Learn Vietnamese

The grammar is easy. No conjugation, no gender, no plurals, no cases. What is hard is everything that happens before grammar — and almost no course puts it first.

Three things, in this order

1. The vowels. Vietnamese has eleven, and English and French speakers glide most of them without noticing. A gliding vowel makes any tone on top of it unreadable, so this comes first even though it feels like nothing.
2. The tones. Six marks, six melodies, six different words. There is a page on those.
3. Who you are talking to. There is no neutral "I" or "you". Every sentence places you socially — by age, by relation, by context. Courses that teach only tôi produce learners who sound cold in every single sentence and never find out why.

Northern or southern — decide on day one

The two accents differ enough that learning both at once means holding two systems in your head for the hardest sounds. The letter d is "z" in Hanoi and "y" in Saigon. The North has six tones, the South five.

Neither is better. Pick the one where your people are, and the app will teach that one consistently rather than showing you both every time.

How long it takes

Months. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Vietnamese pronunciation is the slowest part, and it improves so gradually that you cannot feel it week to week — which is the real reason people stop, not difficulty.

That is why the app keeps your old pitch curves. Saying the same syllable a month later, with your previous attempt drawn faintly behind the new one, is the only honest proof of progress this kind of learning can give you.

One hundred chapters

From the eleven vowels to ordering food, arguing about prices, and talking to someone's grandmother. Free, offline, no account needed.

More: how the app works · the hardest tone