Vietnamese language

Use CD/DVD based learning materials as, unlike teachers, the players never get tired.

I used to put my training courses on an MP4 player and listen whilst I drove around the countryside (on my way home).

There is a DVD compilation with many training courses on it and includes northern and southern dialects.

Another benefit is that no one will laugh at you as you practice. Recording your efforts (video or just audio) ad using a mirror helps you get your mount/lip/tongue action right.

One consolation is that the Vietnamese experience similar difficulties in learning English.

Let's see. For basic Vietnamese, it must have been around 5 years, from I was 1 year old til 6 years old, I guess.

kidding aside, I have always told the people trying to learn Vietnamese: better learn to pronounce a few words right, rather than a lot of words wrong, since people don't understand you.

That it does not sound right in your ears, does not matter. What matters is whether the Vietnamese understand you. For that, the pronunciation needs to be near perfect. Sorry, the Vietnamese have little experience hearing non-native speaking their language thus little tolerance for deviation/wrong pronunciation.

Therefore, if you want to learn proper Vietnamese, try to differentiate the pronunciation. That takes a lot of time to get it right, and not a lot of foreigners have the patience, but a few do.

Better spending money go to a good school, preferably with one-on-one professional coaching than doing it yourself.

yes nice tip thanks

Do you have any friends who are Vietnamese, if you have, I recommend that you should ask them to write a paragraph (like 5-10 sentences) send that to you along with an audio recording of the sentences so you can read it as they are reading it aloud. You know, The two most important things to do are to speak the language and to listen to native speakers. Watch TV in the language and try to converse with others as much as possible. Listening to and imitating a native speaker is the most important and fastest way to learn. Remember that when you were young you learned a language by listening and then repeating the words while imitating the accent ^^

Hope that what I've said would be helpful for you at this time.

Regards,
Linh

Hello
Can anybody recomend a good c.d / teacher to learn vietnamese ?
cheers

if this is the first time you study vietnamese, i think you will have a lot of chalenge with it, the diffirences of pronunciation, grammar...so just study slowly, repeat a lot of time to make sure you can use it.
i think you should have vietnamese tutor ( im available hihi) at the first time, then you can make friends with vietnamese and practice at much as possible.
good luck

My Vietnamese speaking is terrible but I find the best way to improve my Vietnamese is to practice verbally pronouncing the 5 or so accents (' ` . ? ~) correctly. That way when you hear the Vietnamese words your ear is trained to say those words correctly in the proper accent way.

Jaitch wrote:

There is a DVD compilation with many training courses on it and includes northern and southern dialects.

Where is the DVD with the southern dialect? I tried learning from a program teaching a northern dialect, and my redneck accent crossed with a Northern VN accent made it impossible for my family in Saigon to understand.

Anatta wrote:

What matters is whether the Vietnamese understand you. For that, the pronunciation needs to be near perfect.

For me, this is one of the most frustrating things. I will learn words well enough for my in-laws to understand me, but then I will try to speak with Viet Kieu, they will give me a blind stare and ask my wife. The frustration is compounded by the fact that I understand them even though they usually butcher not only the grammar, but also the pronunciation of the English language. At least my grammar is (usually) correct when I speak Vietnamese.

that is the problem with learning Vietnamese. You guys think you speak Vietnamese, but you are not, to be perfectly blunt. To speak Vietnamese, your pronunciation has to be 100% correct. 95% correct does not cut it. Like singing a song, one off-note once in a while is ok. More than than, people just don't want to listen.

I used to try to correct my Western colleagues but gave up!!. They thought they spoke it well enough. One even said my correct pronunciation does not "feel" right!!!!.

I don't claim to speak it well; I know I have some pronunciation issues (and major lack-of-vocabulary issues), and I work on them. Tonal languages are difficult for those who didn't grow up speaking them. I am constantly asking native speakers if I am pronouncing things correctly. My wife and in-laws will some times let my mistakes slide because they understand what I mean and are trying to be nice; in the end, it isn't nice to let me learn words incorrectly, but that is a whole other subject. Kudos to you for helping non-native pronunciation; I imagine that can get very tiresome.

My point is that my pronunciation is at least as good as many Viet Kieu's English pronunciation, and my grammar is far better. It gets frustrating some times because in the US we are very accommodating of foreign accents and try very hard to understand what non-native speakers are saying, but it feels like whenever we try to speak another language we are not afforded the same accommodation. It just feels like I try to understand butchered English more than some Viet Kieus try to understand my Vietnamese. If someone speaks to me and I recognize that they are trying to speak English, I will slow down my speech, drop my southern accent, and ask clarifying questions to understand what they are saying. I would never give them a blank stare and then ask their friend what they said. Maybe it is a cultural difference like laughing at a non-native speaker when you understand what they are saying?

In my opinion

I think the best way to learn one language is beginning from listening and speaking, you don't need to know how to write it first, just hear some words from other people and repeat similarly. Like kids, that is the reason why they study English quickly and easily.

So you need to make more friend in VietNam, talking with him and you will realize you are improving day by day.

So if you need a person to study VietNamese, you can contact me,
my skype ID: chirstmax_box.

thanks,

jakejas wrote:

For me, this is one of the most frustrating things. I will learn words well enough for my in-laws to understand me, but then I will try to speak with Viet Kieu, they will give me a blind stare and ask my wife. The frustration is compounded by the fact that I understand them even though they usually butcher not only the grammar, but also the pronunciation of the English language. At least my grammar is (usually) correct when I speak Vietnamese.

Hey jakejas,

Just wondering, shouldn't you be more focused on and bothered by native speakers not understanding you than a Viet Kieu? What kind of VKs have you talked to? Ones that don't even know Vietnamese well enough to understand it yet alone understand wrong pronunciation? Ones that only can understand some correctly spoken Vietnamese but don't know it well enough to guess bad pronunciation? Or ones that are pretty much like a local anyways?

I think you should only talk Vietnamese to nice enough VKs/Viet locals that knows Vietnamese well enough, can guess a lot of wrong pronunciations, has patience for understanding you, and don't be bothered too much by those that don't.

Getting grammar/pronunciation wrong in English which isn't a tonal minefield can not be compared to speaking Vietnamese with correct grammar but with wrong tones. In Vietnamese wrong tones can turn into different words and what you say might not be what you actually want to say and most likely people won't understand you.
It's only when you are lucky that certain words can be slightly mispronounced and guessed by certain people.

But its great that you guys are still trying hard to learn it. Keep it up and stay patient. I've met/heard foreigners that has spoken Vietnamese really well so it isn't impossible .

jakejas

I agree with you on all points. You must understand that the Vietnamese are not used to having others speaking the language, so don't have the patience as I mentioned earlier, so yes, it is a cultural difference so don't take it seriously.

I myself have experienced the same thing in Vietnam some time (Yes, I am a VK and my Vietnamese is better than most of Vietnamese). In general, the Vietnamese ridicules the Chinese Vietnamese way of speaking widely in movies, theatres,...

It does not happen in Vietnam. I have seen the same thing in Thailand.
Again, not everyone is like that but for some (many?) who are not so polite, it does happen.

thaoh wrote:

shouldn't you be more focused on and bothered by native speakers not understanding you than a Viet Kieu? What kind of VKs have you talked to?

I live in Houston, Texas (USA), so that is why I speak with a lot of Viet Kieus. I think most of them were born in VN and then moved to the US because their English isn't great. Most Vietnamese-Americans who were born in the US speak English well.

@Anatta
I think you are right and this is just a cultural difference that we need to accept.

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