Learning Vienamese

Hi all,

I have to take another foreign language (I already took French) and was thinking about taking Vietnamese. I mix several Vietnamese variety shows every year so it would be nice to be able to get the gist of what is being said.

I wanted to ask if anyone has taken this as a foreign language? After talking to the Dean of the college it looks like I will be put in a class with naitive speakers so I will "hit the ground running" so to speak because the class will start without any english being spoke. I'm just trying to get a scope of how hard it will be.

I guess a second question would be are there any good lessons on the web so I can get a head start on the language?

Thanks

Being put in a class with native speakers and not having any English spoken in class is a recipe for being hopelessly behind and never being able to catch up. I did that once and regretted it. The concept of "hitting the ground running" is hogwash. I recommend you avoid that particular class.

You already know two Romance languages (languages that evolved from Latin). If you need to learn a third language, another Romance language would be far easier for you than an Asian language. Spanish is the most commonly spoken language in the US after English and almost universal in Central and South America. As for its usefulness in Europe, it is obviously spoken in Spain and is so similar to Italian that it is possible to have rudimentary communication with Italian speakers by just using Spanish.

I would recommend you take Spanish. And hopefully in a class with other students at your same level of knowledge. Actually, this will be hard to find in a college environment because most foreigh language students in college courses have at least two years of study in that language at the high-school level. So you are likely to be behind from the start in any sort of college language class, but at the least you should avoid a class full of native speakers.

By the way, I am assuming you are a typical person and not a language prodigy or someone highly motivated to learn Veitnamese and willing to spend 20 hours per week studying it. If either of those apply, go for the Vietnamese class.

Good luck.

I know some words from the Vietnamese people I work with and it is much more difficult then the high school spanish I took.

Hint #1 Vietnamese, Japanese, Laotian, Korean, all are "sung" not spoken and the tone changes what the word is. I would have learned a lot more Korean a lot faster if someone had pointed that out early on.

While I agree that immersion classes can be good...not when you first start out with no background in the language at all. For example I would have HATED to try and learn German that way (total immersion) but now that I have a little base I would LOVE to travel to Germany for more.

(okay, I confess, I just want to travel to Germany and Austria /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif)

Thanks for the replies. I guess it will be a challenge to say the least. I still haven't made up my mind, but total immersion may be more than I want to handle with all the other classes I will be taking.

Ok, I've settled on learning Latin reading instead of Vietnamese.