General online Vietnamese courses that train tones from day one

A general Vietnamese course follows the six levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), from A1 for beginners to C2. Vietnam's own framework for non-native speakers, introduced by the education ministry in Circular 17/2015, sets its six levels, Bậc 1 to Bậc 6, against these CEFR levels. No official hour counts per level exist for Vietnamese. The hours in the table are rough estimates for lessons plus self-study, derived from the US Foreign Service Institute (FSI), and the weeks assume five study hours a week.

The FSI is the language school of the US State Department. It places Vietnamese in the third of its four difficulty groups and plans about 44 weeks of full-time training with 1,012 classroom hours for confident professional use. Indonesian takes about 36 weeks under the same scheme, Chinese and Japanese 88.

1 Six tones

Pitch and contour change the meaning of a syllable. Speakers in the north distinguish six tones, while in the south two of them, hỏi and ngã, merge, so southern speakers use five. English speakers raise their voice at the end of a question, and in Vietnamese that habit changes the tone of the last word. Vietnamese marks questions with words such as không at the end of the sentence instead.

2 New vowels and letters

The alphabet adds ă, â, ê, ô, ơ, ư and đ to the Latin letters. The vowels ơ and ư are spoken without rounding the lips and have no English equivalent. The letters d, gi and r sound like the z in zoo in the north and like the y in yes in the south.

3 Listening at normal speed

The grammar comes quickly because words never change their form. Many learners therefore read sentences long before they follow speech at normal speed.

Forms of address add a fourth task. The words for I and you depend on age: anh for a slightly older man, chị for a slightly older woman, em for a younger person and ông or bà for much older people.

A general course follows a syllabus of grammar, vocabulary, listening, reading, writing and speaking. A conversation course spends most of each lesson on speaking and usually expects level A2, the second of the six CEFR levels.

In Vietnamese, the grammar feels easy on paper while the ear lags behind. A conversation course from A2 gives you the listening hours that close that gap.

Vietnamese is taught online mainly through private video lessons and a number of apps. Fixed group courses are less common than for European languages.

Decide on the variety before you book. The northern variety of Hanoi serves as the standard in national news and many textbooks, while much of the overseas community speaks the southern variety of Saigon, officially Ho Chi Minh City. Ask every teacher which pronunciation they teach.

An AI tutor is a program that practises with you and scores your pronunciation by speech recognition. Test it with the series ma, mà, má, mả, mã, mạ, and use it only for vocabulary if it accepts wrong tones.

Large Vietnamese communities live in the United States, Australia, Canada, France and Germany. Many families left the south of Vietnam after 1975, and their children and grandchildren often grow up hearing southern Vietnamese at home. They understand everyday speech but later need to read and write it properly.

A heritage course is a course for learners who grew up with the language in the family. For Vietnamese, it focuses on the script with all tone marks, on formal vocabulary, much of which comes from Chinese, and on forms of address outside the family. A placement talk shows more than a written test, because heritage learners often speak far better than they write.

For children, book shorter lessons, for example 30 minutes, and ask whether the teacher speaks the same variety as the family. A child who hears southern Vietnamese at home and northern Vietnamese in class meets different words for the same thing, such as heo and lợn for pig.

1 Weeks 1 to 4: tones and letters

You learn the extra letters and the six tones with the series ma, mà, má, mả, mã, mạ. You also set up a Vietnamese keyboard on your phone, which adds tone marks through simple key sequences.

2 Weeks 5 to 8: numbers and classifiers

You count, ask for prices and use classifiers, short words before nouns that show the kind of thing: con for animals and cái for many objects, as in hai con mèo (two cats).

3 Weeks 9 to 12: time words and address

Đã, đang and sẽ mark past, ongoing and future actions, since the verb never changes. You ask questions with không and choose anh, chị or em by age.

At five hours a week, these 12 weeks give you about 60 study hours, roughly half of the lower estimate for A1, the first CEFR level.