#dissscafe

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