Waishama Language is important? Posted by Stancy , Monday, January 11, 2010 at 4:24 PM, in

To adopt one’s culture it is always nice to know the basics of their language. If you’ve watched “The Ramen Girl”, you will get an idea why language is important. In that movie you will see how the main character struggled in understanding her Japanese boss’ instructions because she doesn’t understand Japanese language.
Vietnam is a very significant place in our family because it is where my Mom and Dad met each other. My father was a missionary there in 1971. Here are a few basic things that they did to be able to communicate with the people and share the gospel:
1. Because they don’t know the Vietnamese language in the beginning they had to look for interpreters.
2. When they have no more interpreters, they found the teachers who know very little English so they had to speak very slow so the teachers could interpret it to the students.
3. When they found another interpreter from the group of believers, my mom, who was single at that time, found out that there were twisted interpretations.
4. My Mom, who is a linguist, gave my dad and the other missionaries, tapes of Vietnamese language to listen to. The listening helped them be familiar with the sounds of the language.
5. They familiarized themselves with the Vietnamese words in buying food, riding transportations, and asking directions.

Trivia: Vietnamese language is very confusing because one word has different meanings depending on how it was pronounced. For example, bia which means book cover and at the same time with different tone means to invent, fabricate, create, make up. another is bien means to write down, note down, jot down and it also means edge, border, limit, boundary, frontier in a different tone.


In the Bible, we can see the story of the Tower of Babel when God confused the people by giving them different languages. Because when the people could understand each other they thought they could reach God but they were wrong. The language confusion caused them to have a hard time to communicate with each other. The opportunity of the people of Babel to have the same language could have helped them to be able to do good things but they did what is evil. Today, we can turn the plates around by being familiar with another culture’s language and use it as an opportunity to share the gospel to them. Then they will know the good things God has done for them and worship Him.