A teacher devoted to Vietnamese linguistics

VWhite chalk, blackboard, still the same lecture hall

Still the same teacher walking leisurely this morning

A little bit of wind and silver hair

Many autumns have passed quietly under the trees...

Those are the opening lines of the poem I wrote for Professor Dinh Van Duc on November 20, 2008, on the occasion of his receiving the title of People's Teacher.

How fast. This year (2015), Professor Dinh Van Duc turned 72.

Professor, Doctor, People's Teacher Dinh Van Duc

It's not that I don't remember the year of his birth. But I (as well as many of my friends) have made many mistakes. After all these years, his appearance is still the same: gentle, calm, cheerful and very humorous. He is still diligent with his books, teaching every day, not only for graduate students and researchers but also for undergraduate classes. The times I went to the University of Social Sciences and Humanities to teach, I often saw him walking quickly to the lecture hall to keep up. "I have to go to class now. Wait for me, we'll meet after recess" - and then he quickly left. I watched his appearance and tried to imagine a teacher I was lucky enough to study with nearly forty years ago.

It was early 1979. Our K22 Language class (Faculty of Literature, Hanoi University of Science) studied the topic of Vietnamese Grammar in the part of Words. Teaching us was a young, completely new lecturer whom we had just met for the first time. He was of average height, fair skin, a handsome face with a pair of white glasses, very intellectual. He was even more handsome in his clothes, which at that time were considered very "fashionable" and "stylish" to us "young people". On the first day, the whole class was fascinated by his teaching style: mature, clear, concise... with many difficult examples from Russian (more than half of our class were studying this foreign language). Later, we learned that it was Mr. Dinh Van Duc, who had just defended his PhD thesis in the Soviet Union the year before.

Then in the following years, due to work and other relationships in life, I had many opportunities to meet and be close to him and read works named after Dinh Van Duc. I understood more about a teacher whom I always respected.

Professor Dinh Van Duc comes from a family of ordinary intellectuals in Thanh Hoa. His family has been teaching for four generations. Like many of his peers, during the war against France, the small, intelligent and active Duc had to follow his parents to evacuate to many places according to the agency, knowing many people and many situations. He surprised many people because even though he was still young, he already looked like a "young old man", often observing and thinking alone. Right from primary and secondary school, he was a very good student with a talent for social sciences and humanities. At that time, schools had a very bustling movement of making wall newspapers "a hundred flowers blooming". Duc's first "improvised" essays were soon highly appreciated and enthusiastically encouraged by teachers and friends. The head teacher of his final grade advised him to take the entrance exam for a faculty with a tendency towards Literature, even though he really liked History and Geography. So in 1961, Dinh Van Duc was admitted to the Faculty of Literature, Hanoi University of Science, after the exam "Nam school competes with Ha school.” in Nam Dinh. At that time, people used to call the Faculty of Literature as “General Literature” (as well as General Mathematics, General History…), a name that bears the mark of a time, showing the honor of a very necessary and very valuable basic science.

He was Head of the Vietnamese Language Department (Hanoi University of Science) (1985–1990); Head of the Linguistics Department, University of Social Sciences and Humanities (1996-2004).

Recalling this story, Professor Dinh Van Duc told a funny story. He said: “I entered the General School but, unlike many of my classmates, I was not yet a member of the Youth Union. At that time, it was very difficult to join the Youth Union. When I was in high school, I was considered a “petty bourgeois” because I was interested in reading “unofficial” literary works (of the Tu Luc Van Doan with names like Khai Hung, Nhat Linh, Hoang Dao, Thach Lam and the New Poetry movement, etc.) which were being condemned. Then there was a time when I was considered lazy when I went to help people harvest rice, I had the “initiative” to run back and borrow a bicycle to carry rice instead of carrying it on my shoulders.” But that was just a passing story. Just a few months after entering university, thanks to the results of my studies and self-cultivation, this “romantic” young man quickly joined the Youth Union. And now he is nearly forty years old in the Party.

Student Dinh Van Duc's dream of improving his Russian language so that he could later have the opportunity to study Russian literature in depth was stopped halfway because of an unexpected situation that made him turn to another path: Linguistics. That was at the end of the first semester in 1962, teacher Nguyen Phan Canh (whom many people knew through his thesis onPoetic languagerecognized the student's ability and introduced student Dinh Van Duc to teacher Nguyen Tai Can. Teacher Can asked about his aspirations and asked if he wanted to go to Linguistics. At first, the teacher was not very interested in him because he thought the student was not determined (easily gave up). But then Dinh Van Duc was completely won over by teacher Nguyen Tai Can's talent and personality and was completely moved to confidently enter a new field. So, Dinh Van Duc decided to "plunge" into a very new field, not only because "dry, difficult, miserable"But the future at that time was very difficult to predict, and very few people were passionate about it (The teacher still quoted the Kieu verse: "Who knows where to put all your heart and soul").

Being retained as a lecturer in the Language Department of Hanoi University of Science at that time, an environment full of excellent teachers, was a great honor. Young lecturer Dinh Van Duc (as well as other teachers in the Department, in the Faculty) had to endure many hardships during the war (when the US expanded its bombing to the North). After receiving the appointment letter for exactly 4 days, he and his colleagues went to the remote area of ​​Dai Tu district, Bac Thai to build a wartime facility for the University of Science in the middle of the wild mountains and forests, full of deprivation. Living in a life of "thatched houses, bamboo walls, eating in the mountains, sleeping in the forest" for four years, the teachers overcame everything, teaching, self-studying, and implementing a field research program on ethnic languages, focusing on the Tay - Nung languages, and the results were very successful... Teacher Duc also matured from then on thanks to his willingness to study and his willingness to "serve a hundred families".

