Categories
Experiences

How I learnt Vietnamese – Part 1

Learning Vietnamese from a phrasebook

Back in March I passed the 3-year mark since I started learning Vietnamese. In this time I’ve worked hard but also taken some breaks where I’ve done little but maintain my level.

Recently I realised that even though I started this blog over year ago, I haven’t told you much about how I actually learnt Vietnamese.

So here’s the first part of my story.

Before heading to Vietnam, I spent 4 months travelling round South East Asia. I had with me a mini-phrasebook from the back of a Lonely Planet and as I arrived in each country I learnt a few words like numbers, basic food items and some other simple phrases.

All along my plan was to take a teaching course in Vietnam and, if all went well, to work there too but because I visited other countries I didn’t have much time to focus on Vietnamese.

Phase 1 – A phrasebook and learning to read

March 2011
I began learning Vietnamese on the bus from Laos to Vietnam.

Those first few words were really hard to learn. It all sounds so different that it’s hard to make things stick. On the day-long bus journey, I literally just learnt the numbers 1-3, chục (a unit with the value of 10, useful for money), cơm (rice) and cảm ớn (thank you).

Over the next few days I slowly added new words and mini-phrases to my repertoire. Literally just a handful of words each day until I had a rudimentary vocabulary.

Learning Vietnamese from a phrasebook
Learning Vietnamese from a phrasebook

In Hanoi I quickly made Vietnamese friends. In particular, I made friends with a Vietnamese woman who taught English. She gave me a list of basic phrases and when she was busy, her receptionist (who spoke no English) prompted me to read them, correcting me on my pronunciation.

Up to this point I’d used the pronunciation guide in my phrasebook to get a general idea of how letters sounded but I was probably still relying on the Anglicization in my phrasebook more than I should. Now I was more confident using the Vietnamese words themselves.

Phase 2 – My first course

July – October 2011

Having arrived in Saigon, I kept practising what I’d learnt so far. Soon after I had started work, my employer provided a free short Vietnamese course. I was a quick learner and picked up enough to manage daily life in Vietnam. The weekly classes lasted a few months and by the end I could easily order food, haggle and give directions to a xe ôm.

Phase 3 – The expat plateau

November 2011 – August 2012

I continued using Vietnamese every day to eat and get around town.

At this point I had great intentions – I practised with friends and I started speaking more Vietnamese by dropping Vietnamese words into English sentences. Through this I learnt some new words here and there. But although I had a couple of elementary textbooks, I never quite got round to using them.

While I say I plateaued, it’s not strictly true as I did pick up enough in this time that I was able to write short texts about a holiday or restaurant visit – albeit with a lot of spelling problems including missing most tones.

To be continued…

What surprises me is that I mostly learnt through self-study and practice, with just a little bit of classroom instruction. I wonder how Part 2 will compare!

Over to you: How did you start learning Vietnamese?

Categories
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?

Categories
Language & Culture

Vietnamese Pop Music – 10 Artists

Vietnamese musiciansMusic is a fun way to get in touch with Vietnamese culture and can even benefit your language learning.

But I have a confession…

When I lived in Vietnam I didn’t really listen to Vietnamese music, pop or otherwise. There are three main reasons.

  • There’s a weird phenomenon that most Vietnamese people sing with a Northern accent, no matter where they are from.
  • My teenage students were into K-Pop. That’s probably because…
  • Pop music isn’t really mainstream in Vietnam.The kind of songs popular with my friends were ballads and love songs, which are not my cup of tea. Vietnamese pop music is often criticised in the media for being too Western or too much like Korean pop music.

By the time I left Vietnam I only had 6 songs on my ‘Vietnamese music’ playlist. And one of those was a parody of a K-Pop song.

 

So I decided to investigate and see if I could find some Vietnamese pop music (aka V-Pop) which is called nhạc trẻ in Vietnamese.

10 Vietnamese Pop Musicians

Here are some of my favourite Vietnamese musicians, covering a range of modern styles.

Word of warning: Many of these songs have a catchy beat to them but are still quite melancholic.

