Hi everyone,

Thanks, nucuoithienthan, for the response. You’re my hero, little brother. I couldn’t do that when I was at your age. You are doing very well.

I have edited nucuoithienthan’s writing as below, just correcting the mistakes and making it sound right. No fancy work. If you compare the two pieces, the answer will be clear to you. No need for any explanation. However, if anyone has a question, please feel free to ask.

There are five people in my family–my father, my mother, my brother, my little sister and me. One of us is most pampered by my parents. It is my little sister Ngoc Han, because she is the only girl in my family. Now she is six years old. I am eight years older. she is really a very beautiful girl with ocean blue eyes, a straight nose, and long shimmering black hair. My mother likes to fondle her hair.

Ngoc Han always smiles. Everyone loves her. She likes to read and listen to fairy tales, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Prince Frog. My mother often tells her a fairy tale before she sleeps.

Ngoc Han likes to eat sweets, so she has only one upper incisor left. She has a passion for piano. She began playing piano when she was 3 years old. Now she can play more than 100 pieces of music. She also likes singing and sings very well. My father said that when Ngoc Han reaches 15, he would send her to a music college to learn. He always hopes his little and tender Ngoc Han will be a famous singer. I do too. Everyone in my family does.

GRAMMAR HINT: How do know you which noun is countable and which is uncountable?

Answer: Look it up in the dictionary 🙂

Ex: Look up the word “time” at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/time.

“Time” has many different meanings; each meaning is a “different word” (for our current purposes). Generally, the meaning starts with “a” or “one” in the dictionary is a countable noun; the meaning starts with “the” is an uncountable noun.

So, depending on what meaning you want to use for the word “time”, it can be either countable or uncountable.

TODAY’S CHALLENGE

OK, you guys. What do you usually do on Sundays? Sleeping until 5pm? Swimming? Visiting with friends? Going to the coffee shop? Working with the computer? On what?

Please tell us what you usually do on Sundays.

Come on, guys! Shoot!

Have a great day, everyone. 🙂

Hoanh

Hi everyone,

Thank you for participating very well in yesterday’s translation. Everyone is very good. It was hard for me to pick one over the others. It hurts my heart. I may have a heart attack eventually if I keep doing this.

At the end I decided to pick two–chị Kiêm Yến’s and Đức Minh’s writings. Viên Hy’s is very good, good enough for posting, but I don’t want to annoy the readers by posting too many. And JEa’s is also right there. JEa should be a little tighter in language when translating, though.

I did only a couple of very minor changes in Kiêm Yến’s and Đức Minh’s translations before posting. Hope you have already seen today. Thanks, Yến and Đức Minh. And, of course, Viên Hy and jEa too.

Nothing much to discuss on the translation exercise. You guys can just compare the original and the translations, and you will see all the points.

“Secondary performance”: I translate it as “Làm việc kiểu hạng hai.” Everyone misunderstood this term. But it probably is my fault. Had I written “second-class performance” or “second-rank performance”, it might have been clearer.

“At the individual level”: This is similar to what we hear often in economics–“at the micro level”–which means to look at things from the point of view of an average person, and not from the (higher) point of view of leader who looks at groups of people. Translating it as “góc độ cá nhân” in this context is good.

For Yen’s question: “Today we are in a much more exciting time.” “A time” here means “(một) thời đại” or “(một) thời kỳ.” In Vietnamese language, we don’t think about “một” here, but in English, the “a” is required–it is a countable noun in this meaning.

TODAY’s CHALLENGE

OK, every one, here it is, a couple of easy challenges for today for you to choose (or to do all, if you’d like to :-)). Write in whatever way you want, with you own words and your own level of writing. Make it easy on yourself.

1. Tell me about your most favorite female singer.

or

2. Do you have a niece, nephew, little brother or little sister? If yes, please write about him/her. I would love to hear.

That’s it. It seems you guys tend to shy away from writing English. But, that is the KEY. And it is much easier than you think. After several exercises, you will find it easy. Just do it. See the guy below?

