The Difficulties of Learning Vietnamese

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The Difficulties of Learning Vietnamese

Sonny Side is the host of the "Best Ever Food Review Show" on YouTube, a series devoted to exploring and appreciating the world's unique culinary offerings.

This clip was taken from JRE #1925 w/Sonny Side.

Host: Joe Rogan @joerogan

Guest: Sonny Side

Producer: Jamie Vernon @jamievernon

#joerogan #JRE #jre #podcast #comedy #jordanpeterson #elonmusk #sonnyside

[FukUrUsernameRules]

That thing he said "Language Anticipation Anxiety" is 100% a real thing. I lived in Japan for 5 years and every once in a while I would walk up to someone in a restaurant and say something in perfect Japanese and they wouldn't understand me. It was cos they saw me coming, and inside their own heads they were thinking, "oh shit this guy is gonna come up and start speaking English at me and I'm not sure I'm gonna understand". So they're so focused on "ENGLISH" that when Japanese comes out of my mouth they can't understand it. 🤣 Then I repeat myself and they go and laugh out loud!

[Danielson]

My best friend growing up was Vietnamese, and that really is a crazy language. I always said it was more tones than words.

[TheUntypicalGerman]

I'm fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese and I recently have lived 6 months in Vietnam learning Vietnamese for fun, and Vietnamese is so much harder than any other language I have attempted to learn. The tones are not that hard, due to my fluency in Chinese, but it's the pronunciation that is so crazily difficult.
Mặc dù bây giờ tôi không sống ở Việt Nam nhưng tôi sẽ tiếp tục học tiếng Việt mỗi ngày <3

[BigsmokeATL]

Everything sonny says is correct . The tones are difficult to get down. I’m often struggle speaking Vietnamese because I’m often mixing English grammar

[andyheritage]

To all that want to learn how to speak Vietnamese easy. Just know these premises of the language. Vietnamese is known to be the language of birds because all words only have one syllable. There is not a word in Vietnamese that has 2 syllables. Therefore when birds are singing..Vietnamese language is one in the same, we are actually singing instead of talking because you have to hit the right pitch in a word; hence one word spelled the same but with accent marks, sometime it can turn into 5 to 7 meaning. Talking about tough, try learning German. Since I live in Germany for nearly 7 years, its truly is a fun language to know but I learn so much rich past history from its language etymology. BTW..reach out to myself, I`ll teach you how to speak Vietnamese fast to appease to your in-law. I have to do the same for my German in-laws and its tough..so I feel you!!

[YoannVn]

Vietnamese is hell to pronounce and once you success then you fly from Hanoi to Saigon to find out that the pronunciation is very different... Then again, you fly to the center and it s different. I ve been living in VN for long, got used to the language and it s a lot of fun. Vietnamese people are also really nice people. Here the written tones : ma má mà mã mạ mả

[Banana_Split_Cream_Buns]

The only words I can remember of Vietnamese are:
"Plèãse dõn't éât mè Thēô Vòn."

[khalidmohak]

I lived in Vietnam, Hanoi for 5 years and he's right. You try to order a coffee in Vietnamese and end up in a confusing mess just repeating what you think the other said. The amount of times I ordered a black coffee and go back and forth and get something totally different. The tonal language is hard 😅

[amwright]

Sunny Side is one of the most interesting people alive!

[Re-Hong]

Yeah... As a Viet, I can confirm this. There's 5 same words with different meanings because of the symbols changing the tones. The vowels and some letters will also have different sound and meaning such as the letter A... or A Ă and Â. Yeah, 1 word will have like 15 different meanings. T and Th are flipped so "think = th" would be "think = t or tink" and same can be said vice versa. T sounds more "the" and TH sounds more of a 'Tuh" in vietnamese. Some require another word to describe one thing. The fun part is that some words don't even exist at all so some words only have 3 words instead of 5 because of overlap pronunciation or something else.

