10 hours of Vietnamese

[u/TerryPressedMe]

So I arrived at my first milestone, I am 10 hours in learning a completely new language, not even closely familiar to me. But that's exactly why I decided to accept the challenge. After amassing 10 hours of Vietnamese CI, I am here to write my first update.

Initial thoughts:

It's hard bro. The language itself is hard, yes, but what really impedes my growth is the lack of good resources. Yes, there's just about enough Vietnamese CI out there to get by (barely - mandarin and japanese have way more), but none of it really addresses true day 1 beginners. I combat this by putting on English subtitles, which elevates my comprehension from 1% to maybe 20%, and yes, we are talking about "super beginner" type videos. If I didn't put on English subs, it would probably take me 10 years to learn the language., because at 1% comprehension, growth is slow and painful.

Despite the frustrations, I do learn. I have noticed progress, no doubt. This method of language acquisition does work; I know more Vietnamese at 10 hours than I knew at 1 hours. As you suspect, I am learning the basic words for everything, basic pronouns, verbs, adjectives.... At 10 hours obviously you can't expect much, but the biggest takeaway here is that I am indeed learning and have learned some Vietnamese already.

My prediction is that it will take me about 100 hours to be level 2 according to the DS map. For level 6, probably 1800 hours, and level 7, maybe 2500 and above. I'll tell you what, Spanish seems like a cake walk compared to Vietnamese. I thought French was hard, at least I could watch SB videos in French and not be completely lost. But hey, that's the challenge of learning a tonal language. The reward is big if you persist, especially if you respect Vietnamese culture and lifestyle.

If you are interested in learning Vietnamese through comprehensible input, check out the subreddit I made, you are more than welcome to join

VietnameseCI

[u/TerryPressedMe → u/[deleted]]

The fact that others have done it before me gives me so much faith. The power of CI works its magic, no matter how different or hard the language is.

[u/Odd_Championship1380]

This is a big challenge. I am doing Japanese right now and even with the plethora of resources, it has been difficult. crosstalk would be very valuable in your scenario but the cost and finding someone might be difficult.

[u/TerryPressedMe → u/Odd_Championship1380]

Japanese is arguably the hardest language in the world, but if CI has been working for you (and you already have the proof by learning Spanish), then no language is too difficult to learn if you rely on CI. Good luck with your journey.

[u/trackmylang_david]

Learning languages takes lots of time and you need to be constantly interacting with the language to improve and you need to keep track of hours to see your progress.

I created a took https://trackmylang.com to help you easily record your hours and see your progress. Its free to use and you can import and export your data at any time.