A Blog to help all those moving to hectic Hanoi, wanting to learn about the culture in Vietnam or simply interested in the opinions of an adventurous expatriate teenager!

Saturday, 29 October 2011


Most words are consisting of one syllable and are tonal meaning that the same word with different accents on it can have many different meanings depending on the way it is pronounced (falling, rising, short, flat and kind of combinations from what I can see). It is a common misconception that the language comes  directly from Chinese however this is not so. However Chinese characters were used in literary texts due to Chinese politics being prominent for around ten centuries. There are also many similarities between the two languages as well as with French and English. For a start the words are formed from letters not characters (Vietnamese).

The language is spoken in subject verb order however since in a sentence there are very few words and no words are marked by gender (as in for example French or Spanish), number or tense it is very important that you say everything in the right order otherwise no one will understand you (Adoptvietnam).

Here are some words similar to French and English, which a few of my friends (Newell)  thought of:

Savon - xà bông (sabon) - soap
Chemise - sơ mi (so me) - shirt
Carrot - cà rốt
Radio - radio
Chocolate - sôcôla
Antenna - ăng-ten
Film - phim
Café - cà phê - coffee

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