liddytime wrote:Darren,
I noticed you were considering Glossika Vietnamese. I was considering picking this up but like you said, it is in the Northern Dialect. I live on the West Coast of the US where, probably, 90% of the Vietnamese spoken in in the Southern Dialect. Do you think the dialects are close enough that one could learn one (Northern) and speak in the other (Southern)? I really love the Glossika method but don't know if this would just confuse me...
Hi liddytime! It's a good question. I bought Glossika Vietnamese (Northern), and listened to a little bit but not started using it yet.
There are differences in both pronunciation (sounds and tones) and also some words between Northern and Southern Vietnamese. I would say that the Southern dialect is a lot more "relaxed" and less tense, vowels tend to blend into one sound, and two of the tones become the same. e.g to ask for the bill in a restaurant, you say "Tinh tien". In the north, it's something like "Ting Tee-en" in the south "Tuhn Teen" (excuse my very bad approximations!). The tones in the north are a lot... "sharper".
On the one hand, Northern Vietnamese is the "standard" and probably you would be understood by people speaking Southern Vietnamese. On the other hand, you would probably have difficulty understanding Southern Vietnamese speakers if you learned from Glossika!
They did say that they were working on a Southern Vietnamese version of Glossika - but I haven't heard anything more about that recently...