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Vietnamese: how hard is it? | ||
Tags: Vietnamese | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| ghostunit Triglot Newbie Japan Joined 5907 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 1 of 31 07 November 2008 at 9:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello, there is a dearth of information regarding Vietnamese
but could someone tell me how hard is this language? Also, how hard is it compared to Japanese or Chinese? Regards, thanks. Edited by ghostunit on 07 November 2008 at 9:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 7022 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 2 of 31 07 November 2008 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I played with Vietnamese a little about 10 years ago. Pronunciation is difficult since it is tonal like Mandarin, only with more tones. Reading is not nearly as difficult as Chinese or Japanese, since they have adopted a Latin alphabet. I do not know much about the grammar, as I did not pursue the language much. I only went through the 5-tape Pimsleur set and the Language 30 course, so my exposure has been very limited.
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| nobita Diglot Newbie Vietnam Joined 5852 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: Vietnamese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Mandarin, Thai | Message 3 of 31 17 November 2008 at 5:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi,
First of all, I am Vietnamese. It's quite difficult to say how hard my native language is, but I'm trying to tell from my friend's point of view, who has 1/4 Vietnamese blood and had to learn the language as foreign. Here's what she said: - Pronunciation is tonal and difficult. It's even more as there are several dialects (Northen, Central and Southern area) - Writing is easy, as it is based on Latin alphabet with some accents added - Limited vocabulary. - Grammar is crazy. Many rules and irregularities. Though, there are also some easy points, compared to some Roman languages: no verb tenses and conjugations, no noun genders and plural forms. Well, regarding to the question, I would rate its difficulty at 3-cactus level. And it is far easier than Mandarin (I'm trying) or Japanese. The bottom line, I would be glad to help once you've decided to pick our language. Nice day. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| null Groupie China Joined 6126 days ago 76 posts - 82 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 4 of 31 17 November 2008 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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what do you mean by 'Limited vocabulary'?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nobita Diglot Newbie Vietnam Joined 5852 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: Vietnamese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Mandarin, Thai | Message 5 of 31 18 November 2008 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi null,
I am actually not a linguist, so I suggest the term 'limited vocabulary' of Vietnamese comes from the fact that: - it has no phrasal verbs. Let's take an example: you have in English two verbs 'to search' and 'to look for' with very little difference in meaning (at least for me), while we have only one in equivalence. Yes, I can point out many more. - it has very little prefixes and suffixes - Many words act as many parts of speech. For instance, you have the noun 'grace', the adjective 'graceful', the adverb 'gracefully' and even another noun 'gracefulness'. We do have only one word for all 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 6 of 31 24 November 2008 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I read a book recently about the Vietnam War, consisting mainly of photographs but also with text describing the conflict. I forget the author's name, I think the book might have been called "Vietnam Inc". The difficulties of the Americans in the country were described, one of them being the Vietnamese language itself, which was presented as being extremely difficult to master, as much for cultural as linguistic reasons, and few Americans really did, those few supposedly being regarded with special suspicion by Vietnamese.
The book stressed the "fish out of water" nature of Americans in Vietnam, and might have exaggerated the difficulties of the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gorkem_turkish Triglot Newbie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5817 days ago 25 posts - 26 votes Speaks: Turkish*, English, Mandarin Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 31 25 December 2008 at 10:05am | IP Logged | ||
I am also considering to learn it, what you said exactly parallel with what I have heard except "Grammar is crazy. Many rules and irregularities". you say that there is no time conjugations(or a few) and a few affixes. so what is crazy?there are 2 things, that I have to say, I can speak chinese which is just like vietnamese(people say so) and I am turkish, no grammar is difficult for me. I can treat grammar as maths, I love it. thanks in advance 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 8 of 31 01 June 2014 at 12:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Vietnamese tones are nothing like Mandarin tones, because in Northern/standard Vietnamese tones include not only changes of pitch but other phenomena like laryngealization and glottalization. In fact, speakers of Vietnamese are not good at getting Mandarin tones right, and vice versa, Vietnamese tones are a nightmare for speakers of Mandarin.
''Tones in Northern Vietnamese are distinguished by pitch variations and phonation types, but falling pitch slopes are not considered as a major cue that its speakers rely on in tonal contrast. This may contribute to difficulties that native speakers of Northern Vietnamese are faced with when learning Mandarin tones, especially the distinction between the level (T1) and the falling (T4) tones. To examine how Northern Vietnamese speakers perceive the distinction between T1 and T4 in Mandarin and how well they adapt phonetic cues underlying the non-native distinction, an ABX identification experiment is carried out on perception of synthesized pitches with two inter-stimuli-intervals (ISI) at 500ms and 1500ms. Results suggest a combined effect of pitch slopes and pitch heights, the former of which claims more robust influence on tone perception. However, a reversed pattern is found when the ISI equals 500ms, where pitch heights exert a stronger effect on tone identification than pitch slopes. '' source: http://scitation.aip.org/content/asa/journal/jasa/131/4/10.1 121/1.4708234 Overall, Vietnamese is in the 4+ difficulty category, which is like just a half a grade easier than Mandarin: http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang uage-difficulty Edited by Medulin on 01 June 2014 at 1:04am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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