SAIGONNEZUMIStudying Vietnamese Again
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...