Diplomat Nguyen Manh Cam and the story of learning foreign languages

(Baonghean) - On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Paris Agreement (1973 - 2013), my colleagues and I visited and interviewed veteran diplomat Nguyen Manh Cam at his private home in Hanoi. While my colleagues asked many questions about the negotiation and signing of the Agreement, I did not understand why I paid much attention to a story he happened to tell. That was the story of how he learned a foreign language?

Mr. Nguyen Manh Cam talked with the author of the article at his home in Hanoi.
Photo: Le Anh Dung

Many people know that Nguyen Manh Cam was the last Vietnamese ambassador to the Soviet Union (1991) and believe that he must have been well-trained and very good, and only good at Russian. Even a famous diplomat of our country thought so, so when he heard Mr. Cam speak French, he was pleasantly surprised and exclaimed, "So you also know French?".

To be exact, Mr. Cam is fluent in at least 3 foreign languages: French, Chinese and Russian. With French, he simply learned from a young age at the only French school in Vinh at that time, the Vinh National School (Collège de Vinh). The teachers taught in French, so students who did not know the language had to drop out. He joked with us that, back in the free zone, there was a good teacher of ours who still spoke French with a Thanh Chuong accent, but it was impossible to know what accent he spoke, because he was educated in the traditional way, spoke fluently, wrote well and of course no one knew he was a... native Nghe An person.

In 1952, he was sent to China to study Russian for more than a year and entered the Foreign Service. He said that when he first went to the Soviet Union, he could only hear one or two words in a sentence when listening to his friends. And he had to learn and practice on his own in a way that was different from everyone else. That is, every day, he got up at 5am, turned on the Soviet radio to listen and, most importantly, to learn. The voice of the announcers was the most standard - if he didn't learn there, where else would he learn, right? Just like that, he listened and learned every day from 5am to 8am, that is, until everyone's working hours, then he stopped his own learning.

He learned very quickly and absorbed it so that after a while, "he could listen and understand the words of the announcers, which basically meant everything started to go well." In addition, he also researched and bought tickets to see Soviet children's art performances, because the ticket prices for children were always very cheap, suitable for the budget of a person like him at that time. Moreover, there he could learn the pronunciation and expressions of Russian people, starting from the children.

In that way, he began to perform well the task of Russian interpreter during the time of the first Vietnamese Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Mr. Nguyen Luong Bang.

He admitted that once you know a foreign language, learning other languages ​​is quite easy. He did not underestimate the language aptitude of each person, but he affirmed that only hard work, diligent and creative work can achieve the desired results. Learning a foreign language is no exception to that simple rule!

Our story with him is long and interesting. I deeply understand what he said, the words, the slow sounds that were drawn from the active life of a veteran diplomat. More notably, this is the story of a person who is entrusted with a great responsibility for the country's education and training: he is the Chairman of the Vietnam Association for Promoting Education!

Nam Son (Hanoi)