Thank so much Over thousands of years, many writing styles have changed, Chinese characters, variations of Chinese characters, Latin characters, but Vietnamese voice has not changed at all. For example, in the past, we held documents in Chinese but copied and read them in Vietnamese. Now we use Latin but the voice has not changed, Vietnamese is an important part that helps us preserve our identity and maintain our independence.
As a VN-Thai, This is helpful for all the VN descents who are not supposed to speak their parent' language. My immigrated mom with 100-year-ago Northern linguistic said she could not understand what VN medias said in TV.
Finally someone mentions about pronouns. People keep talking about tones but pronouns are the tricky one. 31 yo native speaker like me still gets confused sometimes.
Like always, an amazing video. Additionally, I would like to share one video which completely changed my approach to Vietnamese and saved plenty of time: "Vietnamese has 8 tones | Learn Vietnamese with TVO". I would like to recommend this video to every single person trying to learn this language. By no means am I an expert. I'm very far from being one, but in my opinion, this video is a must-have and will explain plenty of confusions one would normally have while learning :)
Vietnamese being a language from the East with the alphabet from the West literally allows me as Vietnamese to learn English, French (barely) , Japanese (N3) easily and i counts that as a blessing 😊
An Interesting example of sino-influence vocabulary among Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. In Vietnamese, we use “prepare” or “get ready” by saying “ Chuẩn bị”. The way people in 3 remaining countries pronounce is almost the same Chinese Mandarin 准备 Zhǔnbèi Japanese 準備する Junbi suru Korean 준비하다 junbihada
I’d like to point out that Vietnamese from the diaspora (born and raised overseas) usually have a very hard time understanding Vietnamese dialects outside of their own. I wouldn’t say the dialects are 100% mutually intelligible. It’s more that the Vietnamese in Vietnam have learned to understand each other by exposure.
Vietnamese diaspora often claim because it’s of the dialect but in reality they just lack the vocabulary. They can’t even understand their own native dialect fully
I feel like I'm learning my native tongue listening to this. I was born blind and was raised in the South but none of my parents are from the South. My dad's side are from the North but they have a history of the Northern people coming to the South that somehow makes them become more Southern: and my dad and his youngest brother end up being able to speak both Northern and Southern dialects. My mom's side is from the Northern Central, but they also have a history of moving to the South and they have their unique voriety of dialects and accents as well. My younger brother and I were both born from the South-West but we moved to Hone Chi Minh City when we were little, especially my brother, so we do speak the Southern dialect but every time I visit my town, the South-West people telling me all the time that I've lost my local Western accent from where I grew up, and that's true to some extend: as for my brother, he doesn't even have any idea of what Southern-Western accent is. We continue to move around and meet new people with different accents and dialects, even meeting foreigners, so I guess that affects our accent as well. I have some American friends asking me if it's possible to speak the written pronunciation without any Northern, or Central, or Southern dialects without sounding unnatural, to which I'd say, yes it IS possible, and the closest dialect to the written text is obviously the Northern dialect: I call this "the standard pronunciation", and I do speak it sometimes. I'm glad you believe that Vietnamese is not hard to learn. I've heard my foreign friends complain that our language is too hard to imitate and stuff... and some of our native people seem to have a strange pride of our native language that they force themselves to think that our language is the hardest one in the world, and of course Vietnamese cannot be the most difficult one to learn, so don't believe those uneducated people boasting our language like that. BTW, did I miss something or you didn't mention the consistency of our way of pronouncing words? We have rules of spelling and only the local dialects break the rules slightly, but we've learned the spelling rules in our first grade as a foundation for us to be able to pronounce any Vietnamese text later on: I tried teaching a European all the rules once and it only took him a day to be able to comfortably pick up a book in Vietnamese and start reading it out loud, asking me if I understood what he was reading, because he didn't 😂!
Wow, this was a very thorough analysis. As a learner of Vietnamese and a teacher of English, I appreciate how accurately you framed everything. Especially pronouns and vowels. My wife's family are from Quảng Nam in central Vietnam and it's almost like having to learn the entire IPA vowel chart to learn each dialect of Vietnamese.
Vietnamese is pretty to learn. The people are amazing, great family value and overall cool. Nothing really bad I can say about Vietnamese people, except they have a culture of being late.
The knowledge of the instructor is quite impressive. If anyone wants to learn about culture and language in general, this is wonderful. His pronunciation is understandable and enough to get around VN . Professor Keely talks like my son. Despite of being around Viet parent, he could not nail to pronunciation. However if you want to sound like Viet, the funny young lady around 12:15 is the one to imitate if you are going for the southern dialect.
In a family, brothers and sisters are often identified by their order of birth. My first wife was Chi Hai, the second born although her older sister died in birth or very young. Since I married her, my in-laws of the same generation called me Anh Hai (Two). I was was addressed as "Anh" because I and my then wife were older than the rest of the siblings. I addressed them as "Em" signifying someone younger than me. Being American, sometimes I addressed by their order of birth or by their given name. It might have been useful to mention in passing that people's names have a different order than in English, with the family name coming first, often followed by the typical middle name of "Thi" for females or "Van" for males. So my Vietnamese name was/is "Cao Van De" meaning Tall Literate/Scholarly David, which is true. I am not here adding tonal marks or the other symbols signifying sounds. I studied in VN at the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, CA in 1964 in the 47-week intensive course, and was a translator/decrypter in VN for 30 months from 1965 to 1967.
Very good job, my words of praise for you. I respect you and the knowledge you're sharing in your videos, you are clearly the person who should be talking about this. Vietnamese is very difficult from my viewpoint - my native is polish, so thats a pretty different language. I have some experience in studying japanese, i used to be communicative at it, but i forgot a lot because of not having time for studying and exposing myself to it. My words of respect are because of this - I always felt impressed by sinosphere languages, since I was like a 10 year old kid watchin japanese karate movies. Almost always wanted to be really good at them, or any of them. I also have two vietnamese colleagues who told me a lot about the country. And I may end up studying vietnamese eventually. Wish me luck. And I wish you good luck too, keep on livin man
Vietnamese is probably the easiest to learn when it comes to learning the tones. In Thai you have to learn the tone rules. In Chinese you have to guess the tones or memorize it if you are reading Chinese characters only. In Vietnamese the tone is given to you.
