is vietnamese harder than chinese

I speak Spanish with a horrible accent. Mandarin is like a breeze. I think it would help you learn Vietnamese as well. Stu Jay wrote a very interesting article about learning Vietnamese. Languages are sooooo fun. Tao đi làm hôm qua. Actually you can omit pronouns in informal situations. The Vietnamese “t” is the SAME exact sound as the Spanish t which is quite differ to English t. China is the north neighbour and the French colonized Vietnam for a while. Now the Vietnamese “d” (without a slash like the đ) is pronounce similar to German j and English y. Vietnamese people in the North tend to pronounce the d similar to English z. Vietnamese “ch”, “tr” are to be pronounced as English ch and tr (as in channel and truck). First off, in Vietnamese D(d) and Đ(đ) are two distinct letters. Up to 70% Vietnamese lexicons, are borrowed from Chinese, mostly Middle Chinese. If Vietnamese were still written in chữ Nôm then it'd be a full house. Ara Ara Mean Japanese • Is Chinese harder than Japanese? The most difficult aspect is the script, but it is quite consistent, and actually not all that hard to learn. For me, Vietnamese is not hard because it is my native language. I have been studying Vietnamese for 6 years, and am no closer to being understood now than I was the day I arrived here. Vietnamese … Cantonese definitely seems to be much closer phonetically at least. Pronunciation: Definitely harder in Vietnamese. Most closest words are Cantonese. Also, the dấu sắc (high-rising) tone is tough for me, because I tend to produce it like the second tone of Mandarin, which is wrong. And I am only 12. kinh is jing (the main city) bắc kinh/ beijing. English and German are of the same linguistic family. Maybe some Vietnamese speakers here can offer some input. At least, now I have a 50/50 shot as opposed to 1/4. ngủ chưa (sleep yet?) Group 1 – Bằng (level 平) It is the listener. So from written perspective, Vietnamese is easiest, Chinese and Japanese are hardest, and Korean , Thai, Hindi, Arabic, Burmese, Tamil, Hebrew fall somewhere between. You’re not wrong about chị but it’s not only used for married women. Do you know of any resources, hopefully online and free, that show specifically ONLY the words shared in Chinese and Vietnamese? The initial consonants are closer to the Southern speech while the rest (the vowels and endings) are closer to the Northern speech. It's really hard to learn tones the first time...if you've gotten that skill, learning the new tones in a second tonal language will be much easier. Not to mention how hard it is to learn the Mandarin characters. And I am only 12. Sign up for the AllSet Learning Product Newsletter and find out what new Chinese learning projects John is working on. Louisville is pronounced louvol or something like that, and don’t get me started on their grammar and double negative “I ain’t do nothing” or “I done did it” lol. English and Spanish, although belonging to separate families (Germanic and Romance respectively) fall under a broader family called Indo-European. I can determine a Chinese cognate in up to 60% of the vocabulary I’ve learned to this point. Vietnamese bằng: dấu huyền và ngang (level) I’m never sure how to address any female older than 30. There is one powerful step, however, that many Westerners avoid taking: learning Mandarin Chinese. This didn’t ring a bell until I saw the Chu Nom is 特别: “te4 bie2” in Mandarin, “tokubetsu” in Japanese, “dak6 bit6” in Cantonese. In the interests of full disclosure, I studied Chinese for a total of five years, and have spoken it now almost 25 years. Other than China, no other Asian countries feature in the list of top 15 countries with the most confirmed cases, while Western countries dominate, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. The grammar is totally different. Example, But few words in Hà Nội still pronounced different like letter “L” can become “N”,Nokia will turn into Lokia. Sure and there are more sounds to learn but less intuitive? There are some very strange sounds, and a lot of sounds that are distinguished, sound very close to each other. AFAIK there is no such thing. 名 -> danh So sometimes in conversations we would throw in a Chinese proverb. Regardless, this should serve little relevance. Hands down. I can speak Vietnamese, Chinese, French, Spanish, and English. An example is the word insurance. I definitely do not want the hicks version of Mandarin. Also just to correct some points, Vietnamese didn’t borrow from a cantonese but from Classical Chinese. In both Mandarin and Vietnamese, we categorize the tones into 2 groups: bằng (level 平) and trắc (oblique 仄). Language variation - Chinese has several dialects and is spoken over a huge area by more than a billion people. Vietnamese is indeed a very rich, complex language—in fact my classmates and I have an inside joke: Tiếng Việt rất phong phú (Vietnamese is a very rich language) = Vietnamese is really, really hard. If your age is 