Hi everyone, welcome back to a new episode of Natural English with Nick.
In today's episode we're going to talk about why and how I'm learning Vietnamese.
So I'm going to break down my learning methods for learning this very particular language.
It actually comes from a group of languages I've never experienced before, I've never dabbled in.
So it's very new and it's very exciting.
So in terms of the big question, why?
Why would you learn Vietnamese of all the languages in the world?
Well, I'm going to break that down here today.
I'm going to give you guys some reasons why I've been learning Vietnamese and why it has a special place in my heart in this time, especially right now.
You know, some languages grow on you gradually, some languages you love from the start.
And I think that Vietnamese is going to be one of those languages that gradually becomes a greater part of my personality, of who I am, and a language that I really look forward to using and incorporating in my life in the future.
And I'm making today's episode because so many of us are learning other languages likely.
If you're listening to this podcast, you're somewhat interested in learning other languages as well and you're maybe intrigued by seeing how other people learn languages.
I'm the same way.
And if you would like a partial transcription of today's episode, feel free to check on my site.
There's a link in the description so you can find it easily.
Simply under the transcriptions tab on my website, in the top right corner, and you'll be able to access my notes for this episode.
So let's get started with the why.
I've decided to give you guys three very simple yet profound reasons for me wanting to learn Vietnamese.
Number one is work and living opportunities.
I would love to live and work in Vietnam.
There are many beautiful cities in Vietnam that I would love to explore, not to mention the incredible biodiversity, the mountains, the rolling hills and the water.
Cities like Saigon in the south, Da Nang in the center and Hanoi in the north are quite affordable and offer an interesting experience for expats to have a good quality of life and experience a unique culture.
As many of you probably know by now, I want to be a second language English teacher, either full-time or part-time, really as many hours as I can get.
I would also like to develop this project on the side, so I can reach so many more students in less time.
Vietnam is a quite popular travel destination for Westerners like myself, and I think that there are many great reasons for that.
I like to think of Vietnam as the mysterious cousin of Thailand, even though I know the cultures are somewhat different, because while Vietnam is quite popular among Westerners, western tourists, thailand remains the hub for tourism in the region.
Plus guys, i gotta come clean, i love vietnamese food.
It's healthier than many other ethnic cuisines and it's so flavorful and diverse.
And, if you haven't guessed by now, i also love the warm weather, whether it's boiling hot or like lukewarm or anywhere in the middle.
I'm a happy guy.
I love spending time outside, in nature and under the sun, whether it be at the beach or hiking through the mountains.
So now that we've covered my first reason for wanting to learn Vietnamese, and that is work and living opportunities, for all the reasons that I just mentioned, whether it be the food, the beautiful places to explore and the amazing climate,
The second reason is the fact that my girlfriend is Vietnamese Canadian.
My girlfriend's family speaks Vietnamese and Cantonese.
So I would like to learn some of the language to show my respect for their culture and their household traditions when I finally get to meet them.
It's also very motivating to have a heritage speaker of a language you're learning right there.
As a language enthusiast, I see it as an exciting opportunity to get to know a new culture and challenge myself.
And I must say that this is also my first opportunity to learn a language in this way, that is, having a partner whose language you're learning.
And I think I'll be able to learn a lot about the language learning process using this kind of natural method, much like having family that speaks a language you're learning.
So I'm curious to see how it goes.
And I think it's also an interesting way to deepen and spice up the relationship.
And even though my girlfriend Erin doesn't speak Vietnamese incredibly well, she still manages to understand my incredibly broken Vietnamese.
So I'm very proud of that.
And my third reason for wanting to learn Vietnamese is simply my love for Southeast Asia and my general curiosity towards Vietnam itself.
As a language nerd, I'm always intrigued to better understand how similar or dissimilar languages in that region are to one another.
On a phonetic level, I find the sounds of Vietnamese to be very different to European languages or anything I've ever experienced before, which makes me curious to learn more.
Plus, Vietnamese is my first Austro-Asiatic language, so I'm super excited to learn a language from a new language family.
And to make a cheesy reference from Forrest Gump, life is like a box of chocolates to me.
Life is like a box of languages.
Everyone has a distinct flavor and something new to discover.
I just want to get to know Vietnam and Vietnamese people on a deeper level that you can't get simply by watching TV or going on a touristy trip.
If I ever get the chance to go to Vietnam, which I really hope I do, I want it to be meaningful.
And I can't think of a better place to start than learning the language.
And I would love to at the very least travel all around Vietnam and hopefully other countries in Southeast Asia as well, which I'm sure will push me to learn other Southeast Asian languages in the future.
So now that we've covered the why, let's move on to the how.
How am I learning Vietnamese?
Well, I bought a course for beginners in Vietnamese actually.
And actually, it's the first time in a while that I've spent money to learn a language.
And I did so mainly because of the scarcity of resources and the format of this particular course that I liked a lot.
It's very similar to what I do here, in the sense that the content is based on reading, listening and copying a native speaker's pronunciation, which is what I always seek out when learning a new language.
So I've been using this course, along with Google Translate, to analyze sentence structure which, I must say, has been pretty effective so far.
I'm using Google Translate because of the lack of quality-free Vietnamese dictionaries online, something that I will probably invest in in the future if I do end up moving to Vietnam.
And I like writing out example sentences, watching videos, and listening to podcasts as well.
Currently, I don't have a book to learn Vietnamese, but Since it's a rare language, it's something I might consider buying as I improve, which is something that I don't usually do with more widely spoken languages.
My goal is to learn for an hour a day.
I've decided to put Japanese to the side as well to concentrate my efforts on Vietnamese.
I study the most common vocabulary from a book that's called most common 2500 words.
My copy is in Greek and English, but you can translate the words and expressions to whatever language you like.
I would also love to start taking lessons in the near future, maybe on italki or a platform like that.
I have one friend who speaks Vietnamese, plus my girlfriend, so I intend to practice with them as much as possible.
It's funny actually, because from day one I was able to say some things to my girlfriend and surprise her, so that's always been super motivating.
I intend to focus the majority of my efforts on speaking and mastering the tones, especially since Southern Vietnamese has five tones and I want to have a good level of comprehension.
In terms of reading.
To my knowledge, there's very little interesting things available in Vietnamese that aren't available in languages that I already know, so I'm not going to fret too much about learning to read to a very high level, although being able to read will enable me to access more material and grow my vocabulary.
So, of course, i want to be able to read and pronounce words well and uh yeah, my friends, that's about it.
Thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and i'll remind you that, if you would like the partial transcription of today's episode, simply check out my site through the link in the description below.
It's free, so what do you got to lose?
And we'll see each other on thursday for a new episode.
Take care.
