Vietnamese diphthongs

Not as hard as they sound. When two vowels are sitting next to each other, e.g. hai, thôi, người, and so on, you just blend 'em all together.

In reality it's a lot more complicated than this but as a beginner this is pretty much what I picked up and it's a pretty good rule of thumb.

For some reason the Foreign Services Institute breaks up diphthongs into four groups - I'm not sure what purpose this serves. Maybe we'll find out later on.

Group 1 = syllables ending in 'ai', 'ui' and 'oi' sound variants
Group 2 = syllables ending in 'ua', 'ong', 'oc' and 'iet' sounds
Group 3 = syllables ending in 'iu', 'au', 'ao' and 'u' sounds
Group 4 = syllables ending in 'oy, 'oa', 'an', 'at', 'uy' and 'uyen' sounds

The writer of the course really freaks out about Group 4 syllables and how intense they are. He says all the other diphthongs 'glide' to another vowel, but Group 4 ones start with a glide. He writes an entire page about it.

I don't get the problem. You move from one vowel sound to another, so what? Who cares what you glide from and to?

I'm probably such a noob I can't hear the differences yet.

What I'm getting from all this is that of all languages I've encountered before, it seems as though pronunciation is the most important for Vietnamese. You may be able to bumble and mumble your way through English and be understood well enough, but Vietnamese pronunciation is so subtly nuanced that you could really stuff up if you don't pay attention to it.

Think about it: in a word like 'institution' you really stretch out all the sounds into a multi-syllablic word. I just looked it up in Vietnamese - one synonym is sự lặp. What a difference. It seems like in Vietnamese you really cram all the sounds of the language into tiny little syllables.

I'm really starting to like this language. It seems like nothing else on earth!

Vietnamese keyboard

On a positive side note I've found out how to write Vietnamese like a pro with my keyboard and do cool stuff like ă and ư and even ồ̀ at the touch of a button. I went to 'Control Panel', 'Region and Language', 'Change Keyboards', click it again, 'Add Keyboards', found Vietnamese and presto: all I need to do now to alternate between an English and Vietnamese keyboard is to press left Alt + Shift.

So to write Vietnamese letters you just have to push these keys:

ă = 1
â = 2
ê = 3
ô = 4
̀ (5th tone) = 5
̉ (4th tone) = 6
̃ (3rd tone) = 7
́ (2nd tone) = 8
̣(??) = 9
đ = 0
₫ (what on earth is this tiny crossed d for?) = +/=
ư = [
ơ = ]

I'm sure there are more and I'll put them up when I find them. If you're planning to undertake this mental project to learn Vietnamese with me I hope you find it as easy to convert your English keyboard into a Vietnamese one as I did.

Vietnamese final consonants and other hilariously difficult random stuff

Well. Just when I was feeling confident Vietnamese spear-tackled me headfirst into the concrete floor.

All the consonants I just learnt? Almost all completely irrelevant.

1. When they're at the end of the word, instead of the beginning, they sound different.

2. How they sound depends on what vowel comes before them.

3. Some of these 'end consonants' sound like a blend of two consonants you never thought possible to blend into a single sound.

Are you ready? This is what I've picked up for final consonants.

-m - pretty much sounds like our m at the end of the word.
-nh - now our 'n' at the end of a word
-n - the same, but only when it comes after i or ô
-ng - like 'ng' in 'song' but only after vowels which are not o, ô or u
-n - the same but only after vowels which are not i, ê, ô, u except when it is preceded by an iê or yê. Seriously Vietnamese, seriously?
-p - like our 'p' but it makes the word said very quickly, so kịp is said like you're saying it really, really quickly - essentially smashing the two consonants together while also trying to incorporate the tone.
-ch - like our 't' but with the same 'speeding up effect' as the 'p' sound above
-t - same as above but only after i or ê but not when preceded by iế
-c - our 'k' but only after vowels which are not o, ô or u
-t - same as above but only after vowels which are not i, ê, ô or u except when preceded by iế
-ng and -n after vowels o, ô or u, just in case you were wondering, is pronounced like a combination of an English 'm' and 'ng'. Digest that for a second.
-c after o, ô or u and t after ô or u is pronounced like a combination of an English 'k' and 'p'.

