I find it funny when Northern Vietnamese switch the "N" consonant to "L" consonant.

ok who the hell would say Viet Lam
Nu*~ Sinh -Lu*~ Sinh
Na`o - La`o
Nu*'ng - Lu*'ng

They do? Like in what words?

I think North Vietnamese accent is the best in term of easier to write and pronouce. They just have lot's of weird vocabulary though.

I just watch a clip people interviewing those northern Vietnamese. and one of the girl said Viet Lam.

Did you see the kich in Thuy nga when the fat lady said "LEO" instead of "Nail"?

Sorry, but I think you are wrong.

Wrong?

I don't think North Vietnamese switch N and L's. Because my grandmother is from the north, and I also know a few northerners.

North people like to put Z in gi, d and sometimes nh . No big deal, Southern part ,esp in the country, they don't say tr .

i say a lotta words dat start wit da letter Q wit a Q. like da word quan (pants) i say it exactly like how its spelled n my friend says it wit a W like wuan or sum $hit like dat. which one is north n which is south?

Okay, Northern Vietnam is big, there are lot of regions in North where people talk with different tongues. Basicly, the Hanoian way is the official proper way to speak Vietnamese. You speak exactly what you write it down. I know a Vietnamese girl here in the Netherlands talk exactly like that switching "N" to "L". I think she is from Thai Binh, I'm not very sure.

Interesting... Cantonese (HK) do that too.

My friends say it "wuan". And when I pronounce it with a Q they have the audacity to say its wrong. That I don't know how to speak Viet. lol When it comes to speaking Viet, Southerners are ignorant. They like making fun of the different accents like theirs is the original. 2 One girl even said I can't pronounce my own son's middle name. Quang. They are forgetting that not everyone is from the south.

My mom also speaks with a Northern accent and she doesn't switch the "n" and "l"... she's a Bac '54 (those northern viets who migrated to the south in '54). The Bac '54 do not mix the "n" and "l" .. it's usually the Bac '75 (northern viets in Vietnam right now or vietnamese boat people who fled Vietnam around the '80s) that speaks that way.

The Bac '54 accent is usually what you hear the MCs speak with on Vietnamese music production shows like Paris by Night and Asia. It sounds very elegant and upper class... IMO. It also helps when you're trying to write proper Vietnamese.

A way to tell if you are speaking with Northern accent is ask do you put Zs in your words. Understandable one needs to put it in for foreigners such as the name Dung; they would pronounce it as dun, put in the z makes it dzung, thus pronounced close to Viets would Dung. But Northerners like it too much and put the Zs in a lot of words also, for example, Southerners would pronounce Dung as Dung, Northerners would say Zzung, gia dinh as Zia ddzinh. It is also true that Northerners don't pronounce nam (year), it is pronounced as lam.

As said, country folks from Southern part don't pronounce tr such tra (tea), they say it as "ta", such part as Ben Tre, Ca Mau etc.


Regional differences are good, just as Ireland, Scotland and England have different accents, or Canada, US.......

Qu should be pronounced as W, just as you would pronounce Quoc Thai Binh An, how else would one pronounce it.

saying "wan" is south. "quan" is north.
My dad mix "n" and "l" up all the time. my mom doesn't. THey're both North speakers.



North and South have a lot of different vocabs, but i don't think they're weird.
I'll list some juz for the heck of it see if you recognize them: the word bowl, its "chen" in southern tounge and "bat" in northern tongue. Corn is "bap" (south) "ngo" (north). the one that confused me the most was tea which is "tra" (south) and "che" (north). but Che is a desert in southern tounge so when I heard "che` lo'ng" (hot tea) I thought it was desert and ordered TWO...



exageration...i say "Dung" as "yung" and "gia" as "zzah". we do differentiate the two. southerners use "y" sound for both "d" and "gi" sounds.

I have heard this many times and it always sounds funny.



This is true. Normally, educated people like to distinguish the two. Southerners D for both d and gi, whereas, Northerners use Z for both D and gi and don't pronounce n as in nam (year), but as lam.

Che long is a classic example, and very funny too.

How about the Chinese speaking Viet : lồn tren, lồn duoi, lồn nao cung long het. Which is supposed to say: "Đồn trên, đồn dưới, đồn nào cũng đông hết ."

Vietnamese is a tonal language, say it wrong and it means different things.

Okay this thread got my interest. I just asked around about "N" to "L" switch. It's from Nam Dinh/Thai Binh. A lot of Bac 54 folks are Catholics from Nam Dinh.

Btw to make a distinction between North and South is too simplistic. Hue, Nha Trang, Da Nang, Saigon... all with different tongues, you can hear the different. Same with the Northern Hanoi, Nam Dinh, Thanh Hoa... etc.

hue and da nang are considered Tieng Trung or Central dialects. I have no knowledge of these dialtects other than I can never understand them.
There was one time when my neighbor came over and asked me and my dad something in Quang Nam dialect (Da Nang). I looked at my dad and he just looked at me and shrugged...so she juz gave us the and left. hahaha

In fact, there only one dialect but several accents and intonation.

I say dialects because there are different words/vocabularies used in each of them, not juz accents and intonations alone.
for example a Quang Nam person would say "mi di mo rua" (where are you going?) The first time i heard it...the only word i recognized was "di"

Oh how can I forget about Hue dialect, first time I heard it, it's like WTF, it sounds like another language, I say 10% of their vocabular are total differents words. It sounds funny too. Sorry if I hurt any dân Huế's on this forum. 2

I like Vietlam better... :x

English from England and America use different words. Sometimes you can't even understand a single word. Its still called an accent. Dialect is a little too distant.

My mom is from Hue but she changed her accent for my father. But her cousins and my uncles come over and talk to me I don't even understand half of what they say. It's the pronunciations of the words. Sounds really strong.

Is that any dialect of
the beloved vietnamese
language that sounds kind of
Indian :x

...no huh.

Not all northern viets say Viet Nam as Viet Lam. MC Nguyen Ngoc Ngan and Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen do not mix the "n" and "l" when they speak with their Bac '54 accent... as do my mom and her family.

I noticed that the majority of oversea Vietnamese music production shows like Paris By Night and Asia speak with the Bac '54 accent.. I think they also speak with this accent for news and radio broadcast.

Personally, I love the Bac '54 accent. I think it sounds sophisicated and upper class. The Bac '75 accent can sound really harsh. As for the southern accent, I don't think it makes the men sound very masculine. I guess it depends on how the guy speak it, but some guys use their nasal so much it sounds like they're speaking with their nose pinched... very high pitched... like singer Manh Quynh and other Vietnamese male opera singers. Ugh.. I can't stand men who sound like that. It gives me goosebumps.

should I get technical?
well here goes...
Dialect = A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary
If you look at English and "American" the way they sound vary upon accent. the written language is fitting to both the accents.
in vietnamese, Trung, Nam, Hue have different vocabs as i have mentioned before. But the pronunciations differ alot as well...enough to sound like two different words.
Look at the word "hoang" of the north and "Woang" of the south...(kinna the same as the varietion in mandarin and cantonese dialects to me). This is why a lot of southerners have problem spelling correctly. I don't see Americans and British having this problem in their spelling.
Also look at "mi di mo rua?" I don't think any English accents vary this much in speech.
Too much analyzing...Man I need to get a life...