Interest in Vietnamese

why isn't anyone interested in speaking Vietnamese

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

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])  

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.

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.

Aleksys.P wrote:

Tonal languages are tough as rubber!

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

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