When I started my Vietnamese intensive course, a lot of non-linguistists I talked to said that the Chinese students would have an advantage because they already speak a tonal language.
It is true that some Westerners could be completely stumped by tones, and just not get the language at all. But, a person who already speaks a tonal language does not have an advantage over a Westerner or a Korean or Japanese who is intelligent, motivated and who is trying to learn tones. Remember that a Cantonese or Mandarin speaker has mastered the tones of his or her language, not the tones of Vietnamese. Saying that someone from a tonal language would have an advantage is like saying people from languages with words, or sounds, or verbs or adjectives would have an advantage.
Mastery of a particular language is based EXCLUSIVELY on your mastery of THAT language, not other languages. If you know tones in one language, you still need to learn the specific tones for the new language you are studying.
Next, people who were more language-savvy suggested that both the Chinese and Korean students would have a huge advantage because of all of the Chinese cognates between Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. But in my class, I have noticed the Chinese and Koreans don’t even hear or notice the cognates. I help Schwe Son translate his homework every single day and he never sees the cognates. The Koreans are the same.
In addition to not having a particular advantage, our Chinese classmate, Schwe Son (not his real name) seems to have a number of special problems because of his Chinese mother tongue. For example, we learned the words for “half a million.” But in Chinese, there is no word for a million. They count by ten-thousands. So, a million is 100-ten-thousands. Schwe Son pointed at the Vietnamese words for half a million, nửa triệu, and asked me to translate. I translated it into Chinese, literally, “Half of 100-ten-thousands.” The look on Schwe Son’s face was as if he had just seen me defecate in a frying pan. “Why don’t they just say 50-ten-thousands?” He asked. He had a point.
The old Vietnamese word for Burma is ‘Miến Điện’ the same as in Chinese. But now the Vietnamese have created a Vietnamese spelling for the countries new name of Myanmar. Most languages and most countries move toward not changing country or city names, but just spelling them in their own language. This is why Beijing is now Beijing in English, instead of Peking. But Chinese cannot move in that direction, as it is impossible to spell foreign words with Chinese characters. As a result, many Chinese place names are outdated. Or, they have to create a totally new word, which may or may not be recognizable as the place it relates to.
So, in class, when we encounter country names that are instantly recognizable for Western or Korean students, but for which Schwe Son needs a translation. Afterwards, the translation has no real meaning for him. He just has to memorize it, although it doesn’t relate to anything.
We have only had eight days of class so far, but have already encountered a lot of Chinese cognates. The word for ‘a shop’ which I learned in Hanoi was ‘cửa hàng’. But here in Saigon they say ‘tiệm.’ this is a cognate from the Chinese, ‘Diàn’. And yet, when we came to this word, Schwe Son asked me to translate. I said, in Chinese, “tiệm means Diàn.” Schwe Son simply said, “OK.” And immediately wrote the Chinese character in his notebook. There was not even a flicker of recognition.
Here is a list of Chinese cognates from the first eight days of class (I have only listed modern Mandarim cognates. If I were to list ancient Chinese cognates (similar to Korean and Cantonese cognates) the list would be much, much longer.)
| English | Vietnamese Pronunciation | Chinese Pronunciation | Chinese Character |
| Please | xin | Qǐng | 請 |
| Shop (n) | tiệm | Diàn | 店 |
| South | nam | Nán | 南 |
| East | đông | Dōng | 東 |
| come | đi lại | Lái | 來 |
| Zero/Empty | Không (zero) | Kōng (empty) | 空 |
| zero | linh | Líng | 零 |
| prepare | Zhǔnbèi | chuẩn bị | 準備 |
| money | tiền | Qián | 錢 |
| side | bên | biān | 邊 |
| Café | quán cà phê | Kāfēi guǎn | 咖啡館 |
| wrap | bao | Bāo | 包 |
| pronunciation | phát âm | Fāyīn | 發音 |
| dictionary | tự điển | Zìdiǎn | 字典 |
| Burma | Miến Điện | Miǎndiàn | 緬甸 |
| Country | Quốc gia | Guójiā | 國家 |
| Germany | Đức | Déguó | 德國 |
Vietnamese is a Mon-Khmer language, in spite of having so many Chinese cognates. Chinese is a single syllable language, with a lot of compound words. But Mon Khmer languages have multi-sylabic words. The Chinese student is having a lot of difficulty with the pronunciation of multi-sylabic words.
Possession in Khmer, Vietnamese, and English can me made, using the verb, “to belong to”, as in, ‘the book belongs to me.’ But most languages don’t have that construction. Neither Korean nor Chinese has it. (It exists in Korean, but no one uses it). So, they were all having a hard time understanding the concept of, “book belongs to me”, “sách của tôi”. The Chinese student kept pushing me for word-for-word translations. But obviously, there was no way to translate this word-for-word. I could only translate the meaning. In Chinese, “This is my book.” But then he would flip the book to the previous day’s lesson. “I thought this phrase meant ‘this book is mine’.” He said. “Yes,” I said. “The meaning is the same, but the wording is different.” “OK, so what is it in Chinese?” he asked again.
