Hi everyone.

Is anyone in my position who can understand when people are talking in Vietnamese to you yet you can't make a vietnamese conversation yet can speak some basic Vietnamese? (confused?)


For those people who were not born in Vietnam or learnt much Vietnamese and then suddenly started to learn more Vietnamese and can actually use Vietnamese in everyday life, how exactly did you manage and what helped you? Please advise as i fear i'm losing my mother tongue


Thanks to everyone

^ im with u bro Iam Vietnamese Canadian and I wasnt born in Vietnam i was born in Malasia during the war . Iam full not mixed went to canada when I was two lived in Canada for 16 years. Iam 18 living in Toronto

I find it hard if Viets ur second language because English was mine. When ur younger u have a chance to learn it better because it refreshes ur mine. while when ur older its harder cuz u have english and trying to speak and understand Viet at home while english at school..

I get lessons from ma' and ba and practise phrases in sentences , and I l also have my trusty Viet language book with me to help pronouncate words

Ye....thats what i think too!
When you're younger it's alot easier!
That why i try and urge my mum and dad to teach my lil bro who's 7 to fit some Vietnamese into him before it's too late....late meaning becoming to the stage like me and my other bros who are useless speaking in Vietnamese.
At the mo, i am really wanting to improve my Vietnamese, i see my brothers lack the motivation to learn it still. I've tried getting mum to teach us but it hasnt really worked plus there was a Vietnamese school for kids in my area but they people who taught us all lacked the thing that made us interested to learn! It was all working on sheets and what made it more difficult was that teacher couldn't speak English so all us kids had to struggle when we asked her what this and that word ment

thats not good....born here in norway, i went to viet class once a week until i was 16. Speak viet with parents and friends thats all.
now i can speak and write viet pretty good

^ Chi cho toi

I live in a area in the UK where lets say...the Vietnamese Community is fairly small I have literally no Vietnamese friends around here so i cannot put my Vietnamese to the limits. There is the adults i can talk to, but for now i think speaking Vietnamese to my family will have to do til im fairly confident with my Vietnamese....which will be in a long while :S

^ u dont need Viet friends to speak the language all u need is u and the will to learn and master it why dont u go to the Viet language section itll help u a little.

Its good that ur learning shows ur very proud of ur heritage and where u come from thats the spirit In my book as long as ur trying theres nothing that u can't succeed so do it for the heck of it .

But ur poor brother tsk tsk he should be ashame but not his fault to busy with games, and social life with friends or he doesnt care or has adapted to UK culture too much

Heres my link read what I Posted ull like it okay remember read it

http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=47606

speak to ur parents more in Vietnamese

well i got into speaking vietnamese coz my parent influence and watching chinese movie... in viet dub

LOL, haha, excuse me, inside joke nevermind.

um... why dont your parents teach you vietnamese when your young? are they lazy or whitewash lol or they not fully viet?
i think most families teach their kids viet (talk to their children in viet), thats a good way to learn, viet school is a bonus.

Listen to a lot of viet songs and watch some viet movies, that helps in understanding, pronounciating.

vietnamese already have a funny accent, how would they sound speaking vietnamese with a english accent,lol. it would probably sound like a fobby snob stuck up viet hahha.

a CAMBODIAN talks about how bad Vietnamese accent is when speaking english ????? wtf is going on with the world .... geez

well cambodian language is worse, i think only dogs can understand cambodia since my dog likes to bark with them in public. They usually understand them quite well
maybe cambodian originated from dogs?

woof woof hehe

Hey dawg I fêel the same way. When I go back they say I sound like a Korean trying to speak viet. Its embarrassing cuz I'm fully viet. Born in Rach Gia but lived in the states since I was 1 month. My gramps tried to teach me when I was young , but I neglected it. NOw he has past away in 2000 and NOW I'm just begining to realize how important my heritage means to me. Em khong muon muc gop Vietnam. I want to start to learn to speak better and read and write. I just got back 2 wêeks ago and that was the first time I actually read and wrote Viet. I fêel I'm catching on quick as all I did there was text message people. But I haven't gotten the hang of the damn accents. I can understand alot but can't speak well to reply. I mean I know the words , just don't pronunciate right. We nêed to get together a Viet support gruop to help learn Viet all over again.

Pft.

Who needs Viet nowadays?

^ ....people who want to keep in touch with their roots, which is the trend nowadays.
besides, knowing more than one language is always good

dont compare them with dogs 2

you have a dog....for a pet?or food.

yeah i understand what your dog was saying, he was begging me to let him loose cause thanksgiving was coming up LOL, he also said he was the last out of 8 puppies, i wonder what happened to them all.

Wow that really sucks, if Vietnamese has become kinda like a second language to you.
If you werent raised speaking enough vietnamese and building the foundation since childhood, learning it now is very hard, especially the accents.

Scientific studies have shown that from age 0 to 5 is when you learn a language the fastest, after that it all starts to go down hill. So if you, since birth, speak vietnamese alot with you family, especially if you have older siblings, and only speak english at school and american friends, then you'll be fine.

But some viet parents are drown in a myth that if they dont allow the children to speak english in early childhood, their children to be less competence at school compare to Americans, this is completely false (i know one person, whose parents took an advice like that and now he cant speak viet at all, very sad). I started learning english at the age of 9 and do just fine. Thats why i yelled at my younger brother if he says something in english at home.

