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Vietnamese TAC 2014 Team Coconut | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes  Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 1 of 15 28 December 2013 at 5:26am | IP Logged |
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So, here is my log for Vietnamese. Today I installed the Vietnamese keyboard, and it seems straightforward to use. I’ll try to include real Vietnamese language (with all the diacritics) in this log as much as possible.
Below is a list of resources for Vietnamese that I currently own. I will mainly be using resource (3) – my goal at this stage is basically to assimilate the material in that book – vocab, practical phrases, function words. I’ll also be using some stuff from Youtube, especially something called ‘Annie’s Vietnamese’, a series of videos that looks professionally produced. It has some good pronunciation practice segments. Other segments present and explain Vietnamese songs – an enjoyable way to learn. List of resources for Vietnamese: 1. A Vietnamese Reference Grammar by Laurence C. Thompson U Hawaii Press 1965 Inspired linguistic treatment of different aspects of the language. Contains useful discussions of function words, particles etc with many examples. Begins with a very in-depth description of Vietnamese phonology, including regional differences, how the script developed, etc. 2. A Concise Vietnamese Grammar by Đoàn Thiện Thuật et al. Thế Giới [World] Publishers, Hanoi Shorter than Thompson – picked this up on my recent trip to Hà Nội. 3. Vietnamese for Beginners by Jake Catlett and Hương Nguyễn Paiboon Publishing 2006 (with 3 cds) Pretty straightforward intro text, with vocab lists, example sentences, and 2-3 short dialogs per unit. Recordings use southern accent. 4. Elementary Vietnamese by Ngô Như Bình Tuttle Publishing 2003 (with 8 cds) Excellent textbook, with really substantial intro pronunciation drills. I worked through the first part of this on my own three years ago – it may be more suited to the classroom though. Accent on recordings seems to be northern/standard. 5. Teach Yourself Vietnamese by Dana Healy TY Books 1997 Bought this a few years back, at the time it seemed way too difficult. 6. Tuttle Vietnamese-English Dictionary by Nguyễn Đình Hoà et al Tuttle Publishing 1991/2007 Not very large (no example sentences) but good enough. 7. Hán Việt Tự Điển (漢越字典) by Thiều Chửu This is a Chinese/Vietnamese character dictionary. Definitions are all in Vietnamese, the main point of interest is to see how Sino-Vietnamese words are pronounced. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 2 of 15 01 January 2014 at 1:04pm | IP Logged |
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I’m working on Lesson 2 of Viet for Beginners now.
The lesson introduces measure words (also called classifiers). These are common in Asian languages – for example, in Chinese we would say ‘一把刀’ ‘yī bă dāo’ for ‘a/one knife.’ Literally this is one-handle-knife. It’s just a convention how different objects are counted, and you have to learn the correct MW for each noun, like 把 for knives in this case. So, Vietnamese has measure words – how do they work? Basically, they go in front of the noun: cái bàn MW / N ‘a/the table’ hai cuốn sách Num / MW / N ‘two books’ If there’s a demonstrative (this/that) or similar word, it goes after the noun, like this: cái bàn này MW / N / Dem ‘this table’ hai cuốn sách đó Num / MW / N /Dem ‘those two books’ If we look at Mandarin, Thai and Khmer in comparison, we can see something interesting (in my opinion!) Mandarin is like Vietnamese in that the MW precedes the noun, but different in that demonstratives do too. In Thai and Khmer, on the other hand, the head comes first in the noun phrase and other consitutents such as demonstratives and measure words follow. Actually I think in Khmer you can usually drop the measure words, but basically its structure mirrors that of Thai. 這兩封信 Dem / Num / MW / N ‘these two letters’ รถสองคันนี้ N / Num / MW / Dem ‘these two cars’ The reason I think this is interesting is that it suggests that Vietnamese is midway between two types – the Sinitic type and the Southeast Asian type we could call them – as far as word order in the noun phrase goes. To really develop the point, we might need to make a general comparison of word order patterns in the respective languages. As a language learner, I suspect it might be a bit tricky to keep this straight in speaking Vietnamese – the other languages stack everything either at the front or at the end of the phrase, but for Vietnamese the noun is kind of in the middle. A point to work on then! Edited by viedums on 01 January 2014 at 1:08pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 3 of 15 12 January 2014 at 3:45am | IP Logged |
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I’ve been doing different things with Vietnamese lately. For this post I’ll focus on one of the highlights of my studies so far, a song called “I go to school” or “Em tới trường”. This is presented and translated in Lesson 23 of Annie’s Vietnamese Youtube lessons. It’s sung from the perspective of a little hill-tribe child going to a small local school while his mother tends the terraced fields. Yesterday she led him to school holding his hand, but today he has to go alone. He notes various things while he’s walking – the nice smell of the forest, the birds in the trees and the fish in the brook. And he’s proud of his small school and young teacher, who is teaching him to sing… In the video, this is accompanied by many charming photos of smiling young children in traditional hill-tribe dress. Cute and at the same time somewhat patronizing, in a way that I suspect is particular to Vietnam (as opposed to the other countries with minority nationalities – Laos, Thailand, China etc.) They look like Hmong children, judging from their costumes, but I could be wrong.
