Barnes & NobleLearning Vietnamese- Learn to Speak, Read and Write Vietnamese Quickly Free Online Audio Flash Cards by Bac Hoai Tran

Good beginner material for Vietnamese

There’s not a lot of Southern Vietnamese - English learning material (a lot of the formal, instructional books default to standard Northern Viet dialect), so by that automatically gives this book a boost. However, this book is more of a quick reference, mainly composed of vocabulary lists and basic conversational phrases. Think of this as a fast way to learn or refresh Vietnamese before traveling rather than a comprehensive guide. It’s structured in chapters related to common scenarios you may encounter while traveling - introductions, ordering food, shopping, etc. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is not used here. The pronunciation examples uses a mix of approximate sounds from English with the Vietnamese tone marks, which is probably fine for a heritage speaker but can may be tricky for someone who is new to the language, as Vietnamese is a tonal language. Some things to note: * Some of the dialogue is a little unnatural or unusual. I understand this is probably to provide more context for the beginner speaker but a lot of the more natural way of responding would actually be using shorter phrases/answers. The dialogue is actually repeated in the comic style images and the actual practice and translation section, so I wish this was varied more to show both approach (speaking more naturally in responses vs using complete sentences). * 2 characters talking to each other would both use “dạ,” which is not fully correct, as this is usually only used by a younger person speaking to an older person - so really only 1 character should be using this term in a dialogue * The drills do not provide a lot of variation in sentence structure or dive deeply into grammar. * Some Northern and Southern Viet words are used interchangeably without specifying which one is more prevalent for their respective regions. If you’re traveling to different regions of Vietnam, this makes a difference.