Filial Piety

One of the most important aspects of Vietnamese culture is filial piety. Filial piety is the duty of a child towards his or her parents. As a young child, one must obey one's parents. When they are old, one must care for them. After they pass away, one must honor their memory by worshipping them. At all times, a filial child should be grateful to his or her parents for raising and teaching them. There is a Vietnamese saying that can be very roughly translated as: Our father's hard work is like Mount Thai Son, The gratitude we owe our mother is like water flowing from its source. This means that the credit our father deserves for raising us is as great as Mount Thai Son, a mountain in China, and our gratitude towards our mother should be as inexhaustible as the source of a river. This saying is meant to remind people to be grateful to their parents for bringing them into this world and caring for them.    

Education

      The first university was set up in Hanoi in the 11th century. Since that time Vietnamese scholars have veen highly esteemed. Nevertheless, in 1930 less than one tenth of the population was literate In 1945. Elementary schools were set up for children, and night classes were offered for adults to equip them with basic skills reading and writing, especially in the use of quoc ngu, the Vietnamese romanized script. Since then an entirely new educational system had been established.

      Nursery school is optional, so generally children start elementary school at the age of six. The first cycle of five years is compulsory.Those students go on to secondary school--a four-year. Student who complete secondary school qualify for higher education at a college or university.Those who do not attend secondary school may continue their education at a technical or vocational institute that prepares them for a specific profession. There are also agricultural institutes where students and farmers alike learn about advanced farming techniques, horticulture, and animal husbandry. 

Family

      The traditional Vietnamese family commonly has three generations living under the same roof: the paternal grandparents, parents, and children. Young women leave their homes when they marry and resettle in their husbands' homes. When a young man marries, his wife moves in with him and his family. Vietnamese children usually grow up in an extended family of paternal relatives including his or her parents, grandparents, father's brothers and unmarried sisters, and cousins. Unlike in a modern American family, Vietnamese children live with their parents their entire life, except for daughters who leave their homes when they marry and start families of their own. Long ago, an entire patriarchal family lived in the same village with young men marrying women from neighboring villages and young women leaving the village when they marry. Also according to tradition, the father's duty is to work and provide for his family while the mother cares for the children and does the chores at home. The Vietnamese believe that relatives must care for one another, the strong protecting the weak, and parents must be willing to make sacrifices for their children. That is the picture of the ideal traditional family, but the typical modern family has changed much. Many young couples like to have their own homes instead of living with their parents. The wife usually still goes to live with her husband's family, but some husbands move in with their wives' families. Since traditional times, Vietnamese woman have sometimes had to join their husbands in working to provide for their children because their husbands either did not earn enough or did not care to look after the family. Today, approaching equality between the sexes, it has become common practice for women to work, and the man is no longer the head of the family with total control as he once was. Because earning a living sometimes forces people to travel extensively, because of war, and because people have been forced to become refugees, many Vietnamese families now live far apart from each other. But when circumstances allow it, the Vietnamese still like to live near their family and relatives. One thing that has not changed is that the Vietnamese continue to have respect for love of family and continue to honor filial piety above all.  

Living in the City

      Most city-dwellers prefer to live fairly near their place of work. the chop houses, or low apartment rooms, have a small kitchen and a bathroom. There may also be a small courtyard for drying laundry. Apartments on the upper floor usually have a balcony or roof garden. Most of the large colonial houses built by the French have been converted into offices or subdivided into apartments. 

      The city comes alive when the sun comes up. As early as 6 a.m.. trucks and buses rumble on their way to the provinces, honking at smaller vehicles to clear the path. By 6:30 in the morning, the city's main streets are filled with columns of people on bicycles and scooters weaving their way to work, hawkers selling noodles soup, French bread, or xoi (a kind of sticky rice, pronounced 'soy') park thier push carts on sidewalks and workers eat breakfast at these stalls. In the marketplace, housewives buy fresh vegetables, fish, pork or chicken for the day's meals. 

      Most offices close at 4 p.m., but shops in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City remain open until 8 or 9 p.m. On their way home, workers enjoy browsing through the shops or stopping at a cafe' for a drink. Some stop at the market to buy food for dinner. 

      In the evening, many adults attend courses at community centers or work at second job to supplement their income.

Village Life

     Village life is not so much determined by the minute and the hour as by the seasons. Fields have to be ploughed and harrowed and rice must be sown twice a year during the dry seasons. Seedling are transplanted only after the first rains.

      People are organized into teams, young men taking on heavy tasks such as plugging and digging canals, women help in the back-breaking work of transplanting rice seedlings. Older folks are assigned to look after fruit trees or to tend pond fish. Grain storage, construction of buildings, and fertilizing are assigned to a team of villagers. 

Going to School

  Students aged six to eleven go to primary school, where they learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. Rules are strongly enforced at shool, and disobedient students are punished harshly by their teachers. Most students, however, show their teachers the same respect that they show their parents. 

      With so many children to educate and so little money, schools often cannot afford supplies. Some classrooms have little else than old wooden benches, scratched tables, and 50 determined students. Children go to school six days a week. Many must walk a long distance. Students must pay to go to school.

