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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| kmart Senior Member Australia Joined 6125 days ago 194 posts - 400 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 17 of 30 13 March 2010 at 10:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Teango thanks for the suggestion, I think I'll start with Pimsleur, and if I get it finished I can extend with FSI.
And Arekkusu, that is an excellent point - I was just giving a lecture on attitude on another post, it might be appropriate to take a look at my own! I will do a little bit, regularly and see how I go. After all, if I fail, nobody will know, and I can always test it out on my future DiL first to make sure I don't mispronounce something innocuous into something embarrassing! ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Qinshi Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5754 days ago 115 posts - 183 votes Speaks: Vietnamese*, English Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 18 of 30 10 April 2010 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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How is it going for you? By now you may have realised that there are 18 A's in total haha. As a native speaker, I can't really judge how difficult it really is for a foreigner but it is indeed a challenge, especially being a tonal language.
a á à ả ã ạ â ấ ầ ẩ ẫ ậ ă ắ ằ ẳ ẵ ặ Cố lên đi! Edited by Qinshi on 10 April 2010 at 12:36pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 19 of 30 10 April 2010 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||
Simply amazing, I have so much more respect now for my lovely local Vietnamese restaurant owner! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Miznia Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5352 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Cantonese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese | Message 20 of 30 10 April 2010 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm studying Vietnamese at least in the short term as well.
I'm concerned about different dialects. I feel like even the male and female speakers in Pimsleur Vietnamese 1 don't completely agree with each other on pronunciation. I have a book and CDs coming in the mail but I didn't check what dialect that is going to be. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BiaHuda Triglot Groupie Vietnam Joined 5364 days ago 97 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Vietnamese Studies: Cantonese | Message 21 of 30 11 April 2010 at 5:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Vietnamese is very difficult. I learned to speak a bit before ever learning to read it. This is probably a good idea. I was amazed at the the way the words I was speaking were actually written. The pronunciation from North to South is universally understandable, but the middle dialect is quite different. I can also say that I can count on one hand the number of Westerners that I have heard actually speaking Vietnamese with any proficiency.
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| Qinshi Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5754 days ago 115 posts - 183 votes Speaks: Vietnamese*, English Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 22 of 30 11 April 2010 at 8:10am | IP Logged | ||
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The main difficulties of Vietnamese are most probably the correspondence between orthography and pronunciation, the tones, the actual pronunciation itself and probably the different pronunciations between the two major dialects. I'll briefly go through each.
1. Orthography and Pronunciation The modern Vietnamese writing system is based on the Latin script with the addition of a variety of diacritical markings either indicating tone or differentiating between vowels. This system is known as Chữ Quốc Ngữ (The National Language Script). However, before the turn of the 20th century, some Vietnamese were still using a script called Chữ (Hán) Nôm (The Southern Script) - which is considered the first ever script used to record the native Vietnamese language. This script was derived from the Chinese character script and many new characters were coined to represent words which were native to Vietnamese. Before this script there was said to be an ancient script called Chữ Khoa Đẩu (The Tadpole Script), although there is evidence - it is not yet solid. Back to modern times! The modern Vietnamese language can be divided into 3 major dialects: Northern, Central and Southern but there are also many other minor dialects as well. The two most prominent dialects are those of the Northern (Hanoi) and Southern (Saigon) regions. As English speakers, when learning to read Vietnamese regardless of which dialect you are learning you will notice that the correspondence between certain letters is not always the same. Let's abbreviate the Northern dialect as ND and Southern dialect as SD. Take for example the word da meaning skin. ND --> /zaː/ the d is pronounced like English z SD --> /jaː/ the d is pronounced like English y This is basic stuff but if you are not familiar with the differences between ND and SD, then it might present you with a huge challenge when speaking with the other dialect. Just from the example just given, you can guess that there probably other consonants which are pronounced differently by dialect. 2. The Tones As with any other tonal language, tones present somewhat of a challenge for speakers of non-tonal languages (like English), although if you already speak a tonal language then it is probably easier to grasp. What are tones? Tones are simply the variation in pitch when pronouncing syllables. In Vietnamese, there are 6 tones meaning for any one syllable (apart from syllables that end in -c, -ch, -p, -t) it is possible to pronounce it in 6 different ways. Of course, not all syllables have meaning! The tones are ngang (a), sắc (á), huyền (à), hỏi (ả), ngã (ã) and nặng (ạ). There are also four other non-tone markings which differentiate between vowels or in the case of đ - a consonant. They are dấu ớ (â), dấu á (ă), dấu ơ/móc (ơ) and dấu đờ (đ). A good example of the use of tones is with the syllable ma. ma --> ghost má --> mother (SD), cheek mà --> but mả --> tomb/grave mã --> horse mạ --> rice seedling Note, however, that the SD only has 5 perceived tones, ie. the hỏi and ngã tones have merged. 3. Actual Pronunciation Reading is one thing but to actually practise speaking Vietnamese is perhaps one of the biggest hurdles facing a learner of the language. Fortunately, unlike tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese where when a certain sequence of tones arises you have to adjust your tones accordingly, Vietnamese does not have tone sandhi. However, if you are learning the SD - you will be in for a greater challenge than learning the ND in regards to the fact that many SD speakers slur their pronunciations more often than ND speakers. This leads to the merging of many sounds. (ă/â, d/gi/v, g/r) just to name a few instances. 4. Differences between ND and SD Generally, native speakers of one of either dialects will nowadays have less trouble understanding the other dialect due to the spread of media. That is not to say that there isn't any difficulty at all. In fact, if the speaker has a very strong accent, then this will lead to confusion. Generally speaking though, the two dialects are said to be mutually intelligible for the most part. Why? This is because apart from the many local slang expressions, local vocabulary and pronunciation differences, the major corpus of words and the grammar is pretty much the same, if not similar. Apart from the obvious pronunciation differences and the fact that SD has merged two tones, here are just a few examples of other differences. (Car tyre) ND --> lốp xe - SD --> bánh xe (Rose-apple) ND --> quả gioi - SD --> trái mận (Pig) ND --> con lợn - SD --> con heo (Tael of gold) ND --> lạng - SD --> lượng (This) ND --> này - SD --> nầy (Soap) ND --> xà phòng - SD --> xà bông Another interesting difference is how children are ranked in the family. ND --> the eldest child is called cả, the second is called hai, third is ba etc. SD --> the eldest child is called hai, the second is ba, the third is tư etc. The youngest may be referred to as út. There is a common way of referring to people by their ordinal rank in a family. For example if I had 2 older brothers and 2 older sisters in my family (SD), I would call the eldest brother and sister respectively as anh hai and chị hai and the other two as anh ba and chị ba. Literally 'big brother/sister + rank according to gender' Edited by Qinshi on 11 April 2010 at 8:16am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| learnviet_ Newbie Singapore learnvietthrumusic.f Joined 4975 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes | Message 23 of 30 24 May 2011 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is anyone still learning Vietnamese?
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| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 24 of 30 25 May 2011 at 12:51am | IP Logged | ||
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^ I'm trying, but it's easily the most difficult language for me to speak of any I've ever attempted (that includes Cantonese, Thai, and Arabic). Edited by nway on 25 May 2011 at 12:52am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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