I'm dumbfounded at the complexity of the language. Is this what it's like to learn English?

I've already seen a contradiction in the rules above but it appears contradictions are allowed.

Some extra things:

'tiêm' and 'tim' are said the same
-ip and -iêp are said the same

And just a couple of extra vowels thrown in for good measure:

ă - it's a short 'a' unlike the regular Vietnamese a
â - also a short 'a', but only used before -ng or -n. Both ă and â can, for some wacky reason, be used interchangeably before either -m or -p

Which of course brings the total amount of vowels in the Vietnamese language up to about 11 from last count and consonants up to somewhere around what seems like the 30 mark.

We're talking an alphabet which appears to be twice the size of ours but attempting to use the same amount of letters as ours.

I totally underestimated the difficulty of this language just because it had an English alphabet. But I plan to see the bloody thing through.

Just when we were becoming friends Vietnamese you turn around and do something like this. I'm disappointed in you man.

Let's hope learning dipthongs is a bit cruisier.

Vietnamese tone sequences

You know what? I think I was just in a bad mood yesterday - a raging Father's Day hangover probably wasn't helping.

I've come to the conclusion that I was simply over-thinking Vietnamese pronunciation.

Yesterday I was loath to start on Vietnamese tone sequences, but guess what? Not that bad. Not bad at all.

For the first time the Foreign Services Institute's Vietnamese course has started using real phrases - and spoken Vietnamese is nowhere near as challenging as I thought it would be. Sure, the pronunciation of everything is slightly different, and there are all these wacky tones, but it all seems to come together nicely.

As it turns out, Vietnamese is a beautifully musical language. Think about it: in the Western world we have seven notes in our musical octave. Well, this language has five notes and it basically sounds like a constant song. What a pleasant discovery.

The purpose of the tone sequences part of the course is to try and get you to picture what all the separate tones sound like strung together in a sentence or phrase. It runs through each of the possible combinations in a two-syllable phrase, and then a three-syllable phrase.

So you start off with two Tone 1 words next to each other, then a Tone 1 and Tone 2, then 2-1, then 1-3 and so on. It actually makes a lot of sense when you hear it and arguably more sense than trying to teach the tones separately. It's not like the tones actually change when combined with other tones - you just sort of blend them together. Much like the words 'blend' and together' sound slightly different on their own than if you were to say the phrase 'blend together', where the 'd' and the 't' sort of mix.

What's probably making Vietnamese a bit easier is I'm getting used to all these crazy sounds and they're actually starting to sound normal.

I've made another discovery: I need to work out how to 'Vietnamise' my keyboard so that I can type the extra Vietnamese letters with all the squiggles without having to copy and paste from another text.

Only three tapes to go in the pronunciation. Crikey what else could there possibly be?

I can also proudly brag I'm about 10% of the way through the course! All in four days... so does that mean basic Vietnamese will take me forty days? That would be wicked.

Vietnamese consonants

I was delusional.

I told myself that now I was done with the vowels and the tones everything would get easier from here on in.

And then I met the consonants.

I'm told by the Foreign Services Institute course in Vietnamese that pretty much all of the Vietnamese consonants are different from the English counterparts.

I'm a little suspicious, however - especially when the course tells me that the best way to pronounce a Vietnamese 'tr' is simply to imagine it as a ''voiceless, apico-alveolar, slightly affricated, retroflex stop.' Jeepers.

So below I've explained what I personally think these damned letters sound like without all the linguistic jargon.

Of course if a linguist ever does read this they'll realise I've completely butchered his craft.

Let's start with a positive. M, ph, n, l and h seem to be the same in Vietnamese and English.

But that's it.

