Should I try to learn Vietnamese (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

Should I try to learn Vietnamese
Tags: Vietnamese \| Reasons for study \| Difficulty
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14 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

clumsy
Octoglot
Senior Member
Poland
lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4972 days ago
1116 posts - 1367 votes

Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish
Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi

Message 9 of 14

07 September 2011 at 12:45am | IP Logged

Vietnamese shares a lot of vocabulary with Chinese, Korean, Japanese.
So it will be a little hard, if you don't speak any of them.
Vietnamese is considered hard language according to Foreign Service Institute.
Vocabulary may seem very hard to learn I believe.
Grammar on the other hand I think is not so hard.
Although there are some Vietnamese that say their grammar is hard.
I don't know advanced Vietnamese so I don't know, but the basics are easy.
They use family terms for pronouns, so it may seem that they use a whole load of pronouns.

Something like that

Older brother wants to eat an ice-cream. younger sister thinks older brother should buy an ice-cream to sister too.

About the courses recommended above: they are both Southern Dialect, and quite dated, but generally with a lot of things to teach, and for free.
1 person has voted this message useful

learnvietnamese
Diglot
Groupie
Singapore
yourvietnamese.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4743 days ago
98 posts - 132 votes

Speaks: Vietnamese*, English^C2
Studies: French, Mandarin

Message 10 of 14

07 September 2011 at 4:58am | IP Logged

One more reason to learn Vietnamese: I'm willing to help you as well :D
1 person has voted this message useful

Jordan152
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 5615 days ago
39 posts - 35 votes
Studies: English, Finnish

Message 11 of 14

07 September 2011 at 10:59am | IP Logged

to get by in most everyday situations I mean? I know this may be difficult to estimate im just looking for a ball park figure. Cheers
1 person has voted this message useful

jimbo
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 6088 days ago
469 posts - 642 votes

Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French
Studies: Japanese, Latin

Message 12 of 14

07 September 2011 at 1:24pm | IP Logged

chrisphillips71 wrote:

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.

Totally possible. A friend of mine in a similar situation has done it.
2 persons have voted this message useful

Nguyen
Senior Member
Vietnam
Joined 4887 days ago
109 posts - 195 votes

Speaks: Vietnamese

Message 13 of 14

30 June 2014 at 8:29am | IP Logged

newyorkeric wrote:

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.

I would like to point out that their are over 100,000,000 Vietnamese speakers on the
planet. Not such a small country, roughly the size of California. The demand for people
especially native English speakers is high as are the salaries to accommodate such
people. Yes it is worth learning as it will give insight into your wife's language and
culture. The main problem you will encounter is that the Vietnamese "swallow" their
words and it seems to be difficult. By the same toke as a Vietnamese native it was
difficult to get used to the numerous English sounds. If we see an L at the end of a
word it is pronounced N; i.e. School is Schoon. My advice learn to speak a little first
the reading and finally writing. I have seen many people who can do the latter but the
speech is unintelligible. Over 40 is nothing. Be patient though, I would give it a year
or so just to get comfortable.
1 person has voted this message useful

Nguyen
Senior Member
Vietnam
Joined 4887 days ago
109 posts - 195 votes

Speaks: Vietnamese

Message 14 of 14

30 June 2014 at 8:38am | IP Logged

clumsy wrote:

Vietnamese shares a lot of vocabulary with Chinese, Korean, Japanese.
So it will be a little hard, if you don't speak any of them.
Vietnamese is considered hard language according to Foreign Service Institute.
Vocabulary may seem very hard to learn I believe.
Grammar on the other hand I think is not so hard.
Although there are some Vietnamese that say their grammar is hard.
I don't know advanced Vietnamese so I don't know, but the basics are easy.
They use family terms for pronouns, so it may seem that they use a whole load of
pronouns.

Something like that

Older brother wants to eat an ice-cream. younger sister thinks older brother should
buy an ice-cream to sister too.

About the courses recommended above: they are both Southern Dialect, and quite dated,
but generally with a lot of things to teach, and for free.

Actually the grammar is their; in some cases not much different than English. The
sentence would go more like this:

Ahn Hai (older brother) wants to eat ice cream, (Ut) youngest sibling (Male or female),
thinks that Anh Hai should by some for here also. Vietnamese is an Honorific language.
There is alot of grammar unless you want to talk like Tonto. You will still be
understood.

1 person has voted this message useful

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