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Should I try to learn Vietnamese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| chrisphillips71 Groupie United States Joined 5031 days ago 64 posts - 86 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 14 05 September 2011 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Have any English speaking people here successfully learned Vietnamese or any other
tonal language? I originally tried to learn Vietnamese because my wife is from Vietnam, but gave up, thinking it was too difficult. Instead of giving up on languages altogether, I took up Spanish, which I have now studied for about 18 months. I love Spanish, but always think about taking up Vietnamese again. My concern is whether it is possible for a 40 year old English speaker with a full time job and two kids to learn Vietnamese. In my 18 months of learning Spanish, I have learned a lot, but am nowhere near "fluent" (something I define as understanding 80% of Spanish tv). Obviously with Vietnamese I have my wife to answer any questions, but think that it would take a long time for me to reach a level of proficiency where I could fully take advantage of her knowledge. So my question is this, should I be happy with just learning Spanish or give Vietnamese another go? Any thoughts, advice, inspirational stories, or the like are appreciated. -Chris Phillips 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5210 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 2 of 14 06 September 2011 at 2:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, the tendency among enthusiasts discussing their own hobby is to be optimistic and supportive of any and all further advancement of that hobby, so I'd imagine the default answer among all of this forum's users would be "yes". It obviously wouldn't hurt to merely "try" Vietnamese, but the issue is whether it's worth the opportunity costs. So if you don't mind cutting down on your Spanish (or if not that, then cutting down on something else in your daily life) in order to allot more time to seriously studying a new language, then yes, you may as well try it out and see how it goes. You certainly (or rather, hopefully) don't have a gun to your head forcing you to continue with Vietnamese should you ever change your mind. :)
As for your age, 40 may be older than when one typically begins learning a language, but given current life expectancy estimates and their tendency to increase, you statistically can probably expect to live to around 80, meaning you still have half your life ahead of you. So if you think your entire life thus far would have been enough time to have learned Vietnamese, then it's not too late. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 4889 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 14 06 September 2011 at 3:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Learning a language with a family and full time job is tough, but it can be done, if you are patient and creative with your time. This is what I'm doing. Though, I admit, there are times when I wish I could do more, and go at a faster pace, but it's just not realistic. So I accept the somewhat slower pace. However, the fact that your wife is a native speaker should help all the more, since you could work the language into your daily life and use it with her. Edited by starrye on 06 September 2011 at 3:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6024 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 14 06 September 2011 at 3:51am | IP Logged | ||
Oh my goodness! Go for it! You have a resource that few of us have, a live-in Vietnamese expert! ( I'm assuming your wife and her family speaks Vietnamese ) Let her know that this is important to you and I'm sure she would be eager to help. Have an hour or two a day where you speak NOTHING but Vietnamese. It will be pretty basic at the start but as you accumulate vocabulary you will be amazed at how much you will pick up. Perhaps your kids would be interested in learning it with you as well? As far as courses are concerned: Two great free resources are the FSI Vietnamese course (Southern Dialect) FSI Vietnamese and the DLI course (I believe Northern Dialect but I could be wrong) DLI Vietnamese The DLI in particular has a TON of material. Even if you spent only 30 minutes a day on it, in a year you will know a huge amount of Vietnamese! I have heard mixed things about the Teach Yourself Vietnamese. The main complaint is that it goes way too fast and is better suited as an intermediate course. You probably wouldn't get much out of Pimsleur Vietnamese either. You can do it! Edited by liddytime on 06 September 2011 at 5:21pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6174 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 14 06 September 2011 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||
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It's hard to do with a family, a job, and a difficult language. So you have to be in the mind set that you won't see returns to your effort for a very long time. If you can do that, I would definitely try to learn it if I were you.
To answer your first question, there are at least a few members here that learned Vietnamese. There aren't that many but unlike Mandarin for example the relatively small size of the country and the relative lack of resources and media means there are generally fewer learners and thus fewer success stories to read about. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5920 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 6 of 14 06 September 2011 at 5:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I would think studying Vietnamese would show your wife that you are interested in her and her culture -- even if she says you don't have to study Vietnamese. So there are reasons to study even you don't get to the level of understanding 80% of Vietnamese TV -- which would be a remarkable achievement for anyone. Don't worry so much about being fluent. If I worry about fluency it just makes me crazy. Make easier goals. Learn greetings, learn the numbers, learn parts of the body, etc. I only have one rule -- do something every single day, no matter what.
I'm not sure why you gave up Vietnamese the first time, but I wonder if it's because of the vocabulary. For me, I swear the beginning level of Japanese vocabulary was insanely hard. I used flash cards, and some words I would repeat every single day for months. I'd see the card, review it, get it wrong, and then get it right, and then I'd see it again the next day and get it wrong all over again. But what happened was eventually my brain seemed to loosen up a bit, and now I seem to be able to learn new Japanese vocabulary more easily. What got me through the beginning level was a lot of repetition with flash card software. It was a pretty miserable, but I got through it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Nguyen Senior Member Vietnam Joined 4888 days ago 109 posts - 195 votes Speaks: Vietnamese | Message 7 of 14 06 September 2011 at 7:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I am a native speaker, but I think Vietnamese would be high up on the difficulty scale based on the number of foreigners (including Asians) that I have encountered that can speak it well. One Korean guy and two Englishmen all told. The thing about these three guys is that they all started learning in their forties, so age isn't a factor. It has to do with motivation. You also need the time to do it.
I can tell you that if you can succeed in reaching an intermediate level that will be quite an accomplishment indeed! Vietnamese is a world class language (about 100,000,000 speakers)with a great culture, long colourful history and a dynamic future. The pronunciation is the hard part, you need to train your ear well and listen to the sounds. Speaking in the correct rythym is importent too. Most foreigners tend to run the words together in a group, actually Vietnamese tend to group words in pairs and almost sing them. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chrisphillips71 Groupie United States Joined 5031 days ago 64 posts - 86 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 14 06 September 2011 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the thoughts and encouragement. I am still undecided on what I will do. Part
of me thinks that learning Vietnamese would be great (very few Americans speak it and I would be able to talk to my wife and her family in their native tongue). Another part of me thinks that the hill is just to high and I do not want to detract from my Spanish studies. If I have learned anything studying Spanish, it is that learning a language while no being immersed is extremely difficult. There are so many things in my life that I have given up on without seeing them through to completion. I do not want Spanish to be another wasted effort. However, it still would be amazing to speak and understand Vietnamese at a level beyond hello, goodbye, and thank you (my current level). -Chris Phillips 1 person has voted this message useful |
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