With that said, let’s get started with my V-pop list:

JustaTee

He mostly sings ballads but there are some poppier songs like this one.

Download Forever Alone from Zing MP3.

Emily

Model-turned-R&B-singer Emily is both a solo artist and regularly teams up with other singers like JustaTee.

Download Dừng Lại Nhé from Zing MP3.

FB Boiz

A fun boyband based in Saigon who describe their music style as R&B and Hip Hop.

Download Em Có Biết from Zing MP3.

Đông Nhi

A soloist who composes many of her own songs.

Download Khi Mưa from Zing MP3

Trương Qùynh Anh

She mainly sings ballads, but this is a poppier song.

Download Hãy Bước Qua Nhau from Zing MP3.

Á Đông

Their sound is very Vietnamese but accompanied by a pop or dance soundtrack.

Downloads of Vầng Trăng Tình Yêu seem unavailable outside of VN.

YunjBoo

A younger rapper who often collaborates with others. I’m not normally into rap but it’s refreshing to hear a southern accent!

Downloads of Hy Vọng Vô Hạn seem unavailable outside of VN.

Thái Tuyết Trâm

She sings several lovely acoustic covers of other Vietnamese songs.

Downloads of Tình Yêu Màu Nắng seem unavailable outside of VN.

Diễm Hương

She has an incredible voice. The first time I heard this song I got chills down my spine. It’s no wonder she was on Vietnam’s “The Voice”.

This is a good song to sing along to as it’s fairly slow and it’s easy to understand the basic message of the song.

Downloads of Who Cares seem unavailable outside of VN.

365 DaBand

This band have a Western or K-Pop vibe to them. They also occasionally sing in English, cover or mash-up English songs. Isaac also does solos.

Downloads of 365daband songs seem unavailable outside of VN.

Resources to continue exploring Vietnamese music

  • To find Vietnamese lyrics search for [title] lời bài hát or [title] lyrics (eg. Forever Alone lời bài hát).
  • For more V-Pop recommendations see Spotify or go here or see Reddit.
  • If you do like ballads, you’re in luck! There’s a huge range of them with English translations here.

Over to you: Do you listen to music in a foreign language? Do you like any Vietnamese musicians?

Categories
Learning

How an afternoon in a park taught me to pronounce ng-

Readers have been asking me questions about Vietnamese pronunciation. It’s an important part of learning Vietnamese but I didn’t know where to start. Then last week I read this short article explaining how to get over your big language issues.

It all became clear how to break down the big topic of Vietnamese pronunciation for you.

The short answer? Get specific. Then tackle each of your issues one at a time.

How I learnt to pronounce ng- words

Today I’m going to tell you how I learnt to pronounce ng and how you can do it too.

some Vietnamese ng words

I started learning Vietnamese just a few days before I arrived in Vietnam. In some ways this was great because I was surrounded by native speakers from the beginning. If I didn’t pronounce something correctly, I’d be met with a blank look.

Even so, after one month there was one consonant sound that was still troubling me… ng-

I wanted to be able to say ngon (delicious) but my attempts to say the ng- sound were really hit and miss.

It all changed in an afternoon

One afternoon I was in a park in Saigon and chatting in English to some university students. During the conversation, I mentioned that I was learning Vietnamese. They encouraged me to say something so I said “Tôi là người Anh” (I’m English).

As you may have guessed, I didn’t pronounce người right. One student decided to teach me to say it.

She modelled the sound for me, showing me how her mouth was positioned as she simply said ng. After she did this a few times, she encouraged me to try.

Me:  ng
Her: Yes!
Me:  n
Her: No.
Me:  n
Her: No.
Me:  ng
Her: Yes!

This went on for a couple of minutes.

Little by little I started getting more yes’s than no’s. I also started hearing the difference myself and being able to tell when I was saying it correctly and when I wasn’t.

I kept practising for the rest of the week. One day it just clicked and since then I’ve had no trouble pronouncing ng. I’ve even taught other people to say it correctly.

How you can learn to pronounce ng- too

Start by listening to the sound ng, paying attention to how it should be formed in your mouth and how it should sound.

