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Learning

How to improve your Vietnamese spelling

It’s fairly easy to learn how to read Vietnamese words aloud. It’s a bit trickier spelling them due to letters which can sound similar like a and ă, or are essentially the same like gi- and d-.

However you can improve your Vietnamese spelling with practice.

Tip #1: Write more

Because I learnt a lot of my basic Vietnamese by talking to friends, my spelling used to be awful.

My spelling used to suck
My spelling sucked until I started to practice writing

By getting your writing corrected and learning how to spell the words you got wrong, you can drastically improve your spelling.

Sometimes you’ll be able to remember these corrections right away. Sometimes you’ll have to practice spelling the words until you can consistently get them right.

Tip #2: Use Memrise or Anki with an input box

You can review vocabulary and test your spelling with a flashcard system like Memrise.com. You could also do this in Anki by creating a text input field and adding a third card to practise typing it.

Learn how to spell the words you get wrong

If you’ve done some writing and made a list of the words you got wrong, add them to a flashcard program so that you keep reviewing their spelling over time.

Use memrise to test your spelling
Words I’ve misspelt recently

Do this often and you’ll learn to spell common words correctly.

Learn to spell words correctly before you need them

Even now, there are a lot of Vietnamese words that I can say but can’t spell or can’t remember the tones for.

A good way to learn spell to familiar words like this is to download a deck in Anki or select a Memrise course with vocabulary you’ve already studied.

memrise-review
I’ve learnt about buildings but can I spell them all? Let’s see.

Practice the vocabulary through the Memrise system.

If you can spell the word correctly – great!

If you get it wrong, take note of the correct spelling and continue revising it in Memrise.

memrise-test
Is it ngoại thành or ngoài? Looks like I need to review this.

By reviewing words before you need them, you’ll improve your spelling and cut down on the number of words you have to look up in the dictionary.

Over to you: Do you struggle with Vietnamese spelling? How do you practice?