How to learn Vietnamese

#language #education #needs-work #needs-update

Vietnamese language

Update on progress and current learning habits

I would say I can, by ear, finally understand the sounds better. Not like I know how every sound maps to every letter combination, but I've certainly made gains just by having a basic understanding of the alphabet and prioritising listening to the sounds first.

To do this, I purchased Southern Vietnamese for Beginners - Book 1 by Learn Vietnamese with Annie, downloaded all of the audio files onto an offline audio player, and listen to them in the car when I'm driving a route I'm familiar with (so that I don't... uh... crash).

Doing so thus far, I have learnt a lot of basic vocabulary, can understand the basic listening dialogue, and can start to hear similarities or differences in the tones/phones. From here, I will eventually map these sounds back into written Vietnamese. Since audibly identifying the different phones is what I struggle with currently, I will focus on that for a while before getting too caught up in reading comprehension.

Thank you Annie and team, you are amazing.

I do not currently use Refold, despite having set up Refold Vietnamese, but I have taken some cues from it such as creating a VN language YouTube account, and also knowing I can access a great list of content to listen to in the future.

Further reading

HOW TO LEARN VIETNAMESE – 10 QUICK TIPS

Decide on the dialect to learn at the beginning
Focus on tones
Learn the vowels
Get a good teacher to correct your pronunciation
Listen a lot to improve your pronunciation
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Just speak
Know that it can be frustrating and do not give up
Avoid going to expat dominated areas of Vietnam where English is widely spoken
Speak slowly, there is no rush
Make Vietnamese friends

HOW TO GET STARTED

The basis and most difficult part of Vietnamese are the tones and pronunciation.

You will be learning about Diphtones, Triphtones and vowels that exist in no other language and some rather strange consonants too.

This can make learning Vietnamese quite intimidating at the beginning.

Even when you know a word, chances are that native speakers still will not understand you because you do not pronounce it correctly yet.

The good news is that once you get past this, things get a lot easier. Vietnamese grammar is much less of a headache than Japanese, Spanish or Russian.

So just get your head down, take your time to learn the tones and pronunciation and do not get frustrated when you struggle.

Everyone does. You will get through it and the sun shines much brighter on the other side once you get there.