Schwe Son realizes he needs to improve his English in order to get through his study of Vietnamese language. So, every day, in addition to translating his homework into Chinese, he asks me to translate it into English for him. And this creates a whole other set of problems.
In Vietnamese there is a word for the noun, “a question” (câu hỏi), and the verb “to ask” (hỏi) is a related word. The noun, “answer” (câu trả lời) is also related to the verb “to answer” (trả lời). But in English, obviously, the verb “to ask” is unrelated to the noun “a question.”
“Open and close your book” in Vietnamese is exactly as it is in English. Meaning the same words “open and close” could be used for the door or a drawer or a crematorium. But in Chinese, the words for “open and close your book” are unrelated to “open and close the door.” I translated for him, and he understood what the phrase ‘open your book meant’ in Chinese, but it was a completely unrelated phrase, that had no meaning and no connection to anything else for him. For the rest of the classmates, once they learned ‘open and close’ they could apply it to anything. But for Schwe Son it was one isolated piece of linguistic noise.
There are so many aspects to learning a language: vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, usage, and many more. Though an argument could be made that a student with a given native tongue may have an advantage in one area, he or she may have other areas with particular difficulties.
About Antonio
Antonio Graceffo (a.k.a. "The Brooklyn Monk") is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia. He is the author of 6 books, including including The Monk from Brooklyn, Adventures in Formosa, Rediscovering the Khmers, The Desert of Death on Three Wheels,Boats, Bikes, and Boxing Gloves: Adventure Writer in the Kingdom of Siam, and his latest book, Warrior Odyssey: The Travels of a Martial Artist in Asia. All his books are available on Amazon.com here. He is also the host of the web TV show, “Martial Arts Odyssey,” which traces his ongoing journey through Asia, learning martial arts in various countries (watch select clips here).- Follow Antonio on Twitter
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I’ve read many of the articles that you have written over the past few years on ALG, but time after time you seem to be missing the point you are trying to make. Why are you trying to learn the language? Shouldn’t you be trying to acquire it? I’ve been searching the net for information about how to use the ALG method to learn languages and I keep running into yours. You really seem to agree with the concept of ALG and hold it in high esteem, but after praising it, what do you do? You tell your reader not to use it. You tell them to study 5 hours a day enroll in a class and work really hard at “studying”. On your Youtube channel you criticize people who try to acquire the language by hanging out with their friends and boast how you study “vocabulary” for 5 hours a day. WHAT?? This is exactly what ALG seeks to get away from.
I might be missing something, but when it comes to selling ALG, you don’t seem to be the best evangelist for the job.
If you’ve written any articles on how to ACQUIRE a language, I’d love to read it.
Thanks for commenting. I agree with you. I have not found a way to transfer ALG out of the classroom in Bangkok and actually use it anywhere else. I have tried creating videos, but since you need 800 hours listening, that is difficult. Sitting and listening to native speakers in a real-life situation is not ALG because it is non-comprehensible input, and thus won’t help you. So, I go back to traditional methods of learning, rather than acquiring.
One point in my defense is that my goal is to be a translator of Asian languages and ALG will not lead to the end. People who acquire a second language generally are not good translators because there is no link between the L1 and L2. So, for translation, traditional learning still seems to be the best. BUT, if I could combine the two, I would. If I could sit and listen to two hours of Vietnamese ALG every day, I would. But I haven’t figured out a way to do that.
I liked this article, but I disagree completely with your statement that tonal languages have nothing to do with one another. When I learned Mandarin, I anticipated having an easier time because I would formally learn what the tones were. I quickly found that that was not the case. I can’t speak Vietnamese because I can’t really hear tones and this problem translated to Mandarin. I really liked your table showing cognates, though, because I didn’t even realize that they were. The only real crossover that I found between Vietnamese and Mandarin was the grammar structure and the strange retroflex r that is incredibly difficult for most Americans.
CL: Thank you for your comment. Your story is definitely on target with what I want to say, knowing one tonal language does not help you learn another. Your statement, “disagree completely with your statement that tonal languages have nothing to do with one another.” is confusing, because your story seems to support my thesis, that the tonal languages are not related. If your point is that your failure to learn two tonal languages proves that there is a similarity between them, then that is a strange thesis. And the answer is NO, your inability to learn two languages would not be considered a linguistic commonality between those languages. My thesis is that knowing Chinese tones does not help you learn Vietnamese. Your inability to learn two tonal language could well be because you cannot hear tones, but that doesn’t prove a linguistic similarity. It also doesn’t mean that the reverse is true.