If you have a younger sibling, dont worry about him/her being not as competence, teach them viet, they'll absorb english very quickly. Convince the parents who are so worked up about their children's academic well beings.

And it relates to this discussion because

BTW bye bye mr. mikeyhumpalot

Learning Vietnamese and speaking it is easy. There is some Flippo guy who says he learns Vietnamese for 2 years and he can write and all. But for me getting the spelling right is difficult.

I´m so proud of me....

I wasn´t born in Vietnam but still can speak vietnamese fluently...
But I can´t read and write like an elementary vietnamese pupil... 2

And I unterstand 70-80% of a vn newspaper....

Share with us your secrets of how you learn the language.

At first you have to love your country, so i mean Vietnam, really much like I do now.
A few years ago I didn´t care of Vietnam, so I thought why I should read and write vietnamese?... but now I know what Vietnam for a country is. It doesn´t have to be rich and full with skyscrapers, the people and the beauty has fascinated me 2 years ago when I go throught the country, thats why I tried to practise reading and writing vietnamese. How can you practise?-> I chat with my family in vietnamese and read about the latest news about my country on the internet.

Later, I want to do business in Vietnam and bring western methods to there...

Except this my parents prefer to talk to me in vietnamese at home. Untill 14 years old I got a vn teacher when I was in Vietnam.

I don´t have even a german accent in my vietnamese

Talk much vietnamese with your parents and vn freinds as you can and make often holiday in Vietnam.

Inspirational story. That is one Vietnamese we'd like to have more.

i donno if this pertains to you guys
but for me in north carolina (in the usa) i see that lots of viets here tend to converse with one another in english even though they may or may not speak viet very well. unless the person is literally fresh off the plane or boat or whatever we seem to prefer english to viet, and i have no idea why. so as a result, our viet might be worse than someone else's viet who lives in atlanta or orange county where i would assume they speak viet to one another (correct me if im wrong cause i donno). perhaps if we change this then it will be easier to keep whatever fluency we have in viet.

one thing i do give props to koreans for is that most of the ones i've seen tend to speak to one another in korean even though their english is perfect when they speak to me. i think thats a great way to keep the language alive among the later generations

Hey Hoang!
I fêel the same way you do. I just visited the mother land this year and I've fallen in love and used to the way things are there. I know there's alot of corruption but you get used to it . The fơod and pêeps and views and just the fêeling of being there makes me fêel somewhat proud. Its like finding out about your biological parents if you we're adopted.

yea.......thats wuts wrong with me. im fluent in speaking and semi-fluent in readin/writing viet, but i dont speak viet that much except with ppl older than me. when talkin to my friends, it just comes out in english, not sure y, but i just does. and yea, most ppl over here (in CA) do tend to know viet fluently. i should try to use it with my viet friends more often cuz it would be fun for the chinese/koreans to not understand wut we're sayin. and ur right bout the korean thing, they do speak korean when talking to each other.

many Koreans i know, even their parents were born in the states but they and their children, grandchildren still talk in Korean to other Koreans. I don't understand why most of young Viets, some were even born in VN prefer English when talk to other Viets. What really lame is many Vietnamese parents totally neglect keeping and pass on our language, some even always talk in crappy English with their children and got so proud that the kids can speak in perfect English but don't know a single vietnamese word ...

yeah i hated that too..

Vietnamese language has about 19000 distinct syllables, the most of any Asian language I believe and 18000 more than Japanese. I think the number of syllables also make it difficult for some kids to remember.

you only need a brain to talk.
writing and reading is a bonus

Warned for flaming.

who did u warned?

vietxboy

and you deserve one too for that comment about dogs being better than cambodians. I think you're getting temp banned again. because you're at 100% right now.

just can't listen when i say stop flaming cambodians can you?

why didnt u warned that cambodian kid?
lol comeon dont temp ban me ok fine i ll go edit it

He didn't flame Vietnamese though. I'll admit it's very close, but it's still worded so that it's his opinion. Did he mention dogs and compare them to Vietnamese? Anything like that?

The art of backtalk. All in how you word things. How well you can keep your temper, etc.

As for temp ban, yeah I'd feel bad, but I've already told you so many times. Why can't you just not flame them?

tell them to stay out of here, you dont see me going into the cambodian chat and talk shyt now..
one more chance please? i wont start again

HAHAHA...ahhhhh next temp ban you get will be 10 days instead of 5. That is the consequence if you don't want your temp ban now.

^ what are we now? make illegal deals to break the rules? but then again, anything goes after the detuned ordeal....

k thanks i ll not bash cambodian for u

lol it's not illegal. it makes for a harsher penalty next time. And I haven't seen PhoShizzle make any drama outside of this issue. and another mod was in here and posted in here and didn't make any comments or warnings verbal or actual ones.

you guys were basicallly selling drugs. i won't tell the popo aka ben if you give me some of it....

hahaah vietpunk is jealous

LOL thats me...except for speakin good english. me speak so fobbish.

Because you Vietnamese kids DON'T WANT TO fu-kING SPEAK IT.

WELL.. I have two vietnamese guy friends who are viet but can't really speak viet or understand it. Which i think it's ok. Cuz.. whenever i be hanging with them... my other viet frands be translating everything! 2

actually it is because my parent are too lazy to teach us. my brother and sisters who were actually born in vietnam dont even speak vietnamese properly. but my sister knows more because she married a vietnamese whose family always speak viet.

You must not have stayed in Vietnam for long then.

And blaming your parents. What a cheap way out.