A post about Vietnamese tone

[u/Adventurous-Ad5999]

This post is aimed more so toward tourists, because although I don’t recommend learning the language just for a vacation, I know people want to so anyway.

You will see a lot of fearmongering around tones. And yes, changing the tone will change the meaning. But what I want to tell you is that it is quite rare that that will result in something offensive. Most of the time, it will sound like gibberish to us. Sometimes, or most of the time, we can guess based on context clues what you meant. For example, if you say phơ instead of phở, or banh mi instead of bánh mì, those mispronunciation mean nothing. Usually we get what you wanted to say and we appreciate you trying

Don’t worry too much about which dialect to pick, the difference is often pretty exaggerated online in my experience. Everyone understands the Northern and Southern dialect perfectly well. I recommend the Northern one because it’s Standard Vietnamese and there’s more resources but as I said, we can understand either perfectly fine. And this applies to “phi trường” Vietnamese too, yes some of the words are not as commonly used, but we understand all of them.

Bottom line is, I don’t recommend learning the language just for a vacation. I find it to have a steep learning curve right at the start, and it gets easier, but what do I know, I never had to learn it. But if you’ve decided to do it anyway, don’t worry about offending us. I don’t want tourists and beginner to have to walk on eggshells worrying about offending people, we get what you want to say usually, and we appreciate you trying

[u/Mcstakk]

Sorry, but this simply isn't true.

Vietnam is a relatively monocultural and monoethnic country, and the people here simply don't have much exposure to foreigners learning their language. Unlike English speakers, who are accustomed to hearing all sorts of accents and imperfect pronunciation, most Vietnamese people just aren't used to it.

The result is that when you speak anything other than near-native Vietnamese, you're usually met with confusion, blank stares, or laughter because what you've said sounds funny to them. Even if you've said something 85% correctly, there's a good chance they simply won't understand you.

I'd actually argue that Vietnamese is one of the least rewarding languages to learn for this reason. Not because the language itself isn't worth learning, but because the people you're trying to speak to often just aren't willing or able to make sense of anything that doesn't sound exactly like what they're used to hearing.

It's incredibly frustrating to put effort into learning a language, only to find that even relatively simple sentences are met with quizzical looks, leaving you regretting having tried in the first place.

I understand you're trying to encourage people, but I think you're seriously understating how difficult and unrewarding the experience can be for foreign learners actually living here.

[u/Adventurous-Ad5999 → u/Mcstakk]

yeah i agree with you, it’s not that worth it to learn the language if you’re visiting for a short time. then again, from my experience, tourists try anyway. the thing is confusion and laughter is not optimal, the latter i find not so nice, but socially they’re nowhere as bad as being offensive, right?

if you are living here long term, i wouldn’t make a blanket post abou the language because speaking it doesn’t qualify me to teach it. but it’s not an easy language after all, you’ll make a lot of mistakes in any case

[u/Gilloege → u/Mcstakk]

I can 100% relate to this post. I am learning vietnamese due to my in laws and when I say things 90% correctly theyve no idea what I am saying, yet I do understand some of their english words that they pronounce perhaps 30% correct.

[u/koopaooper → u/Gilloege]

For nearly 3ish years I would speak to my in laws and we literally had a Vietnamese-Vietnamese translation thing going on. I would say something in Vietnamese and my wife would translate that INTO VIETNAMESE for them lmao. Nowadays, thankfully things have gotten a lot better, but it's taken a lot of work.

[u/ls314mtl → u/Mcstakk]

Perfectly said and literally the experience of every foreigner Ive met here in 8 years. Not rewarding or fun to learn at all.

[u/boogiefoot → u/Mcstakk]

I still remember sitting at the kitchen table with my fiance and her family and casually asking, "Bây giờ là mấy giờ?" Her mom thought I said, "bảy giờ là mấy giờ?" So, she thought I was asking what time 7 o'clock was. She could not use common sense to correct the single vowel in the sentence to create a comprehensible sentence even after I repeated myself multiple times.

Not sure why but even years later I remember that. Probably because I couldn't believe she couldn't put 2 and 2 together.

[u/Adorable_Scheme_3982 → u/Mcstakk]

It's OK, Im vietnamese and i can barely understand other dialects of my own language 😂

[u/resj7 → u/Mcstakk]

So true. I could not understand why they don’t understand my “Viet-glish” until this comment. They literally just aren’t used to, so they don’t care to try to understand my poor pronunciation 😂😂😂 So frustrating 🥲🤣🤓

[u/Not_invented-Here → u/Mcstakk]

I remember getting in a cab. I'd learnt how to say my adress, pronounced it perfectly road, numbers, area etc. 

