How many Vietnamese words do you actually need
Word counts for different levels of Vietnamese, why the grammar saves you time, and why counting words is a poor measure of progress in this language.
#memory techniques
Remembering Vietnamese words: the tone is what fades
Why the meaning of a Vietnamese word stays while its tone slips away, how spaced repetition should be adapted for this, and a workable review schedule.
The Sino-Vietnamese layer: why news feels like another language
Why you can hold a conversation in Vietnamese and still not read a newspaper, what the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary layer is, and how to approach it.
Classifiers and set phrases: learn words in company
Why Vietnamese nouns need classifiers, which pairings must be learned as units, and how to record vocabulary so it is actually usable.
Vietnamese words learners keep confusing
Word pairs in Vietnamese that foreign learners routinely mix up, why the pronoun system causes most of them, and how to sort each one out.
Vietnamese vocabulary by topic: what to learn first
Which topic areas to learn first in Vietnamese, why pronouns and food come before everything else, and what to leave until later.
Tools for learning Vietnamese vocabulary
Which tools actually help with Vietnamese vocabulary, why your notes need a tone column, and how to type diacritics properly.
From understanding Vietnamese to actually speaking it
Why you understand far more Vietnamese than you can produce, what makes the gap wider in a tonal language, and how to move words into active use.