#vietnamese vocab

[languageofadreamer]

Chinese/Việt Langblr Introduction

他们好！I'm Birdie or 梦晓 !

I've been studying Mandarin on and off for about 7 years. I started learning in middle school and had the opportunity to visit China during an exchange program in my teen years, and I've been in love with it ever since. I want to be able to be proficient enough to study Chinese media and books.

I picked up Vietnamese after meeting my lovely partner, who is an immigrant from Vietnam. Her language and culture is deeply tied to her, and I want to be able to share that with her. Not to mention their family only speaks Vietnamese, and I want to be able to make a connection and relationship with them without constantly relying on my partner to translate lol.

I'll be uploading mostly my notes and any culture topics that interest me. I'm also a children's librarian, so I may post about that as well!

I tag things by language and then grammar/vocab/culture! My personal posts will be tagged with #birdie+chirps

[aro-langblr]

Language that is the most difficult to learn in your experience ?

hmmm, there's nuance to this question. but I'll say both german and vietnamese. for two very different reasons.

unless you followed my previous blog, most people probably don't know that I self-studied vietnamese for ~1.5 years! I paused my studies because I struggled to pronounce the tones well enough to be understood despite actively practicing and interacting with natives on here. vietnamese is a language I'd like to go back to studying in the future, but I do need a formal teacher if I'd like to continue. the good thing about vietnamese is that the grammar is quite simplistic! it doesn't feel fair to say "vietnamese has been the hardest language for me to learn" when it wasn't the grammar, vocab, or resources that I struggled with; it was specifically my ability to replicate the 6 tones. yes, I dropped the language, but I have every intention of going back if I ever have the resources available to me

as for german, every ounce of my grammar knowledge came from fighting through blood, sweat, and tears lol. german grammar was not intuitive to me at all, and although I feel comfortable with most german grammar concepts now, it took so long for the declension chart and word order and everything else to finally make sense in my brain. I still get tripped up sometimes! concepts that I understood in a mere month for other languages took me probably 6-12 months to implement in german!

most people expect me to say japanese has been more difficult to learn than german, but that hasn't been my experience at all :)

[king-hunty]

Resource Recommendation!!

For any of my readers that are, well, readers (lol) have I got the app/website for you!

The app is called Langi, found at langi.app, and is like a Du Chinese or Chairman's Bao for Vietnamese (specifically the southern accent). Hopefully, some of my fellow polyglots know or are familiar with those apps, but for those who aren't, that's okay. They're apps that work as graded readers, categorized accordingly based on vocab and grammar difficulty. That's what Langi does, and it currently goes to B2 Vietnamese, which is considered upper-intermediate.

The pros and cons:

—Pros—

aesthetic & modern UI

multiple learning methods incorporated together (reading, listening, SRS flashcards, sentence forming, and dictation tests)

interesting stories (even for low beginners)

in the southern accent!!!

—Cons—

still in fairly early development (bugs expected)

SRS system still needs work (could use a habit tracker + notif system)

the listening practice is done by AI, so you don't always get the most authentic experience :/ but great for beginners.

Final Verdict:

It's a great resource, especially for a language and dialect that is quite lacking in material. I can't wait to see how it grows!

[pink-strawberry-kissess]

tumblr keeps exposing me cuz every time i get a notification it says “your crush is at it again” “mind-blowing post from your crush. they’re a favorite of yours, we’ve noticed ❤️”

and i be like WHO tf IS MY CRUSH??? i don’t even have a crush, and i click and it’s you😐

is me drunk anon.

i’m not sure if you talked about this before. you may have, and i have a feeling you did. i just don’t remember, but what are your hcs/theories for Ada’s back story and how she became a merc? (maybe you might want to do them FAQ shit lmao, hehe just a suggestion because i understand it can quiet get a bit tiring answering repetitive questions)

let’s get very deep with this. let’s not glide the surface of the water. i do believe that she started at a very young age. maybe around 9 or 10. and for this whole mercenary thing to work? there is no way she went to public school. was Ada born in China then gained US citizenship, or born in the US? i hc Ada’s parents as immigrants FOR SURE. maybe her family came to the US to escape economic hardships in China? maybe her parents are US citizens but her grandparents are immigrants? i’m only saying this because i believe it’s canon information that Ada is Chinese-American (and honestly i don’t remember seeing where Vietnamese came from), so she can’t be Australian or Canadian lmao

i would go on but this question is for u and not for me lol

k bye (YOU DRINK WATER too FAWK 🫵😤 and eat a something. u need reminding too 🖐️😌)

