Categories
Learning

How do I choose materials suitable for my level?

Golden leaves, golden shoes, golden nuggets of information. I do like autumn!
Golden leaves, golden shoes, golden nuggets of information. I do like autumn!
Golden leaves, golden shoes, golden nuggets of information. I do like autumn!

A new type of post on the blog, I’ll periodically be featuring short posts with little golden nuggets of knowledge or advice about language learning.

Thảo ơi, how do I choose reading and listening materials suitable for my level?

A good rule of thumb is to read material that’s a little harder than your level and listen to material that’s a little easier.

This can make a huge difference between being able to understand something and feeling so confused that you give up.

To read easily, you don’t want to be looking up more than a few words per page or article. If you’re studying rather than reading for pleasure, you can increase that figure. But even then, if you find yourself stopping every few words then consider putting that article or story aside for a few weeks and trying again when you’re a bit further along in your studies.

As for listening, even if you’re naturally good at it it’s harder than reading. Ever struggled to understand something and put subtitles on to help? Yeah, that’s it. At that point you’re reading the subtitles rather than listening to the dialogue because you can’t actually do both at the same time. Like the situation with struggling to read an article that’s above your level, if you find yourself needing subtitles then you need to find something easier to practice your listening skills for the time being.

Now you know how to tell if your materials are the right level for you, you’re ready to choose some new ones! Vietnamese learners can start here.

Categories
Experiences

What I’m doing to maintain my Vietnamese

As you may have guessed from the fact I left Vietnam a while ago combined with last week’s post, I’m currently brushing up on my French after seven(!) years of neglect.

What does this mean for my Vietnamese? Well, I’m taking a step back from active study and just maintaining my current Vietnamese level. I don’t want to lose any momentum during this study break, because it is just a break, so every day I’m practising some Vietnamese in some way, shape or form.

But what exactly does that look like?

Skyping with friends

On average 5-6 days a week (total 8-10 hours)

This is the best thing as it keeps me using Vietnamese. However, I’ve noticed I’m already slower at recalling vocab so I’ve had to boost my activity in other areas too. Eventually I want to find new people to practice with as I’m aware that my friends are used to the way I speak.

Revising vocab with Anki

On average 2-4 days a week (total 20 mins)

I’m not adding new cards but simply keeping up with the vocab I learnt in (2 of) my classes. I keep forgetting to review more often, but I’m mostly up-to-date so around 5 mins every few days is more than enough.

Reading short articles

On average 1-2 days a week (total 30-45 mins)

How much time I spend on this mostly depends on how often new articles appear on my favourite sites or if friends share something interesting on facebook. I usually try to read these intensively but less so now I’m reading a lot of French. Of course, I do read a few emails too.

Watching Quà Tặng Cuộc Sống

On average 1 day a week (total 15 mins)

I love these short animations and don’t watch them as often as I should! A lot of the time I can understand them fairly well, but sometimes they go over my head. I watch these for pleasure, without doing any language work.

Writing

On average 2-3 days a week (total 30mins-1 hour)

Again this includes emails, which I am trying to be less lazy with as I usually don’t write the tones and accents because it’s quicker that way. If I have something interesting to write about, or if I’m not writing loads in French, I’ll write something, get it corrected on lang-8 and go through the corrections.

What that looks like

Amazingly it seems that I practice all four skills most weeks! Admittedly sometimes I’ll go a couple of weeks without watching something or intensively reading something. I should probably spend more time on decent input, but at least I’m still getting practice.

In total I spend about 10 hours a week, on average, maintaining my Vietnamese. Mostly through Skype chats which are so easy to keep up with as they’re enjoyable! Even during my busiest weeks this summer, I managed at least 4 hours a week chatting on Skype.

How I maintain my Vietnamese level each week

Over to you: How do you maintain a language you’re not actively studying?

