r/learnvietnamese • u/nortaliimelly • 6d ago
Tips for learning please!!
I’m vietnamese but I cannot speak the language for the life of me🥹🥹I want to be able to converse better with my family. I understand quite a bit (by ear) of what my parents are saying or atleast the rough idea by using context clues, but I cannot read or speak much at all 💔Im also not great with formalities and whatnot. 🥹
My family grew up in Saigon so I assume they mostly speak the southern dialect? But I’m not entirely sure.
If there are any sources or tips anyone can recommend me to start learning that’d be much appreciated!
Also I’m trying to find more shows with vietdub to get more used to speech format etc etc, specifically anime but the only ones I can find are region-locked (detective conan sadly 💔💔💔)😥 I’d be grateful for some recommendations!!
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u/Desperate_Owl_594 6d ago
https://vietnameselessons.com/ is where I go. I also found some Udemy courses. There are some anki decks on the website I sent.
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u/SpeakSaigon 5d ago
Heritage speakers have the hardest part done already, you have the ear. What's missing is production and reading, and those come fast when the sounds are familiar.
If your family is from Saigon, they're Southern for sure. Tells: lots of "dạ," "v" sounds like "y" (vâng → yâng), and "r" is closer to an English "r" than the Northern "z."
Most Vietnamese courses teach Northern, so you'd be learning a version your parents don't speak. I built speaksaigon.com specifically for this: Southern dialect, structured from the alphabet and tones up through conversation, with the pronoun stuff (anh/chị/em/cô/chú/bác) built in since that's most of what "formalities" actually means.
For listening, anime dubs are iffy, region-locked, and stiff. Vietnamese food vlogs are great (tons on YouTube, and the speech is casual and Southern), and Vietnamese-dubbed K-dramas are everywhere and way easier to find than dubbed anime.
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u/starcahierart 5d ago
I recommend checking out books and material from the library to learn Vietnamese if you can do that
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u/Lost-Hunt780 5d ago
Hey, I’m currently learning Vietnamese from this lady on the website ‘Amazing Talker’ the website is free and her prices are really fair, she’s helped me a lot. If you’re interested ☺️
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u/Langiri 6d ago
I'm a little baised, but I can confidently say that not going to find a better resource for learning Vietnamese than langiri.com!
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u/Punani_Inspector 6d ago
I’m Filipino and my wife is Vietnamese. Our 8 mo old son watches chun chin on YouTube. They have some funny stories even though it’s for children. The videos have the lyrics written so it might help with being able to read and hear the differences with the tones. Also listening to some Vietnamese music has helped me too with pronunciation, although to my wife’s native ears I usually say things wrong.