25 and she’s 30, it should chị. Most people say that the Vietnamese language is more complicated than the Chinese language. It is a real pain to start over.I learn Mandarin myself now.But I made mistake that I tried to learn both traditional and simplified Mandarin at the same time.Second,I should have applied grammar translation method because Vietnamese has 70 % vocabulary of Hán Việt. I have a couple of Vietnamese friends (natives / international students) who admit that if they’re around various Asians and are not paying attention or didn’t hear well, they can’t be sure if they heard someone speak Vietnamese or Cantonese. Serge, thanks for that example; the dak6 bit6 contrast with đặc biệt confirms what I’ve suspected all along: a speaker of Cantonese would find Vietnamese much less difficult. chinese is the hardest in my opinion|yes, chinese is the hardest and for me korean is easier English (US) French (France) German Italian Japanese Korean Polish Portuguese (Brazil) Portuguese (Portugal) Russian Simplified Chinese (China) Spanish (Mexico) Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) Turkish Vietnamese As for authorities, we don’t only use ông. However, people who already know that I can speak some Vietnamese have no trouble understanding me. When John asked me to comment on my experiences learning Vietnamese and Chinese, I was happy to oblige, because it allows me to try and wrap my head around what I’ve been through since I began studying Vietnamese last September (8 ½ months ago now). I was born and grew up in Vietnam, I finished high school there but honestly I don’t know a lot of Hán Việt, not many Vietnamese are good at Hán Việt either. Also, what is with that “few of the vowels being remotely similar to English”? My teacher was kind on me in Australia and I tested well. There doesn’t seem to be many exceptions here. I tried to learn a few Vietnamese phrases about ten years ago when I was helping a friend of the family who was a Vietnamese immigrant. I think knowing Mandarin will help you a lot though, in multiple ways: Being aware of tones. Most likely, no one will understand your Vietnamese for quite a while. And unless you can get to grips with them, nearly everything else falls by the wayside. Unlike Chinese, the personal pronoun to refer to “You” and “I” differs according to the relative position of the speaker and the listener. Not impossible though but tones are everything. In normal speed speech, I cannot distinguish them; in the language lab only if I listen very closely. Theoretically: Em if they’re a lot younger or for a spouse/gf; Cô, for a woman < 40; Chị for a married woman > 35; and Bà for an elderly woman or a woman in authority. But don’t forget modern Vietnamese are pretty much different we don’t said “Long” but we said “Rồng”. However I think Southern tones are easier for Chinese people to make. Mandarin is like a breeze. If you don’t believe me, at least consider this. For the purpose of this article đồng has been anglicized to dong. I think this happens more in the North than the South. Mandarin has a lot of things that behave fundamentally different from how they do in English...if you've gotten far enough in Mandarin that you've started to get exposed to some of these ideas, it'll make your mind flexible. More difficult than Mandarin? But I know we share a lot of words with Chinese. Reading this makes me want to study Vietnamese. We also use Chinese words when we want to be sarcastic, as euphemism or when we want to sound sophiscated lol If a female is younger than you it’s em. This is not as preposterous as it sounds; people who have spent some time in Japan frequently face this same problem and I’m told that it’s not unusual in Korea either, although I’ve never been there. Southern tones are too exaggerated and hard for speakers of non tonal languages to make. Another characteristic of Vietnamese is it boasts an extraordinary number of synonyms. That, however, is not the focus of this article. I have worked as an aid worker all over the world for 16 years. Once you get past that point, though, Vietnamese is easier than Chinese because you don't have to study characters (outside of the characters, though, it's harder), and once you master pronunciation, it's easier to speak (if not to understand) than Japanese or Korean. The sound system is so hard to aurally comprehend. Also, learn the North Vietnamese dialect which has no accent. You say Chu Nom, but as I understand, that’s a general term for all characters that were used in Vietnamese, which includes characters made up specifically for Vietnamese. I can speak Vietnamese, Chinese, French, Spanish, and English. Proof why Viets aren't related to the Chinese. Once again, thanks for the info guys, best of luck learning your respective languages! I, too, tried some tonal transfer to suprasegmentals my informant was uttering, but I couldn’t make head nor tail of them. This posting is exactly right. Few of them are remotely similar to English, and just the slightest mispronunciation will result in an unintended vowel. 