Vietnamese Accents

[Tenebrarum]

And comparing to our ngã, it dips to 1 in the middle..

I don't think Nrothern ngã dips audibly, no. Aside from the glottal break it rises pretty steadily in pitch, kinda like sắc. That's why your Southerner friend made it into sắc when she attempted it - as a Southie, she forgot the creaky voice part.

[abcdefg]

Ah I meant your merged tone.

But according to this chart



Doesn't our ngã also dip a little?

What's the creakiness, is it the glottal stop?

[mōdgethanc]

I think it's glottalized. I already asked.

Also, interestingly the defining characteristic of the huyền tone seems to be that it's low, not that it's falling. The contour is almost identical to that of ngang there.

[mafke]

the defining characteristic of the huyền tone seems to be that it's low, not that it's falling. The contour is almost identical to that of ngang there.

In the (northern) kinds of pronunciation I'm used to huyen is long and the voice often has a 'breathy' quality to it. Nang just sounds short and low with a glottal stop after which everything is unvoiced (and inadubile for me though I suppose native speakers here the rest of the syllable).

For me bạn often sounds phonetically like bạ or bạc.

(And hoi is usually pronounced as a shorter non-breathy fall without the final rise which is mostly restricted to syllables in isolation).

[mōdgethanc]

(And hoi is usually pronounced as a shorter non-breathy fall without the final rise which is mostly restricted to syllables in isolation).

Ya don't say. Just like Chinese.

Dammit, Vietnamese tones are ridiculous.

[mōdgethanc]

(And hoi is usually pronounced as a shorter non-breathy fall without the final rise which is mostly restricted to syllables in isolation).

Ya don't say. Just like Chinese.

Dammit, Vietnamese tones are ridiculous.

[mafke]

Vietnamese tones are ridiculous.

Yes they are. And I'm very thankful for that. If they (or any tone system) made more sense I'd feel much worse about my generally poor ability to perceive and/or produce them. As it is, I can blame my lacklustre performance on the ridiculous nature of the tones themselves.

[mōdgethanc]

Mandarin isn't that hard, although some people have a lot of difficulty keeping the rising and falling-rising tones distinct. The fact that they merge in certain circumstances doesn't help.

[inquisitive]

I meant how the tones are written. In other words, i want to take a pen and paper and write a word down. Then write the proper tone mark for it, but with the right stroke. Some words have several accent marks, so i want to know which one is normally written first. I want to learn it the way children learn it growing up. I've also noticed that many Vietnamese raised in Vietnam pretty much have the same or very similar handwriting styles. You can tell. Anyway, Is there a video on how to write the proper tonal marks? Thanks.

Normally, the diacritics will be put last, and from right to left. Because writers usually aim to write fast, most words usually are written in one stroke - the pen's point isn't put off the paper when writing the word - so we'll finish the word first, then go back and put the marks.

And the letter's diacritics will be put first, then the word's.

For example, the word khướu:
We'll write: k - h - u - o - u - horn diacritic for o ( -> ơ) - diacritic of u ( -> ư) - acute for the word ( ' ).
The word's diacritic will never be put above semivowels. That's why the acute is above ơ.

For clips, this Youtube user has clips showing how to write the alphabet. For Vietnamese writing style, well it's just the copperplate thing as you can see in the clip.

Btw, abt software, I think this http://www.vnschool.net/modules.php?nam ... e&sid=3440 has enough in details.

Good info. I'll check it out. Thanks.

[sleepapnea]

Living in the Americas, the Northern dialect is absolutely useless. You'll be lucky if you find a Northern Vietnamese speaker (although if you go to an embassy or something, they'll probably speak the Northern variety). Everyone over on this side of the pond speaks a Southern or sometimes South-Central dialect.

Including Canada? There are quite a lot of Vietnamese people in Toronto (and their restaurants!) but I'm not sure how recently they've come over here.

If most of them speak a Southern dialect, then I am definitely not learning Vietnamese, because I only like the Northern dialect. (Well, and the Central. And I wasn't really planning on learning it anyway, but it was a possibility, if I mastered Korean, Italian, Punjabi and Turkish first.)

Now really? There are plenty of people that speak with heavy Northern accents in America: including Hai Phong, Bui Chu, Vinh accents that replace "d" and even "gi" with "r" and switch around "l" and "n" (any pretentious Viet-kieu can fake a Northern accent by saying "gi" instead of "di", but it takes a really Northern to replace "di" with "ri"! To those who replace "gi" with "ri", one can only stand in awe!).

[JackFrost]

Phuongngutiengviet.png

Just throwing this here. Enjoy.

[הענט]

A lot of people I used to chat with changed their initial n into l. Such as in the word for fifteen. Is this a dialect thing?

[JackFrost]

A lot of people I used to chat with changed their initial n into l. Such as in the word for fifteen. Is this a dialect thing?

It's more like urban vs rural thing since [n~l] can be found throughout the country.

Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as năm by itself and in compound numerals like năm mươi "fifty" but appears as lăm in mười lăm "fifteen". In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mươi nhăm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mươi lăm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese ... _variation

[Tenebrarum]

A lot of people I used to chat with changed their initial n into l. Such as in the word for fifteen. Is this a dialect thing?

That's a rural Northern feature. The opposite direction - /l/ becoming /n/ - is even more common.

People in the South have other pairs of consonants mixed up, but not that one.

[הענט]

Oh. Thank you very much guys. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this l/n transition does also occur in Cantonese, right?

[mōdgethanc]

Oh. Thank you very much guys. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this l/n transition does also occur in Cantonese, right?

Yep, and some Mandarin dialects.

[Tenebrarum]

A lot of people I used to chat with changed their initial n into l. Such as in the word for fifteen.

Wait... There's no /n/ in the word for fifteen. It's either mười lăm (standard) or mười nhăm (a northern variant). No /n/.

[הענט]

I didn't know. I thought I would just take 10 + 5 and make 15.
Of course I meant it in general as in the word nói (speak).

[Tenebrarum]

Ah, I get it now. Of course, because "mười năm" would mean "ten years", not fifteen.

/n/ shifting to /l/ is characteristic of quite a few kinds of Cantonese, like Hong Kong Cantonese. And the variety that I'm learning too - Saigon Cantonese.

[הענט]

Cool.