So, thanks to the unexpected "change of direction" event as mentioned, our Linguistics community has a new expert, specializing in Vietnamese Grammar. After years of studying in Rostov and Moscow (Soviet Union), he was formally trained in the direction of Linguistic Theory, he returned to continue to delve into Vietnamese Linguistics. The bookVietnamese Grammar - Word Typesby Dinh Van Duc, published in 1986, left a mark in the Vietnamese language community with a new perspective and a new approach to Vietnamese word classes according to functional theory. After thirty years, this treatise is still very topical and profound, increasingly affirming the scientific value of the work. This year, he has just published volumes I & II, exploiting and updating these contents more deeply.

But Professor Dinh Van Duc's scientific contributions do not stop there.

As a professional researcher, he is very willing to learn everywhere, every time (He said: We need to learn even from our students). Always sensitive to new things, reading foreign languages ​​well (Russian, English, French), he also had the opportunity to lecture at universities in many countries (France, Korea, USA, Canada, ...), so he has absorbed and accumulated many ideas and academic methods of Modern Linguistics. He read a lot, practiced many observations and realized that: "For a while, after escaping the framework of describing Vietnamese grammar according to the European perspective, Vietnamese linguists believed that there must be a different way of treating Vietnamese" (Lectures on Vietnamese Lexicology - Word Types from the Functional Perspective,Hanoi National University Publishing House, 2010, p. 10). From here, he saw a series of issues related to Linguistic Theory and Oriental Studies of Language expressed through specialized works in very difficult areas: booksGeneral Linguistics - The Essentials(Hanoi National University Publishing House, 2012), bookLanguage and Thought - An Approach,Hanoi National University Publishing House, 2013... There are nearly a dozen specialized books published in which he has invested a lot of effort, without a single day of rest (especially since his retirement, 2009). These books are imbued with his academic thoughts and his broad and deep observation, showing how persistent and tenacious Professor Dinh Van Duc has been throughout his life to become a respected Linguist of the third generation of our country. His recent books have become profound suggestions for a series of general theoretical issues and Vietnamese linguistics, providing knowledge about theoretical foundations and linguistic research methods for generations of students pursuing this career.

From a young man who was initially passionate about literature and wanted to become a literary researcher, Professor Dinh Van Duc has today become a "branded" Vietnamese linguist. But it would be a mistake if we did not talk about his passion for literature.

Professor, Doctor, People's Teacher Dinh Van Duc and a moment of peace in the countryside

Turning to linguistics, “Even though we are apart, my heart still has strings attached.", he has always been interested in literature, reading literature and thinking about literary language through books written about historical Vietnamese. I know he still contemplates life by writing very good essays about the events he has witnessed and about the people living around him. His essays have a very unique style, extremely interesting, very "Dinh Van Duc": leisurely, profound and lyrical, very rich in emotion. I heard that he will have a book of essays of nearly fifty articles published under the name: "From my village to the University village: A little memory of a stop”.

As an individual, Mr. Dinh Van Duc is also a respectable personality.

Before contacting him, it seems that he is quiet, but those who have contacted him feel that he is open, close, cheerful and very pleasant. Serious, thoughtful but not pretentious, he has a simple, intimate way of speaking and is full of humorous "authenticity". In teaching, he is a person with high pedagogical skills. Topics on grammar, general linguistics, and the language of thought are very difficult to approach, because they are abstract, dry, and difficult to understand, but those who listen to Mr. Duc's lectures are very interested because he always has a way of explaining "easy", with a slow, simple, gentle way of speaking, "colloquializing" and "literaryizing" high-level theoretical issues. Sometimes he quotes Kieu, Tang poetry or quotes folk songs, proverbs... very suitable and creates a unique, lively tone for his lectures in class. His public speeches are always very short, concise, informative and emotional with a rich, personal way of expression.

He loved his students very much, cared for them, gave them strict academic criticism but helped them wholeheartedly, warmly and always encouraged them. Having taught for half a century, been the head of the Language Department for nearly twenty years, students in all classes respected him for his knowledge, erudition, and his way of reasoning, speaking and writing tightly (but he was a modest and unpretentious person). Students also respected him for his tolerance, his love of exchanging and learning from everyone:

                                    Lessons from the past become historical witnesses

The familiar voice we still keep

Just take it easy like the wind blowing in the sky

Add salt to life, my Vietnamese language!

At 70 years old, with half a century of dedication to the university lecture hall, going to the ends of the earth, one would think that Professor Dinh Van Duc could rest in peace.wash hands and hang up sword”. But no, he was still as enthusiastic and diligent as ever, very gallant and “old-fashioned” with a leisurely and carefree demeanor. Looking at his agile figure, strong voice and friendly smile, one felt that he was “forever young” at his seventy years old.

There is a bit of poetry the teacher quietly sowed in the grammar lesson.

Each word sediments according to life's growth

Thousands of pages of books still contain simple words

Professor Duc deserves to be considered a “historical witness” as he has gone through and witnessed all the ups and downs, all the growth of the Vietnamese linguistics community. Generations of Linguists in our country all mention his name - Professor Dinh Van Duc - with respect, love and affection. For a teacher, a scientist, that is the most worthy “medal”.