HOW TO DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM OF LANGUAGES BARRIER ???

Unless you have a local data sim and internet on your phone, you're going to need to pretranslate and save those translations on google translate. There are ones which work offline.

Wherever I go I learn at least these four woods as a minimum. Hello, please, thank you and Goodbye.  I always introduce myself with the local hello before asking if they speak English...in English. Always saying please and thank you even if it's not the customary manner in that country. Manners will get you far as a strange foreigner as you'll end up asking for a lot of help for directions.

Anyway, they speak English in Canada and it appears you write perfect english. What's the problem?

Actually, they speak french too in Quebec but I've never been so don't know the percentage of people who are bilingual there. More than likely they speak english too.

If  you need help in French we can help you for free just PM me.

Hi Pikachu,

Hi Pikachu,
Thank you for your helpful advice as you see my writing skill is good enough for foreigners to understand but my speaking and listening skill are so bad lol. Maybe in some daily converstion I can speak English just a little bit . Cause I go alone so if I have a translation app, I'll feel secure.

Hi NPBD, thank for your kindness, I'll contact you if I need some French translation. Is it free? lol

phikachu wrote:

Actually, they speak french too in Quebec but I've never been so don't know the percentage of people who are bilingual there. More than likely they speak english too.

Except in very rural areas they all speak English in Quebec.  Pretending not to is Just a point of pride.  They may make concessions for someone who does not "look" like an American.

I find it interesting how quickly French disappeared after colonialism in Vietnam while it was retained in other countries.

Hi Dan,
I recommend you some translation apps I have tried, I think they're helpful for you.
- Google translate (just get some suggestions bc it doesn't work well on grammar as well as conversation mode)
- iTranslate
- Translate voice
- Hana bilingual assistant ( It actually work well on verbal translation bc it provide real translator, not machine like others, take less time)
- Translator (It's a good app too)
Hope you have a safe trip! 

THIGV wrote:

phikachu wrote:

Actually, they speak french too in Quebec but I've never been so don't know the percentage of people who are bilingual there. More than likely they speak english too.

Except in very rural areas they all speak English in Quebec.  Pretending not to is Just a point of pride.  They may make concessions for someone who does not "look" like an American.

I find it interesting how quickly French disappeared after colonialism in Vietnam while it was retained in other countries.

It is indeed fascinating, I don't know much about linguistics and I've never studied Vietnamese. What interests me is how there are so many chinese words... or what might be considered sino-vietnamese that is part of the vietnamese language. The spelling of the word is so similar to how you would phonetically write the cantonese word.

obvious examples is ba, ma

vietnamese "dien" is same as "din" in cantonese... crazy init
http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictio … ters/2651/

So although I can't understand Vietnamese, I can speak cantonese and when I hear people speak vietnamese there will be some words in their conversation I can pick up and get the gist of what they are talking about.

I did some googling of this and there are people (usually proud nationalistic types) who denies any similarities still exist. You can't share a long complicated history with your neighbour without having languages evolve together.

Another American and I were hired in 1974 by the U of Saigon Language center because the director realized that he spoke English too perfectly(along with six other languages that he likely had the same issue with). Our job was to instill an understanding of the typical bad English that most real people speak into the best students.

We never got into a discussion about whether or not he had a similar issue with Chinese. I suspect that he did. Anyway, there are a lot of Chinese words that are also found in Vietnamese. If you study Vietnamese History, you will find that China ruled Viet Nam on a number of occasions for periods running up to a thousand years. Some times it took a thousand year war to convince China that ruling Viet Nam was a bad idea for China. The Vietnamese people rather strongly object to other countries ruling Viet Nam.

So, it is reasonable that some Chinese words were adapted into Vietnamese. Similarly, a bit of English has found it's way into Vietnamese. In Viet Nam, a stop sign has STOP written in big letters with "dừng lại" on a small sign underneath the stop sign is but one example. Similarly Di Di is used by some Americans for go in America.

Note, much if not most of the fighting was in what is now Southern China. "Việt Nam" translates as the Southern Viets. Apparently the Northern Viets did not survive as a separate ethnic group while the Southern Viets were driven out of China.

This is also a rather simplified view of Vietnamese history.

For me, google translate is the best as it has helped me in Vietnam past 2 years 
It may not be 100% accurate though but it helps most of the time.
Its available in most languages.

Anecdotally I have been told by college students that they find learning to speak Chinese (presumably Mandarin) quite easy while I have had two Singapore Chinese tell me that they have found Vietnamese impossible.  One explained to me that if you get the tones wrong in Chinese it just makes you sound funny but you can be understood most of the time.  We know that if you get the tiếng Việt tones wrong you are unintelligible.

Interesting. I did not realize that Chinese worked that way. Thank you. But, it sort of makes sense because of the way that Chinese Characters are written.

To explain to those who don't speak Vietnamese; vợ = wife, vớ = socks, vỡ = break

Great point.

some more reading if you're interested in the similarities. "sino-vietnamese" is the term to search for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Viet … vocabularyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Xenic_pronunciations

I'm not a linguist so most of it goes over my head. I just know that sometimes when people speak vietnamese, occasionally there will be a word or two I understand from cantonese.

Me Soldier. Me no languist.

More seriously, I will check out those links. But, from my efforts at researching the Chinese/Vietnamese linguistic history have been interesting. The subject is seriously over my limited ability. Still, I do try.

phikachu wrote:

some more reading if you're interested in the similarities. "sino-vietnamese" is the term to search for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Viet … vocabularyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Xenic_pronunciations

I'm not a linguist so most of it goes over my head. I just know that sometimes when people speak vietnamese, occasionally there will be a word or two I understand from cantonese.

Again, thank you. I spent most of 1972 to to about half of 1974 in Japan and picked up some basic get around Japanese. So the references to Japanese as well as Vietnamese were interesting and added to my understanding of the Vietnamese side as well.

Thank you.

Envy Dan wrote:

Thank you for your helpful advice as you see my writing skill is good enough for foreigners to understand but my speaking and listening skill are so bad lol. Maybe in some daily converstion I can speak English just a little bit . Cause I go alone so if I have a translation app, I'll feel secure.

I suggest that you carry a small notebook, your written English is excellent, writing your questions in English will be faster and will translate better than an app! 

Brush up on your English skills at Master's Cup. 

I didn't read all except the first couple of lines, but have you tried "Duolingo" in the google store?