Bilingual Development in the Tai-Vietnamese Multicultural Borderland

Northern Vietnam, in particular the regions along the international border, is home to a rich diversity of language communities. Important research opportunities have presented themselves in the Tai-speaking communities in rural districts near Laos with an emphasis on the development and preservation of the Tai languages. One opportunity in particular focuses on the new generation of bilingual school-age children. Preliminary results of the present study regarding the sociolinguistic setting are reported to better understand the language use context of community bilingualism. The method applied for this exploratory survey included different components, each one gathering different kinds of data: interviews with parents of elementary school students and their teachers, in-depth discussions with local language scholars, a study of the previous research on language and literacy in the Tai languages of the region, and assessment of the bilingual ability of the 6-year-old population of a village known for its conservation of the local variant of the language. Findings confirmed that the local community language has been preserved in the child population. At the same time, assessment data point to the rapidly growing influence of the Vietnamese language in every domain of village life, including at home. Overall results of the study place the finding of language preservation in the context of modern-day regional interrelation and historical connection. The concluding discussion of results presents a hypothesis that these tentatively observed favorable conditions might represent a distinctive case.