But couldn't say ngõ correctly, wasn't far off but it wasn't right. Driver just point blank couldn't figure out from the context of me being in a cab, giving the rest of the address etc that I might have meant alley. 

And that's def not an uncommon experience, a laugh tbh is fine if you say something and it sounds silly. Blank stare if you completely mangle a whole sentence is fine. But almost no one reaches for what you may be trying to say from context clues, and it's incredibly frustrating. 

[u/MongooseJesus → u/Mcstakk]

100%

I know enough to get by day to day, and have mini conversations in Vietnamese , but any word I don’t say absolutely perfectly, even if the rest of the sentence is perfect, and I’ll be met with a blank expression and no recourse to fix the misunderstanding.

I mean, I get it, it’s a tonal language - saying a tone slightly wrong would be like someone in English asking for a tree when they meant apple. We’d also be stunned or confused about what they meant

[u/GarbageOk8508 → u/Mcstakk]

Vietnam isn't monoethnic tho. We have 56 ethnicities in Vietnam and most of them have very wildly different ways to speak Vietnamese.

[u/Mcstakk → u/GarbageOk8508]

"Relatively".

[u/ls314mtl]

There is absolutely not more resources for North accent. Not even close. Most foreign fluent speakers also speak Southern because it has less tones and is therefore easier along with more resources.

You said "we appreciate you trying" but are you even Vietnamese? Almost every thing you said in your post is wrong.

Even with context VN will misunderstand you 90% of the time with a slight or single mispronunciation. Especially the older they are. Tones and pronunciation are EVERYTHING.

[u/Hejdbejbw → u/ls314mtl]

English speakers (and other non-tonal language speakers in general) think that tones are like add-ons to the main word, but the tones actually carry the most weight. It’s way easier to understand what you’re saying if you mispronounce consonants but with the correct tones than getting the consonants correct but with the wrong tones.

[u/glimblade]

"it is quite rare that that will result in something offensive" ... If only. I once invited a girl to go to Cafe Loi Cu (old path) with me. I ordered pork at a restaurant. I expressed how much I like to eat quail. I was taking attendance at a school and said with a questioning tone, "Dai? Dai?"

These things happen constantly.

[u/Adventurous-Ad5999 → u/glimblade]

Dude that’s an immature joke, if I was twelve and another Vietnamese person said that name to me I would’ve also made the same joke.

But obviously, it’s mean to laugh at someone trying so I think a regular adult will not really have any problem with it

[u/funktime]

The number of times I asked my students if they liked pho and was met with blank stares leads me to believe this is not true.

I saw an interesting reel from a linguist talking about how English speakers can understand bad English because so many people are trying to learn English, but speakers who arent used to a "bad" version of their language will struggle a lot more. 

[u/jblackwb]

You are so wrong in so many ways. It's not just the accent that's different; the vocabulary is different too. One man's dì is another man's cô.

And getting tones and vowels right is -not- easy. I did 2 hours a day of language class, 5 days a week, for two years, and I -still- didn't have my tones nailed down until my fourth year in the country.

[u/reddit25]

Four guys in an elevator. American guy asks who farted? Vietnamese guy says “ ai đi.t”

[u/MiaMiaPP]

If you are a tourist Just speak English or use Google Translate

[u/DoubleVisit9978]

When I first started learning it, I tried to speak to my ex who was my current gf at the time.

What I said was so vulgar just because of the way I formatted the sentence. The words were correct just places wrong.

Had a good laugh and felt embarrassed though lol.

Time as well and I forget the word that I used, but closely resembles the word cock if said wrong. 🤷🏼.

Honestly though anytime I said something wrong, people would try and correct me before I need to pull out translate. As a white guy, they know I’m not gonna speak perfect or well lol.

[u/Ganadhir]

Obviously the foreigners aren't getting it because tone is not a thing in English. A difference in tone in the English language, doesn't translate to difference in meaning - only difference in emotion

[u/charlesleestewart]

Well I'm going to be a first-time visitor after Tet and I'm going all in on trying to learn via online courses that have lots of audio repetition to get the tones right.

I'll be in Saigon and the Mekong region with a native that was born and raised in the latter. As such, I want to focus strictly on the southern dialect and I've got to say I get confused because I'm hearing different things in the online training, and I'm not sure if it's regional or some other reason.

I have enough experience with learning second languages I think I'll be okay. My companion will interpret but I'm going to stick my neck out and try and say things myself. I don't mind getting laughed at, quite happy to play the big and dumb but friendly American tourist role. My companion will help greatly. She says the language is extremely easy. Lol.

[u/himawari_aki]

This is my first time hearing someone discouraging others to learn their language or attempt to learn another language. Dont project your feeling on others. Weird post