"they're a favourite of yours," YOU HAVE OTHER FAVOURITES????? >:((((((

im jks dfjkbfdjkssdjkfbskf

HIHIii

sdjkfjskfjksbfs honestly i have answered lots of things and i keep forgetting to link them to my masterlist and im also lazy

OKAYOKAOKAYOKAY so i think the "Ada is Chinese/American" has been a huge misinterpretation based on that one "Ada Wong facts" vid from ink ribbon? the video states that she's Chinese-American and for some reason I think people interpreted that as she's half Chinese / Half white. (i've always interpreted it as just she is Chinese AND lives in America and has grown up partially in America.

also for some reason it seems like Ada (to me) is the only fully asian character because jill has always supposed to be half japanese and they just COMPLETELY got rid of that imo. i refuse to acknowledge that she's half japanese considering they just don't do anything alluding to the fact that she is. she's always been modelled after white models too.

And also a lot of sites including capcom just state that's Ada's "of Chinese descent" and don't specify anything else.

ALSO capcom FUCKED UP REAL BAD IMO by modeling her with a WHITE PERSON'S FACE. ada, a chinese woman, should've NEVER been modelled after a white person. i know that for a bit of damnation? courtenay taylor stated that they modelled it a bit after her because of her face/voice???? but i don't know if it was confirmed, it was just from an interview and she wasn't even sure herself

i think because we have no idea for her backstory and there's no canon backstory there's so much to go on for DDDD: i just have so many thoughts about what kind of life she could've had.

god i just reread this and im rambling a lot just a lot of YAPPING

okay uh

i don't really think she was born in the states tbh. i do think her parents were immigrants or at least she had something that made her go to the states. i like the idea of her having to at least grow up a bit in the states (particularly in her teens) and that's also why i think she doesn't have an accent.

also YEAH i do know a lot of people who have come over from china or some part of asia and they RARELY lose their accent if they come over in their 20s. (most people have defined vocab at this point and unless they actively try to lose their accent or change their vocab, it tends to stay kinda the same. their english will get better, but i've also known people that lost a lot of their english after leaving uni for example) i've only see people lose their accent/never develop one if they have lived in america for 15+ years or grew up for a lot of their childhood/teen years

i know that's confirmation bias lol but considering ada's always had perfect american english, i (personally) can not headcanon that she moved into the states in her 20s. i think that she could've been in the states by the time she's like 7-11.

i'm not a huge headcanon-er of ada having siblings (particularly younger siblings.) also it being the 70s, (if her family complied with the law) she should not/would not have younger siblings (look up "one child law" if you're confused) i can see her having a younger friend that she "wanted as a sister"

i can maybe see ada having an older sibling, but i also hc that her family (similarly to leon and the rest of the re cast lol) have all lost their families in their entirety. (also i KNOW that the "leon lost his entire family" thing hasn't ever really been confirmed, it's just heavily headcanoned)

also

ada is not a chinese name. WONG is, but ada isn't. i've struggled with this and trying to find a reason for this lol other than it just being a fake name. iirc ada is a german name (from it's origins)

NYWAYS SORRY FOR YAPPING

THAT'S MY SECRET, I'M ALWAYS DRINKING WATER

hehe i go eat something sweet hehe :3

[squeakygeeky]

Language Learning Check-In: June

Assuming I keep up with this I guess I'll make this a monthly thing. I've loved languages for a long time, but this was the first time in a while where I felt like it was my main hobby. I'm currently very into the idea of 'comprehensible input' which is where things are simplified enough and with enough context that you can understand what's going on, even if you can't understand most of the words, and you naturally start picking up both grammar and vocabulary from exposure. I finally quit Duolingo cold turkey.

