What's the most difficult thing when learning Vietnamese?

[korn]

Hi there,

What's the most difficult thing when learning Vietnamese?

Regards

[Pangu]

It depends on the individual.

From my personal experience, the two most difficult things were pronunciation and pronouns.

Even though my native language Mandarin is also tonal, I had some trouble with Vietnamese tones. But I had more problems with some of the sounds. For example, the ng-, tr- and distinguishing between c & g... etc.

In Vietnamese, although there is an universal "you" and "I", it's considered rude to use them unless you are very familiar with someone. In general, you would use a different pronoun to refer to the yourself and the person you're speaking to depending on both people's gender and age. Even today I would have to pause and think for a second before I use a pronoun. It just takes practice.

[zerogravital]

It depends on the individual.

From my personal experience, the two most difficult things were pronunciation and pronouns.

Even though my native language Mandarin is also tonal, I had some trouble with Vietnamese tones. But I had more problems with some of the sounds. For example, the ng-, tr- and distinguishing between c & g... etc.

In Vietnamese, although there is an universal "you" and "I", it's considered rude to use them unless you are very familiar with someone. In general, you would use a different pronoun to refer to the yourself and the person you're speaking to depending on both people's gender and age. Even today I would have to pause and think for a second before I use a pronoun. It just takes practice.

As a Vietnamese native speaker, I would say, the whole Vietnamese grammar and its pronunciation are quite tricky to Western learners due to its flexible grammar and tonality, just like Chinese. However, Chinese learner would find quite a few things in Vietnamese pretty similar to their mother tongue-Mandarin, especially in grammar, so Chinese learners would take much less pain when dealing with Vietnamese.
And also, I have to say Vietnamese has no "universal pronoun", unlike Chinese and English which have 我-你 and I-you couples respectively. Vietnamese speakers always have to carefully choose the right pronoun to address the addressee, which one is chosen depends on addressee's gender, age, relationship, etc.