Anyway, the song piqued my interest, and I’ve been listening to it often enough that I can more or less sing along when reading the words. There are easy parts and hard parts to remember. The descriptions of the forest are harder and the language there is probably less useful for a beginner. I wrote out and glossed the whole song – here are some of the easy lines. Hôm qua em tới trường Yesterday I came to/reached school Mẹ dắt tay từng bước Mother led me step by step by the hand Hôm nay mẹ lên nương Today mother went up to the fields Một mình em tới lớp And I went to class alone Trường của em be bé My school is quite small (reduplication) Cô giáo em tre trẻ My teacher is quite young (ditto) There’s one feature of Vietnamese singing that’s helpful for the learner – you can hear the tones quite clearly, even through the melody. For instance, words with the nặng tone are clearly pronounced low and with a glottal “uh-uh”. All in all, it’s probably easier to distinguish tones in songs than in regular speech. I don’t know if all singing is like this though. The singer seems to have a pretty standard Northern accent, with a lot of ‘z’ sounds. This is the accent I prefer, so also good. Actually the song is called 'Di hoc' - here's the link: Annie Lesson 23 Edited by viedums on 12 January 2014 at 3:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 4 of 15 18 January 2014 at 11:16am | IP Logged |
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Checked out ‘201 Vietnamese Verbs’ from my university library. Since Vietnamese doesn’t conjugate verbs, there are common compounds for each (monosyllabic) verb. I have gone through and copied out each verb, along with 1-2 compounds that look useful. Some seem familiar from Chinese, and as I worked my way through the book, I got (slightly) better at guessing what the corresponding Chinese character(s) might be. Many of the entries are native Vietnamese words, of course, but quite a few seem to be borrowings.
A few comments on Vietnamese borrowing from Chinese - a complex subject, but important if I want to make use of my knowledge of Chinese characters to expand my vocabulary. According to Resource 2 above, the way Vietnamese pronounce the words they borrowed from Chinese dates from the Tang dynasty (pre-10th century). At that time, Vietnam was a part of China. One result of this is that Chinese words that originally ended in stops (-t, -p, -k etc) still have these endings in Vietnamese. In Mandarin these ‘dead rhymes’ were lost, but Cantonese for instance retained them. A word like ‘giả’, meaning ‘to pretend, fake’, is pretty transparent (Mand. 假 jiă, Cant. gá). On the other hand, ‘tạp’ meaning to train or practice, is actually Mand. 習 ‘xí’ – no resemblance at all! The Cantonese pronunciation looks more similar – jaahp – but there’s still an odd difference in the initial consonant. This reminds me of my Mandarin studies – countless hours spend thumbing through dictionaries. I enjoy this in any case. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 15 18 January 2014 at 12:37pm | IP Logged |
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I'm enjoying following your log, and happy to be on a team with you again this year! Your passion for Asian
languages is awesome! I spent a couple of days with a friend from Kampuchea Krom (the Khmer area of Vietnam) and had her teach me some Vietnamese, it was incredibly difficult! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 6 of 15 18 January 2014 at 1:59pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the encouragement, js6426! Actually this is the first time I’ve kept a log myself, although I remember we had some exchanges about Khmer and Mandarin last year. And, since I haven’t had the chance to post in your log, congratulations on your new family.
Interesting that you know a Khmer Krom – I wonder to what extent they are able to keep up their language and culture while living in Vietnam. Yes, Vietnamese is a challenge – one thing is the tones, which I would say are more difficult than those in Mandarin and Thai. Basically nothing about the pronunciation is straightforward, although other areas might be less of a challenge. Guess we’ll see… I’m going to try to visit the south sometime in mid-2014, although work might preclude this. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 7 of 15 18 January 2014 at 2:04pm | IP Logged |
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I second that, your passion for Asian languages is impressive, and I'll follow your log with interest! Vietnamese is being portrayed as incredibly difficult to pronounce, so I'm really curious how you will fare, given that you know a few SEA languages already. It sounds very funny to my ears, the tonal inventory must be quite different from Thai...
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| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 8 of 15 18 January 2014 at 5:30pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks Viedums! I got the chance to visit Khmer Krom and it actually seemed fairly much like Khmer village style
(culture wise), but their Khmer is very hard to understand, they have a really thick accent. However, they do all speak Khmer which is great (although it is definitely mixed with some Vietnamese). I think their accent is basically the opposite of the Khmer Surin accent, which seems to be so soft that they virtually don't pronounce half of the word they are saying! In my very limited knowledge, I would say that Cantonese sounds like it most resembles Vietnamese in relation to other SE Asian languages, certainly more so than Mandarin and Khmer. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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