Vietnamese Language?
Me and my wife are from New Orleans and plan to move back in a couple of years. I am starting Pre-Med this fall and want to start learning other languages. New Orleans has a large Vietnamese community, so my goal is to learn Vietnamese down the road because most people that speak a second language in the United States speak either Spanish or French. I want to be different.
None of the colleges I am prospecting teaches Vietnamese, but one of them offers Japanese and Chinese (Manderin).
Personally I am more interested in Japanese, as I am infatuated by their culture and would love to at visit Japan a few times.
But if my ultimate goal is Vietnamese, would either language help me more with Vietnamese? Maybe one is more similar in linguistics, word roots, or characters.
And if anyone happens to have any tips it would be helpful. I have wanted to at least pick up a second language for a while, but my goal is to also look good to a Medical School and/or Hospital.
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Tags: chinese manderin, colleges, japan, languages, linguistics, medical school, new orleans, pre med, second language, united states, vietnamese community, word roots
September 26th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
vietnamese was my first language and i was born in hawaii..
its so easy to learn.. you should try smaller colleges.. at my college they offer vietnamese and its a junior college..
its easier than manderin or japanese becuase its like english words with little accents and the sounds are simular not confusing characters..
September 26th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I don’t think there is any language that is similar to vietnamese. Very few (few few few) words in chinese sound similar to vietnamese but that’s as far as it can get. The vietnamese language contains the usual "ABC" of English, except for f, j, w, and sometimes z. If none of the colleges around your area have vietnamese classes, then I think you can try learning it from other vietnamese people around your area. Maybe even rent a couple vietnamese movies… with subtitles.
September 26th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
If you want to learn a language that is the most similar to vietnamese, learn chinese (particularly cantonese) or maybe one of the other southeast asian languages. It’s not that you can actually learn vietnamese from learning those languages, it’s that vietnamese is a tonal language and it is very difficult to master for someone who comes from a non-tonal background. The same word with different tones can have five different meanings.