r/learnvietnamese

Hi all,

I have been dating my girlfriend for over 2 years now. Her background is Vietnamese (parents born in Vietnam whilst gf born in Australia). I feel like I have gotten along well with her family, they all seem to like me and we all went to Vietnam together at the end of last year for 5 weeks and I met some more extended family.

While I do enjoy the fact that I get along with my girlfriend's family, I do think my relationship with them has stagnated as they mostly speak Viet at home, especially my girlfriend's dad and grandpa who don't speak much English. So I think the next step for me should be to start learning Vietnamese.

I just thought I'd ask this reddit page for the best suggestions of how and where to learn Vietnamese. My girlfriend has told me that duolingo sucks for Viet, and one of my Vietnamese friends told me that a lot of what they teach on duolingo is overly formal and cringe.

For reference, my girlfriends parents are both from the Saigon area (since I know that the dialect is different north vs south).

If anyone has any good suggestions for learning Vietnamese I would love to hear them, particularly if anyone on here is based in Australia (Melbourne).

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I'm a Software Engineer based in Vietnam. My English is decent, and I’m considering starting some 1-on-1 Vietnamese private-tutoring sessions, but I want to see if my approach would actually be helpful to this community.

My idea:

• Focus: Purely on Speaking and Fluency. Less grammar, more real-life conversation.
• Specialty: Since I have a tech background, I can explain things logically and we can discuss tech, startups, or work culture (perfect if you are a dev moving to VN!).
• Price: I’m thinking of a symbolic $5/hour just to keep me committed and to build my portfolio.
• The "Satisfaction Guarantee": If the lesson isn't what you expected, you don't pay.

My questions for you:

1. Would $5/hr be an attractive rate, or does it sound "too much" ?
2. Would you prefer focusing on a specific dialect (Northern/Southern)?
3. What is your biggest struggle with speaking Vietnamese right now?

I’m not taking students officially just yet, but if this sounds like something you’d sign up for, please let me know in the comments! If there's enough interest, I'll start reaching out to set up some trial sessions.

Thanks for your feedback!

I am a special education teacher at a high school. It seems like in my area when students from other cultures have names that are difficult to pronounce or read correctly, they end up adopting some common English name to use at school. I had one girl on my roster whose name started with a Q and I asked her how to pronounce it she said that she just went by “Abby.” I don’t know when or how this practice started, but I’ve my best to work around it and learn the name they were given from their parents. So now I am working with “Kiley” a teen girl with special needs whose verbal skills are VERY limited. One day I noticed a tag on her bag read “Ngaontshia“ and realized she was another one of those cases with a different name. I think as a teacher, particularly working in a special education setting with her, it would really benefit me to learn how her name is actually said. The Internet has been kind of vague with letters and syllables. Any help appreciated.

I’ve been trying to learn Vietnamese for a while but I struggle with listening.
Any tips that actually worked for you?

Hi friends, hoping to get help with a few things.

"I'm from America." Rosetta stone says "Tôi từ nước Mỹ đến" and google translate says "tôi đến từ Mỹ." Is one more common or more correct, or are they basically the same?

"That's my daughter." Does "Đây là con gái tôi" work when my daughter is an adult? I'm using Rosetta stone, and the pics are all children! Similar question, "Em ấy hai mươi sáu tuổ." Is em the right pronoun if I'm talking about my adult daughter?

How about "he's my older brother" when we're both in our 50s? "Đây là ảnh trai em" because I'm younger than my brother? Or does it depend who I'm talking to? What pronoun would I use (instead of em) if I'm talking to someone my age? What about if I'm talking to someone in their 30s?

Thanks!

I'm trying to learn Vietnamese but it all feels overwhelming. I want to start by listening and learning the sounds, but even that is overwhelming, so I'm wanting to do the following:

• Start with the flat tone and learn the vowel and consonant sounds. (Even this is big)
• Then add in the tones

My method is to find a sentence, and then practice dictating it into my phone (set to Vietnamese language) and see if what I say gets triggered as words. (If I'm stuck, I'll have google translate say the word, make sure it triggers my dictation on my phone correctly and then try to emulate.)

The issue is that the phone is using predictive text, so it's helpful if the words I'm saying "make sense as part of a real sentence." Does anyone know of a book or guide that presents sample sentence in this order?

Thank you!

Hello everyone,

is there anyone in Germany that wants to learn/study vietnamese? I'm a vietnamese guy that grew up in Germany and wants to learn/improve my bad vietnamese for a better connection to my relatives.

Looking for a partner/native speaker that would also like to speak in vietnamese to me to improve the pronunciation and the vocabulary.

DM me if you are interested :)

Hi everyone! 👋
I’m currently doing a research project about the difficulties foreigners face when learning Vietnamese.

After interviewing some learners, I found 5 common challenges:

1. Pronunciation and tones
2. Vietnamese pronouns
3. Grammar (especially classifiers)
4. Culture and communication styles
5. Local dialects and regional accents

Now, I would love to hear about your personal experiences! 😊

• Which difficulty was the hardest for you?
• Do you have any funny, confusing, or memorable experiences?
• Can you share specific examples of misunderstandings or mistakes you made while learning Vietnamese?

