Also - to the developers: I should balance out my above criticisms by saying that what I have sampled on this website has been done very well, and the addition of things like the lesson PDFs is a welcome thing. Learning a language is difficult enough, but building useful language teaching tools is really difficult. As a teacher of English here in Hanoi, I can understand that all too well. Hat’s off to you.

Carl Kenner’s comments are mostly true, though the word for “what” (gì) is pronounced “yee” (with the downward tone) more in the countryside area between central Vietnam and northern Vietnam - as far as the north is concerned.

In and around Hanoi, the pronunciation is supposedly the government “standard,” and words starting with “gi” or “d” (not the hard đ) have the same sound as “z” in English rather than “y” as in “you.” So in the upper north of Vietnam the word for “what” is “zee,” again with the downward tone.

The spoken lesson as well as the PDF fail to mention the distinction of the northern accent / dialect, and though I’d give bonus points for explaining that there are three main dialects (northern, central, and southern,) it is a complete misrepresentation that a foreigner can get by learning only one dialect. I have met Vietnamese is all of these regions, as well as being married to a native Hanoian, and Vietnamese can have quite a lot of trouble understanding natives from other regions, not to mention foreigners who are normally way off the mark with pronunciation. Even the tones of the language are used / spoken quite differently between the three regions (as well as all of the smaller minority regions.) Hanoi, for example, has the most distinct difference between the six tones (if you include “no tone as one of them.) What this means is that if you are planning to only visit the central and northern regions, you probably don’t want to practice pronunciation with examples from a southern speaker - and vice-versa.

Another problem (with this particular lesson) is the PDF has some mistakes both in explaining the tones used for the “You’re welcome!” phrase, and the Vietnamese spelling. The Vietnamese spelling is “Không có ̣gì” for “It’s nothing,” and “Không có gì đâu,” for “It’s nothing at all.” To explain the tones correctly: Không has no tone, có has the rising tone, gì has the falling tone, and đâu has no tone. Disregard the PDF. Unlike English, Vietnamese has very strict pronunciation rules, and if you learn these rules, you can correctly pronounce any word that you read. That said, it’s no easy task, especially when you mix it with the tones.

Finally, to clarify about the use of “Không có gì” and “Không sao đâu”: “Không có gì” is closest to “It’s nothing” in English, and is almost always used as a response to “Thank you” (”Cảm ơn.̶ However, “Không sao đâu” is closest to “(It’s) no problem at all,” or “It doesn’t matter,” but is best used as a reply when something “bad” happens (eg., a waitperson drops your food on the floor before it reaches your table,) or when somebody apologizes to you (”Xin lỗi” in Vietnamese.) It’s interesting to note that “Không sao đâu” can be literally translated several ways, including “Not why at all,” or - more popular with Vietnamese tour guides - “No star where.”

But the word “yi” will be pronounced “zi” in the north. It is the same word with a different pronounciation. So you will hear “yi”, “zi”, or “chi”. “yi” and “zi” are pronounced with a tone going down, and “chi” has a flat tone.

Don’t worry we'’ll wait until the next lessons are release. S_R_C