Have a great day!

Hoanh 🙂

Hi everyone,

Wish everyone a good working week. We had some interesting talk over the weekend with Vien Hy, Be Rom, Loan, Quang on the subject of English challenge. Great discussion!

But…

You guys did not have an answer for the easy Saturday challenge! Come on, guys! Don’t let me down. I know you can do better than that. I probably know about your ability more than you do. Have faith in yourself. And, shoot!

Anyway, I have an interesting challenge today. Yesterday I ran into an article I had written three years ago in English, entitled “The Task of this Generation.” I was planning to translate it into Vietnamese to use as a Trà Đàm article for Đọt Chuối Non, but then I thought: “Why translate it? Why not use it as an English challenge (so I don’t have to do the translation myself)?” 🙂

So, here it is, the challenge for today. Below is my (long) English article to be translated into Vietnamese. I will select the best translation among your responses, edit it a little if necessary, and then post it to ĐCN as a Trà Đàm article (as I have done that with danh ngon translations by Wasabi and Vallikie and chị Kiêm Yến).

Because this is a long article, you can do that in more than one day. Each day, just post the part you finish.

This article may be harder than the previous articles to translate. You may have to work harder.

But, whoever finds this article hard to translate, please keep in mind that you should still work on any of last week’s challenges. Keep working and post them when you’re done. Don’t slow down. Don’t stop.

Practice makes perfect! Go! Go! Go!

Have a great day!

Hoanh
_______________

The Task of this Generation

Some months ago, sister Huyen mentioned in this forum something like “Our father’s generation was so exciting. They walked Truong Son to fight for the country. Today is so boring. We wish we could have a time like our father’s time.” Then many months later, I read Dang Thuy Tran Diaries. As my heart was put on fire by Dang Thuy Tram’s words, I remembered Huyen’s message. Following a generation that lived with death everyday probably makes us feel overshadowed. Tough! And it is even tougher when we look at the individual level. Hard for us to feel motivated if we can’t find great meaning in our life.

But let me tell you this. If we look carefully, today we are in a much more exciting time than our father’s generation, and our task is equall, if not more important and more difficult than the task of our fathers. Today, the first time in our history we have peace, advanced technology, advanced knowledge, and global connection to move our country toward greatness. This has never before happened in our history.

For thousands of years, we were just a little country in a little unknown corner of the world with China (and later France) as the center of our world. Today, we have independence, we have peace, we have the ability to sit in any corner of the land and gather information and knowledge from anywhere in the world. And we have a network of Vietnamese spreading all over the world to move things at the global level.

Our nation has never had that chance. This is the chance for us to get out of our own shadow of a poor and heroic nation to become a powerful and prominent nation. In other words, we are in a war against poverty and backwardness and a race toward greatness. How exciting would that be!

Today, we don’t have to look at China or France as the center of the world. We look at ourselves as the potential center of the world. Why? Because in the old days the world was too big for us to fathom. Today, we are in the little global village and it is not such a big ambition for any villager to dream of becoming a village chief some day.

We live in an era abound with great opportunities. Great opportunities bring with them great challenges. And the greatest challenge of all is our Self. Peaceful life brings with it inertia and the false sense of security. It is much easier to be on guard when we have to sleep with death each night. But when things seem to be so peaceful, that is when our inertia creeps in and lulls us into a long sleep.

In war, we can’t be corrupted, because that would mean death. In peace, corruption may become a part of our life if we don’t guard against it. In war, secondary performance means death. In peace, both the best and the worst survive. In war, we know our mistake the minute or the next day. In peace, today’s mistake may show its consequences 10 years later. So today we are easily blindsided by the false sense of security and by mistake’s slow speed of presenting its own consequences.

If we see all this–the first time in our history we have great opportunities and great challenges to become a great nation in the community of nations–then we will realize that we are in a very exciting time, with a struggle that is equally if not more important than our fathers’ fighting for independence.

