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Vietnamese School Lesson 2 - Hello, Thank you / Chào bạn, Cảm ơn

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Chào các bạn! In the previous lesson, I explained how to say "you" in Vietnamese. In this lesson, we'll put your "you"-saying skills to use when we learn how to say "hello" and "thank you"! Hello = Chào / Xin ch à o It may seem a little bit abrupt or even rude just to say "chào" by itself. To fix this, Vietnamese speakers either attach the other person's appropriate familial pronoun onto the end of the sentence (e.g., anh, chị, em, etc.), or say " x in ch à o ". [ C lick here  to access the previous lesson if you don't remember the familial pronouns that were taught.] "Xin  ch ào"   is considered more formal than " ch ào [pronoun]", but if you don't want to worry about using the correct pronoun, just say "xin chào". Sample Conversation Hải: Chào, cô! Ha: Chào, cháu! Next, we will learn how to say "thank you" in Vietnamese. Thank you =  ...
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Vietnamese School Lesson 1 - Different Words For "You"

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Chào các bạn! In this lesson, we will look at the different words for "you" in Vietnamese. When talking to someone in English, we constantly use the word "you". For example, "Do  you  like chocolate?" "Have  you   watched Yee?" "I don't like  you. " These are all phrases that use the word  "you" . A common mistake that people learning Vietnamese make is to translate this directly. Why is this a mistake? When you look up "you" in an English-Vietnamese dictionary, the first word that will come up is usually  "bạn" . While this isn't necessarily wrong, you don't really hear it in everyday conversations. So how DO you address the other person? There are a couple ways you could go about addressing the other person: 1. You can use their name. Ex) Kim có thích sôcôla không? = (Talking to Kim) Do you like chocolate? 2. You can use a familial pronoun. Ex) Chị có hiểu...
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Vietnamese School Lesson 0 - Introduction to Vietnamese Grammar

Chào các bạn! Welcome to Vietnamese School! I am copying this post from my other blog for the purpose of organization: One of the first things you need to do when learning a language is having a fundamental understanding of the grammar. Vietnamese is a SVO language, like English. This means that in a sentence, the order of the words is subject , verb , object . For example, Ha ăn cơm . Ha eats rice. In the example, "Ha" is the subject , "ăn" is the verb , and "cơm" is the object . Pretty simple so far, right? Now, let's talk about how the verbs work. In Vietnamese, verbs never change their form. There's nothing like, "I am, you are, he is, they are..." The verb always remains the same! Let's use "là" (to be) for an example. Tôi là - I am Bạn là - You are Nó là - Kim is Họ là - They are The verb, "là" in this sentence, never changes, no matter what the subject is. In my opinion, thi...
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