Thai: I started seriously studying Thai at the end of last month, starting with learning the alphabet and then immediately abandoning that to do pure listening comprehension only. I've been averaging 2hrs a day, a pace I can probably stick to for the next two months since I can watch videos during work, but not after that. This is not counting time spent watching BL since in that case I'm focusing mainly on reading subtitles, although I'm sure it helps a little. The videos I'm watching have the format of two teachers asking each other basic questions ('Is this a fruit? Do you like to eat this?') with lots of repetition, hand gestures, and doodles to illustrate.

I feel like I've been learning so much but all I can quantify is the hours spent since it's not like I'm making vocab lists or taking tests, I'm just absorbing like a sponge. My favorite part is that it's pretty chill to be a sponge so it's still possible when I'm tired, and until this past week or so I was struggling a lot with my energy levels. I don't really have any fun language facts to share other than that sky blue is its own distinct color category, there's no overall blue in Thai.

Spanish: I'm actually part of an insanely multilingual friend group now and there are a lot of Spanish speakers. This includes the friend I've been calling 'Kdrama Friend' who is actually a Spaniard, although her mother tongue is Catalan, not Castilian. Then there's my Guatemalan neighbor of the Mysterious Doormat Beverage (left on my doormat, not consisting of doormats), and a few other women. Kdrama Friend can translate (and so can some of the others, they mostly speak more English than I speak Spanish) but it's a lot less awkward when she doesn't have to. I do struggle to follow group conversations a lot of times though, so I've been meaning to seriously work on my conversational skills and now I've actually started.

It's easier than with Thai in the sense that I don't have to have visual input, I can understand intermediate to advanced podcasts like the Duolingo podcast and even native podcasts, but it's harder in the sense that I don't feel any progress since my level was already pretty high and I'm just picking up the occasional new word. We'll see how I do at tomorrow's baby shower. To be honest I think a lot of my problems with conversation are more psychological than linguistic and exist even when I'm speaking English, I can just cope better then.

I found a podcast on fashion history which I was able to follow because I'm actually really interested in that. It's the whole comprehensible input thing, I know perfectly well what a toile is and have used them, but someone at my Spanish level who didn't know how to sew clothes might have been lost.

Working on Spanish doesn't feel that exciting but it's useful and important to me for heritage reasons. If you've ever read the Josefina American Girl books, that's exactly one side of my family and my grandma grew up speaking Spanish, but my dad's Spanish is almost nonexistent and I just learned in school.

Vietnamese: You all know I love this language and I've wanted to learn it for a while, but there aren't great resources for it and while I can absolutely pick up certain words and phrases, it still kind of...doesn't sound like a language a lot of the time. Thai already feels more understandable. I think the alphabet similarity is actually hurting me because if I look at a word the way it would sound with English pronunciation interferes too much, and there aren't any videos simple enough to feel comprehensible without any translation. So this is on the back burner.

Korean: Dropped for now, although I did find some comprehensible input videos in case I decide to try learning it later.

My problem is that I now want to learn all the languages, right now, and that is not how it works. Anyway, feel free to ask me about languages any time.

[straykats]

little ramble about queer vocab in viet <3

so im. thinking about how the only word i know that means 'gay' is 'be de' (spelt here without the proper letters but anyways) and thats actually a slur, the equivalent of the f-slur, and how the only other word i know that connotes being gay is 'bong' (not pronounced like a bong btw but like. bohwm? idk man, once again not spelt right - im not a tually sure of the spelling tbf) and how that only implies being gay and does not actually mean it. it's the word you'd use in conversation when referring to someone who is gay, the same way people probably do the "you know, he's [the hand thing]" and i'm thinking about how the word be de was only brought into the vietnamese vocabulary through french colonistion and prior to that, there was no word for queer bodies. i'm thinking about how the word 'be de' was thrown around at school (because i went to afairly multi-cultural school, with a great number of vietnamese people) and how people still used the f-slur (because it was highschool and there was a thrill in using 'bad words', though of course this doesnt excuse it) but they knew it was bad, whereas be de was thrown around without much though for it. everyone knew it meant gay, also knew it could be translated to the f-slur, but it didn't carry that weight with it.

i'm thinking about how there aren't any words (or, that i'm aware of anyways. we'll get to this later) for being bisexual, for being lesbian, for being trans. how if I want to come out to my parents in my mothertongue, i will need to literally spell it out for them. take apart who i am and state it word by word. there is no word that encompasses loving more than one gender, not even a word that encompasses the queer community itself?

