I decided to make another attempt at studying Vietnamese.  I enlisted the help of my former student.  She never taught Vietnamese before but I told her not to worry, I will create the lesson plans.

Studying Vietnamese can be frustrating for most people.  For me, it gets even more frustrating since I already can communicate in six other languages; Japanese, English, Kazakh, Russian, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Turkish.  The tricks I used to learn the other languages do not work with Vietnamese.  The tones are a killer for me.  Russian has some tones as well.  My Russian professor from the University of Washington felt that I was tone deaf.  It makes a nice convenient excuse not to learn Vietnamese, doesn’t it?

I really should be ashamed that I have not learned any survival Vietnamese, at least, during my two and a half years here in Vietnam.  I have no excuses except that I am just plain lazy.  Well, my lazy days are about to end.

Vietnamese, here I come.  Toi hoc Tieng Viet…