Vietnamese communication: indirectness and saving face
How Vietnamese people express disagreement and refusal, why a smile is not always agreement, and what visitors most often misread.
#speaking Vietnamese
Starting to speak Vietnamese when you fear the tones
Why learners study Vietnamese for months without speaking it, what actually happens when you get a tone wrong, and where to start.
Greetings in Vietnamese: the pronoun comes first
Why a Vietnamese greeting requires choosing a term of address before you can say hello, how to choose safely, and what accompanies the greeting.
Everyday situations to prepare for in Vietnamese
The situations you will certainly encounter in Vietnam, what to prepare for each one, and the everyday ones that textbooks leave out entirely.
What to do when you cannot follow Vietnamese
How to handle not understanding or not knowing a word in Vietnamese, the rescue phrases to memorise, and how to keep a conversation alive.
Finding people to practise Vietnamese with
How to find Vietnamese conversation practice inside and outside Vietnam, why people switch to English, and what to do when you have no partner.
Vietnamese pronouns: a social decision in every sentence
Vietnamese has no neutral I or you. How the pronoun system works, how to choose safely as a foreigner, and why this is the hardest part of the grammar.
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.
Vietnamese pronunciation: what actually matters first
The three things that decide whether Vietnamese speakers understand you, why word order of practice matters, and what you can safely ignore at the start.