@@polyglotdreams Yes, it is challenging to pronounce the tones correctly. The tone is in fact another character. Once you master them, the rest is easy compared to other languages.
Have you had a conversation on this Asian tonal languages topic with Stuart Jay Raj? Another polyglot just like you who's from Australia but living for decades in Thailand just as you did in Japan. The only so-called polyglots(mainly westerners)I admire are those who have a good command of several Asian languages like you or him. I myself speak several Asian languages like Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and Vietnamese. In fact, your explanation about Vietnamese pronouns impressed me very much, mainly because I never saw anyone out there specifically referring to this topic. Even native Vietnamese speakers who teach this language never do this on detail. As you maybe fully aware, Japanese and Korean feature the same characteristics in regard to the usage of pronouns. So many different words for "I" and "you" depending on the age gap, social position, relationship and familiarity between the speaker and the hearer.
But I would say for Korean, at least, if you don't know what pronoun to use, you can somewhat omit "I" or "you" from the sentence and will be understood from context.
The tonal variations between Northern, Central and Southern Vietnamese accents, I like to compare them to the UK English - "proper" British (Northern), Irish (Southern) vs Scottish / Welsh (Central). The Central dialect is difficult, in the same way most English speakers have a hard time understanding Welsh or Scottish "English". There's also accented variants - like Bac 54 (North 54) - those who fled North Vietnam to the South in 1954, when Vietnam was divided. You'll find a lot of the Vietnamese diaspora (refugee / migrant communities) in Western countries - like US, Europe, Australia etc, speak mostly this Bac 54 accent - it's also considered the most "correct" pronunciation of the Vietnamese language - because Northerners often don't pronounce properly the "r" and have a z pronunciation for r, "d" (there are 2 d's in the Vietnamese alphabet) and "gi" - while the South tend to not pronounce their Vs properly (instead it sounds like a y sound) and pronounce their n and nh as the English ng Examples: in Southern Vietnamese pronunciations, Thien (sky/heaven) sounds like Thieng, Anh (big brother) sounds like the English "Ang" and Viet Nam is spoken as Yiet Nam, or vui (happy) sounds like youi.
Another great video. Many can lookup a few things on Wikipedia, mess with beginner's learners materials. Almost no one can compare the different languages and understand the cultures as well as you do. Sound quality improved, but it still isn't there. I don't know what you could do.
As a Vietnamese with poor social communication skills, the pronouns of Vietnamese put up significant barriers for me when speaking with others, especially ones who I just met. For example, within a family, even if I'm 20 years younger than someone, that person still has to call me older brother because they are my uncle's son, and their children would have to call me uncle, even though we are the same age. This obviously would create awkwardness, and as an introvert, I decided to not speak to them to begin with, ruining my relationships with lots of my relatives growing up. Similarly with strangers, you would need to estimate how old the other person is relative to you, and guess how they perceive their age and your age. If you chose wrong, the other person would feel offended at worst, or at best we would both call each other older sis/bro until one give up. In any case, the conversation doesn't really flow well until we know each other's age. There is neutral pronouns, but in reality, it's rarely used as it could sound distant and unfriendly or just straight up unnatural.
Only one Vietnamese but three tongues low, high. Many voices but same meaning. Vietnamese is a country use Latin language to describe writing and speaking although Japan, Korea use Chinese wo. So this is an interesting point and independent language in Asia.
Wow, You understand more about Vietnamese grammar and tone than me (a native Vietnamese Speaker). When I speak Vietnamese, I do not know that the south accent have 5 tone, I just know the North accent sound different with the South accent, the North accent seem to use a lot of ""Funny Phrases"" which make them sound cute. In my opinion, the north and south sound really similar on the news, I can only tell the different btw 2 accent when people begin to use informal speech, a lot of words in informal speech are different
“Vietnamese has the most complicated pronoun system”. I still remember time when I went to coffee shop and waiters call me “chú” which mean uncle when I’m in my 20s and. It’s heart breaking and it happen a lot 😂😂.
