Practise Vietnamese with a native speaker, and give them English conversation practice in return. Roughly 85 million people speak Vietnamese natively, so partners are easy to find; the useful discipline is showing up on time.
Endonym
Tiếng Việt
Script
Latin alphabet with extensive tone marks
Spoken in
Vietnam, the United States, Australia, Cambodia
First thing to learn
Xin chào — "Hello"
US Foreign Service Institute estimate for an English speaker starting from zero
~44 weeks
Distant from English
Six tones, and the writing system marks them - so the page tells you how to say the word, which feels like a gift until you find that the same syllable at a different tone is a different word entirely. English speakers also have to learn which pronoun to use, because it depends on the other person’s age and relationship to you.
Knowing this in advance changes what you do with a partner. Grammar drills on Vietnamesewill not fix a habit your first language gave you — only producing the sentence out loud and being corrected will. That is the specific thing an exchange gives you and an app does not.
A language exchange dies when nobody has anything to talk about. Take these into the call and you will fill the first half without silences.
Say Xin chào (sin CHOW) as your first line, then ask your partner when they would use it and when they would choose something more formal.
Ask your partner to write your own name in Tiếng Việt, then explain which sounds in your name do not exist in Vietnamese.
Talk for two minutes about what you imagine daily life is like in Vietnam. Have your partner correct the parts you got wrong - in Vietnamese first, then again in English.
Talk for two minutes about what you imagine daily life is like in the United States. Have your partner correct the parts you got wrong - in Vietnamese first, then again in English.
Ask your partner for one sentence that exposes the hard part: Six tones, and the writing system marks them - so the page tells you how to say the word, which feels like a gift until you find that the same syllable at a different tone is a different word entirely.
Switch to English and ask your partner to explain their own language's hardest feature to you. This is the half where you pay for the practice, so take it as seriously as your own turn.
You are not here to improve your English — you already have it. Practise Vietnamese with someone who speaks it natively, and pay for it by answering their English questions properly. Fluent English speakers are the scarcest resource on an exchange, which is why you will match quickly.
Vietnam has a fast-growing English-learning population driven by tourism and export work, and a large Vietnamese diaspora in the United States and Australia also needs to keep up their English.
44 weeks of full-time study to working proficiency, on the US Foreign Service Institute scale - distant from english. Six tones, and the writing system marks them - so the page tells you how to say the word, which feels like a gift until you find that the same syllable at a different tone is a different word entirely. English speakers also have to learn which pronoun to use, because it depends on the other person’s age and relationship to you.
Around 85 million native speakers, concentrated in Vietnam, the United States, Australia. English has already borrowed pho, banh mi from it, so you are not starting from nothing.
Latin alphabet with extensive tone marks. The alphabet will look familiar, which is exactly the trap - the letters are the same while the sounds behind them are not, so reading fluently is not the same as pronouncing accurately.
Xin chào (sin CHOW) - "Hello". Xin chào is polite but incomplete on its own - Vietnamese generally expects you to choose a pronoun based on the other person’s age and gender, and the rest of the greeting shifts with it.
pho and banh mi all reached English from Vietnamese - 2 words you can use on day one.
Free matching, free voice calls, free video calls. One twenty-minute call is enough to know whether it works for you.
Start your exchange