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> everyone speaks at least a little English now. Attributed to being locked inside and a lot of YouTube

There was a push for English fluency in K-12 around 10 years ago. Most people you are bumping into are products of that era. The non-Saigon/Hanoi/DaNang/DaLat kids who didn't get that opportunity attended the hundreds of ESL schools like "Wall Street English" and "California English" in town






"Hi, what is your name? Where are you from?"

It was pretty mediocre and that was the depth of it.

Unless you're in a private school, my experience is that education here is still pretty poorly handled. Kind of "blind leading the blind".

What I'm seeing now is that even the older generations are speaking some English too now, where previously I would just get the infamous jazz hands.

I'm also in a big city... it'll be interesting to see how things are when I head out into the country side again.


> that education here is still pretty poorly handled. Kind of "blind leading the blind".

It is, but the tourism boom began around sa decade ago as well, which pushed (pidgin) English fluency front and forward in Tier 1 cities (eg - https://laodong.vn/chinh-sach-giao-duc/dieu-kien-lam-giao-vi...).

Most Vietnamese born after 1980 who consume foreign content prefer Korean, Chinese, and Japanese content over Western (based on my wife and her extended family's experience)

In Saigon at least there was a push for English teaching in K-12, and ik international teachers (mostly Pinoy) were hired as contractors to teach part time in that initiative.


> Most Vietnamese born after 1980 who consume foreign content prefer Korean, Chinese, and Japanese content over Western (based on my wife and her extended family's experience)

Agreed, I've noticed this as well from when I was living here before. The difference today is that I'm noticing more english youtube content being consumed. I wish we could see youtube stats on this.

My partner is 1983... grew up in D3... near perfect english... only likes western content. A bit of an oddball in that regard, which sets them apart mentally from the rest.




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