This video by Stuart Jay Raj explains it really well as even though only a few examples are Vietnamese, the Thai and Indonesian examples have a similar ng sound.

By the end of the video you should be able to say ng correctly, though you may still sometimes get it wrong like I used to. Keep on practising Vietnamese words beginning with ng- like ngon, người and the most common Vietnamese surname – Nguyen.

Here are some great examples for Vietnamese. If possible, ask a native speaker if you’re pronouncing it correctly.

Although this article is about ng, you can use the same technique with any sound, tone or word you are struggling with.

Over to you: What sounds do you find hard to say? What do you do to practice them?

Categories
Learning

12 topics to kickstart your Vietnamese writing

Choosing writing topics can be difficult Do you feel like you should write in Vietnamese, but you don’t really know what to write about?

Choosing the right topic enables you to practice your Vietnamese in a low-pressure setting. Writing gives you time to think about what you want to say, to build on what you’ve been learning and to try out new things.

But sometimes it can be hard to choose what to write about. If you pick the wrong topic for your interests or your level, it can frustrate you, kill your motivation and even cause you to give up and avoid writing.

Similarly, different styles of writing are suited to different levels. If you’re a beginner trying to write an essay or letter of complaint, you’re going to have a hard time.

It can be tricky to know what to write about. Here are 12 ideas to get you started.

  1. Make up a conversation

    This is a great one for beginners. It can be hard trying to write when you don’t have much language to work with, so go with what you know and write a fictitious dialogue between two friends or colleagues.

    Intermediate learners can also use this to practice different types of writing because you can vary how formal it is by changing characters. This can be a good way to check if you’re using slang or polite words like thưa in the right way.

  2. Keep a diary

    Write about your daily routine or recount something unique or different about your day. If you’re struggling at first, commit to just writing one sentence each day. It will get easier over time.

  3. Describe a trip or event

    Write about an interesting event like a dinner party or wedding you attended or describe a holiday or day trip you’ve been on.

  4. Practice vocabulary

    Think of sentences or stories based on new vocabulary you’ve come across.

    Eg. If you learn the word ‘leo’ (climb), you could write a few sentences about any mountains you’ve climbed, climbing trees when you were a kid, or why you’d never do either of those things.

  5. Write about a hobby

    Describe when and why you got started with one of your hobbies (or why you’re learning Vietnamese) and how often you practice it.

  6. Describe a familiar place

    Write about a place you know well – like where you grew up or went to university. As well as describing it physically, say what you like about it.

  7. Write about a local event

    Explain about a festival or annual event in your town, why it started and what usually happens.

  8. Comparisons

    Make a comparison between something in your country and that in Vietnam. Eg. differences in climate, eating habits, transport…

  9. Story summaries

    Summarise what you watch or read in your free time. Even if that film or book was in English or another language, you can still practice Vietnamese by describing the basic story, key events and why you liked (or didn’t like) it.

  10. Use the same topic as your study material

    Write your own take on a topic that you’ve seen/read about in Vietnamese.

    Eg. If you listen to someone describing their best friend, write about your own.

  11. Translate something

    Find a short article or letter that you’ve read in your native language and translate it into Vietnamese.

    This is a harder task than writing something directly in Vietnamese, but on the other hand you don’t have to think about what to say.

  12. Ask questions

    Ask questions in Vietnamese about the language or culture.

    If you wrote a sentence while chatting that you didn’t think was natural, rewrite it, ask questions and find out a better way to say it.

    Or you could ask about something you’ve read or pose a cultural question like if people really chew betel nuts.

    Post your questions on a peer-correction site like Lang-8 or iTalki*, wait for answers from native speakers and make it a discussion by responding to them.

Top Tip: Keep a list of writing topics

Instead of trying to think of a topic every time you’re in the mood to write, keep a list of things you want to write about.

As you go about your daily life, look out for potential topics and jot them down. That way, when you want to write you can simply look at your list and go with one of those ideas.

Over to you: Do you struggle to think of things to write about? Did this list of topics inspire you, if so… What’s your next piece of writing going to be about?

Photo credit: ralaenin