Language In Vietnam
Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam. Vietnamese is a tonal language like Thai and most Chinese dialects that use a shift in tone to inflect different meanings, which makes it difficult for the Westerners to comprehend. However, people might be surprised to find out that even though it differs greatly from western languages, its basic grammar is in fact pretty simple. The parts of speech are not complicated and the verbs remain unchanged in both the past tense and future forms. Major difficulties are found in pronunciation especially when it comes to particular sounds.
There are four major dialects spoken among Vietnamese speakers: northern dialect spoken around Hanoi, central northern dialect spoken near Vinh, central central dialect spoken around Hue and southern dialect used in Ho Chi Minh City.
In addition, there is no de facto standard while using Hanoi dialect as broadcasting medium or within educational system. However, most Northerners would advise you stick with their accent as they naturally believe that Southern accents belong to “hai lua” (country people), but your choice should be based on where you plan to live. If you work at Saigon (the commercial center of Vietnam), then everyday you communicate with people whose native language is southern accent.
Apart from that written Latin alphabet has been an ease for learners of this language. Vietnamese orthography exactly represents the pronunciation unlike English where letter sounds vary or do not exist.
Nonetheless, despite the fact that Chinese characters are no longer used for writing Vietnamese the Vietnamese lexicon still remains strongly influenced by Chinese language. Some words originated from Chinese roots or characters such as “representative” (dai dien) or bird flu while others were borrowed from Chinese like hotel children communist party (cum ga). If one already knows some Chinese studying Vietnamese becomes much easier. Additionally, there exist several borrowing terms from French and English into Vietnamese.
The majority of local inhabitants hardly ever hear a foreign accent but they always appreciate any undertaking to learn their language. Consequently, it might be frustrating for learners when no one understands what they are trying to say. Thus, at the hotels and children, ears are more open to foreign accents so that there are even instances when children instead of adults will help you with your wrongly pronounced Vietnamese words.
Ho Chi Minh City is the home of a large Chinese minority community which speaks Cantonese besides Vietnamese. Furthermore, in the most remote corners of the country you can find many ethnic minorities who speak different languages belonging to Mon-Khmer, Tai-Kadai and Austronesian groups.
Many young Vietnamese pick up English as a subject in school hence some of them have little information about this language although they usually have poor level of proficiency. In addition, most hotel and airline staff can communicate in English anyway. Normally multilingual in both English and Vietnamese signposts.
Notwithstanding its colonial history, where French was the medium of instruction, gone are the days when a few educated elites among the elderly would actually speak French and it is not as effective as English for communicating with locals. Some of the largest luxury hotel chains in the world employ multilingual individuals working in major cities such as Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul who can fluently communicate in languages like Chinese, Japanese or Korean.