For clarification on tones:
No symbol (Ca = sing) sounds neutral.
The tick mark (Dấu Sác= /) (Cá = fish) sounds higher pitch tone.
The down tick mark (Dấu Huyền = \)(cà) sounds soft.
The question mark (Dấu Hỏi = ?) (Cả =(adj) for whole or main, therefore, Cả lớp = Whole Class ) sounds like you have a question or confused.
The squiggly line/tilde (Dấu Ngã = ~) (Cã=??? --> Yeah i dont know the meaning) sounds like you are twisting and stretching the tone and word in a bit of a high pitch.
The down dot (Dấu Nặng = .)(Cạ = ? --> Sorry idk) sounds like its deep and straight to the point.

Combine all of this together into sentences, it basically sounds and looks like you are having mood swings after each word while speaking.

[jules]

I totally think language anticipation anxiety exists. I’ve learned a few expressions in different languages but am very Caucasian and look it. And every time I say something in a different lang they ALWAYS say “what?” And I’ve come to realize it’s because they were expecting me to speak English so didn’t actually understand/hear what I said. But if I repeated it in their lang then they understood.

[golgoth]

I'm Laotian. We have the same different tone, different meaning thing. I understand why this could be very hard for a foreigner to learn.

[kthx]

he basically said that he was very ugly, not he was very hungry

[_llv]

it's so cool that Joe Rogan learns the structure so quickly

[smithtran]

Chris Lewis on Youtube speaks Vietnamese with proper dialect and grammar, better than most Vietnamese Americans. I love watching that guy speaks Vietnamese, Mandarine and Hindi.

[cainabel]

Vietnamese is a very tonal language. The words can be spelled the exact same way, but the punctuations on the letters changes the inflection of your voice. One word spelled the same way can have 7 different meanings depending on the inflection of your voice. Unless you grew up to identify those subtle distinct tones, it’s a very difficult language to learn.

[ausgepicht]

Mandarin has 4 tones as well, and Cantonese has at least a whopping 9. I'm 52 and been a musician since I was 15 years old and started learning Mandarin when I was about 27-28 and found it incredibly easy - mostly because they don't conjugate verbs and the verb doesn't change whether it's past, present, or future (you add a modifier word after the verb to indicate those tenses). I was speaking very rudimentary Mandarin within a week. Nothing to write home about, but I was at least having simple conversations with actual Chinese nationals. So, I think if you have a musical ear, it's far easier because the gramar and syntax is pretty simple and highly practical.

I've never tried Vietnamese, and I may be wrong on this, but watching Sonny's videos, especially when he is with Calvin or Nguyen, and hearing it spoken, I suspect there are more than 4 tones. It sounds more "musical" than Mandarin. Can anyone comfirm? I'm curious.

[lexthang]

I heard this comment a number of times: people keep saying "I try to speak Vietnamese but no one understands and no local wants to help guide me towards the right way". The problem is that with Vietnamese, if you don't speak with the right accent, it sounds like you're speaking a foreign language to the native ear, and that's why no one can help you. Most foreigners when they first learn Vietnamese, their pronunciation is very "timid" when doing the accent. So they end up doing an "off-white" version of the real thing. All the accents they speak sound the same, a middle-ground that doesn't sound like anything. In the clip above, one example is when he said "đói quá". He ended up saying a foreign version the word, somewhere in between "đòi, đồi, đỏi". I mean, even the "đ" is not the Vietnamese đ but more like the English 'd'. So the native year, it easily sounds like some foreign word of a language they don't know about. That's why the reaction is more like being puzzled rather than being helpful.
For other languages, it's easier to recognize that you're trying to speak the language, and to recognize the word you're trying to say. Then it's easier to help.

[NicWalk]

Grown up as a vietnamese born in europe i do hear the difference nouances when someone else speak but beeing able to pronounce it the same way, is a whole different thing. I‘m fluent in 5 languages and my vietnamese is the worst out of all of them

[DUKEOFSOUNDS]

I speak 5 languages
It's sometimes hard to translate 😕
That's why the translator professionals have a good pay