Learn to Speak Vietnamese

Vietnamese is spoken by approximately 80 million people worldwide, including almost 3 million who live in the United States. As a major language of Southeast Asia and a major language minority group here in the States, those learning Vietnamese will certainly find ample opportunity to use their language skills. While there is not as great of demand for Vietnamese speakers now as during the years when the U.S. was involved in conflict in the country, the language still serves as a good communication tool in the country and learning at least the basics of Vietnamese will definitely help travelers to this part of the world.

Vietnamese is the most widely spoken of the Austro-Asiatic languages and much of the language's vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially for words that signify abstract concepts, much like how European languages have borrowed extensively from Latin for the same purpose. Although Vietnamese formerly was written using a modified Chinese alphabet, today the Vietnamese writing system uses an adapted Latin alphabet, making it much easier to learn how to read and write for native language speakers. Because, much like Chinese, Vietnamese is a tonal language in which tone and pitch greatly affect the meaning of a word, it is typically a difficult language to learn for Westerners. However, with some basic knowledge of Vietnamese, paired with English and French, communication in Vietnam should not be too difficult.

There are many different ways to go about learning Vietnamese. You may want to first check with your local community college and/or university to see if there are courses offered in the language. If not, because there is a significant Vietnamese population living right here in the U.S. it should not be too difficult to find and hire a private tutor who can help you begin to learn basic communication skills. Programs like Rosetta Stone can also be extremely successful in teaching you the basics of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. Of course the best way to learn any language is through total immersion. Just a few weeks of speaking Vietnamese on a daily basis can be worth more than a year in the classroom and being forced to actually interact in a language can also force you to improve you language skills at a very fast rate.