Learn to Speak Vietnamese Like a Native

By Greg Vanderford

This book is for anyone who wants to become fluent in the Vietnamese language or simply learn some conversational phrases and vocabulary before making a trip to Vietnam. It's also for anyone seeking to simply communicate with your Vietnamese friends or neighbors.

It is designed to teach you Vietnamese in the shortest possible time frame by using the same strategies that I used when I first learned the language while living in Vietnam. I'll teach you tricks and tips along the way that allow you to understand popular phrases and slang, as well as how to properly pronounce the difficult tones and accents of Vietnamese.

Everything in the book is useful in everyday situations so you will never be spending time studying something that is not totally applicable in the real world right away. Most language materials have a lot of this kind of superfluous content which is quite inefficient and waste a lot of time covering unnecessary vocabulary and grammar rules. My book is designed for efficiency AND proficiency.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Vanderford
• Release date: Dec 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370109654

Greg Vanderford

My courses are designed based on my many years as a teacher and student of education and business. I hold a master's degree in curriculum and instruction and have been designing curricula for over a decade. My business, language, and chess courses and eBooks are a reflection of this experience and dedication to education. My goal is to reach as many people as possible with my courses, which is why I have chosen the internet as my ideal mode of delivery. The following is a little more about my expertise and background. I was born and raised in Sandpoint, Idaho. I attended the University of Idaho where I earned a bachelor's degree in Business Administration in 2004. After a few years in the work force as an account manager I moved to Vietnam where I lived for over 5 years. While in Vietnam I taught English as a second language for almost 2 years to students of all ages and backgrounds. For the 3 final years that I lived there I opened and ran a sports training company called Saigon Sports Academy. We coached sports such as soccer, tennis, and basketball as well as ran large sporting events such as tournaments and leagues. My positions while at the company included Director of Strategic Initiatives as well as Director of the Chess Program. While living in Vietnam I became fluent in the Vietnamese language and developed a deep love for teaching and traveling internationally. I then came back in the United States to work on a masters degree in education so that I would be an even more effective teacher in the future. It is my wish to be a positive force for education in the world, and to inspire my current and future students and readers to be the best that they can be in whatever they do. I am now a full time real estate investor and online entrepreneur specializing in flipping properties, showing others how to do the same, and having a great time doing it!

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Alphabet

Tones

Greetings

Pronouns

Questions

Time

Work

Relationships

Food

Transportation and Travel

Common Slang

Introduction

Needless to say, learning a language is a very challenging endeavor. This is true with any language, but especially when attempting to learn a language as different from English as Vietnamese is. The language is not only different from all western languages, but also quite unique among Asian languages as well, due to the fact that it has a romanized alphabet and several dialects (Northern, Southern, Central, and Western).

The goal of this textbook is to make learning Vietnamese as easy and painless as possible, while cutting out all of the superfluous and unnecessary formal content that fills the typical language textbook. I have been where you are now, trying to figure out what materials I needed to start the daunting task of learning Vietnamese, what teacher or course I should use, and if I would be able to succeed at all.

In this book, I will use the same strategies that I used to become conversational in less than 3 months, fluent in less than 1 year, and speaking like a native after only a few short years of moving to Vietnam. I have been teaching the language to expats and tourists for many years now, with great success. Having a native English speaker to explain the tricky ins and out of the language is invaluable, and can make the difference between success and failure when studying Vietnamese.

In this book, you will learn colloquial Vietnamese with an emphasis on the Southern dialect, which is spoken by the majority of people in Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City is the country’s largest metropolis with nearly 10 million people at the time of this writing in 2017, not counting 3 million non-residents). Technically, the northern dialect is the standard that is taught in all of the language courses and textbooks throughout the country. This is a problem because with tens of millions of people living in Ho Chi Minh City and the surrounding southern areas, there is virtually no material that exists to teach foreigners wishing to learn the southern way of speaking, which includes different slang, pronunciation, phrases, idioms, and general language (although the dialects are similar enough that Northerners and Southerners can understand each other well enough).

If you apply what you will learn in this book, by going out into the real world and practicing with Vietnamese speakers, I guarantee that you will become fluent in the language faster than with any other Vietnamese language resource, especially if you plan on traveling to or living in the Southern region of Vietnam. I can say this with confidence because I tried them all, and this book is my attempt to create the resource that I wish I’d had when I first started out and wanted to become fluent in the shortest possible time frame. So turn the page, and let’s get you on the road to Vietnamese mastery!

The Alphabet

Luckily for us, the Vietnamese alphabet has been romanized, which makes it easier than most other Asian languages that have a large number of complicated characters. Not having to learn those saves us a great deal of time. However, the alphabet is not exactly the same as English. There are a few extra letters that we must learn, most of which are vowels. The following are these letters with pronunciation.

a ă â (aaaa, a, uh)

o ô ơ (aaaaaaw, oh, uhhh)

u ư (oooooo, uugh)

ê e (ay, aya)

đ d (duh, ya)

i y (eee)

The vowels without a symbol on top are long vowel sounds while the vowels with a symbol are short sounds. A couple things to note are that the ư is pronounced almost like a grunt, which is a sound that we don’t have in English. The đ sounds the same as d in English, while the d without the strike-through is pronounced like a y in the south, but in the north it sounds like a z, which is what you’ll hear in other language material. Don’t let this confuse you! I will continue to clarify the differences between the north and south throughout the book. The i and y are pronounced the same but due to spelling are used for different words. They sound like the pronunciation of the English letter e.

It is a bit tricky sounding out the words in a book without being able to actually hear them, so you need to go find a partner to practice with. But the important thing is to begin to understand the alphabet so that you can correctly sound out words, and begin to read written Vietnamese. Then use this discount coupon

Reviews for Learn to Speak Vietnamese Like a Native

[Frank · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was very well put together, the content inside was very helpful for increasing my vocabulary!