      One group of students goes to school early in the morning, perhaps from 7:30 to 11:30. Then a second group comes to school in the afternoon. Often there is long break for lunch because the weather gets very hot.

      Students who hope to go to university or college must attend secondary school. To get into secondary school, the students must pas difficult exams.

     Students who do not go on to secondary school may continue their education at a vocational school vocational school provides special training for trades such as mechanics, or agriculture. 

In many Vietnamese schools, students wear a uniform consisting of a white shirt and blue pants with a red scarf.

List of Kinship Pronouns

N = North, S = South The North and South have different accents as well as slightly different kinship pronouns.
Since the accents of Vietnamese words are not given, please note that

Ba, meaning father, is actually spelled differently from Ba, meaning grandmother. Bo (N), Thay (N, rarely used), Cau (N, rarely used), Ba (S), Tia (S) = father
Me (N), Mo (N), Ma (S) = mother
Con = child Con trai = son Con gai = daughter
Anh = older brother
Chi = older Sister
Em = younger sibling
Chong = husband
Vo = wife

According to Vietnamese custom, siblings often call each other by their rank according to seniority, although more Northern families use name than seniority. Seniority here is used as a rough translation of thu, meaning the different ages of siblings; seniority comes in ranks, whether eldest, second, third, etc., or youngest. According to the Northern style, the firstborn sibling is called anh ca or chi ca, meaning eldest brother or eldest sister. The following siblings are known by their rank: second, third, fourth, etc. In the southern system, probably due to avoiding the term huong ca, or the village mayor, there is no ca rank. Instead, the firstborn sibling is called anh hai or chi hai (second brother or second sister), followed by the third, fourth, fifth, etc.
Ong noi, ba noi: paternal grandfather, paternal grandmother
Ong ngoai, ba ngoai: maternal grandfather, maternal grandmother Ong co noi, ba coi noi: either grandfather's father, either grandfather's mother
Ong co ngoai, ba co ngoai: either grandmother's father, either grandmother's mother "Either grandfather" or "either grandmother" means that the explanation applies to both the maternal and paternal grandparent. In the Northern system, people use the pronoun chau, meaning grandchild, for themselves when speaking to their grandparents. They call their grandparents ong and ba (grandfather and grandmother). In the Southern system, people use the pronoun con, which means child, when speaking to their grandparents. They call their paternal grandparents noi, meaning paternal, and their maternal grandparents ngoai, meaning maternal.

Ong bac: either grandfather's older brother
Ba bac (N), Ba co (S): either grandfather's older sister Ong chu: either grandfather's younger brother Ba co: either grandfather's younger sister
Ong bac (N), Ong cau (S): either grandmother's older brother
Ba bac (N), Ba di (S): either grandmother's older sister Ong cau: either grandmother's younger brother
Ba di: either grandmother's younger sister These are only the formal terms for these relations, used when describing them in the third person.
In the Northern system, grandchildren call the grandparents' sibling ong and ba. When speaking of them in the third person, the grandchild uses their name following the word ong or ba.
For the grandparents' brothers, the men's own names are used. For grandparents' sisters, the women's husbands' names are used (for example: if one's ba bac, or grandfather's older sister, marries a man named Phong, one would call her husband and her Ong Phong and Ba Phong). In the informal, familiar style of the Southern system, a paternal grandfather's siblings are called using this pattern: paternal grandfather/grandmother + the person's sibling rank. That means his siblings are called ong noi hai, ba noi ba, ong noi tu, etc. (second paternal grandfather, third paternal grandmother, fourth paternal grandfather, etc.). The siblings of the rest of one's grandparents follow the same rule. (In the South, the "second" rank sibling is the eldest.)
Bac: father's older brother or his wife Bac (N), Co (S): father's older sister
Bac (N), Duong (S): father's older sister's husband
Chu: father's younger brother Thim: father's younger brother's wife
Co: father's younger sister Chu (N), Duong (S): father's younger sister's husband
Bac (N), Cau (N): mother's older brother Mo: mother's older brother's wife Bac (N), Di (S): mother's older sister Bac (N), Duong (S): mother's older sister's husband
Cau: mother's younger brother Mo: mother's younger brother's wife Di: mother's younger sister
Chu (N), Duong (S): mother's younger sister's husband
The same pronouns are used for one's parents' first cousins as for their siblings. Anh ho, Chi ho: male children of parents' older siblings, female children of parents' older siblings Em ho: children of parents' younger siblings
Con dau: daughter-in-law
Con re: son-in-law Chau: sibling's children, first cousins' children
Chau re: husband of sibling's daughter or husband of first cousins' daughter
Chau dau: wife of sibling's son or wife of first cousins' son Anh re: older sister's husband
Em re: younger sister's husband
Chi dau: older brother's wife Em dau: younger brother's wife
Anh vo, chi vo, em vo: wife's older brother, wife's older sister, wife's younger sibling Anh chong, chi chong, em chong: husband's older brother, husband's older sister, husband's younger sibling
Chau noi: son's children
Chau ngoai: daughter's children
Chau re: granddaughter's husband
Chau dau: grandson's wife
Chat (N), Chau co (S): great-grandchildren
Chut (N), Chau co co (S): great-great-grandchildren
Chit (N), unsure of Southern terminology: great-great-great-grandchildren