Well that's cool at least you said Vietnamese right, I remember you were saying Vietmanese and it boggled my brain for a bit lol good to see you back in action
Thanks... it is a tough word for me in English... the only language I am haunted by a speech impediment and have to try extra hard to enunciate certain words
I am Vietnamese 🇻🇳 What are you nationality? Are you love Vietnam ? I hope you have an idea how much you enjoy traveling in Vietnam the most in the world
I list all pronouns here and when to use it and how to use it properly in case you guys need it or to figure out how confusing it is () 1st note: Every pronouns have to use according to your genders and genders of the person you are talking to. We have pronouns to call other people and to refer to yourself but in this note i would list all pronouns you use when speaking Vietnamese or at least Vietnamese in the North - Use Chị/Cô/Dì/Mợ/Thím/Bà (Female) - Use Anh/Thầy/Chú/Ông (Male) - Unisex pronouns: Mày, Tao, Tớ, Cậu, Bạn, Mình, Bác, Cụ, Con I. A person who is younger than you: + Cháu/Con: When that person is so much younger than, you for example you are 20 and he/she is 5 years old =>Pronouns you use to refer to yourself: 1. Chú, Cô, Dì, Thím -In case you seem to be younger or as old as his/her parents- 2. Bác -In case you are seem to be older than his parents Note: Chú/Bác - Cô/Bác/Dì/Thím can be flexible Ông, Bà - in case you are little younger/as old as/older than his/her grandfather/mother Cụ - in case you older than his grandfather/mother or as old as his/her great grandfather/mother *In reverse if you are that younger person then you have to use pronoun "Cháu/Con" to refer to yourself and all below pronouns to refer to the person you are talking to + Em/Mày (Insulting or when you are close to that person): When that person is younger than you but not too younger and you definitely can tell him/her is younger => Pronouns you use to refer to you: Anh, Chị, Tao (Insulting or only when you are very close to that person) * When you use Mày to call him/her you can use Anh/Chị/Tao to refer to you but when you use Em to call him/her you can only use Anh/Chị to refer to yourself *In reverse if you are that younger person you have to use Em to refer to yourself and use Anh/Chị to call the person you are talking to. () 2nd note: Never use Tao/Mày except when you guys are very close and that older one feel comfortable being like that. But this is really rare when that one is older than you II. A person who is in or around your age + Bạn/Cậu/Mày (same age), Anh/Chị (Not knowing if youger/as old/older and want to respect) *Note: When you use pronoun Mày to call that person you have to use pronoun Tao to refer to you, only when you guys are close => Pronouns to refer to you: 1. Tôi and call him/her Bạn 2. Em and call him/her Anh/Chị 3. Mình and call him/her Cậu 4. Tao and call him/her Mày III. In studying ( school/college/university ) + Use pronouns Thầy, Cô to call your teacher => Use Em to refer to yourself Above is the standard way to use pronouns in society in the North and enough to speak Vietnamese. Different regions comes with different pronouns, just cant know all. In family, pronouns get more confusing but basically still those pronouns, just different in way using it. Even Vietnamese got lost and sometime members in family argue how to call each other 😁
Vietnamese are Mon-Khmer people they share the same similarities with Cambodia people , they speak austro-asiatic which classify as Mon Khmer language,they have counting number exactly the same with the Cambodia people . Vietnamese borrow many words from Chinese .
The hard part is the use of sentence final particles. Like what is the purpose of nhé, nhà, nhi, co? It is hard for me even though my linguistic background is full of languages with these particles. Because they are absent in English so grammar books in English rarely describe them well.
Nhe, nha ,nhỉ all of them have the same purpose, like supported words to indicate the sentence is a question, so in normal clause, without them, it would become affirmative sentence. And the word " Có", it has many meanings and each ones use in different circumstances, but the popular use of "có" plays the role like "Is/Are there....?" in yes-no ques.
After watching your video, As a Vietnamese, it turns out that the our pronoun system is way more complicated than that of the Chinese. This leads to the fact that Vietnamese society emphasizes on hierarchical structure by telling each other in accordance with sex, age, occupation, level of education, status of relationship, even biased feelings…😂
Chinese, Japanese and Korean have about 808 known characters used together. I am curious if Chữ Nômon were added how much of the 808 would Vietnamese have?
@@maryjane20495 Like the time when Vietnamese actually used Chữ Nôm. It likely would be considered a period piece now. It is just a specialized niche at this point.
I was surprise when i knew students have to learn a lot of grammars and vocabulary many years in their school in USA. We learn spelling Vietnamese language and basic grammars such as question phase, negative sentence, comma, period. all those just for basic not dive deep, Correct writing is emphasized gather than pronunciation in school. After 2nd grade we are no longer learn grammars and vocabulary. We have main subject in school is literature which learn everyday. reading essays and the teacher guides how to write essays and then correct it. We have to do it for the remaining 10 years of school. That how we learn to know to describe and say things logical. I just say we don't have gramma technically as long as we say and write it logical, make sense and enough information. Concepts such as present continuous, past perfect, ect ... those are very new to us. I don't know how about other languages.
Người Việt Nam thường nói siêu chậm ( sunper slowly ) tiếng Việt với người nước ngoài. Bạn không phải lo lắng khi học cơ bản tiếng Việt . Ước chung 1000 từ vung và 50 mẫu câu giao tiếp tiếng Việt là xếp loại trung bình sau khi xem xong video này.
Vietnamese vowels sounds are very consistent, English vowels are confusing. eg. O, you pronounce "oh"....but only applied to (orange, old, mold, hold, told) ..etc.... but words like (on, honey, con, mom) etc pronounce "aw"....and (onion), pronounce "un" . Eg A, pronounce "ey" ..but only for (day, may, stay, lay, crazed) etc....words like (adam, adjective, advice, add, at, last) pronounce "ah".......So are U, E, I, Y........so Vietnamese is very easy compare to English, Vietnamese you don't have to guess or get used to in order to navigate around certain vowels sound.
You forgot to mention French language in Vietnamese language: 15% of the French vocabulary is in Vietnamese language, with slight variations in pronunciation.
@@hehe22083 work as public relations related will use like every time. Teachers or professors are too to their classes or courses, no matter the region.
@@keithle_ yeah sure but "xin chào" is much less used in casual daily conversation. Even in classes teachers also rarely say "xin" before "chào". I think the reason for that mostly is because "xin chào" seems kinda formal and it's weird to use in everyday life.
Such an interesting video! I really appreciate it. I'm half Vietnamese, but unfortunately I don't speak that much Vietnamese. It's a very hard language. The pronunciation is the most difficult part of the language.
The pronoun system is very complicated. Not every family adopts the same system. The North and the South got their own systems and sub-systems. I have to face a bigger challenge than most Vietnamese for being half-Chinese 😂 The relatives on the Chinese side, the relatives on Vietnamese side 😂
@@polyglotdreamsfor example regional dialects. Me as a southern vietnamese sometimes misunderstands some northern vietnamese words and vice versa, or regional dialects in northern central vietnam which mostly can't be understood by people from other regions.
as view of north vnese, i have to admit smt i cant catch up listening to the south or central vietnamese :)))) smt i have to ask em to repeat what they have talked about
Hello Mr. Thank you for compare and contrast the language/tone/accent in different region of vn. The Vietnamese language and vocabularies are much different before the 1975 compare to now. Nowadays a lot of nonsense/ignorant vocabularies that the communist regime added to the Vietnamese language in the last 20-30 years. Great video, yes the Vietnamese language is very difficult….. thank you
@@polyglotdreamsjust only it, i think the rest is quite simple, especially grammar, we all use just 3 words "đã, đang sẽ" to express past, present, future , instead of a bunch of complex tenses that i have learnt a lot but still not use it skillfully till now.
