Vietnamese Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone is a space pig - it actually contains all the languages - and loads your drive.

I have a copy and found it a little boring. The best way, IMO, is to get several training programs and switch between them. It makes it more interesting and the variety helps expand your listening range. Most use northern speakers - even though the dialect is different, southerners can understand it. There only a few words in the daily word range that are actually different.

Several language courses are on sale in the computer copy software stores.

The only 'investing' you need do is to download them from PirateBay.com.

I didn't like rosetta stone. A good free way to start is www.byki.com

From a previous post:

Learning Vietnamese (Southern Dialect)

This is a website maintained by the US Dept.of State.  The dialect is southern:

http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content … Vietnamese

These guys have done a lot of research on how to go about learning Vietnamese and the resources that were available in 2009.  It's one of the best written and civil threads I've ever read.

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo … 0&PN=9

Arizona State University's Vietnamese as a Foreign Language course. They use a textbook called Let's Speak Vietnamese:

http://www.public.asu.edu/~ickpl/lsv1/index.htm

Audio for Let's Speak Vietnamese workbook:

http://www.public.asu.edu/~ickpl/lsv/wb/index.htm


Learn languages free: Vietnamese

http://freelanguage.org/learn-vietnamese

Northern Illinois Center for Southesat Asian Studies' website:

http://www.seasite.niu.edu/vietnamese/V … ontent.htm

This has a lot of the links that I've included in this post. 

http://www.adoptvietnam.org/vietnamese/vietnamese.htm

Link to thread about websites with VFL videos

Rosetta Stone is produced with the northern dialect. 

Basically, the folks in the north are pronouncing all of their vowels different than the folks down south.  Good luck!

Hi gang,

The main difference between north, south and central, Vietamese is in the pronunciation of words.  It is much like the ways Brits, Americans and Australians pronounce English (north, south and central Vietnam, respectively).  The north Vietnamese have the most proper pronunciation, but the south Vietnamese accent is more preferred.

Hope that helps.
Howie

Wild_1 wrote:

but the south Vietnamese accent is more preferred.

I disagree that part. From a neutral third person view, you can't tell a language - which is considered as the first standard of the country, taught at schools, and is delivered/broadcasted on most governmental TV channels - less prefered. It's like the standard AE on CNN or BE on BBC, Hochdeutsch in Germany or standard Mandarine in China.

Ha Ha
Always a sensitive topic when it comes to dialect. That's why I stay away from those discussions.

It is not only the pronunciation that you have differences but the three regions use different words, even (slightly) different sentence construction.

ANYWAY... Using Rosetta stone will not be a problem due to northern accent.
I used Rosetta Stone quite a lot, and I think it is a good tool, if you can spare the cash, especially if used as supplement to e.g. taking real classes. It helped me a lot to get started. I would definately buy the new e-version if it wasnt so expensive.
It feels like Rosetta put more effort into other languages...

rojamin wrote:

Wild_1 wrote:

but the south Vietnamese accent is more preferred.

I disagree that part. From a neutral third person view, you can't tell a language - which is considered as the first standard of the country, taught at schools, and is delivered/broadcasted on most governmental TV channels - less prefered. It's like the standard AE on CNN or BE on BBC, Hochdeutsch in Germany or standard Mandarine in China.

Romajin, it's difficult to believe you can be a "neutral third person" considering the fact that your profile says that your are from Hanoi lol.

I would believe this statement if it were coming from a western born person with no relatives from there. Regards, Me.

amberlulu wrote:

Romajin, it's difficult to believe you can be a "neutral third person" considering the fact that your profile says that your are from Hanoi lol.

You need to type the name right, sis. More than 3 times is not a coincidence anymore
It's as much believable as your statements that southern accent is more preferable well to be neutral, real Saigonists' accent sounds nice and soft but other provinces' accent is less preferable (as much as real Hanoian accent vs. Provinces nearby) I hope you're satisfied with that ^^

rojamin wrote:

amberlulu wrote:

Romajin, it's difficult to believe you can be a "neutral third person" considering the fact that your profile says that your are from Hanoi lol.

You need to type the name right, sis. More than 3 times is not a coincidence anymore
It's as much believable as your statements that southern accent is more preferable well to be neutral, real Saigonists' accent sounds nice and soft but other provinces' accent is less preferable (as much as real Hanoian accent vs. Provinces nearby) I hope you're satisfied with that ^^

Rojamin, sorry for mis-typing your name (but then again..who cares, it's only fake anyways right?)lol.... so take it easy.