For example:

• confusing “ma, má, mã, mả...” because of tones
• not knowing whether to call someone anh/chị/cô/chú
• struggling with classifiers like con, cái, chiếc
• difficulty understanding Southern/Central/Northern accents
• cultural situations that felt confusing in conversations

Any experience — big or small — would help my research a lot. Thank you so much for sharing! ❤️

i came back from vietnam recently and one thing i still can’t stop thinking about is how genuinely sweet people were to me there

like every time i looked confused for even 2 seconds, someone would immediately try to help me 😭 even when we barely understood each other

there were SO many moments where i wanted to say more but couldn’t because my vietnamese is basically nonexistent right now

one time i tried ordering coffee and accidentally answered the cashier completely wrong because i misunderstood her question 💀 we both just stood there awkwardly smiling at each other for a second before she switched to broken english to help me

and honestly that interaction has been living in my head ever since lol

because the more i traveled around vietnam, the more i realized i didn’t just wanna visit as a tourist anymore. i actually wanna understand people properly next time i go back

like i wanna be able to order food without panicking

i wanna understand little jokes people make

i wanna stop nodding pretending i understood everything 😭

i know vietnamese is gonna be hard as hell for me but idk… the language feels weirdly warm to me now

for people who learned vietnamese as adults, what actually helped you the most in the beginning?

Well, I’m a native Vietnamese speaker from Da Nang. I can speak both the central and northern accents. I’ve always wanted to grow a CI Vietnamese channel on youtube in my free time, I just don’t know which types of content would be useful for actual learners, or would they be interested in CI at all or would lean toward videos that use English for explanations.

Need your thoughts!

I'm looking for some feedback/advice on my current study routine and how I can improve on effectiveness. My goal is to have conversations in Vietnamese and to speak confidently.

Some background: I grew up speaking some Vietnamese with my mom when I was young, but over time, she just started speaking English with me. I've asked her in the past to speak Vietnamese with me so I could learn, but she ends up saying she doesn't think I can understand and English is faster for her now. I have knowledge of grammar structure, but I'm trying to build my vocab so that I can actually have a conversation in Vietnamese with someone. I've taught myself how to read and write, but I'm not too good at it. I'm not in college anymore, so I don't have connections to any Vietnamese friends or know where to find people who can help me practice speaking in Vietnamese in person.

My current routine:

-I've been taking group lessons every Saturday for an hour through NRCAL's Vietnamese Language Program (we have one last session though before the semester ends).

-I started listening to the stories on Learn Vietnamese with Annie's website. I'll write the transcript down in a notebook and I'll also write down the new vocab.

-I listen to Vietnamese music all the time, but it doesn't really help me speak or learn new vocab.

I've used iTalki in the past, but was considering using it again for the speaking practice. I also have the Elementary Vietnamese textbook in case it's worth digging into again.

Is my current routine effective enough? What would you change? I'm kind of at a loss and feel like my current routine is doing nothing for me.

Hello, I’m hoping someone can help me with an English - Vietnamese translation. I need to speak with my elderly neighbor about something serious but struggling with the language barrier. We’ve tried using the translate app to communicate in the past but he has said he can’t clearly understand when using Translate and then when he speaks into it, it comes out mixed up for me too.
I want to remain respectful and polite so need to make sure we have a clear understanding.
I’m hoping to PM and send the messages that need translating. Can anyone help? Thank you!!

Bonus, you’ll get the neighborhood tea/drama 😂😂

Hello,

Earlier this year I celebrated Tết in my girlfriends hometown, and met lots of relatives. She is 28 years old and I am 30 years old, and because her parents had her when they were quite young, she has some uncles and aunties that are actually younger than her and myself.

I was told to address these uncles and aunties as Cô/Chú/Dì/Cậu etc and myself as con. I understand this is part of the family hierarchy in Vietnam, but do Vietnamese people ever find this weird?

For example, I've heard of cases where say a 45 year old man in a family has to call his 25 year old aunt cô and refer to himself as con. In reality, do people really follow this in real life or is it just awkward referring to yourself like that? Or do people generally end up just using each other names instead?

Interested to hear from Vietnamese people how they feel about these situations and what is normal in their family.

Thanks!

​

Hi everyone,

I recently got back into tutoring Vietnamese after about a year off, and from what I’ve seen here, a lot of you struggle with listening. From my perspective, there are 2 main issues:

1.You hear the word wrong Like I say “hủ tiếu” but you hear “hủ tiêu”, “hủ thiều”, “thu tiền”… -> pronunciation problem

2. You hear it correctly but don’t understand it -> vocab/grammar problem

It’s not a perfect split, but it helps you figure out where you’re stuck.

I’m thinking of focusing on pronunciation sessions, mainly for case 1. The goal is simple:

- You can read aloud any word even if you don’t know it

- You can write down what you hear even if you don’t understand it

Just wondering if anyone here is in that situation and would actually be interested, and what price range feels reasonable to you

Also, I teach based on the standard system Vietnamese students learn, so it leans northern accent. It’s a solid base and makes it easier to pick up other dialects later

And just to be clear, if your issue is more about vocab (case 2), this probably won’t help much. Also I’m not a professional teacher, I just have a bit of experience tutoring a foreign friend from my uni, honestly.

Hope to hear your thoughts, and wishing you lots of fun on your Vietnamese learning journey.

Hello! This is my first on Reddit so forgive me for not knowing how to format things. I’m currently an 18 year old girl who was born and raised in America—my ethnicity being Vietnamese. Currently, I’ve been struggling with my culture and connecting with it. Growing up, I’ve learned how to partially understand and speak the southern dialect but struggling hard. Sometimes, I feel extremely ashamed for how out of tune I am with the history of Vietnamese culture and lack of understanding of the language. Whenever I try to start learning, there was always a reason for me to stop—whether it was with a busy schedule, or even just a lack of confidence. What’s even harder is that I don’t have any Vietnamese friends I could talk to so that I could strengthen my understanding. I love my parents, but they’re way too busy to help me and I feel like I’ll talk like an old granny if I try to learn from them. Is there like an app or a social media where I could possibly befriend some Vietnamese people? I want so badly to be fluent and knowledgeable, but it feels so overwhelming. Is there any advice you guys could give me?

các bro có thể chia sẻ một số tip học ngôn ngữ mới hiệu quả đi