That flag at the start of the video does not represent Vietnam Nam. The yellow flag with the 3 red stripes does. Other than that your video is very informative. Danke schön.
Your profile says you're in Australian and probably you're a Cham guy from Nha Trang or Phan Rang escaping Vietnam by boat and accepted by Australia as refugees. Tell me in the course of human history there were no slaughters to occupy territory esp. from 15- 19 century. White Australians didn't slaughter indigenous Australians? Americans didn't slaughter the whole indian tribes? As a naturalized Australian, why don't you just start by asking your government to apologize or compensate indigenous Australians first?
If Vietnamese people hadn´t gone South, their country wouldn´t be called Vietnam. The name of the country is literally "intrude (to the) South". They would have stayed the civilization at the Red River and would probably now be absorbed by Chinese.
@@thumtlnguyen3626 German here: Unlike Britain Vietnam never publicly repented for its colonial past and present (Cambodia, Laos). Vietnam South of Huê´ was literally built on the corpses of Cambodians and Cham people. Just look for the place names there. France ended the slaughter. France also introduced the Latin alphabet. Due to France Vietnam is today a civilized country. And look for your country´s name: Viê.t Nam means "intrude (to the) South". 80 years ago Germany could have likewise called itself "Go East".
Thank so much
Over thousands of years, many writing styles have changed, Chinese characters, variations of Chinese characters, Latin characters, but Vietnamese voice has not changed at all. For example, in the past, we held documents in Chinese but copied and read them in Vietnamese. Now we use Latin but the voice has not changed, Vietnamese is an important part that helps us preserve our identity and maintain our independence.
As a VN-Thai, This is helpful for all the VN descents who are not supposed to speak their parent' language. My immigrated mom with 100-year-ago Northern linguistic said she could not understand what VN medias said in TV.
Finally someone mentions about pronouns. People keep talking about tones but pronouns are the tricky one. 31 yo native speaker like me still gets confused sometimes.
The most challenging for sure.
Vietnamese use age and sex instead of only sex when using pronouns. Vietnamese lessons are horrible they won't go into simple details to explain this.
when vietnamese first meet, we often ask or self-disclose our age to the order for choosing pronoune before any conversation.
This is why wokeness LGBT shits are a bad thing for Vietnamese. We already got enough confusion.
@@polyglotdreams don't worry I'm 30yr old Vietnamese and it still confuse me
Like always, an amazing video. Additionally, I would like to share one video which completely changed my approach to Vietnamese and saved plenty of time: "Vietnamese has 8 tones | Learn Vietnamese with TVO". I would like to recommend this video to every single person trying to learn this language. By no means am I an expert. I'm very far from being one, but in my opinion, this video is a must-have and will explain plenty of confusions one would normally have while learning :)
Thanks... I have used TVO too.
Heyyyyy its PeterViet !
Vietnamese being a language from the East with the alphabet from the West literally allows me as Vietnamese to learn English, French (barely) , Japanese (N3) easily and i counts that as a blessing 😊
Yes... did you see my video on the East Asian Cultural Sphere?
@@polyglotdreams I haven't yet. I'm a new subscriber from this video in fact 😉 Gonna watch that video tomorrow thou because it is night time here 😅
An Interesting example of sino-influence vocabulary among Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.
In Vietnamese, we use “prepare” or “get ready” by saying “ Chuẩn bị”. The way people in 3 remaining countries pronounce is almost the same
Chinese Mandarin
准备
Zhǔnbèi
Japanese
準備する
Junbi suru
Korean
준비하다
junbihada
And many more
Hand
Vietnamese: Tay
Chinese: Sei
Japanese: Te
Korean: son
I thought Tae was the Korean for hand...as in Tae Kwon do...?
Also bàn tay - hand.
@@eraypatria It's more similar to Khmer "ដៃ" (dai). It is pronounced the same way. Same for the Khmer word for "leg".
@@JCMcGee "Tae" as in Tae Kwon Do is the Chinese character 跆. If translated from its Chinese meaning into English, it means trample.
Fun fact: In the region of Nghe-Tinh, there’s a different dialect in each every square mile. It’s the true Asian mode of Vietnamese.
You've done a real service to this language & gotten me excited about it for sure - THANK YOU kindly
I am very pleased.
I’d like to point out that Vietnamese from the diaspora (born and raised overseas) usually have a very hard time understanding Vietnamese dialects outside of their own. I wouldn’t say the dialects are 100% mutually intelligible. It’s more that the Vietnamese in Vietnam have learned to understand each other by exposure.
Yes, I also noticed that.
Yes and also media content is dominated by the northern and southern dialects so ppl are familiar with them.
Vietnamese diaspora often claim because it’s of the dialect but in reality they just lack the vocabulary. They can’t even understand their own native dialect fully
Thanks for making this video that mentions about Vietnamese. I am proud of Vietnamese.
My pleasure
Hello from Hanoi, Tim. This was an enjoyable and helpful dive into the language for me on my first visit to the country. Cảm ơn!
Wonderful! ENJOY
What a nice overview, thank you!
I'm pleased you found it meaningful.
I feel like I'm learning my native tongue listening to this. I was born blind and was raised in the South but none of my parents are from the South. My dad's side are from the North but they have a history of the Northern people coming to the South that somehow makes them become more Southern: and my dad and his youngest brother end up being able to speak both Northern and Southern dialects. My mom's side is from the Northern Central, but they also have a history of moving to the South and they have their unique voriety of dialects and accents as well. My younger brother and I were both born from the South-West but we moved to Hone Chi Minh City when we were little, especially my brother, so we do speak the Southern dialect but every time I visit my town, the South-West people telling me all the time that I've lost my local Western accent from where I grew up, and that's true to some extend: as for my brother, he doesn't even have any idea of what Southern-Western accent is. We continue to move around and meet new people with different accents and dialects, even meeting foreigners, so I guess that affects our accent as well. I have some American friends asking me if it's possible to speak the written pronunciation without any Northern, or Central, or Southern dialects without sounding unnatural, to which I'd say, yes it IS possible, and the closest dialect to the written text is obviously the Northern dialect: I call this "the standard pronunciation", and I do speak it sometimes.
