Hey guys,
    [/tab]Do we have any active and regular Vietnamese member on board ? I'm looking for someone who's well conversant in both Vietnamese and English. Errrr.. the things that I've landed up with a real cute vietnamese girlfriend while I was on my Cambodia-Vietnam trip some 2 weeks back. Problem is that while she understands english, she speaks just about 10 words of it. When I was present there, face-to-face, our conversations still happened mostly owing to my immense patience and 6 years of hardcore training in Thailand - trying to drum stuff into the heads of the locals (read "communicate")- using all forms of sign and body language with a touch of broken english here and there..

[tab]But now that I'm back here - carrying on a decent conversation with her over chat or phone is getting to be a big headache. So I was wondering if I could talk to one of our viet members and pick up a few common words/phrases in vietnamese - partly to impress her and partly to get our conversations rolling a bit further..

    Any help will be greatly appreciated
m^e

*BUMP* Anyone around ?? Hehe

 

 

 

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ever heard of books software schools and what not to learn a language
of course the worse part is trying to memorize everything I have an ok memory but when It comes to trying to speak a fluent language I have a better chance at making the new OS that makes windows look like junk

and you know the rules about bumping topics like that.

But me personally I have no idea of who.

But to help you out in your quest of learning a language here are some sites for you.

http://www.vietcali.com/qevp.htm
http://www.worldroom.com/pages/wrnhcm/customs/hcm_lang.phtml
http://www.achildsdesire.org/vietnamesewords.htm
http://www.linguanaut.com/english_vietnamese

of how accurate some of this stuff is thats up to you but it should help you out though.

 

 

 

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miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG: Ask her, she may in Russian speaks better, than in English? (Many Vietnamese well speak in Russian). If she speaks in Russian I without problems can help you. If you do not know how to ask her, whether she speaks in Russian, write it: Привет, ты говоришь по-русски?

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Would the young people speak Russian though?

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Hehehe - thanks for all the help guys. Nope she doesn't speak Russian.. at least the younger generations in Vietnam don't. But among the old lot - who lived under French rule - you'll find a bunch of them well conversant in various world languages.

Saint-Micahel - I did find a couple of those sites specially VietCali - that helped me roll off.. but then again if I can consult someone whos a native speaker then translating phrases becomes much easier. Besides - what I understood of the language is that individual words may mean something - but when put together as phrases - they mean something completely different. So there...

Moreover if you tried learning languages like Vietnamese and Thai (which I'm mastered to some extent) - you'd realize how difficult it is, because of the TONES they have. Thai has 5 and Vietnamese I believe has 6 TONES. These range from Rising, Falling, Flat, Low etc..It's these tones that make these languages so hard for us non-native speakers. It's an immensely difficult task to bend your tongue or vocal chord to produce the right tones, unless you've been trained since childhood. If you get the tones wrong even by a tiny margin, you can end up meaning something completely opposite of what you intended - and in most cases something QUITE OFFENSIVE

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