Categories
Language & Culture

The French influence

film → phim

For 67 years, Vietnam was part of French Indochina. You can still see pockets of French influence from grand old buildings in the cities to the presence of Catholicism, right down to the fluffy baguettes you can find everywhere in Vietnam.

Linguistically, French and Vietnamese are very different. Although French was used for official business and in education during that period, finding people in Vietnam who can speak French today is pretty rare.

But nonetheless some words have been borrowed for foreign items like foods and other such objects that were introduced to Vietnam by the French. These words have of course undergone spelling and pronunciation changes to make them Vietnamese, but the French root is still easily seen.

pain → bánh mì
fromage → phô mai / pho mát
beurre → bơ
café → cà phê
bière → bia
savon → xà phòng
poupée → búp bé
valise → va li
sou → xu
patin → patin (but pronounced very differently!)
gare → ga
film → phim

This Taipei Times article has a more extensive list, but some of those words have definitely fallen out of use in modern Saigon.

Probably the very first, and most significant, French influence on the Vietnamese language was the creation by a French missionary of the Vietnamese roman script (called quốc ngữ) – the writing system which replaced Chinese-style ideograms.

Categories
Language & Culture

The story behind street names in Vietnam

Street names in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Interactive map explaining the origins of street names in Ho Chi Minh City. Source.

The streets in every town and city in Vietnam all seem to have the same names: Hùng Vương, Lẽ Duẩn, Lý Tự Trọng, Nguyễn Trãi, Nguyễn Huệ, Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai…

The reason being that their names are taken from important people or events from Vietnamese history. (Aside from Hanoi’s old quarter where the names take after the trades that could be found on those streets.)

Hai Bà Trưng – two sisters who fought against the Chinese way back in the 1st century AD.

Đinh Tiên Hoàng – the first emperor of Vietnam after 1000 years of Chinese dominance. 10th Century.

Mạc Đĩnh Chi – a court official and ambassador to China. 14th Century.

Bùi Thị Xuân – a woman general who fought against the Nguyen army. 18th Century.

Nguyễn Du – one of Vietnam’s most famous poets. 19th Century.

Even a handful of Europeans who made waves in Vietnam such as Pasteur, the famous microbiologist, and French-Swissman Yersin, credited as the founder of Da Lat, get on the map in some cities.

But it’s not just about people.

Điện Biên Phủ – the location of a notable battle which signalled the defeat of French forces in Indochina in the 20th Century.

Cách Mạng Tháng 8 is a large and busy road in Ho Chi Minh City. Due to the long name, many expats refer to it as ‘CMT eight’. I never gave the name any thought, until one day I found out that the name meant ‘August Revolution’.

Want to know more about street names in Vietnam? Check out this labelled google map of HCMC:

Street names in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Interactive google map explaining the meaning behind street names in Ho Chi Minh City. Source.
Categories
Language & Culture

Texting in Vietnamese: Common Abbreviations

Texting in VietnameseMaybe you want to use your đtdd (phone) to nhắn tin (send a message) a friend in Vietnamese. Or maybe you’re lazy to type out full words in a chat. Here’s a starter guide to Vietnamese SMS abbreviations.

Most phones don’t do accents, or they’re arduous to use so people don’t bother, so you’ll be reading Vietnamese without the tones. Vietnamese words are short anyway, so the list of common abbreviations isn’t as extensive as other languages.

ko = không
dc = được
a = anh
e = em
ng = người
wa = quá (this may be southern)

-ng → g
For example, nhug = nhưng. dag, xog and cug are also common (= đang, xong, cũng).

i → j
For example, dj = đi, bjet or bjt = biết. Some may write gì as ji or j.
hjhj is also common as showing laughter.

If you’re talking about a friend, you may shorten their name to their initial (eg. if you were talking about me you’d write T for Thảo).

And of course VN is Việt Nam!

These are the most common abbreviations for texting in Vietnamese that I’ve come across, though young people may use more than this!