Vietnamese Language Learning Tips

Learning to pronounce and to speak Vietnamese language

Many people want to jump straight into this first aspect of being able to speak. They spend a lot of time trying to talk to the local. If you are staying in Vietnam, that is the ideal way to start your learning of the language.

Of course, you have to convince your Vietnamese friends that they have to spend at least 50% of the time conversing to you in their mother tongue. Otherwise, most of them will only be interested to learn English from you. You will find that Vietnamese people are very eager to learn English and it is not easy for them to find someone to learn from and to practice their English with. So be patient and remind them regularly and gently that you would like to learn Vietnamese from them too.

Learning to read Vietnamese language

The Vietnamese language is not difficult to read because it is Romanized, i.e. it is in “a, b, c” which is similar to the English language. From what I gather, we (English speakers) have to thank a Christian priest names Alexandre de Rhodes for having introduced the conversion of the Vietnamese characters to the current “a, b, c” a few hundred years ago. Personally, I feel that you should not in the beginning spend too much time reading by yourself as you may end up reinforcing the wrong pronunciation into your mind if you are not reading it correctly. I try to listen to my teacher and repeat after my teacher. Otherwise, I try to listen to audio recordings and repeat after them. As an advanced learner now, I try to read the Vietnamese newspapers with my teacher regularly. I find reading the Vietnamese newspapers the best way for advanced learners to progress in their language learning.

Learning to write Vietnamese language

Not everyone needs to learn to write depending on your aim in studying the language. For example, I have a secretary to do most of my writing and typing in Vietnamese, so my ability to write Vietnamese is not as good as it should be. As Vietnamese is a tonal language, I find that I am able to write more accurately with the correct accents when I am able to speak correctly. Practice makes perfect. So, if you want to be able to write Vietnamese well, there is no easy way out.

You just have to write articles and get your Vietnamese teacher or friend to correct for you. If you are learning from outside Vietnam and have no Vietnamese to help you, try getting a Vietnamese Pen Pal and explain to your pen pal that you would like him/her to help you correct your mistakes.

Building up Vietnamese vocabulary

I find that the best way to build up my vocabulary in the initial phase was to use flash cards with one side Vietnamese and the other side the English translation. I would test myself on the flash cards once in two days. As I progressed in my language study, I had too many flash cards. So I had stopped doing that. Now, I try to build up my vocabulary by reading consistently. I started reading novels in Vietnamese about a year ago. As the novels are interesting (they have Tom Clancy and John Grisham’s books translated into Vietnamese too!) it is easier to build up vocabulary that way as compared to reading language textbooks. Definitely you will find it difficult reading your first few novels in Vietnamese.

It gets better with each novel! It is important to have a good bilingual dictionary (recommended dictionary)and a dictionary software (recommended dictionary software) too.

In order to improve your vocabulary, you should check up a new word every five minutes of reading.