I'm glad you believe that Vietnamese is not hard to learn. I've heard my foreign friends complain that our language is too hard to imitate and stuff... and some of our native people seem to have a strange pride of our native language that they force themselves to think that our language is the hardest one in the world, and of course Vietnamese cannot be the most difficult one to learn, so don't believe those uneducated people boasting our language like that.
BTW, did I miss something or you didn't mention the consistency of our way of pronouncing words? We have rules of spelling and only the local dialects break the rules slightly, but we've learned the spelling rules in our first grade as a foundation for us to be able to pronounce any Vietnamese text later on: I tried teaching a European all the rules once and it only took him a day to be able to comfortably pick up a book in Vietnamese and start reading it out loud, asking me if I understood what he was reading, because he didn't 😂!
Thank you for the feedback. As you know, the pronunciation is consistent only within dialects.
I see that,You are really nothing short of Master of Vietnam's cultures !
Not on my short list of languages to learn but I like Asia and I knew this would be a great video.
Thanks
You have done an excellent video about Vietnam. Thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge.
Thanks so much for letting me know.
Wow, this was a very thorough analysis. As a learner of Vietnamese and a teacher of English, I appreciate how accurately you framed everything. Especially pronouns and vowels. My wife's family are from Quảng Nam in central Vietnam and it's almost like having to learn the entire IPA vowel chart to learn each dialect of Vietnamese.
Much appreciated
Quang Nam dialect is just like Scouse, Scottish, or Cornish accents
Vietnamese is pretty to learn. The people are amazing, great family value and overall cool. Nothing really bad I can say about Vietnamese people, except they have a culture of being late.
Not easy
The knowledge of the instructor is quite impressive. If anyone wants to learn about culture and language in general, this is wonderful. His pronunciation is understandable and enough to get around VN . Professor Keely talks like my son. Despite of being around Viet parent, he could not nail to pronunciation. However if you want to sound like Viet, the funny young lady around 12:15 is the one to imitate if you are going for the southern dialect.
Context markers seem so logical and easier for language learners to pick up compared to conjugations.
For sure
True but it does make it a lot more verbal thus slower to read
In a family, brothers and sisters are often identified by their order of birth. My first wife was Chi Hai, the second born although her older sister died in birth or very young. Since I married her, my in-laws of the same generation called me Anh Hai (Two). I was was addressed as "Anh" because I and my then wife were older than the rest of the siblings. I addressed them as "Em" signifying someone younger than me. Being American, sometimes I addressed by their order of birth or by their given name.
It might have been useful to mention in passing that people's names have a different order than in English, with the family name coming first, often followed by the typical middle name of "Thi" for females or "Van" for males. So my Vietnamese name was/is "Cao Van De" meaning Tall Literate/Scholarly David, which is true. I am not here adding tonal marks or the other symbols signifying sounds.
I studied in VN at the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, CA in 1964 in the 47-week intensive course, and was a translator/decrypter in VN for 30 months from 1965 to 1967.
Fascinating experiences... thanks for sharing
Very good job, my words of praise for you. I respect you and the knowledge you're sharing in your videos, you are clearly the person who should be talking about this.
Vietnamese is very difficult from my viewpoint - my native is polish, so thats a pretty different language. I have some experience in studying japanese, i used to be communicative at it, but i forgot a lot because of not having time for studying and exposing myself to it.
My words of respect are because of this - I always felt impressed by sinosphere languages, since I was like a 10 year old kid watchin japanese karate movies. Almost always wanted to be really good at them, or any of them. I also have two vietnamese colleagues who told me a lot about the country. And I may end up studying vietnamese eventually.
Wish me luck. And I wish you good luck too, keep on livin man
Thanks so much for the encouragement
Thanks for improving the sound! Now it's perfect!
Glad to hear that!
Vietnamese is probably the easiest to learn when it comes to learning the tones. In Thai you have to learn the tone rules. In Chinese you have to guess the tones or memorize it if you are reading Chinese characters only. In Vietnamese the tone is given to you.
I find the Vietnamese tones to be the most challenging.
@@polyglotdreams Yes, it is challenging to pronounce the tones correctly. The tone is in fact another character. Once you master them, the rest is easy compared to other languages.
I didnt realize we have that many vowels + tonals combo. Its crazy
Incredible isn't it!
The northern Vietnamese accent is like British English, the central region is like Welsh, and the southern accent is like American English
Another great video as ever. It's so easy to be overloaded with so much detail, but you keep it interesting and engaging.
Glad you think so! That is encouraging
Have you had a conversation on this Asian tonal languages topic with Stuart Jay Raj? Another polyglot just like you who's from Australia but living for decades in Thailand just as you did in Japan.
The only so-called polyglots(mainly westerners)I admire are those who have a good command of several Asian languages like you or him.
I myself speak several Asian languages like Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and Vietnamese.
In fact, your explanation about Vietnamese pronouns impressed me very much, mainly because I never saw anyone out there specifically referring to this topic. Even native Vietnamese speakers who teach this language never do this on detail.
As you maybe fully aware, Japanese and Korean feature the same characteristics in regard to the usage of pronouns. So many different words for "I" and "you" depending on the age gap, social position, relationship and familiarity between the speaker and the hearer.
Stu and I are good friends and we have making a video on tones together in our to do list
But I would say for Korean, at least, if you don't know what pronoun to use, you can somewhat omit "I" or "you" from the sentence and will be understood from context.