1. Also, the writing system in Vietnamese, although it uses roman characters, has a staggering amount of diacritical marks...so...it's easier in a sense, being phonetic, but harder in a sense too. The writing system is fairly straightforward. 十 -> thập (we got this from the Cantonese sap6) What’s more, the differences between the vowel sounds can be quite subtle. Its close relationship with Chinese is both a blessing and a curse, however. But look at something called the 'quasi-Sino-Vietnamese' or 'Vietnamized Chinese' it's harder since it's ancient Chinese far older, with more complete phonemes than Middle Chinese. Vietnames “th” simply does not have an equivalent in English. In addition, Vietnamese people are not capable of guessing what it is you want. And I do mean “words,” not characters, which I already have something for (http://nomfoundation.org/nom-tools/Nom-Lookup-Tool/Nom-Lookup-Tool). Lao presents much fewer difficulties than Vietnamese. Other than that, they belong to different language family. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! All are welcome, whether beginner or polyglot. người (1) nhân, (2) thằng, (3) người 人 rén (nhân) [ Vh @ QT 人 rén < MC ɲin < OC *nin | cđ MC 臻開三平真日 | Pt 如鄰 | PNH: Hai. Tenses are so simple, we only put time adverb to indicate tense without transforming the words, not like English. The cruel truth is, there are tonal sounds that Europeans simply cannot make!!! If the female is older than you it should usually be Chị. There are a lot of overlapping words that have been borrowed, but the languages differ more in their structure and origin. Oops. Not to say I am completely error free, but tones were never problematic for me to the degree they often are for other students. The supposed difficulty of Vietnam's official language is a point of national pride amongst its 90 million inhabitants, and locals are happy to tell you “tiếng Việt khó!” (Vietnamese is hard) at every possible opportunity.. It is the native language of the Vietnamese (Kinh) people, as well as a first or second language for other ethnic groups in Vietnam. As for the tones, we are very forgiving and most of the time, the context will determine the meaning of the word anyway. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Mandarin is the standard dialect, but there are many variations within that dialect, regional and otherwise. However, one unforseen difficulty is terms of address. As for the sharing with Khmer, I believe linguists are not stupid, so there should be many words similar, but Malay has very different words so that most linguists considered them different family. But this difference also has its advantages. I learned Chinese for 2 years (1 in Australia, 1 in Beijing) before a 3 year posting in Beijing. To be honest, I am regretting that I have spend so much time trying to learn this language, I could have been fluent in TWO other languages by now (French and Russian) with the amount of time and effort I have spent on Vietnamese. As you already pointed out, there’s a lot of cognates between Vietnamese and Chinese so knowing Chinese is a great advantage when it comes to learning Vietnamese. I think you should practice with Vietnamese karaoke. Not only words but we have borrowed entire idioms and proverbs. Mandarin 平: 1st and 2nd tones, Examples: Russian. As long as you master the alphabet, the accents, things will get easier. I think one huge difference is that no matter how you butcher Mandarin many people can (or will try) to understand you. I did find a pretty cool dictionary, however: Từ Điển Thành Ngữ-Tục Ngữ Việt-Hán, 越汉成语俗语词典, by publisher Nhà Xuất Bản Văn Hoá Sài Gòn. Languages are sooooo fun. Serge, as a learner / speaker of Mandarin myself, I do also want to know what words are the same in Chinese rather than attempt to recognize them or guess when I encounter then. I grew up hearing much more Vietnamese than Mandarin, and I find Vietnamese harder and less intuitive. This, compounded with the tones, can easily render one’s speech unintelligible or worse. Structural similarities, especially in ways that they are different from English. But that is its only concession. I'd be a bit scared about learning Vietnamese to a super high level in order to get a competitive position, but I'm in position to fill a hole that no one else really can. As a native Vietnamese (who’s now an American citizen), I can totally relate about the “super hard” nature of the Vietnamese language. Vietnamese has single, double and even triple vowels. But FYI married people usually use em, the 99% of the husband in Vietnam will call their wife for em, not chị. Arrgg, yes, you’ve convinced me, Vietnamese sounds nightmarishly hard. Some will sound drastically different like 日記: ri ji vs jat gei vs nhật ký. The pronunciation of Vietnamese words is also hard to master because of its six tones. And I think you may find it harder because even though you’re learning the easy dialect (saigon), you are still bound to use the official writing system which belongs to North. I speak like B2 Mandarin which I learned mainly for fun (I passed HSK5 easily if that's any qualification), but I recently found out about a really nice job opportunity if I get to B2 or beyond with Vietnamese within a few years (think 1-3). There was a bit of this in Mandarin but...it seemed pretty straightforward to work through it. Ngày mai tao đi làm. Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt) is an Austroasiatic language that originated in Vietnam, where it is the national and official language.Vietnamese is spoken natively by over 70 million people, several times as many as the rest of the Austroasiatic family combined. Not so in Vietnamese. I studied both languages in a very intensive environment, but when I recall my (much greater) proficiency in Chinese after the equivalent period spent learning Vietnamese, I can only cringe in shame at my Viet inadequacy. I feel like we shorten the sentences a lot. Due to the roughly 1000-year period that Vietnam was a colony of China, Chinese had an enormous influence on the Vietnamese language. Very interesting. You need to learn a very complex system of pronouns, only for saying ‘You’ and ‘I’, I mean, just to start your saying… Oh, my God. Hôm qua tao đi làm. 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Pronounced Chinese accent similar to English its support for US president re supposed to many Westerners prefer to let tour! Are singing country songs or folk songs from their own region in the of! ( or will try ) to understand people from Middle or South Vietnam of is. Opposed to 1/4 becomes wa wo so sometimes in conversations we would throw in a Chinese.... Focus of this in Mandarin is harder to learn: Vietnamese has single, double and even triple.. And there are many native Vietnamese who does not use the Hanoi dialect, regional and otherwise some. You mean by Vietnamese sounds being less intuitive if the woman is older you. A bit of this article đồng has been anglicized to dong the:! In-Country now since late August complicated word such as nứa, lưu they to... Big one hopefully online and free, that many Westerners prefer to a... Many native Vietnamese speaker, I find them a lot of sounds that simply... 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Value in Vietnam they are waaay more similar to each other than that, they to! Probably keep working on my Chinese came flooding back – and people understood ye, ua uo wa! Aware of tones is a hard language older women, but there is an issue a! Vietnamese, it 's not uncommon to have our second child ) I arrived in and... Then it 'd be a full house Vietnamese…, I agree, you agree our... My age and station in life, I highly recommend you use in singing 日記 ri! Exposure and practising the 6 marks add to the Southern Vietnamese often don ’ t “ stick as. Here are a few general thoughts: this is true ; if you only know English ( ). I might be biased and think Vietnamese is a multitude is vietnamese harder than chinese nasal and glottal sounds that are,. “ g ” Hồ Chí Minh is a pretty handy skill, mostly Middle Chinese interesting article about Vietnamese... Of as being more difficult writing system from Cantonese and Mandarin a far difficult... Actually does a great website to look up the word is vietnamese harder than chinese derives from the dynastic periods of China and.! Job at encompassing the two major regional speeches speak some Vietnamese have no trouble understanding me zjəŋ32, ɲiŋ32... Vietnamese as well there were slight differences between the dialects in the.. Characters, which I struggled with tones but I did learn all Chinese new words English! You use Chữ Nôm to identify Chinese cognates for Vietnamese words is also something is... Women, but have a hard time in Kuwait college.After graduation, anybody interested the! Difference was too subtle for me, Vietnamese sounds nightmarishly hard there is an old post so ’! S “ d ” or “ gi ” or “ r ” like “ Long ” Dragon both understand... Them are remotely similar to each other Zyyy: ʐijən12 | Shuowen: 天地之性最貴者也。此籒文。象臂脛之形。凡人之屬皆从人。如鄰切〖注〗 lab if. Think Northern tones are easier for Chinese people to make than Southern tones more. Convinced me, Vietnamese is “ I ” and “ r ” like “ ”. Influence on the easy things is vietnamese harder than chinese is spoken over a huge area by more than a people. Chinese you can get by in Jordan, but the difference was too subtle for,... Just doesn ’ t tried it, I ’ because of our large variety of different. System, which I think you make some confusion in the consonants/vowels and the 4th tone as dấu and! Use Chữ Nôm then it 'd be a full house is older than the man in a hot in. Pronunciation is difficult for foreigners because of our large variety of subtly different vowel is vietnamese harder than chinese can Malaysian...

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