Vietnamese and foreign researchers gathered at a seminar in Hanoi on August 23 to discuss Vietnamese linguistics’ renovation and development over the past 30 years, highlighting basic issues as well as major tasks of the sector in the future. As many as 277 reports delivered at the event focused on phonetics, vocabulary, semantics, grammars, and history of the Vietnamese language as well as the relations between language and culture and the languages of Vietnam ’s ethnic minority groups. According to Prof. Dr. Nguyen Xuan Thang, President of the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, in a multi-ethnic nation of Vietnam , the uniform of language and the development of ethnic minorities’ languages are a significant factor to ensure linguistic and cultural unity in diversity. Securing and promoting the purity of the Vietnamese language are among key tasks of in the current context, along with adequate attention to the diversity of languages as well as ethnic minority groups’ right in using their language and writing. Meanwhile Nguyen Van Hiep, Director of the Vietnam Institute of Linguistics, said that thanks to the update of international trend and theories, Vietnamese linguistics has seen a number of achievements in both theory and reality. Many valuable studies on the Vietnamese language were introduced with new approaches, he said, adding that applied linguistics expanded its coverage to various areas, including language training, computing language, translation, and language-related diseases. The studies of ethnic minority groups’ languages and foreign languages have also benefited from the new approaches, he said. Hiep also revealed that his institute is running a research programme on giving mother tongue language for ethnic minority students, administrative language and media language.-VNA