Roby Bellemans

I was born but I do not remember where. When my mother give birth to me I wanted to ask where I was but they give me a huge slap on my buttocks so I kept my mouth and they slapped again. Later I read it was Merksem in Belgium which is now Antwerp, but still in Belgium. All very confusing. We spoke Flemish the Antwerp variation, in the other cities they spoke other language also called Flemish but I couldn't understand them. So the government decided to introduce a new general language that nobody understood. It was a kind of Dutch. So at home we spoke a language that was not teaches at school and at school we learned our mother tongue which was not spoken by anybody, only at school. To give you an impression: "So you have a beautiful bicycle!" was in my original language; "Amai getga ne knappe velo ei!" but in the new language it was: "Nou zeg, je hebt daar een mooie fiets zeg!".

So we had to learn grammar using words we did not understood and for the teacher it iwas also the first time they heard the new language. It was early fifties, in the whole village was one television..

The result is that I never learned any written language cause I have no idea about grammar. The inventor of the new language has said later that the introduction was a disaster and almost nobody of my age has learned to write well.

So I write books, although I'm much better when I can talk. To promote my Vietlish Dictionairy, in which you also find an analysis of the written Vietnamese, I had to do this to find out why everybody thinks that Vietnamese is difficult to learn, it isn't. They just do not have the right courses. I'm very bad in grammar and writing tht is why I'm very good in finding what can go wrong with teaching a language.

In each case, my friend hold her phone and I started to talk for half an hour. You can see on what moments her arm became tired. It was difficult to do for me because I need public, this because I can see their reactions: do they understand what I'm telling? Do they like it? Without public it is difficult for me, nevertheless it will give you a good impression of the "Vietlish Dictionary" just write this in You Tube and you should find the video.

My next project is writing the Vietnamese Museum Guide. I will visit all museums in Vietnam and write about all those beautiful strange things one find in a two chamber museum. Vietnam has o many beautiful things, such an interesting history...traveling through Vietnam makes it very difficult to realize that this country has been occupied for a few thousands years! And the whole time there were hero's like the Hai Ba Trung, the two sisters who were almost 2000 year ago riding on elephants fighting against some invaders. In Vietnam most streets have the names of one of the hero's in the past. That's why they have to build so much...they need streets.

I thought it is nice when you're retired to ride your motorbike trough this beautiful country where nobody does understand you .... I should learn Vietnamese, but it is said that it is very difficult ...although I see so many kids speaking it fluently...