Thursday, December 14, 2023

Abandoned: Tiếng Việt 123: Vietnamese for Beginner





Commonplace Book


Quizlet Folder HERE:

Weekly Reading Vlogs
January 23, 2022  --Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete.  Still studying.  Audio HERE)
January 30, 2022 --Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete.  Still studying.  Audio HERE)
February 6, 2022 --Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete.  Still studying.  Audio HERE.  Supplemental Audio HERE)
February 13, 2022 --Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete.  Still studying.  Audio HERE.  Supplemental Audio HERE)
February 20, 2022 --Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete.  Still studying.  Audio HERE.  Supplemental Audio HERE)
February 27, 2022 --Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete.  Still studying.  Audio HERE.  Supplemental Audio HERE)
March 6, 2022 --Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete.  Still studying.  Audio HERE.  Supplemental Audio HERE)
March 13, 2022 --Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete.  Still studying.  Audio HERE.  Supplemental Audio HERE)
March 20, 2022 --Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete.  Still studying.  Audio HERE.  Supplemental Audio HERE)
March 27, 2022 --Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete.  Still studying.  Audio HERE.  Supplemental Audio HERE) (2 pages)

***Stopped reading for a bit, then started again in 2023**** 

April 23, 2023 --Tiếng Việt 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10 (audiovideoquizlet--finished) p.11 (audiovideoquizlet--3 terms) (1 page)
June 4, 2023 --Tiếng Việt 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.11 (audiovideoquizlet--finished) p.12 (audioquizlet--4 terms) (1 page)
July 9, 2023 --Tiếng Việt 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.12 (audioquizlet--finished) p.13 (audioquizlet--5 terms) (1 page)
July 23, 2023 --Tiếng Việt 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.13 (audioquizlet--finished) p.14 (audioquizlet--5 terms) (1 page)
August 20, 2023 -- Tiếng Việt 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.14 (audioquizlet--Finished) p.15 (audioquizlet--6 terms) (1 page)  [A couple days ago, the link to the audio went down.  I'm going to give it another week to see if it is just a blip, or if the website is down for good.]
September 10, 2023 -- Tiếng Việt 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.15 (audioquizlet--finished) p.16 (audioquizlet--7 terms) (1 page)
October 8, 2023 -- Tiếng Việt 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.16 (audioquizlet--finished) p.17 (audioquizlet--5 terms) (1 page)

Playlist HERE

7 comments:

Futami-chan said...

Oh your DNF video is only hearable on my right earpod until 8:55.

7:42 "Ch" is grouped with "Tr" because in Vietnamese they both sound similar, Northern accent doesn't even try to differentiate them when they say words with those consonants. Even though "Tr" is pronounced with a small "r" people still intuitively consider it as the lighter "Ch". I guess they just don't want to try to sort the double consonants alphabetically since the number of consonants is already few and it's hard to have a good way to sort while still retaining some groupings of similar consonants.

9:38 Not that I miss your point about descriptions being poor... Just saying if this is helpful even though kinda unrelated...
I guess it's just fine for a non-native to consider both tones as the same. Even Vietnamese may have trouble distinguishing them sometimes. I doubt many Vietnamese can make a clear difference when they speak the two tones, but when we do we still feel intuitively there's a difference... Which should not be a concern to people who only use the language to communicate, so most people... It's easy to know the tone (between two of them ? and ~) when we hear the words but that maybe just because people know the vocabulary (its range is not so wide and when we encounter rare words we still have to check up somewhere to make sure of the tone).

Joel Swagman said...

Thanks for letting me know. I'm ashamed to say I don't always listen to my videos before posting them, so listener feedback like yours is very helpful if something is going wrong.
I just gave it a listen myself, and you're right. It seems to sound okay played on the computer speakers (i.e. without the headphones). But with the headphones, you're right--it's only out of the right one until 8:55.
I don't know what's causing this. I did accidentally drop my phone earlier this week, so maybe it's a problem with my phone?
Thank you for the explanation about Ch and TR.
And thanks for your help with the tones. I agree the book is still helpful, even though it could be better described. But at the same time, these kind of confusing descriptions make me feel less guilty about abandoning this book. The plan is to hopefully pick up a better textbook once I'm back in the States.
I did once take a short Vietnamese class, in which the teacher told us that in the North, there is a difference between ? and ~, but in the South there is no difference between those two tones.
At this point, I've largely given up trying to pronounce Vietnamese correctly anyways. My goal now is just to have some understanding of the language on a theoretical level.

Futami-chan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Futami-chan said...

"Just saying if this is helpful even though kinda unrelated..." was actually me talking about the paragraph right beneath it, since there was a chance you had already known about those two tones, and the paragraph was not addressing your point about descriptions so it's unrelated.
I don't think I have ever heard Northern accent make a clear, noticeable difference between the two tones. My own family's accent is considered Northern or mixed accent.

Personally I don't think this book is really helpful (to say the least), unless it's the only thing one can have their hands on. This book with its seeming lack of decent explanations/descriptions just remind me of school days' traumas. Textbooks used in Vietnamese schools for some subjects like Literature, English are just as bad in the same way this book is. At least this book is not so bad to the point of having only a rectangular box that contains 3-4 lines of summaries/explanations for each Literature lesson, while the "I.Theory" and "II.Practice" sections are literally the same. I guess you can see how Vietnamese students can go to school and ended up learning literally nothing with this book. There was a textbooks reform so I don't know if the new current textbooks are just as bad.

Futami-chan said...

Oh I forgot actually a certain kind of Northern accent actually does, but to me it's just like they exaggerate their pronunciation or voice or something rather than anything intrinsic in ? and ~ themselves.
Maybe I should just have added that ? and ~ are like /i/ and /i:/ to clarify how the tones difference is not significant enough to bother. You hold and stretch a bit the ? to make it into the ~. That's why despite not being easy to hear people still feel like they're making a difference when they pronounce them. Regardless all that said not like the point changes so... Sorry for having bothered you with redundant comments...

Joel Swagman said...

No apologies necessary. I always appreciate the comments, and I've been learning a bit about Vietnamese language and culture through our interactions.

I appreciate the explanation of the different tones. I'm not sure I'll ever train my ear to recognize it, but I can at least understand the idea in theory.

I've got a really bad ear for sounds in general. (Even in my own language, I struggled a lot to learn the phonemic chart--although granted that's partly because the phonemic chart is not American pronunciation.) So I'm very discouraged trying to learn to hear the tones in another language.

Joel Swagman said...

>>>>"Just saying if this is helpful even though kinda unrelated..." was actually me talking about the paragraph right beneath it, since there was a chance you had already known about those two tones, and the paragraph was not addressing your point about descriptions so it's unrelated.

Ah, yes, I see that now. Sorry, I misread you. That's the dangers of replying to comments before I've finished my coffee!