We learnt two other aberrations.

x = s
d and gi = 'y' as in 'yet'

Now add these monsters on to that tiny list:

b = English 'b' but more explosive

v = same as Vietnamese 'd' and 'gi', i,e. 'y' as in 'yet'. (Although it appears that in North Vietnam it is said like the 'vy' in 'revue')

t = basically our 'd'

th = like our 't'

đ = like our 'd' but more explosive, with voice

ch = like our 'j'

tr = Oh man. This one. Let's just say it's like an English 'd' with a tiny little 'j' thrown in at the end - tiny mind you.

nh = the 'ny' in menu

s = our 'sh'

r = sort of our 'r'! But if I'm going to be honest there is an 'l' in there somewhere.

c and k = halfway between our 'k' and 'g'

kh = like the 'ch' on Scottish 'loch'

g and gh = say 'g' with your throat like you're gargling, almost sounds like a 'y'

ng and ngh = the 'ng' in 'singer' except at the beginning of the word

In short: the Vietnamese alphabet bears little resemblance to the sounds in our alphabet. It might as well be a separate alphabet.

Surely, surely this must be the most onerous of Vietnamese pronunciation lessons.

But I've just scrolled down for a peek preview of the next pronunciation section. 

What I've been through so far is nothing compared to what I'm about to slam into.

Vietnamese tones

Oh man.

Vietnamese has five tones. I clearly didn't do any research before jumping into my first language.

So after what seems like hours I have managed to essentially master the five Vietnamese tones, much to the chagrin of my family.

There doesn't seem like any possible way to describe them so it's best to listen to them on the Foreign Services Institute page - the tones are on tapes 2 and 3. They only total about 30 minutes in total - you listen to them in conjunction with the student text.

The only way I can sum them up is as follows:

Tone 1: the syllable is said in a pitch higher than that you would normally talk at (Imagine yelling 'Fore!' on a golf course)
Tone 2: you start at Tone 1 pitch and rise even higher - the text even says it rises to a 'squeak' (When someone tells you something shocking and you say 'What?!')
Tone 3: start at normal pitch, go down a bit then rise up (Like asking 'What?' as well but without as much intensity, more curiosity)
Tone 4: start at normal pitch and go down (just like you talk when you're really tired - low energy, dull)
Tone 5: start at lower pitch, go even lower and then rise up (like trying to show interest in something even though you're really tired)

That's all I can do to sum it up really. It's a hell of a topic.

Vietnamese. Nine vowels, five tones.

Next stop: consonants. What the hell have you got in store next Vietnamese.

(I'm through three tapes now and have just noticed there are eight tapes for pronunciation alone.)

Vietnamese vowels

I'm sitting on my couch on a rainy Saturday afternoon reciting Vietnamese vowels over and over with my wife and child having to endure the painful repetition in our small living space. The Foreign Services Institute Vietnamese course is very thorough but very repetitive. You can see how it's designed for diplomats because only a government appointed linguist could come up with such a clinical course.

Rather than you having to go through it all yourself, here are the Vietnamese vowels in a much more concise form. But the repetitive exercises no doubt have the benefit of really driving it home.

The vowels are like this:

i = i as in 'machine'

ê = a as in 'late'

e = e as in 'keg'

a = a as in 'bah'

o = aw as in 'saw'

ô = o in 'obey'

ơ = o as in 'throw' (teensy difference to the above one)

u = u as in 'thru'

ư = u as in 'sugar' (this one is hard - the way it works best in my mind is like saying the normal 'u' but as if you were stuffy from a cold)

What is that, like nine vowels? What are you doing Vietnamese people? Nine? Seriously?

On the plus side most of them seem pretty manageable. ô and ơ are annoyingly similar - they're both said the way we say it when we recite the English alphabet. But ơ seems to be more accentuated - much like when Cleveland on Family Guy says 'Oh Nooo!' - that's ơ.

u and ư. This one is a real pain in the ass. u is really like 'ooo' and ư less so - ư is more like a mild grunt.

The two other things I've picked up are that a Vietnamese 'x' is just an 's', and 'd' or 'gi' are just 'y' as in 'yet'. All the other consonants I've seen are the same as English.

By the way I'm on page 13 of 370 pages.