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Vietnamese lessons

 
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Inspector Gadget



Joined: 25 Mar 2004
Posts: 3

PostPosted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 10:21 am    Post subject: Vietnamese lessons Reply with quote

What school would you recommend for studying Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh City? I want to spend about a month studying Vietnamese intensively before starting work, and I've never studied it before. Also, I'd rather be in a class with other people than have a private tutor. What do you think?
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OzBurn



Joined: 03 May 2004
Posts: 199

PostPosted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 4:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You can obtain courses or tutorials at either the Teacher Training University or the University for Social Sciences and Humanities. The rate for a tutorial is about $4 per hour. Addresses are in the Lonely Planet.

I would wonder why you want a class. Have you ever studied a tonal language? It is very difficult for most people to master the nuances of tones, and some of the Vietnamese consonants are not easy either. It will probably take you about a month to really learn the pronunciation of Vietnamese (never mind grammar, vocabulary, and functional vocabulary). There are many vowels, diphthongs and what the Vietnamese call "rhymes" (letter combinations). If you add these up with all five/six tones, you probably have something like 250 vowel-tone combinations. Please don't think you can skip the step of learning these, as few people will understand one single word you say if do. I would strongly recommend you get a tutor so that you can really hear the correct pronunciation, done consistently. I have a good ear and am considered a talented mimic by my friends and students, but I find Vietnamese quite difficult.

The school will assign you a tutor or teacher in a class. You must be clear on what accent you want to learn. There are three Vietnamese accents: Northern (standard), Central, and Southern. There are six tones in the North, but only five in the South. I don't know how many they have in Central Vietnam, but this accent is widely considered the strangest. Consonants also change as you move south.

You cannot, practically speaking, learn both systems in the initial stages, so you should decide where you want to live. If you are sure you will be in the South, I would advise you to learn a Southern accent, even though it is perceived by most people throughout the country as not "correct" and as somewhat lower in class. It is nonetheless what you will hear, for the most part, and what the people around you are used to.

If you tell the school that you want to learn Southern Vietnamese, they will probably give you a teacher who will try to teach you the Northern accent anyway. Also, the teacher may be from Central Vietnam and have a strange accent. The school is unlikely to tell you the truth about this. Whatever they give you will in their account be what you asked for.

Good luck.
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