The Vietnamese Language

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Latin Alphabet: You can use me Vietnamese: You don't fit my language Latin Alphabet: Well then, use diacritics then? Vietnamese: I'll take your entire stock

At age 70 I decided to learn Vietnamese. It’s difficult to force my mouth to do what my ear hears. But I’ll keep going. Cam on and tam biet (both of which need diacritics my phone can’t manage.) I’ll save this YT to my Favorite Videos album. Thanks, Paul.

Really top shelf video. I am originally from New York where I met a lovely Vietnamese lady in 1976. We married in 1977 and made our first visit to Vietnam in 1988 when and where I promised myself I would learn Vietnamese. After coming home I spoke only Vietnamese with my wife and her family who had come to America a few years before. I moved to Vietnam with my wife in 1995 full time where we remain. About the three dialects… I am lucky because in my small office in Saigon I had a native Hanoi speaker and a native Hue speaker among five staff where we all communicated in Vietnamese for many years and so I am reasonably familiar with all dialects. But the best thing about speaking Vietnamese is the nearly universal positive reaction one receives as a foreigner (especially a non Asian foreigner). I really enjoy living here in Vietnam and thankful that I have been able to learn the language reasonably well.

As a Thai, I want to learn Vietnamese so bad. I've seen Vietnamese people effortlessly nail Thai pronunciation because their language has more number of tones.

Gives example of different tones: "Hey, I can actually hear them!" Starts talking in sentences: "Nevermind."

Foreigners learning Vietnamese: why are there so many tones??? Vietnamese learning other languages: why the words keep changing all the time???

Một đặc điểm nổi bật của Tiếng Việt (không thấy nhắc tới trong video), khác hầu hết các ngôn ngữ khác (English as example) là cách dùng đại từ nhân xưng "chúng tôi" và "chúng ta" (both means "we" in English). Trong khi "we" (chúng ta) trong tiếng Anh không thể hiện rõ ngữ cảnh có hai nhóm đối thoại, nhóm A đại diện bởi người nói, nhóm B chỉ bao gồm một hay nhiều người nghe, tức có thể hiểu người nói đại diện cho cả hai nhóm A và B. Nếu dùng "chúng tôi" (also "we") sẽ biểu thị rõ ràng là người nói chỉ có ý đại diện cho nhóm A mà không đại diện cho nhóm B.

As a background, I am Filipino who grew up bilingual in English and Tagalog. I am conversational in Japanese and learning Hebrew and Bahasa Indonesian. My parents gave me a Vietnamese name (they used to work in a Vietnamese refugee camp) and they've been encouraging me to visit Vietnam and learn the language. I've been trying time and time again to learn Vietnamese but the biggest learning wall for me is the phonetics and the tones. All the other languages I know and am learning are not as tonal as Vietnamese. Learning the vocabulary is daunting and I can't even start on it since I don't even know how to distinguish the words.

Fun fact: The word "ấy" can be use to replace 99% of vietnamese words in dialog

Me, a Vietnamese who has spoken Vietnamese all my life watching this video: "Interesting."

I started casually studying Vietnamese a few years ago to impress my friends, however I lost all progress I gained when the pandemic hit and we couldn't meet up anymore. I do remember enjoying learning the word structure and realizing how much more comprehensive it is than english, but had quite a bit of challenge with tones other than the rising ones. Being a Spanish speaker trying to learn a tonal language is quite an experience, but I truly do want to learn Vietnamese eventually.

I came across many videos of yours on various topics before, yet this is the first time I've watched one on my mother tongue. I must say that I truly appreciated your effort in making this, all the different aspects of linguistics, authentic representatives of the Southern and Northern Vietnamese (as a Southerner, I enjoyed it so much hearing the Southern accent). And yes, as you said, like any language out there, people may find Vietnamese difficult to acquire, but as long as you can grasp the beauty of this language, you will just want to learn more! Keep up the great work!

Just a fun fact: Here’s a word than can mean 3 different fruits simply by changing the tone dưa: melon dứa: pineapple dừa: coconut

I'm Mexican and my husband is Vietnamese. I've been learning Vietnamese for 3 years now. It is a hard language especially since I have nobody else to speak with. Only my husband and my online teacher. Regardless, I love the language. It is so expressive. Tiếng Việt đáng học, for sure 🥰

I grew up in Taiwan but my mother and grandmother were ethnic Chinese from Vietnam. I never spent the time to learn Vietnamese, but I heard a lot of it in my childhood. Vietnamese seems a straightforward language for most Chinese to pick up. All the consonants and tones sound clear to us (I know sometimes it can be confusing to the Western ears). Grammar is simple and straightforward. As you said, there is no form changes due to gender, plural, tense or conjugation *as in Chinese.

This man knows more about my language and its history than I ever did

Vietnamese dialects make easy: Northern Dialect: the British accent of Vietnamese, standard, formal, fancy. Southern Dialect: the American accent of Vietnamese, informal, simple, straight forward Central Dialect: the Scottish accent of Vietnames, cuz nobody understand a damn thing Edit: my god I never realized there are so many Vietnamese linguistics professors on YouTube. All of them replying to my stupid joke. All of them somehow from Central.

One of the very few Youtubers who actually teaches you something USEFUL. The details, the research you are doing is insane. Thank you Langfocus 🙏

As a Mizo from North East India, I like Vietnamese cultures and traditions and I always wanted to know more about Vietnamese. 😅😅. My friend once had a DNA test and also has Vietnamese ancestry and not only him but many Zo people had also done it now and all their results are quite similar. That is why I am curious about Vietnam😅😅.