The tonal variations between Northern, Central and Southern Vietnamese accents, I like to compare them to the UK English - "proper" British (Northern), Irish (Southern) vs Scottish / Welsh (Central). The Central dialect is difficult, in the same way most English speakers have a hard time understanding Welsh or Scottish "English".
There's also accented variants - like Bac 54 (North 54) - those who fled North Vietnam to the South in 1954, when Vietnam was divided.
You'll find a lot of the Vietnamese diaspora (refugee / migrant communities) in Western countries - like US, Europe, Australia etc, speak mostly this Bac 54 accent - it's also considered the most "correct" pronunciation of the Vietnamese language - because Northerners often don't pronounce properly the "r" and have a z pronunciation for r, "d" (there are 2 d's in the Vietnamese alphabet) and "gi" - while the South tend to not pronounce their Vs properly (instead it sounds like a y sound) and pronounce their n and nh as the English ng
Examples: in Southern Vietnamese pronunciations, Thien (sky/heaven) sounds like Thieng, Anh (big brother) sounds like the English "Ang" and Viet Nam is spoken as Yiet Nam, or vui (happy) sounds like youi.
Another great video. Many can lookup a few things on Wikipedia, mess with beginner's learners materials. Almost no one can compare the different languages and understand the cultures as well as you do. Sound quality improved, but it still isn't there. I don't know what you could do.
As a Vietnamese with poor social communication skills, the pronouns of Vietnamese put up significant barriers for me when speaking with others, especially ones who I just met. For example, within a family, even if I'm 20 years younger than someone, that person still has to call me older brother because they are my uncle's son, and their children would have to call me uncle, even though we are the same age. This obviously would create awkwardness, and as an introvert, I decided to not speak to them to begin with, ruining my relationships with lots of my relatives growing up. Similarly with strangers, you would need to estimate how old the other person is relative to you, and guess how they perceive their age and your age. If you chose wrong, the other person would feel offended at worst, or at best we would both call each other older sis/bro until one give up. In any case, the conversation doesn't really flow well until we know each other's age. There is neutral pronouns, but in reality, it's rarely used as it could sound distant and unfriendly or just straight up unnatural.
Yes as I said I think the pronouns are the most difficult
Only one Vietnamese but three tongues low, high. Many voices but same meaning.
Vietnamese is a country use Latin language to describe writing and speaking although Japan, Korea use Chinese wo.
So this is an interesting point and independent language in Asia.
Yes
Wow, You understand more about Vietnamese grammar and tone than me (a native Vietnamese Speaker). When I speak Vietnamese, I do not know that the south accent have 5 tone, I just know the North accent sound different with the South accent, the North accent seem to use a lot of ""Funny Phrases"" which make them sound cute. In my opinion, the north and south sound really similar on the news, I can only tell the different btw 2 accent when people begin to use informal speech, a lot of words in informal speech are different
Thank you for explaining to me why I felt my Mandarin fluency seems to have made it similar to learn, Cam no, Karl Weaver
Excellent!
Thank you for this video awesome stuff
“Vietnamese has the most complicated pronoun system”. I still remember time when I went to coffee shop and waiters call me “chú” which mean uncle when I’m in my 20s and. It’s heart breaking and it happen a lot 😂😂.
Interesting! But age is not negative in VN
Imagine being a female teacher in her late 20s and Vietnamese children (of immigrants) very politely call you 'grandmother'....
@@cliffarroyo9554 you crack me up 🤣
Chú means uncle
@@mdhoque6198 Vietnamese very often uses 'fictive kinship' in talking to people.
Other languages do similar things but not nearly to the same extent.
Well that's cool at least you said Vietnamese right, I remember you were saying Vietmanese and it boggled my brain for a bit lol good to see you back in action
Thanks... it is a tough word for me in English... the only language I am haunted by a speech impediment and have to try extra hard to enunciate certain words
I am Vietnamese 🇻🇳
What are you nationality?
Are you love Vietnam ?
I hope you have an idea how much you enjoy traveling in Vietnam the most in the world
I am Japanese born in the US- white but Japanese nationality
I list all pronouns here and when to use it and how to use it properly in case you guys need it or to figure out how confusing it is
() 1st note: Every pronouns have to use according to your genders and genders of the person you are talking to. We have pronouns to call other people and to refer to yourself but in this note i would list all pronouns you use when speaking Vietnamese or at least Vietnamese in the North
- Use Chị/Cô/Dì/Mợ/Thím/Bà (Female)
- Use Anh/Thầy/Chú/Ông (Male)
- Unisex pronouns: Mày, Tao, Tớ, Cậu, Bạn, Mình, Bác, Cụ, Con
I. A person who is younger than you:
+ Cháu/Con: When that person is so much younger than, you for example you are 20 and he/she is 5 years old
=>Pronouns you use to refer to yourself:
1. Chú, Cô, Dì, Thím -In case you seem to be younger or as old as his/her parents-
2. Bác -In case you are seem to be older than his parents
Note: Chú/Bác - Cô/Bác/Dì/Thím can be flexible
Ông, Bà - in case you are little younger/as old as/older than his/her grandfather/mother
Cụ - in case you older than his grandfather/mother or as old as his/her great grandfather/mother
*In reverse if you are that younger person then you have to use pronoun "Cháu/Con" to refer to yourself and all below pronouns to refer to the person you are talking to
+ Em/Mày (Insulting or when you are close to that person): When that person is younger than you but not too younger and you definitely can tell him/her is younger
=> Pronouns you use to refer to you:
Anh, Chị, Tao (Insulting or only when you are very close to that person)
* When you use Mày to call him/her you can use Anh/Chị/Tao to refer to you but when you use Em to call him/her you can only use Anh/Chị to refer to yourself
*In reverse if you are that younger person you have to use Em to refer to yourself and use Anh/Chị to call the person you are talking to.
