Soothing My Broken Tongue

Learning Vietnamese as a Geriatric Millennial

For the first time at the age of 42, I decided it was time to learn Vietnamese. For years, I carried the shame of not being able to speak my parents’ native languages—Khmer and Vietnamese. As a first-born in America, growing up in a predominantly white suburb, I had little choice but to assimilate and bypass learning my parents’ languages. My father believed that mastering English would give me and my brothers the best chance for long-term success. This meant abandoning our ancestral tongues—and eventually, I would later realize the consequences of that loss.

I couldn’t communicate with my grandparents. My mom, whose English was limited, was forced to find ways to connect with me and my brothers. We were often ridiculed by older relatives and family friends for not speaking the language(s). During my first trip to Vietnam in 2009, I received lectures—not just from relatives, but also from taxi drivers, restaurant servers, and hotel staff—that said, “You should learn Vietnamese.” This “You should” reminder during my trip left me so bitter that it took me until the end of 2024 to return to Vietnam—and even then, I avoided visiting my family’s hometown.

My grandmother lived until I turned 35, yet I never had a conversation with her. I always wanted to ask my grandma about my late grandpa, and about their experiences in Vietnam during the war and escape. For my mom, while her English gradually improved, she suffered a sudden stroke in 2012 that affected her ability to communicate. My brothers and I struggled to communicate with her at times when it came to expressing her needs and being able to understand us. It was painful watching my younger cousins on my mom’s side speak Vietnamese fluently, and my older cousins on my dad’s side switch effortlessly between Vietnamese and Khmer. I watched my Vietnamese friends converse with my mom—while she’d remind them, right in front of me, that I couldn’t understand her. My father, from time to time, would express his disappointment that we hadn’t learned Khmer. I felt the shame of communicating with my aunts and uncles in English—a language they struggled with, yet still spoke more fluently than I could speak theirs.

I often think about all the missed opportunities to connect—especially with my family back home. I was robbed of the precious moments I could have shared with my elders, of learning their stories, of understanding the full complexity of who I am. It became a daily reminder of what I couldn’t do—that my assimilated Americanness had left me too far removed from my family roots, and that I was deemed a lost cause in my family’s eyes.

“We respond back in our broken tongue, in our subtle fear of Khmer and English. But most times when we know more, we choose to respond in silence because we know our broken tongues sting your heart.”
— Sina Sam

For years, I rebelled against learning the mother tongue(s). I knew that no matter how hard I tried to please my parents and community, I would always fall short. Even when I could say a few words, I felt shame when I mispronounced words and phrases—and it stung even more when native speakers gave me confused looks. Sometimes, I lashed out at my parents for not teaching us properly. When my dad brought up my language shortcomings, I’d go for the jugular—reminding him of his failures as a father and blaming him for the burden I had to carry. I knew exactly where it hurt, and I wanted them to feel my pain.

I tried to overcompensate for my lack of language through other means. I majored in English and taught it abroad. I took on leadership roles in the Cambodian and Vietnamese communities—through my podcast and in nonprofit work. For a while, I convinced myself it was enough. I believed that by participating in these communities, I had accomplished more than some of my peers or relatives who spoke the languages I envied.

But the void still remained.

It wasn’t until my most recent trip to Vietnam and Cambodia that I realized, now in my early 40s, that it was finally time to confront this lifelong thorn on my side. Time to take initiative. Time to move past my insecurities around not speaking "accurately." Time to do it on my own terms.

This summer, I began taking online Vietnamese lessons with a native tutor several times a week. I chose Vietnamese over Khmer because I have more opportunities to practice it locally and digitally, and frankly, my brain can’t handle learning two languages at once. Slowly, I gained confidence in reading and texting basic Vietnamese. I would message some of my Vietnamese friends in their language but I also confronted daily challenges, especially with the language’s six tonal sounds. A slight error in pronunciation can completely alter a word’s meaning. (Here are some examples:

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Learning a language from scratch in your 40s can be daunting. But the more I study, broken tongue, mistakes and all, the more I feel myself chipping away at that shame. I may never reach fluency, but I am opening the door to meaningful connections with people I might otherwise have never reached. With time, I hope the language barrier—and the insecurities it created—will begin to dissolve, and that I will finally speak not just the words, but the parts of me that were held silent.