Teach Yourself Vietnamese by Dana Healy (PDF)

Description

This is a comprehensive course in spoken and written Vietnamese. Dana Healy has created a practical course that is both fun and easy to work through. She explains everything along the way and gives readers plenty of opportunities to practice what they’ve learned. The course structure means that readers can work at their own pace, arranging their learning to suit their needs.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The book was designed to be used with tapes for some of the dialogues in the book but I was not aware of this until after the book was delivered and I started looking through the book. Now I have to see if I can find the tapes to match the book. I seller should have stated that the book does not have the tapes to go along with the book. If I knew it ahead of time I would have looked around to see if I could get the whole set.

⭐Make sure you get the book WITH the audio cassette. There is basically NO description of prononciation in this book. They simply say “refer to the cassette.” I hear that the audio cassette is useless, though, but you absolutely NEED some type of thing to listen to, because we don’t have tones in English, and they’re not that easy to explain.Otherwise, I’m sure this is a decent way to learn Vietnamese.

⭐Very helpful to me

⭐Dropped my four to three stars.I have studied Vietnamese off and on since 1965 and own no small number of Vietnamese dictionaries, grammars, and general books. Due to my age and tone deafness (1968 was a year for very loud noises) I have never obtained more than a basic ability with spoken Vietnamese, but I can travel alone throughout Vietnam and manage to make myself understood. (My reading ability is better) Healy’s book contains all the flaws noted, yet it is logically presented, forces students to engage the topic, and imparts enough basic vocabulary and grammar to aid you on your way. I continue to consider it useful as a supplement to other materials. There is no way to learn a language as difficult as Vietnamese without investing the sweat, but if you are willing to do so, Dana Healy’s book is worth your money and effort. I just really wish she had bothered to include a more comprehensive glossary. A lot of time is lost looking up words that are not defined anywhere in the book. And you will run across a few that you will not find in most small and medium sized dictionaries. Maddening, but it does improve Vietnamese research skills.ps: My bookseller also shortchanged me as it did not come with the tape.

⭐Good for beginners, though with quite a few careless mistakes. Cassette tapes use the Northern Accents and not clearly recorded so they are pretty useless. The pronunciation section at the beginning (with some mistakes again) is not clearly written so you have to find a Vietnamese firend to help you on this. The context is written in Northern Vietnamese (with almost no reference or hints of Southern Vietnamese), this can be frustrating if you’re in the South. Lessons (18 in total) are quite well designed, with some cultural notes. This book is so far the most popular learning material for foreigners, and even the HCMC Publishing House (Nh?xuất bản TPHCM) got a license to produce this book (blue cover with a big Tiếng Việt, costs 28000 ?#7891;ng). You may also consider the Colloquial Vietnamese (published by Routiledge) and it seems to be better than than the TY one.

⭐The Teach Yourself series of language instruction books and tapes seems to be aimed at the morning commute–the office secretary by day who plans on taking their summer vacation in Viet Nam, and who hopes to squeeze in a basic familiarity with the language before getting on the plane. As such, a should not be judged by academic standards. Rather, the test for such a grounding in Vietnamese? The answer seems to be yes, but not nearly as much as seems possible with some simple improvements.The book appears to be reasonably-well organized, with an introductory portion focused on tones, pronunciation, and diphthongs. These are the essential building blocks for what follows. But the tapes which accompany this portion are not so helpful. The speakers rush through the different sounds, not giving the reader time to listen and repeat, (unless they constantly hit rewind). In some places, the sequence in the book doesn’t follow the sequence on the tape, and the listener must thumb about to find what’s being pronounced. Once you get past the intro and into the chapters, the sinchronization seems to be more reliable, and the pace is not quite as rushed.Each Chapter begins with a brief conversation that introduces new vocabulary words, and a list of the new words. This is followed by thematic explorations, such as a discussion of how past-tense is handled, or how to use the correct article when addressing a person.Although not as rushed, the taped conversations are still read through too fast, and there is no pause to allow the listener to repeat what is said. These speakers seemed unaware of the concept of “sheltered language,” where the speaker tries to facilitate the listener’s understanding by speaking slowly and clearly. The rushing aspect is particularly maddening because there are on-tape quizzes in English, with long pauses for the listener to answer in English. These comprehension quizzes are a waste of tape, which should have been conserved for what can’t be written–actual Vietnamese pronunciation.Because of these issues, I had trouble checking and correcting my pronunciation and use of tones. I did, however, pick up a fair amount of vocabulary and sentence structure, and I became reasonably familiar with the alphabet.Although I found the problems above frustrating, I cannot say whether this book/tape set compares well or badly with its competitors, as I have not tried them. It may well be that the problems described here are typical in this, “commuter-language student” market. But I can say that compared to what seems doable, the set falls short. The makers of the next edition would do well to give the speakers a little coaching, not only about pacing, but about use of sheltered language in general.

⭐Well, as mentioned the tape have its flaws, mainly in the beginning where there is just a big mess of the introduction to the pronounciations.Before starting with the first chapter I would recomend to go to the library and borrow a simpler tape material just to go through the basic pronounciations, or have a vietnamese speaking friend teach you.Besides this I think the material is very good;you get a good insight into the grammar with very good excercices.There are at least two dialogues in each chapter, clearly and simply explained grammar with plenty of excercices.It can be very intimidating when you get to a new chapter and you hear the native speaker talk in what sounds to us very fast, but you have to keep up with it and listen-speak-and repeat, eventually you will speak (almost) as well as the people on the tape,the human voice is like any other instrument-you need will, dedication and constant practice.If you keep it up it is very rewarding.

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