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An American friend who lives in Vietnam has told me he finds that while Vietnamese people aren't bothered by foreigners speaking broken Vietnamese, they also do

An American friend who lives in Vietnam has told me he finds that while Vietnamese people aren't bothered by foreigners speaking broken Vietnamese, they also don't have an especially practiced facility for guessing what someone might have meant when they butcher something. He theorizes that because there's almost no non-native speaker population, Vietnamese people just don't get much experience having to do that the way Americans do with non-native English speakers. The impression I got was that if you messed up tones, you might get a delighted, but also perplexed, response.

616c 11y ago
Well, after my time in China, I sucked it up and tried to learn Chinese and communicate in broken Chinese with my students. When other kids complained about our old Taiwanese teacher's English accent, I asked them simply: "let's say hypothetically we inverted the situation and found an exact parallel of your Chinese accent to her spoken English when Chinese comes out of your mouth, and you understand the accent is native. How hard will you laugh?"
cageface 11y ago
I've found that, ironically, Vietnamese that already speak English are also more likely to understand my amateur Vietnamese. Maybe that's because they're more familiar with the sounds of English and can make more educated guesses about what I'm trying to say. I suppose this is true of all tonal languages but Vietnamese is very unforgiving. Even when people really butcher the pronunciation and grammar of English I can still usually guess what they're trying to say. If you don't really nail the pronunciation and tones of Vietnamese people won't understand you at all. I've seen a lot of foreigners give up in frustration even after years of living here. If you really want to learn to speak tiếng Việt you have to find a real teacher and drill the basics of tones and pronunciation. If you try to pick it up a phrase at a time chatting with people you'll never get it.
- carelesslisper 11y ago
  That makes sense. As a non-native English speaker I find it easier to understand people from my country speaking English than other accents. I also found out that after starting studying Chinese it is easier to me to understand Chinese people speaking Portuguese (my native language) because I understand a bit of the Chinese grammar and phrasal structures.

616c 11y ago

Well, after my time in China, I sucked it up and tried to learn Chinese and communicate in broken Chinese with my students. When other kids complained about our old Taiwanese teacher's English accent, I asked them simply: "let's say hypothetically we inverted the situation and found an exact parallel of your Chinese accent to her spoken English when Chinese comes out of your mouth, and you understand the accent is native. How hard will you laugh?"

cageface 11y ago

I've found that, ironically, Vietnamese that already speak English are also more likely to understand my amateur Vietnamese. Maybe that's because they're more familiar with the sounds of English and can make more educated guesses about what I'm trying to say. I suppose this is true of all tonal languages but Vietnamese is very unforgiving. Even when people really butcher the pronunciation and grammar of English I can still usually guess what they're trying to say. If you don't really nail the pronunciation and tones of Vietnamese people won't understand you at all. I've seen a lot of foreigners give up in frustration even after years of living here. If you really want to learn to speak tiếng Việt you have to find a real teacher and drill the basics of tones and pronunciation. If you try to pick it up a phrase at a time chatting with people you'll never get it.

carelesslisper 11y ago
That makes sense. As a non-native English speaker I find it easier to understand people from my country speaking English than other accents. I also found out that after starting studying Chinese it is easier to me to understand Chinese people speaking Portuguese (my native language) because I understand a bit of the Chinese grammar and phrasal structures.