and perhaps i'm just not aware of it because I live outside of vietnam, but even if i try and find words, i get mixed results and then i'd need to look at if these words are the words being used by medical professionals or by the community itself? there's so much to unpack and break down if i'm to try and find a word, or a handful of words that could work. but historically, there is no word. and is that because there was never a need for the word? and if so - why was that? because queer people loved in private? because identifying yourself would be to bring harm to yourself? or maybe those words, if they exist/ed, are now kind of just... lost. no one knows them, or at least not enough people use them for them to be known.

and like. i can identify myself in one language, but not the other. i can be my full self in western culture, but not really in my viet one, and bwhilst i don't live in a world where the two are mutually exclusive, it still makes me feel really disconnected.

**please note i'm literally just rambling and thinking and i don't actually have references, nor have i acually sat down and tried to deep dive into the history of queerness in vietnam. i'm talking from my own experiences, from what i've heard from my parents, from what i know as a diasporic queer person (????)

[willows-studyblr]

Langblr reactivation challenge

{Week 1, day 1: Introduction}

Hey there, this is me trying to complete the challenge by @prepolyglot! Great idea, by the way!

The name I use here on tumblr is Willow (she/her). I'm in my 20s, and I live and study in Germany.

I've had Tumblr on and off and I usually end up deleting my account at some point. But for now I'm back.

What languages am I studying?

My native language is German 🇩🇪. My second language is English 🇨🇦 (probably C2).

I've had French 🇫🇷 lessons in school (five years), but I didn't have a huge interest in learning the language back then. About a year ago, I decided to give it another go. At the moment, I'm mostly learning vocabs with Duolingo. I occasionally watch movies/series in French and I sometimes surprise myself with how much of the language I remember.

Last year, I also started taking lessons in Vietnamese 🇻🇳 and I absolutely love the language so far! I always get super excited when I understands a word here and there in songs and movies ^-^

Other languages I'm interested in are Spanish 🇪🇸 and Chinese 🇨🇳 (and so, so many more), but for now I'll stick to French and Vietnamese.

What do I hope I'll get out of this challenge?

I hope that I'll end up being a bit more consistent with my language practice (so far, I'm only consistent with Duolingo, altough I am admittedly a bit proud of my 450+ days streak).

I've got quite a few Vietnamese lessons to catch up to and I also recently started using Anki. I really hope to be able to do some additional language learning outside of Duolingo and besides university.

In addition, it would be nice to connect to my fellow language enthusiasts!

If there is anything you'd like to know, don't hesitate to send an ask or a direct message!:)

[boilingwaters]

✨Boilingwaters welcome everyone!✨

🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊

What is this blog about?

This is a hobby Viet-Eng translation blog for songs that caters to only one audience(me)!

I am merely a native Vietnamese with fluent English, but low aptitude for poetry and the arts of the words.

Hence, these will be neither poetic nor rhyming, nor concise nor whatever way you describe good translations.

They exists as my expressions of love for music and my homeland, as well as the love for life within me!

They will be self-endulging, vocab-flexing, excessively literal, but they will be everything that makes me happy!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What I try to do with each song:

The original lyrics, posted along with my translation

The version of the song that I particularly prefer (either on Youtube or Spotify)

Separately posted and linked: Extra notes on idioms, cultural references, or reasoning for my interpretation of certain wordings

🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊

Notes for visitors:

Please take my translations as the barebone conveyance of what things mean in the original language, as I interpret them.

They can be used as guidelines for your own translations into something more streamlined and poetic!

Free to use and reference with credit, and tell me all about how you made them better!

I am an amateur in every way, so give me feedbacks please, whether they are in translation, song choice, or formatting!

[paxperstudium]

langblr reactivation challenge

.week 1.day 1

i'm adriana, and i’m currently studying a lot of languages to varying levels, but i'm focused on spanish and tagalog right now! i'm from the us and i am fluent only in english, something i am working very hard to change

i’m taking intro to spanish lessons formally at university, and i self-study tagalog with the help of textbooks and online resources. i also self-study a little bit of italian and other languages in extra free time-- but spanish and tagalog are what i most want to reach high fluency levels in, so the best of my focus goes to them

from 2013-2017 i studied french in formal courses and was able to hold a conversation, but i haven’t maintained my study so i’m definitely back to a beginner level for most french grammar/vocab.

sometime in the future i would love to learn some basic arabic and mandarin, develop conversational cantonese and vietnamese, and advanced italian. once i learn tagalog to an adequate level i would like to learn basics of other filipino languages as well!

