Frequently Asked Questions about Vietnamese Culture: Vietnamese Lunar New Year
Phan Thanh Xuân
Instructor: Trương Thị Kim Liên, M.A
Writing 5 ( XH 527)
September 26th, 2012.
Hữu, N. & Borton, L. Frequently asked questions about Vietnamese culture: Vietnamese Lunar New Year. Hà Nội: Thế Giới Publishers, 2003. 116 pp. Culture is the aspect I’m especially interested in. And I find it amazing to read a cultural book in bilingual. It helps me to improve not only my knowledge, but also my new English vocabularies. Recently I have been impressed greatly by “Frequently asked questions about Vietnamese culture: Vietnamese Lunar New Year” - a book written by a cultural scholar Hữu Ngọc and an American writer Lady Borton. This book is from the first series of bilingual handbooks on Vietnamese Culture. These books are really suitable for Vietnamese studying English and for foreigners studying Vietnamese. Because I wish to explore my dear country’s culture in the view of another language, I chose this book to read. Frequently asked questions about Vietnamese culture: Vietnamese Lunar New Year is in form of questions-and-answers, consists of 5 main parts: Background, The Vietnamese Zodiac, Legends, Rituals, Decorations and the glossary is also included at the end of the book. Each part gives us a list of questions related to Vietnamese Lunar New Year. All the answers will be revealed in a clear and understandable way for readers. Although the Lunar New Year is observed throughout East Asia, each country celebrates Tết in its own way with its own national psyche and cultural conditions. The authors clarify that “Tết” is a word of Chinese origin and a phonetic transcriptiont of “Tiết” – a Sino-Vietnamese term, which means “the beginning of a meteorological period of the year” (15). In the first part, the authors aim at introducing the various definitions of Tết in Việt Nam. “For the Vietnamese people, Tết is like a combination of Christmas, Western New Year’s day, Easter, American Thanksgiving, and everyone’s birthday. It is a festival of
Instructor: Trương Thị Kim Liên, M.A
Writing 5 ( XH 527)
September 26th, 2012.
Hữu, N. & Borton, L. Frequently asked questions about Vietnamese culture: Vietnamese Lunar New Year. Hà Nội: Thế Giới Publishers, 2003. 116 pp. Culture is the aspect I’m especially interested in. And I find it amazing to read a cultural book in bilingual. It helps me to improve not only my knowledge, but also my new English vocabularies. Recently I have been impressed greatly by “Frequently asked questions about Vietnamese culture: Vietnamese Lunar New Year” - a book written by a cultural scholar Hữu Ngọc and an American writer Lady Borton. This book is from the first series of bilingual handbooks on Vietnamese Culture. These books are really suitable for Vietnamese studying English and for foreigners studying Vietnamese. Because I wish to explore my dear country’s culture in the view of another language, I chose this book to read. Frequently asked questions about Vietnamese culture: Vietnamese Lunar New Year is in form of questions-and-answers, consists of 5 main parts: Background, The Vietnamese Zodiac, Legends, Rituals, Decorations and the glossary is also included at the end of the book. Each part gives us a list of questions related to Vietnamese Lunar New Year. All the answers will be revealed in a clear and understandable way for readers. Although the Lunar New Year is observed throughout East Asia, each country celebrates Tết in its own way with its own national psyche and cultural conditions. The authors clarify that “Tết” is a word of Chinese origin and a phonetic transcriptiont of “Tiết” – a Sino-Vietnamese term, which means “the beginning of a meteorological period of the year” (15). In the first part, the authors aim at introducing the various definitions of Tết in Việt Nam. “For the Vietnamese people, Tết is like a combination of Christmas, Western New Year’s day, Easter, American Thanksgiving, and everyone’s birthday. It is a festival of