Speaking Southern Vietnamese in a week (8 Days)
Inspired by Tim Ferriss’s Learning Tagalog in 4 Days experiment, I will try to speak Vietnamese in a week.
I had created a general plan to learn any language at My general guide to learn Any Language in 30 hours. This is more specific plan for learning Southern Vietnamese.
Goal: Able to have a simple conversation in Southern Vietnamese near restaurant in 8 days i.e. basic conversation, ordering food, food review, paying bill....
Why Vietnamese is easy
Vietnamese has no genders as in French, Spanish, German, or just about any European language except English.
Vietnamese doesn’t have plurals. If you really need to be specific, just slap an extra word in front of the noun, like một người (one person), nhũng người (some people), or các người (all the people).
Vietnamese has no confusing verb endings. Vietnamese is a completely non-inflective language – no word ever changes its form in any context. Learn the word nói, and you know how to say “speak” in all contexts and tenses for all speakers. I nói, you nói, he or she nói, we nói, you all nói, and they nói. That’s dozens, if not hundreds of hours of work saved compared to learning almost any European language.
Vietnamese tenses can be learned In two minutes. Just stick one of these 5 words (đã, mới, đang, sắp, sẽ) in front of it.
If you’re English speaker (most likely) or other languages that use Latin script, you don’t have to learn a new alphabet.
Vietnamese spelling is highly consistent and unambiguous. You can always tell from reading a single Vietnamese word exactly how it’s supposed to be pronounced (Never for English).
Vietnamese grammar is virtually non-existent. Most of the time, you can just say the minimum amount of words needed to get your point across and the result is grammatically correct Vietnamese, no matter how “broken” it would sound in English.
Vietnamese vocabulary is highly logical. A huge percentage of Vietnamese vocabulary is formed by just combining two words in a logical manner, whereas in English you'd have to learn an entirely new third word that sounds completely different.
My Advantages
My native language is Chinese Mandarin with the 4 Tones, so it is relatively easier to pick up the 6 Tones Vietnamese.
I speak Cantonese. Lots of loan words from Chinese, I have something to associate the new vocabulary with.
Forecast Milestones 1. sugar high @ day 1 2. immediate drop and low point @ day 2 3. rapid progress after low point, followed by a plateau @ day 3 4. inflection point @ day 6 5. fluency @ day 8
Deconstruction (Compression)
Pronunciation in Southern
Consonants
Vowels
Tones
Phrases and Vocabulary for Basic, Self-Intro, Food, Travel, ...
Selection
Focus on Annie's Youtube Videos Only @ https://www.youtube.com/user/AnnieVietnamese for
conversational
slang/idiom
vocabulary
Convert them into Language Matrix @ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RzZ6zfIzddM_GMgo0PpCBPZ_oNxFryd2rnwNEnE-llk/edit?usp=sharing
Use Forvo for pronunciation if needed: https://forvo.com/user/kafechew/ (don’t use Google Translation Voice, not accurate)
Memorise 2 Vietnamese Songs for ear/mouth training
Em tôi (My dear)
Sài Gòn Cà phê sữ đá (Saigon Iced Coffee with Milk)
Sequencing (Frequency + Encode)
One Cycle/Session (2 hours) =
5 minutes: Meditation/Visualisation with Potter Marsh (Glacier Bay by Dennis Hysom)
25 minutes: Practise songs
5 minutes: break
25 minutes: Practise the old Language Matrix
5 minutes: break
25 minutes: Conversational Video —> Phrases/Vocabularies —> Language Matrix
5 minutes: break
25 minutes: Practise the new/old Language Matrix
Big break: stretching & push ups
At the end of the day, public logging my learning progress @ https://blog.kafechew.com/tagged/vietnamese as a review/reflection.
Stakes
Don’t eat meal every day until I’ve accomplished a session (meal is my reward).
Immersion
Changed language to Vietnamese
Facebook Language Setting
Macbook
Handphone