() 2nd note: Never use Tao/Mày except when you guys are very close and that older one feel comfortable being like that. But this is really rare when that one is older than you
II. A person who is in or around your age
+ Bạn/Cậu/Mày (same age), Anh/Chị (Not knowing if youger/as old/older and want to respect)
*Note: When you use pronoun Mày to call that person you have to use pronoun Tao to refer to you, only when you guys are close
=> Pronouns to refer to you:
1. Tôi and call him/her Bạn
2. Em and call him/her Anh/Chị
3. Mình and call him/her Cậu
4. Tao and call him/her Mày
III. In studying ( school/college/university )
+ Use pronouns Thầy, Cô to call your teacher
=> Use Em to refer to yourself
Above is the standard way to use pronouns in society in the North and enough to speak Vietnamese. Different regions comes with different pronouns, just cant know all.
In family, pronouns get more confusing but basically still those pronouns, just different in way using it. Even Vietnamese got lost and sometime members in family argue how to call each other 😁
Thanks for the useful input
Vietnamese are Mon-Khmer people they share the same similarities with Cambodia people , they speak austro-asiatic which classify as Mon Khmer language,they have counting number exactly the same with the Cambodia people . Vietnamese borrow many words from Chinese .
The hard part is the use of sentence final particles. Like what is the purpose of nhé, nhà, nhi, co? It is hard for me even though my linguistic background is full of languages with these particles. Because they are absent in English so grammar books in English rarely describe them well.
Nhe, nha ,nhỉ all of them have the same purpose, like supported words to indicate the sentence is a question, so in normal clause, without them, it would become affirmative sentence. And the word " Có", it has many meanings and each ones use in different circumstances, but the popular use of "có" plays the role like "Is/Are there....?" in yes-no ques.
Japanese has something similar as well
@@MinuNguyen-gl7ql what I wanted to say was cơ. And also đó, mà, thé and so many.
I think we have it like Thai language, just different words and different meanings, they work the same way.
After watching your video, As a Vietnamese, it turns out that the our pronoun system is way more complicated than that of the Chinese. This leads to the fact that Vietnamese society emphasizes on hierarchical structure by telling each other in accordance with sex, age, occupation, level of education, status of relationship, even biased feelings…😂
Yes, exactly
Hi. I'm Vietnamese ❤
Lovely
@@polyglotdreams I admire you very much, sir ❤️
Chinese, Japanese and Korean have about 808 known characters used together. I am curious if Chữ Nômon were added how much of the 808 would Vietnamese have?
Common characters?
@@polyglotdreams Yes. It would be amazing if Vietnamese had all 808 for transferability among them.
Yes, we do have most of them in chu Nôm 𡨸喃. But now if you use so many Sino-Vietnamese words in daily life, it will sound very very formal and weird 😂
@@maryjane20495 Like the time when Vietnamese actually used Chữ Nôm. It likely would be considered a period piece now. It is just a specialized niche at this point.
I was surprise when i knew students have to learn a lot of grammars and vocabulary many years in their school in USA. We learn spelling Vietnamese language and basic grammars such as question phase, negative sentence, comma, period. all those just for basic not dive deep, Correct writing is emphasized gather than pronunciation in school. After 2nd grade we are no longer learn grammars and vocabulary. We have main subject in school is literature which learn everyday. reading essays and the teacher guides how to write essays and then correct it. We have to do it for the remaining 10 years of school. That how we learn to know to describe and say things logical. I just say we don't have gramma technically as long as we say and write it logical, make sense and enough information. Concepts such as present continuous, past perfect, ect ... those are very new to us. I don't know how about other languages.
Thanks for sharing
Does "ma" mean all those things also in Chinese? (I didn't get very far with my Chinese studies 😅)
No, just mom and horse have similar meanings.
Most different and the tones are different
吗 # má . 妈妈 oke má
Người Việt Nam thường nói siêu chậm ( sunper slowly ) tiếng Việt với người nước ngoài.
Bạn không phải lo lắng khi học cơ bản tiếng Việt .
Ước chung 1000 từ vung và 50 mẫu câu giao tiếp tiếng Việt là xếp loại trung bình sau khi xem xong video này.
Good points. Thanks
Đồ ăn Việt Nam rất ngon
Vang!
very informative thanks
Thanks... my pleasure
_Phong ba bão táp không bằng ngữ pháp Việt Nam_
Nhưng Tiếng Việt vẫn dễ đọc và viết hơn nhiều so với tiếng Trung, Nhật, Thái, Cam, Ả-rập…🥴
tiếng việt dẻ đọc hơn đối vơi người việt là đúng rồi thử xem người nc ngoài đọc tiếng việt lần đầu xem có ĩa ra quần kg
Yes
Vietnamese vowels sounds are very consistent, English vowels are confusing.
eg. O, you pronounce "oh"....but only applied to (orange, old, mold, hold, told) ..etc....
but words like (on, honey, con, mom) etc pronounce "aw"....and (onion), pronounce "un" .
Eg A, pronounce "ey" ..but only for (day, may, stay, lay, crazed) etc....words like (adam, adjective, advice, add, at, last) pronounce "ah".......So are U, E, I, Y........so Vietnamese is very easy compare to English, Vietnamese you don't have to guess or get used to in order to navigate around certain vowels sound.
You forgot to mention French language in Vietnamese language: 15% of the French vocabulary is in Vietnamese language, with slight variations in pronunciation.
Please reduce the gain on your mic. Its very distorted
We rarely use "xin chào" to say hello.
You live in the wrong side of VN then
@@keithle_ lol i live in hanoi n ppl say "hê lô" (hello) instead of "xin chào"
We mostly use "xin chào" in "xin chào mọi người", "xin chào cả nhà", or "xin chào quý vị"
@@hehe22083 work as public relations related will use like every time. Teachers or professors are too to their classes or courses, no matter the region.
@@keithle_ yeah sure but "xin chào" is much less used in casual daily conversation. Even in classes teachers also rarely say "xin" before "chào". I think the reason for that mostly is because "xin chào" seems kinda formal and it's weird to use in everyday life.
