I have learned Vietnamese for 10 weeks. Here’s my takeaway.
Xin chào các bạn!
I have been learning Vietnamese for 10 weeks, and I want to share my journey with all the beginners out there trying to pick up the language.
I want to preface this article by saying that I am Malaysian Chinese, and I speak Chinese at a native level, as well as Malay and English proficiently. So compared to anglophone speakers, I have an advantage in learning Vietnamese because it contains quite a large number of loanwords from the Chinese language.
Before picking up a new language, I think we can prepare ourselves by thinking through a few questions: Why do I want to learn? What level do I want to reach? What daily practices do I need to do to reach that level?
For myself, I am a PhD student majoring in Southeast Asian studies, attempting to expand my field of research to Vietnam. I also love Vietnam very much and consider it a destination for my future career and residence. Therefore, I need a much higher level of proficiency than what is required for travel or vacation purposes. I want to challenge myself to reach C1 proficiency in three years.
At this stage, I try to keep my methods as simple as possible. I collect vocabulary from various sources, including YouTube videos, Instagram shorts, Facebook posts, and beginner-level reading materials. I copy this vocabulary into ChatGPT and ask it to generate very short example sentences. Then, I input these sentences into my Anki deck. On average, I add 10–15 cards each day. Although this doesn’t seem like a lot, it piles up quickly, and now I spend more than an hour every day just reviewing my cards.
The reason I choose to use sentence-based instead of word-based flashcards is that I believe learning vocabularies in sentences is much more effective. Also, this way, the most frequent words appear to me repeatedly and naturally from each sentence, so I internalize them better.
After studying over 1000 cards, I have a few takeaways:
- Spend more time getting your pronunciation right before moving on to vocabulary, especially tones and vowels. For example, I didn’t realize I was mispronouncing “a,” “â,” and “ă” until the seventh week. Fixing bad pronunciation habits later is much more difficult.
- A private tutor isn’t always necessary. It depends on how much you are willing to spend. If you are a motivated and disciplined learner, you can get by using online resources. Of course, it’s helpful to have a few Vietnamese friends to chat with from time to time. However, AI chatbots these days are so advanced that they often do an excellent job explaining various usages of a word, almost as comprehensively as an experienced tutor would.
- Expose yourself to diverse learning materials to keep things interesting and engaging. Language learning is a long journey, and it’s more about long-term consistency than short-term productivity. If you like history, learn about Vietnam’s history. If you like music, learn from their songs.
Learning Vietnamese is challenging and can feel defeating at times, but we need to remind ourselves why we first started.
Mình yêu thích tiếng Việt. Mình yêu thích Việt Nam.
Hẹn gặp lại sau nhé!
P/S. Shoutout to my Vietnamese teacher, Cô Dương, who gave me a 10-hour lesson. Although it’s impossible to cover all the basics for my further self-learning, I appreciate her dedication to making Vietnamese accessible. If you’re interested, you can contact her on Instagram @shinegivietnam.