That is the task of this generation. Are we up to it? Are we keeping the flame of idealism burning in our heart? Are we looking forward with great vision? Are we keeping ourselves clean from corruption? Are we standing up straight to defend the truth and justice? Are we opening our mind to the most difficult issues of the nation? Are we doing our small part to bring our nation to greatness? As our fathers have told themselves “We fight to victory or to death,” are we telling ourselves, “We fight to victory until dead”?

I am thankful that I am allowed to live during this most exciting time of our nation. I hope that we of this generation will be faithful to ourselves to take on the great task of completing our father’s job–Keeping ourselves clean and patriotic, and turning our country into a great nation of the world.

Are we up to the task?

Have a great day!

Hoanh

5/14/2006

Hi everyone,

Thanks, Chế Lan Hương, for the posting. You melt my heart. I lived in Nha Trang as a child and, of all cities of Vietnam, Nha Trang still captures my fondest memories.

My family was in Thành, right outside Cửa Tây. If you go through Thành, from Nha Trang, into Cửa Đông, out of Cửa Tây, the fírst home you see on the right side of the road was the first home we lived when our family moved from Pleiku to Khánh Hòa.

I attended primary school in Hà Dừa, then 6th and 7th grades in what is now L‎ý Tự Trọng High School in Nha Trang. It was called Võ Tánh then. While at Võ Tánh, I stayed with a friend of my parents, on the ground of Department of Health, facing Tân Quang Theater. Wonder if the theater is still there. I can tell you about truckloads of memories I have of that town. Oh, nostalgia!

Anyway, Lan Hương’s writing is superb. What can I say! Just one or two minor typos. You guys are so amazing. I am glad I have run into all of you. It is a great pleasure to discover so many talented friends.

Well, let me just be picky and pick some very small points in Lan Huong’s writing to discuss:

“Nha Trang is a center of politics, economy, culture, science and technology, and tourism of Khanh Hoa Province.” We say “a center” when we mean that it is only one center among many other similar centers. But Nha Trang is not just a center of Khanh Hoa. It is THE center of Khanh Hoa—the biggest, the best. So, we should say, “Nha Trang is the center of politics…”

“The difficult beaches differentiates…” Obviously, this is a typo. Should be “differentiate.”

“It is an ideal place for organizing a lot of major national and international events such as Sea festival, Miss Viet Nam, Miss Universe, Miss World, etc.”

. No need for “a lot of”.
. “Hold” sounds much better than “organize”. Why? Because “hold” has only one syllable and people use it everyday.

So, let’s change it to: “It is an ideal place to hold major national and international events, such as Sea Festival, Miss Vietnam, Miss Universe, Miss World, etc.”

Please note:
The comma after “events” and before “such as”.
“Sea Festival”: Probably both words should be capitalized as the proper name of the festival.

Let’s hope that other friends will chip in and share more about other cities. I would love to hear about YOUR cities. This is more than English practice. I’d like to know more about you, how you feel about yourselves and people and things around you. We want to know each other more. Please share. Don’t be so shy.

TODAY’s CHALLENGE

For today’s challenge, please write about ONE THING in your city that you like most.

I know it’s hard to pick one when you like so many. 🙂 But let’s stay with one, to have some focus.

You can incorporate this new challenge into yesterday’s challenge about your city.

Have fun. And, have a wonderful weekend. 🙂

Hoanh

Hi everyone,

Thank you for being so enthusiastic! You are the best! You guys are much better than I expected. I was nowhere close to where you are now when I was at your age. You guys have just given me a tremendous boost.

Let’s get more friends involved in this English challenge program. We will do our country a big favor by promoting English.

In addition to the challenges that I have in this Daily English challenge section, don’t forget other things, such as the wonderful lyrics of the songs that chị Huỳnh Huệ posts. They can be used as translation exercises. Or other ĐCN postings that you would like to translate. Be free. We don’t really have rules here, other than the rule against offensive postings.