[imrileyidostuff]

Sometimes I wanna make a language for my little brain stories but no, I can't jst *make* a language- no, I'd have to make an older language first, so the newer language has a base to grow out of (like lots of English from Latin) but also to make it make sense i shouldn't have the alphabet directly translate to english or even follow the roman-alphabet thing y'know the lestters with engilsh spanish vietnamese french and others, so then I'd have to translate a proper alphabet but not one that translates to english seamlessly.

and with the characters It's literally some guy who speaks english in a brand new world that speaks some fantasy stuff, and then he gets a translation potion but no that's not right, i watched some vids on making magic more fantastical and less mechanical, so i should make it logic more. In magic terms.

anyways the potion for language learning only increases how quickly you learn a language based on how much you know already, so MC still had to learn some basic language skills like the alphabet and phonetics and then he has to hang arounf locals for the potion to actually make work and have him build his vocab and grammar and shit and

ong i hate my brain :(

also he's the weird one and people don't really like him bc. he desn't know how to speak their language.

he just did pictograms for the first few months or so lol.

[maiverie]

i'm Not super good at viet bc i gave up for a couple years and only got back into learning it around the end of last year bc i randomly got back into vpop (thank you trọng hiếu for dropping the banger of the century thú vị hơn vậy 🙏) and now i'm mostly trying to master the phonology and some basic vocab before tackling the scariest monster of all: dialectal differences. it kinda sucks to find learning resources because vietnamese simply isn't a very popular target language but idk something about it called to me i just couldn't pull myself away from all those funky lil diacritics they just fascinated me i had to master them

earlier this year, i actually started stanning (or rather ulting lmao) the group that i-land's hanbin debuted in, meaning that practically any online fandom space would be filled to the brim with viet fans, so i've been getting a lot of encouragement and assistance from them on twitter, i think they get a lil giddy over someone wanting to learn their language hehe

aaaa enough of my autistic rambling (i could honestly infodump all day you'd have to stop me) ummmm i guess i'll go with 🧀 as my emoji cuz it's cute hehehe 🫶

- 🧀

HEJJDJSJA omg i’m only a casual listener of vpop so im VERY VERY open to more recs if you have any that come to mind 🥹🥹 i really like monstar & grey d!! i’ve not heard of trọng hiếu before so THANK YOU FOR THE REC 🫡🫡

dialectal differences are honestly the bane of my existence; my family immigrated from south vietnam to australia so i struggle understanding northern (sometimes even central 😭) accents because the vast majority of the vietnamese community here speaks the southern dialect 😭 at the same time, i was born and raised in australia so i’m not as confident w my viet as i am w my english :( for these reasons, i’ve been trying to study vietnamese properly so we’re in the same boat!!! i’ve noticed the same thing — there’s a plethora of material for other asian languages but with vietnamese, it seems as though more modern/recent material is geared for the northern dialect :(( i really think vietnam has a really beautiful culture and vietnamese is such a beautiful language (though difficult to learn) so it makes me feel really proud and excited that you’re learning it 🥹🥹💖💖 i kinda love that you felt drawn to it because i’ve never had somebody say that before 😭

ALSO. HANBIN & HANNI HIT DIFFERENTTTTT 😭😭😭 i’m so glad the vietnamese fans were encouraging; i think vietnamese people in general ARE VERY VERY welcoming to new learners since our language isn’t the most popular 🥹

ALSO PLS you are welcome to info dump any time on my blog bc i kinda love the way you write 😭😭 your sentences just make sense in my brain and i feel like your personality shines so bright through your texting, it’s kinda insane and I LOVE IT. ILY CHEESE ANON!!! 💖💖💕💗💓💞

[quarantinegirls]

Mornings carry a cool breeze. We rotate through different brands of Vietnamese coffee. Duck eggs are more commonplace than chicken eggs, mangos and papayas and dragonfruit are so much richer here. The roar of motorbikes is all you hear on the streets and traffic is chaotic. Saigon storefronts flash by in jumbled pops of colors and fonts. In Da Nang, mountains loom in the distance.

