MELBOURNE: 21st May 2005 -- The launch takes place today, in Melbourne, of a new Vietnamese language-learning text prepared jointly by Sr Marguerite Nguyen FMA and Fr Anthony Quang SDB, both Melbourne-based members of the Salesian Family.  Sr Marguerite Nguyen is a member of the FMA novitiate community at Broadmeadows, while Fr Anthony Quang is the Rector of the SDB community in inner-city Brunswick.

    'Study Vietnamese Together' is a five volume Vietnamese course, each volume accompanied by an audio CD, and covering a graduated series of levels.  There is also an interactive CD as part of the package, to encourage learners to work at their own pace.  Each of the five levels is divided into five parts, including dialogue, vocabulary and expression, pronunciation, exercises, and a video clip.

    There is a very large Vietnamese community in Australia, and one which has, over the years, integrated into Australian culture.  The language series has at least two aims, one being to encourage Australians of Vietnamese extraction to continue with their language, even to begin to learn it, while the hope is that other Australians who have come into contact with their Vietnamese brothers and sisters, or who may wish to travel to Vietnam, will take up Vietnamese.

    The Australian Salesian Family has been enriched with a number of Vietnamese vocations.  Fr Quang was the first of these many years ago.  He is the editor of Dan Chua, a Catholic Vietnamese monthly which now runs to 20,000 copies.  For anyone who reads Vietnamese it can be found by going to www.vietcatholic.net and following links which lead to Dan Chua.  Sr Marguerite is an exceptionally talented artist, amongst other things, and has held public exhibitions of her work in recent years.

 

VOCABULARY

jointly: combined

extraction: in reference to people it refers to their origins

_____________________________