A Southeast Asian country but influenced by East Asian culture :))
Yes
Such an interesting video! I really appreciate it. I'm half Vietnamese, but unfortunately I don't speak that much Vietnamese. It's a very hard language. The pronunciation is the most difficult part of the language.
Glad you enjoyed it! But you can adapt to the pronunciation if you work hard at it.
Tôi là người việt tôi sẽ dạy bạn tiếng việt haha 🎉🎉
Great 👍
Btw, this is irrelevant but Hoang Sa (Paracel) Islands and Truong Sa ( Spratly) Islands belong to Vietnam.🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳
Very contested place...
The pronoun system is very complicated. Not every family adopts the same system. The North and the South got their own systems and sub-systems. I have to face a bigger challenge than most Vietnamese for being half-Chinese 😂
The relatives on the Chinese side, the relatives on Vietnamese side 😂
😂😂. Vậy là bạn phải đối mặt với thử thách ×4 luôn.
That's incredible
As a Vietnamese some word make me still confuse in Vietnam
For example?
@@polyglotdreamsfor example regional dialects. Me as a southern vietnamese sometimes misunderstands some northern vietnamese words and vice versa, or regional dialects in northern central vietnam which mostly can't be understood by people from other regions.
Im vietnamese n i dont know why im watching this video
I want to learn việt little bit
Great idea
Hello. I'm from Vietnam. Can I help you?
as view of north vnese, i have to admit smt i cant catch up listening to the south or central vietnamese :)))) smt i have to ask em to repeat what they have talked about
I’m a Saigonese, if you guys wanna learn more Saigon' language and culture, I’m willing to share n you also help me learn English ww
Thanks
the number of words with Sino-Vietnamese root in Vietnamese is actually 30%.
No, it 70% vocabularies. In daily speak, we use 50% sino words.
@@chithiennguyen1371 Từ ngữ Hán Việt: Tiếp nhận và sáng tạo by Phạm et al., 2018 proved that only 30% of vocabulary is borrowed from SIno-Vietnamese.
@@Krasnoye158 that info is wrong
No... you are thinking of every day common vocabulary... it is well over half to 60 percent or so
@@Krasnoye158 Even if I take apl the words you just say and translate to Vietnamese, over 50% of those words are Sino-Vietnamese
Hello Mr. Thank you for compare and contrast the language/tone/accent in different region of vn. The Vietnamese language and vocabularies are much different before the 1975 compare to now. Nowadays a lot of nonsense/ignorant vocabularies that the communist regime added to the Vietnamese language in the last 20-30 years. Great video, yes the Vietnamese language is very difficult….. thank you
Thanks so much.
hế lô thầy
Vietnamese women are also beautiful with nice characters ❤
Yes, for sure
“…introduced over centuries of Chinese rule and cultural exchange” Shows the locals being whipped.
If you have Vietnamese flag with red star you should said ho chi minh city not Sai Gon city got it!
Most people in Saigon call it Saigon
I'm Saigonese and I call Saigon, I never call ít HCMC
Du Ma
i am vietnamese and i find vietnanese too complicated . I always make mistakes sometimes
Besides pronouns, what is so complicated?
@@polyglotdreamsjust only it, i think the rest is quite simple, especially grammar, we all use just 3 words "đã, đang sẽ" to express past, present, future , instead of a bunch of complex tenses that i have learnt a lot but still not use it skillfully till now.
That flag at the start of the video does not represent Vietnam Nam. The yellow flag with the 3 red stripes does. Other than that your video is very informative. Danke schön.
Thanks
Don't pay attention to him, you used the flag correctly
@@polyglotdreamsno thats the correct flag, red flag with yellow star one is the only flag of vietnam
@@polyglotdreams cờ vàng 3 sọc là của phản động (những kẻ chống phá nhà nước) anh ạ.
Anh đã sử dụng cờ đúng, Cờ Đỏ Sao Vàng.
That government dosn't exist anymore except in your imagination
10:00 pseudo linguistic nonsense. Japanese has one word for green and blue, which doesn't mean the Japanese do not distinguish these colours.
The Hue accent sounds nice, the Southern one sounds awful.
Where do you come from to offend us like that? Every dialect is the same!
Can Cantonese learn Vietnamese in one day?😂
Lol no
#4 might be the reason why the Viets found communism so compelling. 😂
white teacher lmao
I am a white Japanese... and you?
Justice for 20 million indigenous Cham Hindus Cham Muslims slaughtered by Vietnamese settler colonialists 1471-1832. Justice for Indigenous Montagnards Hmong people.
Your profile says you're in Australian and probably you're a Cham guy from Nha Trang or Phan Rang escaping Vietnam by boat and accepted by Australia as refugees. Tell me in the course of human history there were no slaughters to occupy territory esp. from 15- 19 century. White Australians didn't slaughter indigenous Australians? Americans didn't slaughter the whole indian tribes? As a naturalized Australian, why don't you just start by asking your government to apologize or compensate indigenous Australians first?
If Vietnamese people hadn´t gone South, their country wouldn´t be called Vietnam. The name of the country is literally "intrude (to the) South". They would have stayed the civilization at the Red River and would probably now be absorbed by Chinese.
@@thumtlnguyen3626Thằng này là /// đó chứ chả phải người Chăm nào đâu. Nó gào mồm chống phá VN thôi.
@@thumtlnguyen3626 German here: Unlike Britain Vietnam never publicly repented for its colonial past and present (Cambodia, Laos). Vietnam South of Huê´ was literally built on the corpses of Cambodians and Cham people. Just look for the place names there. France ended the slaughter. France also introduced the Latin alphabet. Due to France Vietnam is today a civilized country. And look for your country´s name: Viê.t Nam means "intrude (to the) South". 80 years ago Germany could have likewise called itself "Go East".
@@thumtlnguyen3626 Champa was black. The current Vietnam are descendants of albino Mongol invaders