Every afternoon, the house quiets down for naptime. Then, our aunts and uncles spoil us with spicy dried squid and candied fruit and sugarcane juice and all sorts of chè for snacking. Vocab words resurface from the deep recesses of my brain through long, heart-to-heart chats. The laundry hanging from this morning is already dry.

People lounge on the sidewalks and fan themselves. It's humid and I'm sweaty with 15+ mosquito bites but I am so happy. We eat dinners seated on colorful, plastic stacking stools, huddled around folding tables. I learn that bánh xèo in central Vietnam are smaller than in the southern region, and I try goose meat for the first time—it tastes like ham. We order rau muống everywhere. When we zip through the alleyways heading back home, my dad points out where he drew up well water for all his fish.

Vietnam always brings forth nuanced feelings of belonging and love and home tinged with cultural disconnection and novelty that I can't quite explain. Flavors and scents and words long forgotten always come rushing back as if there weren't years of separation in between. But everything is different and there are so many new things to learn and know.

I got to spend Tết there with my family for the first time. My aunts prepare a spectacular spread of foods and flowers. I clasp my hands in prayer, thanking the gods and my ancestors in mixed Vietnamese and bits of English, hoping they'll excuse all of it and just peer into my heart. We exchange new year wishes and lì xì, and then start to gather around the dining table.

-T

[obsessed4succs]

Language Practice~

Journal Entry #1

Hello! Help me! Yesterday, my parents grounded me for life! Just kidding; they grounded me for the summer. They took my electronics. I can’t do my scholarships.

Journal Entry #2

I got more hours at CFA! 9 hours to be exact. I am now working 40 hours! Excitement! I am going to talk to Aby about a raise today or tomorrow.

Journal Entry #3 Alexsa got caught and is grounded again. No electronics. Mom called me “snobby” and a curse word. I was shocked. Plus, dad’s on ten to six so no life either.

[willows-studyblr]

Langblr reactivation challenge

{Week 1, day 3: Vocab mindmap}

The task is to create a mindmap that starts with a broader topic and then narrows it down. I'm too lazy right now to create an actual mindmap, though, so I've decided to make a list. This will be for both French 🇫🇷 and Vietnamese 🇻🇳.

House -> names of the different rooms

Kitchen -> kitchen furniture

Fridge -> foods

Foods -> colors, flavors

Obviously, this list could be expanded (e.g. for the other rooms in a house) but I think this will suffice for now.

[translatewithme]

Every year, Vietnamese and Chinese people celebrate the Mid-Autumn/Moon Festival for a year of successful harvest. The festival takes places on month 8 day 15 of the Chinese calendar. In 2017, it's on October 4th! Although this is a festival widely celebrated in East Asian culture, this post specifically looks at how Vietnamese people celebrate Moon Festival.

[floralsphere-blog]

Months & Days of the Week in Vietnamese

The months are really easy to remember, because its just [month] + [number]! :)

Tháng - Month

Tháng một - (lit. month one) January

Tháng hai - (lit. month two) February

Tháng ba - (lit. month three) March

Tháng tư - (lit. month four) April

Tháng năm - (lit. month five) May

Tháng sáu - (lit. month six) June

Tháng bảy - (lit. month seven) July

Tháng tám - (lit. month eight) August

Tháng chín - (lit. month nine) September

Tháng mười - (lit. month ten) October

Tháng mười một - (lit. month eleven) November

Tháng mười hai - (lit. month twelve) December

-

Ngày - Day

Chủ nhật - Sunday

Ngày thứ hai - Monday

Ngày thứ ba - Tuesday

Ngày thứ tư - Wednesday

Ngày thứ năm - Thursday

Ngày thứ sáu - Friday

Ngày thứ bảy - Saturday

** [Ngày] seems to be a modifier in this case and can be deleted. E.g. you can say "thứ hai" instead of "ngày thứ hai" and still be understood!

-

Bonus: the seasons!

Mùa - Season

Mùa xuân - Spring

Mùa hè - Summer

Mùa thu - Autumn

Mùa đông - Winter

-

If there are any mistakes, please let me know!