Today I have just placed 3 links below the “Thử thách Anh ngữ” link (in the right column of our homepage). They are for Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus, Tự Điển Ngoại Ngữ tiếng Việt, and Grammar exercises. These are to aid you in your study.

For yesterday exercise, I will pick out just some points to discuss.

“There are many trees and grasses there.” Grass is a non-countable noun. Change to something like “There are trees and there is grass.” Very simple, but rhythmic.

“My friend living in Đà Nẵng.” Not wrong grammatically, but unclear. It can be changed to something like “My friend from Da Nang who has arrived here three days ago on a visit.”

“My grand mother was fell down” should be changed to “my grandmother fell down.”

“Fortunately , the doctor said that she had been fine , but she must have been rest in bed for one months” should be changed to “Fortunately, the doctor said [that] she would be fine but she must be on bed rest for a month.”

“Not problem” should be changed to “No problem.”

“Not importance” should be changed to “not important.”

“My life looks like monotonous”:

To look + adjective: to describe the look. Ex: She looks so gorgeous with that ao dai. Or, the house looks much bigger in the sunset. Or, you look great today. Or, my life looks monotonous. But in the context here, “My life may look monotonous” sounds better.

To look like + noun : to compare. Ex: He looks like a monkey. She looks like a difficult princess.

That’s it. Let’s use these challenges to get to know each other more and more.

Now, here is the happy challenge for today:

Please tell me about the city where you live. I would like to know more about your city.

You tell me about your city and I will tell you about my city (Washington DC). Oh, if you have a couple of interesting pictures of your city, you can send them to me and I will place them in your post. I am at tdhoanh@gmail.com.

Have a great day!

Hoanh

Chào các bạn,

Trong tiến trình làm việc trong mục thử thách Anh ngữ này, mình vẫn trong giai đoạn khám phá và nghiên cứu vấn đề, để từ từ tìm ra các phương cách giúp các bạn phát triển Anh ngữ một cách hiệu quả nhất.

Vấn đề Anh ngữ to lớn hơn là vấn đề cá nhân và ý thích. Từ bây giờ cho đến vài thập niện nữa, đất nước chúng ta tiến nhanh đến đâu là do “dân Việt”, như là một toàn thể, phát triển Anh ngữ đến đâu. Các chính sách phát triển kinh tế khác đều được hỗ trợ hoặc kéo ngược lại do vận tốc phát triển của Anh ngữ. Các bạn nhìn Singapore, South Korea, India, Japan thì sẽ thấy. Càng khá Anh ngữ chúng ta càng khá trong “khu chợ quốc tế.”

Vì vậy, chúng ta cần biết rất rõ là một trong những cách giúp mình, giúp gia đình, và giúp tổ quốc hiệu quả nhất là khá Anh ngữ. Trust me. Mình đã nói chuyện với nhiều lãnh đạo kinh tế chính trị tại nhiều quốc gia.

Vòng lại chuyện của chúng ta, mình đã nhận thấy rằng cách học Anh ngữ của chúng ta quá khó khăn vì chúng ta học Anh ngữ như người Việt học tiếng Anh, thay vì như người Mỹ/Anh học tiếng Anh. Tức là ta học tiếng Anh qua tiếng Việt, chứ không như trẻ em học tiếng mẹ đẻ, học trực tiếp chứ không qua một ngôn ngữ nào. Học trực tiếp, không thông qua ngôn ngữ nào, làm việc học dễ dàng hơn, thấm nhanh hơn, và thấm được “luận lý nội tại” (inner logic) của ngôn ngữ mình học.

Vì vậy bắt đầu từ hôm nay chúng ta sẽ chuyển hướng từ từ, nghiên cứu cách học trực tiếp tiếng Anh, ít thông qua tíếng Việt. Mình nói là “ít” vì biết mỗi bạn đã thủ sẵn it nhất là một quyển tự điển rồi. 🙂 Chúng ta sẽ cùng nghiên cứu cách học với nhau. Các bạn cứ cho mình ý kiến về cách học khi thấy có điều gì đó cần suy nghĩ. Và chị Huệ, các ĐCN admins, và các bạn đọc cao minh khác, như anh Minh Đoan, đang đọc mục này, xin cứ tự nhiên góp ý với mình. Càng nhiều đầu óc tụ lại, ta càng khá. Đây là vấn đề lớn của đất nước.

