Pat's primer: Vietnamese

I have an idea for a kind of crash course in Vietnamese - a handy reference explaining the more commonly confusing aspects of how the language works. This is what I've written so far - I'll move it to its own blog (albeit linked from this) when I've written enough to make that worthwhile.

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-Plurals (ie. when we have more than one of something) don't work the same as in English, eg. "phim" means both "film" and "films". We sometimes use the plural marker “các” to specify that something is plural (eg. “các người” for “people”) or “một” (“one”) to specify that there's only one (eg. “một sinh viên” for “one student”), but usually it's left open and figured out from context. Usually we'll specify one or many or a specific number when we're talking about specific instances, and leave it unspecified when we're talking about things in general.

-Vietnamese technically doesn't have adjectives – what it has is lots of special verbs which mean “to be [adjective]”, which we usually translate as adjectives. This is why (for instance) “cao” is sometimes translated as “tall” and sometimes as “to be tall”. This is also why “tôi là cao” is incorrect – it means “I am am tall”. The correct sentence is simply “tôi cao.”

-Vietnamese words often have spaces in them, eg. “sinh viên” (student). This is important to remember, because otherwise “tôi là sinh viên” (“I am a student”) will seem to mean “I am a birth pill”. This is likely to cause confusion.

-There are two different types of funny marks. The first type makes letters into different letters, and the second type is actual tone marks. Here's the first type:

-Hats: 'a', 'ă' and 'â' are all different letters. So are 'e' and 'ê', and 'o' and 'ô'.

-Horns: 'o' and 'ơ' are different letters. So are 'u' and 'ư'.

-Stroke: 'd' and 'đ' are different letters.

These marks don't combine – a letter can't have both a hat and a horn, for instance.

There are 6 actual tone marks, independent of the fancy letters above. For example:

ma (ghost)

mã (horse)

mả (tomb)

mà (but)

má (cheek)

mạ (rice seedling)

Those 6 words all have the exact same letters, but different tones. The tones combine with the marks that make special letters, eg. “mấy” (how much/many) and “một” (one). A dictionary will list words in order of letters first (including hats horns and stroke), and then according to tones. Dictionaries will also ignore spaces in words, which can be confusing at first. Get some practice looking words up in a user-friendly dictionary (I recommend Collins Gem), and you'll get used to it.

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-Pronunciation

---Letters (including “sinh” and other departures from phonetic pronunciation)

---Tones (how they're actually pronounced)

---The “musical” concept, its implications, and how it comes from laziness.

-Numbers – how they work, including 'lẻ'

---Time

---Date

-Sentence structure and word order