Free language classes are rare in any community, but at the Oconee County Library, one resident offers Vietnamese classes free of charge every month.
Once a month for the past three years, Martine Thy Nguyen has been offering free lessons in her mother language—Vietnamese—to a small group of Northeast Georgians.
Mara Nelms has been Martine’s student for a year. She says she was excited to learn about a different language and culture for free.
“There’s not a lot of places where you can get free instruction,” she says.
Nguyen says she teach Vietnamese so that Americans will see her home country through the lens of its language and culture, rather than the war that the United States waged there against Communist forces in the 20th century.
She often incorporates songs as a part of her lessons in order to familiarize students with the language’s tones, or different pitches that impact meaning. Nguyen says, “Vietnamese, it’s also a tonal language, so when you sing it, that’s how we speak it, and that’s how we say the words.”
Nguyen adds that because Vietnamese uses the same alphabet as English, it can be a more approachable tonal language to learn.
Vietnamese classes are offered on the first Monday of every month at the Oconee County Library in Wire Park.