Good post. I read it thoroughly and totally agree. I’m a Vietnamese-American who has been teaching English and Vietnamese in Vietnam for the past 5 years. So, if I may, I would like to point out that Vietnamese IS indeed a monosyllable language, and DO NOT have “multi-sylabic” words. Furthermore, even foreign linguists may have classified the Vietnamese language under the Mon-Khmer group, we Vietnamese are totally disagreed! Our language has no words in common with the Khmer (unlike the Chinese language, which we are still using many of their Hán-Việt or Chữ Nôm in our language nowadays).
As a Vietnamese native speaker and I have learned Chinese Mandarin for more than 4 years (on and off), I can tell that most of the time, Vietnamese words order is inverted of Chinese words order. This may help your Chinese friends. Vietnamese has 2 words order: Sino-Vietnamese which uses Chinese grammar and pure Vietnamese which use Vietnamese grammar or just pure Vietnamese vocabulary. For example: Country – Quốc gia ; in pure Viet it is Đất nước. White house – Bạch ốc (Sino-Viet) and Nhà trắng (pure Viet)
For the sentence about “the book belong to me”. Vietnamese says: Quyển sách là của tôi but in Chinese it is 書是我的 (shu shi wo de), and if you translate it to Vietnamese literally, it is Sách là tôi của
Quyển is a classifier for Sách.
I noticed for “Prepare” , you put them in wrong box for Chinese and Vietnamese :Zhǔnbèi chuẩn bị 準備. And for Coffee, it should be Café cà phê Kāfēi 咖啡. You don’t need “shop” (quán ; 館）. In Vietnamese, it is Quán Cà phê (館咖啡) but in Chinese it is Ka Fei Guan (咖啡館)
For a cafe, meaning a place where you drink coffee, you definitely need the word quan, as in kafei quan. And yes, in Vietnamese it is quan ca phe. Not sure what your point is. If I put something in the wrong box, I think the point is still clear.
Good point. and this is the type of research I am interested in. I want to know how the sentence was written in Chinese-Vietnamese characters. Since the grammar is completely different and word order is different, how did the Vietnamese, prior to Latinized script, write that sentence, “the book belongs to me.”
I haven’t had the opportunity to attend the classes in Hanoi, which explore the Chinese characters associated wth Vietnamese language: Is it that, when Vietnamese wrote in Chinese characters, that the grammar and word order remained Chinese, but only the pronunciation, when reading aloud, was vietnamese?
Sorry but you are full-on incorrect. Vietnamese has a lot of words in common with Khmer. And Vietnamese is not mono-sylabic, it is a Mon-Khmer langauge which has multi-sylanbic words, which is ho it is easy to identify the the Chinese compound words. The Khmer words are a bit harder to detect because Vietnamese is tonal and Khmer is not. So, for example, bon is four in Khmer and is the same phoneme as 4 in Vietnamese, but it could be a coincidence. since there is no tone we can’t say it is definitely a common word. but thank you, cam on in vietnamese is clearly related to aukun in Khmer and kop kun in thai. In vietnamese, for close relationships, we ad oi to the end of names and pronouns, this is the same in Khmer.
To find the Khmer root words in Vietnamese, I would suggest either doing research and reading well established and defended papers by linguist and published by universities, or you could study Khmer and do an analysis yourself. With Chinese being the larger influence on Vietnamese, the Khmer root words are probably only 20% or less of the language. but they are definitely there.
cam on is used to say thankyouu but it actually means appreciating the thing someone did for you
Vietnamese is mono syllable not multisyllable name me a word that is multisyllable in Vietnamese
@Antonio: What you say about Vietnamese as a Mon-Khmer language is mostly correct. However, Cam On, is in fact sinitic in origin: 感恩.
As for how Vietnamese was written before Quoc Ngu, as for the sentence, “the book is mine,” people would have either written it in classical Chinese; or in the rarer case that vernacular native Vietnamese was written, an augmented Chinese-based script called Chu Nom was used. It added tens of thousands of new characters representing native Vietnamese words, including the possessive “cua,” that enabled the Chinese character system to be Vietnamese-compatible.
@Lindy: fence: “hang rao,” or pelican: ‘bo nong.’ most vietnamese words and ALL sinitic borrowings are monosyllabic, but a handful of really old words like the ones mentioned are polysyllabic and native in origin.
@Alex Le: There are tons of examples of common Khmer-Vietnamese words. Although about half the words in a Vietnamese dictionary are Chinese in origin, the most basic vocabulary is not Chinese in origin and often have a Mon-Khmer origin.
Compare the native Vietnamese “co tay” (wrist) to Khmer “kaw-tay,” or “ngay” (day) to khmer “th’ngai.” The Sino-Vietnamese word for day is “Nhat,” which derives from the Chinese 日, but I think it’s self explanatory which one is more commonly used: ngay, not nhat.
Just as a note tiệm and cửa hàng are not different because of North and South…these words are both used in both areas, but cửa hàng is a little bit more formal.
I also agree that there are an extremely small number of multi-syllabic words in Vietnamese, and most people will never come across them…overall the language is monosyllabic.