I don't have a problem with Wild1 expressing his personal beliefs...We are all entitled to our own opinions. But the difference between Wild1 and you is: He has enough COMMON SENSE not to use a phrase like "in my NEUTRAL third person opinion" preceding his comments".....Get it?

There are, in my experience, three linguistic areas in VietNam. Northern, Central (Hue) and Southern.

Most Southerners and Northerners can understand each other but the Central language really screws them up. The north reckon they are the culturally most pure area and refined; are more concerned about status / appearances, more thrifty (tight), more conservative and adverse to change, more ceremonious and formal.

Southerners are more direct, freer with their money, more dynamic and open to change. Not to mention their food is more like Chinese in 'sweetness'.

The Highlands, where my office is, can be confusing with distinctions between older folks and the younger ones. After The American War in VietNam, Ha Noi moved a lot of Northerners in to the Highlands to change the political mix. The Highlands were one of the last areas to crease fighting

The children of these importees have a mixed culture and even Foreigners can detect the difference when a younger member is amongst their families using northern dialect.

As I am told by my employees who do our translation work the north uses 6 tonal inflections, the south use 5 (merging two of the tones into one) and central (Hue) uses 4 as well as making wide use of their local vocabulary. Of course, Hue was the Royal city!

Hue is way the most difficult of the 3 to comprehend: Northerners have trouble understanding them as do people in the South. At least people in the North and South can understand each other more frequently.

The pronunciation of certain letters differ, in Ha Noi "d" is pronounced like the English "z" while down south "d" is pronounced like the English "y"

And words ending in "nh" are pronounced differently. The "tr" and "ch" sounds in north are merged.

Take to "fall": Ngả which is from the north, the word Té which is used in the south. The word for "bowl" in the north is "bát", in the south they say "tô"

When network television first was introduced to Canada, as opposed to individual stations and programming, the French population had many dialects but they slowly drifted towards the language they saw on TV, with is a bastardised form of French.

Maybe the same will happen here, too.

You won't find too much discussion in the VN media about the cultural differences, it is considered politically divisive.

Jaitch wrote:

There are, in my experience, three linguistic areas in VietNam. Northern, Central (Hue) and Southern.

Most Southerners and Northerners can understand each other but the Cetral language really screws them up. The north reckon they are the culturally most pure area and refined; are more concerned about status / appearances, more thrifty (tight), more conservative and adverse to change, more ceremonious and formal.

Southerners are more direct, freer with their money, more dynamic and open to change.

Thank you, Jaitch!  You know Vietnam. 

As for those of you who think that I am biased, don't, I have long moved past that. 

Yes, I was borned in Can Tho, the heart of south Vietnam.  But, I grew up in southern California, where we speak a different brand of Vietnamese.  We refer to it as Little Saigonese:  we pronounce our "rs" and "ds" the way we would in English, not to the tone of "gs" as in south Vietnam nor "zs" like in north Vietnam.  I also identify myself as a Vietnamese-American, not a South Vietnamese-American. 

Last but not least, the stigmas attached to each region of Vietnam are largely dued to economic and political forces.  It is only a matter of quelling them, like the ones in southern California largely did, and Vietnamese from different regions will be less critical of one another. 

But, for a foreigner to learn about Vietnam and its language, he/she must be able to distinguish those differences, otherwise an already hard process gets a lot harder, just take a look at the examples that Jaitch gave...

Well,
The following is what I have written earlier about the topic.

https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=133435

Some of the so-called North variations mentioned above are actually mispronunciations in the eyes of the linguists: the merging of the 'tr' and the 'ch', arguably the 'dz' pronunciation, rather than real dialectal difference. There are many more examples.


An official survey done late last year found 11,80% out of 10.875 teachers in North pronounced AND wrote 'l' where 'n' should be used and 'n' instead of 'l'.

After a while when there are many enough to use those mistakes, they become standard, so one can argue forever who is wrong or right, whether they are real mispronunciations or new standards.

The most annoying, and prominent in my eyes, is the pronunciation of the ? as ~,  especially among the youngsters also by official newscasters.

for example, cái đấy (that one) is pronounced as cải đẩy.

