Interest in Vietnamese

Posts0Likes0Joined9/7/2018LocationGeorge Town / GY

why isn't anyone interested in speaking Vietnamese

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1
#1
Posts0Likes0Joined9/7/2018LocationUS
Native
English
Learning Spanish
Other French

I would like to learn eventually. My sister is taking a Vietnamese college course.


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1
#2
Posts0Likes0Joined4/10/2018Location
Native
Chinese - Mandarin, English, Chinese - Cantonese
Other French, Indonesian, Russian, Thai, Vietnamese

Why would you say that nobody is interested in learning Vietnamese? Vietnamese is a rather tough one, though. For starters, there are three main regional variations. Although I spent a couple of years learning it, I find that my ability to understand individuals varies greatly. For instance, I can always understand school teachers who speak "standard" Vietnamese, but the moment you throw me in a market, where everyone pitches their tones differently, not to mention regional variation, and I'm a dead duck. I once ended up with fish, even though I wanted chicken, because the person heard it different (cá [fish] vs gà [chicken])  

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#3
Posts1630Likes1092Joined18/3/2018LocationBellingham / US
Native
English
Learning German
Other Chinese - Mandarin, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Thai

meifeng wrote:
Vietnamese is a rather tough one

I see you're C1 - that's awesome! Did you live there during those 2 years? C1 in Vietnamese is almost unheard of for western learners; maybe it's more common for native speakers of tonal languages though.

In Thailand now. Next up Tanzania and Philippines.

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#4
Posts0Likes0Joined3/9/2018LocationManila / PH
Native
English, Tagalog
Other French, Spanish

Tonal languages are tough as rubber!

Aleks

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#5
Posts0Likes0Joined4/10/2018Location
Native
Chinese - Mandarin, English, Chinese - Cantonese
Other French, Indonesian, Russian, Thai, Vietnamese

leosmith wrote:
I see you're C1 - that's awesome! Did you live there during those 2 years? C1 in Vietnamese is almost unheard of for western learners; maybe it's more common for native speakers of tonal languages though.

I lived there for about 6 months. I learned it at school for about 3 years, and need it professionally, although most of my professional needs are textual in nature. Vietnamese (like most languages) also evolved through time. I work mostly with texts from the 1950s-1970s from southern Vietnam, so Vietnamese from that time (spelling, structure etc) is really quite different from contemporary Vietnamese, or for that matter, even Vietnamese from the north at that time.

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2
#7
Posts0Likes0Joined4/10/2018Location
Native
Chinese - Mandarin, English, Chinese - Cantonese
Other French, Indonesian, Russian, Thai, Vietnamese

Aleksys.P wrote:
Tonal languages are tough as rubber!

Agreed. Excuse me, while I go sob into my pillow.

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#8
Posts0Likes0Joined5/6/2018LocationLapu-lapu / PH
Native
Cebuano, Tagalog
Other English

Vietnamese is interesting to learn, but it is just not a widely used language for different purposes, unlike English. 

Charlyn Amoin

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#9
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