Dĩ nhiên là mình sẽ nghiên cứu cách nào làm cho việc nghiên cứu của chúng ta vừa vui vừa dễ và vừa đủ khó một tí để thành thử thách. Từ từ chúng ta sẽ khám phá ra nhiều phương cách hay.

Vài điểm kỹ thuật cho WordPress system: Post “Thử thách Anh Ngữ hàng ngày” sẽ đổi tên thành Daily English Challenge. “Chuyên mục” (Category) thì vẫn giữ là “Thử thách Anh Ngữ”, và tag (thẻ) thì sẽ đổi từ “Nghiên cứu Anh ngữ” thành “English challenge.”

Sau đây là challenge rất dễ và vui ngày hôm nay:

Today is a beautiful day, even if you have cried a little for some reason 🙂 Would you like to share your day with all our brothers and sisters? We would love to hear from you.

Please write a short piece to tell everyone what you have done and/or what you plan to do today.

It depends on the time you write the response. Say, if you write at 12 pm, then write about what you have done since early morning till noon, and what you plan to do from noon till the time you go to bed.

Write whatever you want to write, how long or short as you like, in whatever style you like.

The best way to write is to do it in short and simple sentences, like this message that I am writing.

We just want to hear about your day. Life is beautiful when we can share our day with other brothers and sisters.

Have a great day!

Hoanh

Chào các bạn,

Thử thách Anh ngữ hôm này là phần II của bài Wise Word mà chi Huệ đã gửi phần đầu hôm thứ hai.

Phần này cách hành văn khác với phần trước. Phần trước, có nhiều chuỗi từ, mỗi chuỗi là nhiều từ nối vói nhau bằng đấu phẩy, tạo ra nhịp điệu rất hay.

Phần này chuyển sang lối viết lý luận, với những chuổi lý luận bắt đầu với “if”. Và nhiều câu hỏi hùng biện (rhetorical questions), tức là loại câu hỏi được dùng để nhấn mạnh một điểm, chứ không phải là hỏi để tìm câu trả lời.

Bài này là một bài viết rất hay, của chuyên gia chuyên về viết lách, cho nên các bạn nên đọc tới đọc lui để thấm ngôn ngữ.

Về bài viết cover letter, thì các bạn nên cố làm nhé. Vì nó ảnh hưởng nhiều đến sự nghiệp mình sau nầy. Nếu khó một tí thì cứ cố lên. No pain, no gain.

Chúc các bạn một ngày vui.

Mến,

Hoành
__________________

Mời các bạn dịch tiếp phần II của bài Wise Word với độ dài độ 230 từ như hôm trước

Do you realize how much power your words have to make a difference in the lives of others? Let’s think about this for a moment. Suppose you encouraged two people today, motivating each of them to encourage two others tomorrow. If the process continues everyday, 128 people will have benefited by the end of the week. If it continues for two weeks, there will be 16,384 beneficiaries. What if it lasted for three weeks? There would be more than TWO MILLION people benefiting from kind acts that you initiated! But let’s be conservative and assume that at the end of three weeks “only” one-half of one percent of that number would benefit. If so, there would “merely” be 10,000 people better off because of your two acts of kindness. Imagine if you were kind to two different people every day! Can you begin to appreciate the enormous power you have to do good?

Of course, the reverse is also true. That is, each of our unkind acts spreads and multiplies just as quickly. Is there any wonder there is so much suffering? Isn’t it obvious the world is in desperate need of our acts of kindness? Can we afford to let a single day pass without a kind word? Let’s begin to make a difference today. Although we can improve the world in many ways with the gift of speech, for clarity’s sake, let’s focus on one issue: ENCOURAGEMENT.