In Australia, language loss and revitalisation has many histories and contexts, starting with efforts to address the erasure of Indigenous languages since British colonisation. As English is the dominant language stemming from colonisation, all migrant communities face generational language loss.

The Vietnamese diaspora in Australia has a decades-long presence stemming from the refugee experience following the Vietnam-American war. For many, this legacy remains a deep resonance to be passed on to the third generation through language. Here, language loss also represents loss of historical identification, important given Vietnam’s long history of dynastic, imperial and colonial conflict and entanglements.

The Vietnamese language itself has historically been regionally differentiated through accents, dialects and contextual wording. For many in the Vietnamese diaspora, the refugee experience represents a point of language differentiation. This means there are variations in the language spoken by those with links to the refugee history compared to those who recently migrated to Australia. In many ways, these differences are not unique to Vietnamese, as languages evolve with practice and are alive to its contextual usage. Thus, some in the diaspora have asked which Vietnamese will a bilingual program teach?

ViệtSpeak supports keeping alive the refugee experience of the Vietnamese diaspora. It is an important story amongst others in the settler colonial history of Australia. Our language advocacy work and call for language educational justice exists in this historical context. In this spirit, we offer the following teaching and language resources.