The last 3 cmmt are informative and correct.
And where does the Accent of Nghe An, Ha Tinh belong to? Geographically to Central Vietnam? I always failed miserably in understanding those.

Dear sir, you mean you have a disc of Rosetta Stone? may I ask which version is it, do you want to sale it ?. thanks a lot.

Jaitch wrote:

Rosetta Stone is a space pig - it actually contains all the languages - and loads your drive.

I have a copy and found it a little boring. The best way, IMO, is to get several training programs and switch between them. It makes it more interesting and the variety helps expand your listening range. Most use northern speakers - even though the dialect is different, southerners can understand it. There only a few words in the daily word range that are actually different.

Several language courses are on sale in the computer copy software stores.

The only 'investing' you need do is to download them from PirateBay.com.

Phillip Lin wrote:

Dear sir, you mean you have a disc of Rosetta Stone? may I ask which version is it, do you want to sale it ?. thanks a lot.

I have PMed you. Check your mail.

Hello. I am not sure if you are still here but I would be interested in buying your Rosetta stone CDs if you are selling. If not I would be interested in copying them if possible.

Ok point taken,... but just as an example, go to parts of Germany and speak Hochdeutsch, ie in Bavaria and they will reply "auf Bayrisch",...and be less thanimpressed,... your high school or Rosetta Hochdeutsch will not be very good for communication, which is the name of the game. - if you want to communicate in HCMC best to get you ear / tongue around the local dialect

I am really interested in Vietnamese language. I try to find Rosetta stone Vietnamese language in Piratebay but i was failure.
Could you pleave give me a link that i can download it.
thank you very much

Chaly, Just a heads up in case you try to buy Rosetta Stone CD's. Rosetta Stone changed its format a few years ago and the old CDs don't work on many new computers. They offered to sell me another CD that would allow me to use my old CDs, but the frank truth is that while Rosetta Stone is good for (Northern) vocabulary, it is not the best language tool in my opinion. Where you are at in your learning process is a factor that must be considered when purchasing a Vietnamese language course. For beginners, I think Pimsleur is best in its approach to pronunciation.

Yeah I agree. Pimsluer is great and downloadable. For anything Rosetta Stone, you need Version 3 or higher, but for some unknown reason; none has made it available online and with the crackdown on torrent websites I don't think we are ever going to see it. I will be buying it though, in the summer and I will sell copies then; of V.3 if I can, find a key or key gen. So hit me up if you are in the need; its a lot of fun.

Rosetta Stone is great for brushing up on a language you're already familiar with. I bought French (which I know a lot of) and Vietnamese, hoping to learn. Can't say I learned much Viet but reminded me of some little things I forgot in French.

So do you have Rosetta Stone Vietnamese?

Rosetta Stone has all languages in it, different keys unlock each module. From a computer perspective it is a resources pig, which why we took it off the office servers.

It is better suited for government users, for whom it was written, who need to be very fluently nuanced in a language.

We have a copy in our stores but there are other programs, when aggregated, are better.

Save your money - not even worth the cost of a file transfer.

Dear Sir,
I am selling the Rosetta Stone software all languages. If you need any languages, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] or my mobile number is 0935888676.
https://www.expat.com/en/search/asia/vi … minh-city/

locsaco wrote:

I am selling the Rosetta Stone software all languages. If you need any languages, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] or my mobile number is 0935888676.

Save your money - unless you are a diplomat almost any package is better. Besides his copies are are hot.

Rosetta Stone his heavy in computer resources. Save your money - only VND20,000 on Ton That Tung Street in Quan 1.

e2bobbie wrote:

my name is Robert please give me a call so I understand more I have rosetta stone to learn Vietnamese. if you're in the education field or like to be please give me a call 0909 755 021

Rosetta Stone is not the best.

I put a CD together that has the following programs:
Colloquial Vietnamese, Elementary Vietnamese, Learn Vietnamese In Flight (Living Language) (1 Audio CD - MP3), Pimsleur Vietnamese, Teach Yourself Vietnamese, TeachYourSelfViet, Texts on Vietnamese, The Rough Guide Phrasebook Vietnamese, Vietnamese Reader Thompson

They are all on the InterNet.

As I said before, I have a copy of Rosetta Stone sitting on the shelf - I wouldn't even give it away except, may be, to someone I really dislike.