Last year, I have a plan to travel to Vietnam as a backpacker. It’s my first time to visit this country, so I thought I should learn some Vietnamese. Then, I bought a Vietnamese language book for Chinese beginner.
This book teaches pronunciation and some topics about daily conversation. After self-studied whole book and its CD, I thought I was able to speak few sentences in some topics:
- Greeting
- Family
- Shopping
- Asking for directions
- Date & Time
- Order in a restaurant
- Simple conversation in Hotel
During this trip, the words I often used are:
| For greeting |
|---|
| xin chào (for all gender, all age) |
| chào anh (for male) |
| chào chị (for female) |
| For shopping / restaurant |
|---|
| Bao nhiêu tiền? (how much is it?) |
| Cho tôi cái này. (give me this) |
| Không. (No) |
However, the reality is that I cannot use most of what I have just learnt because of the three main problems. The first one is pronunciation. the listener often don’t understand what I said. It noticed me my pronunciation is not accurate. Secondly, the native Vietnamese speaker speak too fast. Apparently, I need more input to practice listening skill. And the finally, some topics is less useful for current era. For example, asking for directions, date & time are easily to be solved by smartphone.
But I still enjoy to communicate with foreigner in their native language. Some vender once hear I use Vietnamese, ask me where am I from and keep up a small talk.