For a long time I thought that learning Vietnamese was something that was beyond me. Even though my family are all Vietnamese, I never really spoke it growing up and most of it was forgotten by the time I was an adult, Growing up I always heard things like
You only get better at a language by living there.
It’s expensive to take Vietnamese lessons.
It’s harder to learn a language when you are older.
The best time to learn a language is when you are a kid when your brain is still developing.
After many family dinners of nodding whilst pretending to understand what they are saying, at 24 years old I said that I was going to finally attempt to learn this language.
Fast forward four years and I’ve actually felt like I am beginning to get there. I even had a 15-minute conversation with a native taxi driver!
I am a long way off fluent, and I feel like I took a long time trying out different ways before my effort finally saw any progress. I hope writing about this could also encourage others to take their first steps towards learning the language more and hopefully more efficiently than I did!
For any adults who want to start learning Vietnamese, here are the top three things that helped improve my Vietnamese.
Found a tutor.
Having Vietnamese lessons is one of the best investments I made.
It was only when I found a tutor that I felt my progress with Vietnamese really improved. They’ll be able to take you through the basics like the alphabet and basic sentences.
Thanks to the internet, you can actually find a native tutor in Vietnam for a reasonable price. There is a huge range from with a standard price being $12/ hour but this can range depending what they offer and experience in teaching.
You can also filter by time and schedule so that you can find a tutor who is available for the hours that suit you best.
I used an app called Preply and found my Vietnamese tutor on there.
Downloaded an app called Anki
I’m rubbish at remembering new words. Unless I hear a word really often, I generally forget most words that I see or hear (including in English as well!). One thing that’s helped me is a flashcard app called Anki.
Anki makes the most of how our brains remember things. The best way I can describe how this works is with this story.
When someone asks you, “what’s the vietnamese word for umbrella?”
You might go “OOH.. what… I know this…. It’s uhhhh… ummmmm…. Ummmmm… give me one second”
Well in that space, more is happening than you think. The brain is making new connections and rewiring so that you can remember this word better in future. And the more often and longer you make your brain think like this, the more likely you are to remember it.
By the time you’ve been asked this question for the 99th time your brain should very quickly say “cái ô”. Look at that, the flashcards are paying off already.
Whenever I come across new words I want to learn I pop this into the app and makes your brain think like this.
Focus on learning ways to keep a conversation first.
When I started I just wanted to try and have conversations with other people and talk about myself a little. So I made an effort to only learn something if I feel I would use it again in the future. I found that one of the first things that got better was being able to hold conversations with other people. Which meant you could practice even more (woo!).
I found that I learnt phrases like “My hair looks like a broom” way before I learnt what a “roof” was. It also surprised me how often I had bad hair days.
I found that this did mean I had really random phrases in my flashcards app. When you have a load of sentences like these in your locker, you can be surprised how often you use them and how other sentences follow similar patterns.
Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom of this!
PS: I share more stories, memory tricks, technology and media that has helped me learn Vietnamese as an adult on my Substack. You can read it here.
