Vietnamese Challenge (Day 2)

Day two has come and gone and I feel as though I am making steady progress. Originally I wanted to spend a fair amount of time acquainting myself with the wide range of phonetics, labialization, and tones, but I feel as though even two or three extra days would cut into the total amount of progress I could ultimately make. I finished reading, listening, and repeating the rest of the consonants, nuclear vowels, as well as learning about the differences in pronunciation between northern (Hanoi) dialect and southern (Saigon/Ho Chi Minh) dialect. At the moment it appears that there are only a few consonants in the northern dialect that are not differentiated between like they are in the southern side of the country.

For example:

The alveolar voiced fricative consonant [z] (voiced similar to the Z in zebra) is contained within both dialects, however the retroflex voiced fricative consonant [Z] (voiced as the G in genre) is not differentiated in the northern dialect. To make matters worse the first is romanized ad a ‘d’ while the latter is written as a ‘r’. While this is by no means ‘abstract’, its obviously something that will take time to adjust to as an English speaker far to used to the phonetic assignments of the English alphabet.

A similar lack in distinction of consonants is found in two other instances:

• Ch (Palatal voiceless stop consonant) In both northern and southern dialects.
• Tr (Retroflex voiceless stop consonant) Is only found in the southern dialects.
  as well as
• S (Alveolar voiceless fricative consonant)
• ʂ (Retroflex voiceless fricative consonant) This does not exist in northern (Hanoi) dialect.

“Welcome to Hell”

The tones thus far dont appear to be too daunting, although this could also be attributed to my overall ignorance to the many nuances of the language. Hubris aside, this along side recognition and correct pronunciation of the monophthongs will arguably be my biggest difficult based upon my language experiences in the past. The younger more naiive Pajan who taught himself Mandarin and then unsuccessfully Cantonese would brush off this important characteristic of the language, but the tones themselves are more important than the ability to pronounce a word exactly like a native. (The understanding of prosody is key)

I skimmed through the first lesson to see what the overall format was like and it did not seem far off from any regular text book. I listened to the dialogues a few times and attempted to repeat with the tracking despite what seemed to be the lightning pronunciation of the voice actors. After six or seven listens, however, I was able to properly follow along and mimic the dialogues which is amazing given my limited exposure to the language.

There doesnt seem to be a great deal grammatically that is out of the ordinary either. The basic subject + predicate structure seems indicative of most modern languages. The features of question particles and SOV sentence patterns are relative given my exposure to Altaic, Sino-Tibetian, and Indo-European languages. I can say that I am most grateful for the lack of conjugations. Verb conjugation is a vital part of understanding many languages, however it can also be a great source of frustration especially if the systems are not ‘intuitive’ or based upon a simple system.

My goal for day three is to listen to the dialogues of lesson one, begin to memorize the vocabulary, and dive deeper into the syntactic structure.

Also im sorry if there are sporadic mistakes, or sentences that dont make sense. Its amazing that im doing this given my schedule and the only time I can find to study and report is about 2AM PST everyday.

Cheers,

Pajan

Vietnamese Challenge (Day 1)

Day one is finished and despite not having as much free time as I had expected, I was still able to begin my introductory lessons into Vietnamese. As I had statement in my initial, introductory post, I chose to independently study a language that I had little to no tangible understanding of in order to see the extent in which I could take my aptitude and comprehension is a relatively short amount of time. (At the moment Im thinking of 90 days).

Initially I wanted to allow my friends to select a non-extinct, dying, or endangered language of their choice, but I quickly realized that aside from the challenge and my motivation for it, even the task of gather resources and seeking out native speakers for assistance would be difficult. I realized that Vietnamese was not only a language that I had little understanding of, but was one that was in abundance to my friends as well as the area I live in.

I also said I would be studying the southern dialect. While this is still partially the case, given that I had to search out and find resources such as textbooks on my own, I decided that I will dabble into all three (Northern, Central, and Southern), which for the most part only differ in phonetics and tonal fluctuation.

A general IPA (Internation Phonetic Alphabet) for Vietnamese consonants

My first session felt great. There is always a sense of adventure when studying something relatively unknown to one self; the notion that this is a challenge even furthers that sentiment. I have experience speaking isolated languages (More or less languages where words are monosyllabic whose meanings change based upon tones, lack of inflections etc…) such as Mandarin, but given the phonetic differences I did anticipate many similarities despite the influence that the Chinese have had on the Vietnamese language. What surprised me the most was the abundance of monophthong vowels [13] (a pure vowel whose articulation is static) versus diphthongs [more or less 3] (vowel clusters whose articulations fluctuate).

IPA representation and positional characteristics of Vietnamese vowels

Again, this assumption can only be attributed to my ignorance to Vietnamese language.

Like many I too was tempted to jump right into lesson plans in an attempt to be able to quickly read and repeat dialogues, however, I made a promise to myself to thoroughly learn the language no matter the pace so that even at a basic level of fluency I would make an effort to be as fluid and accurate to the native pronunciation of the words as possible. What I found most interesting is the structure of Vietnamese syllable structure as the compulsory constituents are the tone and nuclei vowel. Aside from these characteristics the initial consonant, labialization (rounding lips to produce a specific sound) and final consonant/semi-vowels are not always obligatorily present.

Thus far I have read and comprehended the basic phonetic structure of the language as well as a general idea of how the tones work. From the references of the text, one of the biggest characteristic differences between the northern and southern dialects is the presence/absence of a sixth tone. On the surface the tonal system seems a relatively straight forward and shouldn’t nearly serve the same challenge that Mandarin or Cantonese has in my formal or self studies.

I hope to contribute at least an hour during the weekdays and at least double that on the weekends on top of weekly reviews to make sure I progress at a reasonable rate. My goal is to be able to express myself in a basic manner, anything beyond that would impress even myself. It seems like its going to take another two or three days for me to feel completely comfortable with the phonetic and basic syntactical structure to be able to move on to actual lessons. If im smart about it, I will be able to find time to update this blog on a daily basis as a means of tracking my progress as well.

Thats all for now, happy learning.

Pajan