Warning from slang and the distortion of Vietnamese in cyberspace
At the seminar "From preserving fine customs and traditions to affirming the human value system of Ho Chi Minh City" organized by the Propaganda and Mass Mobilization Committee of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee on July 21, Dr. Nguyen Thi Thuy Vy of the Faculty of Cultural Studies, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City, raised an issue related to the use of Vietnamese in cyberspace by a part of young people today.
According to Dr. Thuy Vy, on Facebook, TikTok or Instagram, young people often use memes, slang, abbreviations and phonetic variations to increase expressiveness and shorten interaction time. Expressions such as: "Xin xo", "du trend", "chill phet", "toang", "tach", "flex", "ca kia" or the combination of English in sentences such as "Deadline di qua", "My team just pitched a new project" reflect the flexibility in communication as well as the process of receiving global cultural trends.
Besides, the trend of simplifying words is also increasingly popular. Instead of expressing fully, young people often use short expressions such as: "Chuẩn", "chuẩn luôn", "mệt, khỏi đi" or abbreviate them as "ko", "j", "hok" in online conversations.
In fact, this is not a new phenomenon. Many years ago, late Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pham Van Tinh - linguistic expert, former Deputy Director of the Institute of Vietnamese Studies, Director of the Center for Vietnamese Studies - when exchanging with Lao Dong Newspaper warned that many students of all ages, including office workers, often bring written language, spoken language online and in text messages into daily life, applying them to all situations. Writing and speaking styles such as "2 e!" (hello em! ), "Min k hiu nui" (I can't understand), "nó cá chê tao rồi" (it's criticizing me already), "hoy" (stop), "9xac" instead of "chính xác"...
He said: "Using it arbitrarily for a long time, continuously, can cause many teenagers to have difficulty with seemingly elementary requirements: Write correctly in spelling, place sentences correctly in grammar, use appropriate and meaningful words.
Regarding this issue, Van Sang - a student at the Academy of Journalism and Propaganda said: "It is true that young people often use abbreviations and slang in communication in cyberspace or through messaging applications. However, in official communication in real life, many people are still affected. I think the issue of preserving the identity and purity of Vietnamese in the digital environment needs to be paid more attention to.
Building cultural sovereignty in the digital space
At the second meeting of the Central Steering Committee for Vietnamese Cultural Development held on July 13, General Secretary and President To Lam requested: "Promote the building of cultural sovereignty in the digital space, enhance attractiveness, spreading capacity and protecting Vietnamese cultural values".
In the digital environment, competition between cultural flows is increasingly strong. Cultural exchange and assimilation is an inevitable trend, creating conditions for Vietnam to absorb the cultural quintessence of humanity, but at the same time also posing an urgent requirement to improve the autonomy capacity, orientation capacity and resistance of national culture" - General Secretary, President To Lam emphasized.
The role of preserving Vietnamese in the process of building cultural sovereignty in the digital space is very clear. In the digital environment, Vietnamese is not only used in communication but also as input data for search engines, artificial intelligence, translation software, virtual assistants and content creation platforms.
If there is a lack of rich, accurate and quality Vietnamese language data warehouses, technology systems may not fully understand the language, history and culture of Vietnam. At that time, the content created by the machine can easily appear incorrectly, use inaccurate words, confuse about characters, events or interpret Vietnamese cultural values from an inappropriate perspective.
Not only common Vietnamese, languages of ethnic minorities, regional languages, folk literature, indigenous knowledge and traditional forms of expression also need to be digitized. If these data sources are not preserved, many values may gradually disappear as the generation holding knowledge becomes less and less.
Protecting Vietnamese does not mean being closed to foreign languages. The important thing is to receive selectively, enrich expressive ability but not to let Vietnamese be used arbitrarily, distorted or poorly in a high-speed media environment.
Vietnamese culture always develops through the process of contact, exchange and adaptation with many different cultures. The core issue is to have the courage to choose, the ability to transform and the ability to create new values.
Integration is only truly meaningful when Vietnam not only accepts the cultural products of the world but also contributes its products, stories and perspectives to humanity.
In the digital space, a country with cultural sovereignty is a country that has the ability to tell its own story, in its own voice and on the basis of the values it chooses.
That is where history is not explained for, identity is not faded by temporary trends, domestic creators are not left out of the value chain and the younger generation can become global citizens while still understanding where they come from.
