Does Vietnamese English or Vietlish really exist in Vietnam?

Abstract

English has been becoming more and more popular all over the world. Nowadays, English is not the property of the British, nor is it the property of the American or the Australian. English is, in broad sense, the property of the people of any country who use it with its own features of the people in that country. In Vietnam, English is one of the most popular foreign languages, and it is so popular that I wonder whether English will become the second official language in Vietnam besides Vietnamese. In this paper, I discuss a new variety of English in Vietnam coined Vietlish in terms of the circumstances that lead to its birth, all the in-depth features of Vietlish including Grammar, Lexis, Phonology, and Pragmatics, the future of Vietlish, and the implications for English language teaching in Vietnam.