Beginner's Vietnamese

By Robert M. Quinn

Book Overview

Up-to-date language instruction guide for students with little or no background in Vietnamese. This book also teaches about the country's history and culture, including social customs, dining out and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0781804116
• ISBN13: 9780781804110
• Release Date: October 1995
• Publisher: Hippocrene Books
• Length: 515 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.3" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Beginner's Vietnamese

This book was recommended to me by an author of an other Vietnamese textbook and I have found it excellent. I only wish that they had done CD's or tapes to go with it. That would be my only minus. I have also recommended this title to other students who are learning this wonderful language with me.

Best beginning Vietnamese book I've found

Yeah, no tapes, but if you have some friends who can help with pronunciation, this book is the best I've found. I have about 8 beginning books, and all are useful, but this is definitely my favorite. Buy the book, work with a Siagonese friend to get the sounds of the vowels and consonants down, pay attention to the tones and you can lean one of the world's harder languages. Co cho chung ta di mua quyen ay, duoc khong? OK, OK, so if I butchered this, I'm still learning. Pimsleur is fine, but it's all in the Hanoi dialect; FSI course is better (and free - bittorent or google search on fsi vietnamese) but is a slow. If you want to learn the Saigon dialect, try the FSI course coupled with this book.

easy to work with

If you want to learn Vietnamese in a systematic and uncomplicated way, this is the book for you. I have previously worked with all these books on beginner's Vietnamese: Colloquial, Teach Yourself, Vietnamese for Beginners (Paiboon), Beginner's Vietnamese (Quinn). My favorite one is this one by Quinn. Reasons why you should use this book over all the others: + the grammar is clearly explained + each chapter only has around 20 words to memorize + easy and fun to work with + different types of exercises: reading, translating, making your own sentences... + Northern and Southern dialect differences are not only pointed out but practiced as well + This book goes beyond the basic's and into intermediate level Vietnamese There is only one minus with this book: it is old so some words are outdated. But with a language like Vietnamese vocabulary is the least of your worries - pronunciation is where your real challenge is! This book does not come with any audio cd's so you need to learn the sounds elsewhere - but there is heaps of free info on the web. That said, the appendix of this book has an excellent pronunciation guide, but only for the northern dialect. For the Southern dialect Paiboon's book, Vietnamese for Beginners with CD (Audio), has a very good guide, but again, there is alot of info on the web too. If you are short on time, I'd go with Paiboon's book, as the material in this thick book takes 6 months minimum to complete, you could complete Paiboon in 3 months time. It all depends on how thorough you want to be: if you want basics in a concentrated format - choose Paiboon, if you want details and study at a relaxed pace - choose Quinn.

eternal vietnam

In short, it is superb. I think it is designed for beginners and intermediates. Words become sentences, they become paragraphs, they become text. It is first time I come across such kind of teaching and I admired. Lack of auido help is lamentable. Recommended highly

5 Stars!

The title says much of it: it is for beginners. If you start with this book (and if you're studying by youself), you will not get lost or desmotivated like you probably would (i did) with "Colloquial Vietnamese: A Complete Language Course". B.V. is a very step by step book; starts introducing words, with words make sentences, with sentences make dialogs, and with dialogs make texts. It is a complete book. Each lesson (out of 30) provides a dialog that is the core if the lesson; this dialog is supported not only by the vocabulary, but also with notes on usage, grammar, and plenty of drills to make us comprehend better what we were just thaught and retain it. It has also exercises and questions about the texts.After 3 lessons, what we learned in the dialogs becomes a text without translation (all the dialogs have translations); it is like a review lesson.Being of 1972 (1995 is the reprint date) doesn't harm this book at all. Very good!