Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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57 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Save This Endangered Text; It's The Best You Can Get, January 28, 2001
Save this text! As a non-Vietnamese speaking Vietnamese-American born at the end of the war (and ambitions to get involved in business in Vietnam in the future) this course has been a savior. It's the best you can buy for learning the Vietnamese language. Other Vietnamese language `courses' found on Amazon aren't even in the same league with this one. Before getting this I ordered Language/30's Vietnamese and Vocabulearn's Vietnamese. In comparison these ones are jokes (the readers who gave them good reviews obviously haven't seen this course). One caveat however. For this text to be useful the accompanying CD set also needs to be ordered. Unfortunately, I'm lead to believe this text is endangered of being put out of print because the publisher (Tuttle Publishing) doesn't even make the CD set anymore. To get the CD set (7 CD's for $135) you have to mail the author directly (Tuttle's number is given in the back of the book. Call them, they'll give you the author's address). Fortunately the author's very quick to mail the CD set- it took 3 business days to get from Cambridge, Mass. to Santa Clara, CA. If you are interested in learning the Vietnamese language buy this text (with the intention of later buying the CD set). This course deserves to thrive and become the standard for learning the Vietnamese language. It should be the "Elementary Chinese" (a standard Chinese learning text) for the Vietnamese language.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
I'm not sure that this book is useful..., May 9, 2006
I'm a teacher of Vietnamese and have been working for about 10 years in teaching Vietnamese as a second language. Otherwise, I'm a linguist who has several researches on Second language acquisition. The first time I had this book in my hands, I had a very good impression on the book: well designed, correct English, the author introduced as a professional in teaching Vietnamese.
It is true that the book has many positive points: instrumental words, such as final sentence particles, modal verbs, empty words have been clearly explained; the theories of Vietnamese pronunciation in the book show that the author has strong knowledges of Vietnamese phonetics, each unit has many exercises.
HOWEVER, in my opinion, it is impossible for learners to teach themselve with this book. Why?
1. The book focuses too much on Vietnamese linguistics. It's rather a Vietnamese linguitics textbook than a Vietnamese communicative language book. It's really hard for a normal learner (I mean "normal learner" is not a linguist") to understand phonetic definitions of the kind of "G is a velar voiceless fricative consonant" or "Nh is a palatal nasal consonant, which is created with the tip of the tongue being lowered toward the lower teeth and the back of the tongue rising toward the hard palate and contacting it: nha, nhờ, nhủ." And so on. So the Pronunciation session from page 17 - 42 is, in my opinion, a "headeach" part and ... useless.
2. Looking at the 15 lessons with 15 daily topics, it is easy to figure out that some topics can be used only for on-campus students: "In the dormitory"(lesson 10), "In the classroom" (lesson 9), "Getting acquaitanced in the classroom", and even in other lessons, words related to school environment are much used: student, professor, university, library, book, pen, teacher, class etc.
3. No sound distinctions of dialects. Vietnamese language is known as a language with many dialects, at least three main dialects. However, throught the whole book, I find rarely this important distinction. The language that the author uses to teach in the book is likely to be the Northern dialect. Many words, sentences, pronouns, expressions will be useless for those who go or live in the South of Vietnam.
4. The author is not conscient about language level. Especially in the part "Narrative", learners are submerged in a sea of new vocabulary and of Vietnamese expressions and structures, even in the first lessons of a beginning level book. For example, only in lesson 9, the Narrative talks about the University of Harvard with a lot, a lot of vocabulary that are NOT for beginning students at all! A waste of time and an useless resource!
For concluding, this book is recommended only for on-campus students who LEARN DIRECTLY with the author, NOT for those who teach themselves Vietnamese.
Please find my email in my profile if you want to discuss about this reviews. Thank you.
Dinh Lu Giang (Evietnam Group)
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Elementary Vietnamese is EXCELLENT!, April 29, 2000
So far, this is the best book I have seen teaching the Vietnamese language. The first section deals with a highly comprehensive description of the sounds and syllable structure (based on Hanoi dialect). The description includes charts with IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet used by linguists) and linguistic terminology. Don't let this frighten you, because it explains what it means. The lessons, which are themed, are arranged in an easy-to-follow format: Dialogues, Vocabulary, Grammar Notes, Drills, and Excercises. There are also boxes which show you how to formulate sentences. This is definitely for serious students of Vietnamese. Also, since Vietnamese is a tonal language (like Mandarin and Swedish) it helps if you obtain the CD. The CD will also greatly help out in the pronunciation section of the book. Good Luck!
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