Darren's Language Journey (Russian/Vietnamese)

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pained
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Aug 31, 2016 12:11 pm
Location: Ho Chi Minh City
Languages: English (N), Russian (B2), Vietnamese (beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3712
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Re: Darren's Language Journey (Russian/Vietnamese)

Postby pained » Tue Oct 11, 2016 3:59 am

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...
1 x
: 3 / 100 SC 100 Russian Books :
: 5 / 100 SC 100 Russian Films :
: 276 / 1178 Memrise Comprehensive Vietnamese :
: 371 / 2535 Memrise AS/A2 Russian :
: 980 / 10000 Memrise Target Words Russian/Vietnamese :

User avatar
pained
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Aug 31, 2016 12:11 pm
Location: Ho Chi Minh City
Languages: English (N), Russian (B2), Vietnamese (beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3712
x 22

Re: Darren's Language Journey (Russian/Vietnamese)

Postby pained » Tue Oct 11, 2016 4:22 am

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I've posted, but I've only slipped on the updates - not the learning. Memrise has helped push me to learn each day, but I must admit that's been my main effort. Having said that, I now have a 21 day streak in Memrise! Also, I did manage to start a new book in Russian and watch a couple of Russian films. On the Vietnamese side, there's been a lot of natural exposure and I've tried to use the words I know in brief conversations.

What I would like to do over the next week, and trying to be realistic with one main activity for each day:
- keep up with Memrise (every day)
- read more of the Russian book (every day)
- watch 2 more episodes of Banditskiy Peterburg (2 days)
- do 2 chapters of Colloquial Russian (2 days)
- do 2 chapters of Elementary Vietnamese (2 days)
- write a log entry here about how I'm using Memrise to record/learn vocabulary from the videos I watch... (1 day)

Now, I know that I was going to learn Vietnamese and Russian on different, alternate weeks, but with maintaining Memrise in both languages, every day I found myself studying a bit of each. For now, then, I'll carry on like that, but try to have a "main" language each day to make the extra effort with.
0 x
: 3 / 100 SC 100 Russian Books :
: 5 / 100 SC 100 Russian Films :
: 276 / 1178 Memrise Comprehensive Vietnamese :
: 371 / 2535 Memrise AS/A2 Russian :
: 980 / 10000 Memrise Target Words Russian/Vietnamese :

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liddytime
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2016 12:44 am
Location: Oregon
Languages: English (Native)
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Russian

A1
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Re: Darren's Language Journey (Russian/Vietnamese)

Postby liddytime » Tue Oct 11, 2016 9:25 pm

pained wrote:They did say that they were working on a Southern Vietnamese version of Glossika - but I haven't heard anything more about that recently...


Thanks for the reply. I will say the Southern accent sounds much nicer to my ears but most of the educational material seems to use the Northern accent.

Unfortunately, I don't think the Glossika Southern course will be out for a while. It sounds like their focus at the current time is trying to find and correct the errors in their current courses rather than release new ones. Hopefully I'm wrong though!
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Finolia
Yellow Belt
Posts: 52
Joined: Wed Mar 22, 2017 1:21 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: German (N), English (C1), French (B2), Spanish (A2), Vietnamese (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=7587
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Re: Darren's Language Journey (Russian/Vietnamese)

Postby Finolia » Wed May 24, 2017 2:43 pm

Hey there :)
I know it's been a while since the last post here but I was so happy to find someone who is learning Vietnamese. Soo..are you still learning Vietnamese? How did it go and how is it going? What did you do to get better? I'm currently learning it (just started) and would love to hear about the process of someone else :)
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Please feel free to correct whatever I write :P

Elementary Vietnamese: 8 / 14


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