Is Vietnamese hard to learn?

The US Foreign Service Institute, which trains American diplomats, puts Vietnamese in its group of 'hard languages', with an estimate of 44 weeks of full-time study (about 1,100 class hours) to reach professional working proficiency. That's the same group as Thai and Russian, and one step below Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic.

Two things to keep in mind. First, that figure is for running meetings and reading the news in Vietnamese. Ordering phở, chatting with your Grab driver and making friends come much sooner. Second, the difficulty is lopsided: reading and grammar are quick wins, while listening and pronunciation are the long game.

Here is what learners end up saying about it, in Vietnamese.

Vietnamese is written in the Latin alphabet, called chữ Quốc ngữ, with a few extra letters (ă, â, đ, ê, ô, ơ, ư) and five tone marks. There are no characters to memorise and no new script. Compare that with Chinese, Thai or Korean, where learning to read is a project in itself.

Spelling is also very regular. Once you know how each letter sounds, you can read aloud a word you've never seen and have a good go at writing down a word you hear. A few letters don't sound like English, and they're worth learning on day one: x sounds like s, ph is f, đ is the English d, while plain d sounds like z in Hanoi and y in Saigon. Nh is the ny in canyon, and ng is the sound at the end of 'sing', even at the start of a word.

Vietnamese verbs never change. Ăn is eat, ate, eating and eaten, whether it's I, you, she or they. There are no irregular verbs, no plural endings, no masculine and feminine nouns and no articles to agree with anything.

Time comes from context or from small words placed before the verb: đã for the past, đang for something happening now, sẽ for the future, and rồi at the end for 'already'. When the time is obvious, people drop them. A yes-or-no question just adds không at the end.

The one grammar hurdle is classifiers: con for animals, cái for most objects, chiếc for vehicles. Get one wrong and people still understand you.

This is the part people worry about, and they're right to. Northern Vietnamese has six tones; in the South, two of them (hỏi and ngã) sound the same, so you hear five. The tone is part of the word, not decoration: bán means sell and bàn means table, phở is the soup and phố is a street. In a noisy market, a wrong tone can make a word unrecognisable.

Vietnamese tones aren't only about pitch, either. Some have a creak or a catch in the throat, and the vowels ơ and ư have no English equivalent. That is why reading alone won't get you there: you need to hear and copy.

The good news is that every word shows its tone in writing, so you always know what you're aiming for. Spend your first two weeks on sounds and tones, and keep copying audio after that. Our guide to Vietnamese tones takes you through all six.

English gets by with I and you. Vietnamese chooses pronouns by age, gender and closeness. A man a bit older than you is anh, a woman a bit older is chị, anyone younger is em, people your parents' age are cô or chú, and older still is bác. The pronoun works both ways: if you call someone anh, you call yourself em.

That's why people ask your age so early. It isn't nosy, it's grammar: they need to know what to call you. Tôi (I) and bạn (you) are safe and neutral, but use them with everyone and you'll sound like a textbook.

Start with anh, chị and em, which cover most of your day, and add the rest as you meet people. Our Vietnamese pronouns chart lays them all out.

Course audio is slow and clear. Real Vietnamese is fast, most words are one syllable, and final consonants are barely released, so words run together. Add regional accents and the gap between what you learned and what you hear can feel huge at first.

Hanoi and Saigon differ in sounds (Hanoi says z where Saigon says y), in tones, and in everyday words: a bowl is bát in the North and chén in the South, a polite yes is often vâng in the North and dạ in the South. Central accents, such as those of Nghệ An or Huế, are harder again for most learners. Our comparison of Northern vs Southern Vietnamese covers the main differences.

Pick the accent of the place you live or the people you talk to most, and stick to it. Understanding the others comes with time. Meanwhile, these lines buy you time in any conversation.

Word order is close to English: subject, verb, object. Tôi thích cà phê is word for word 'I like coffee'. Adjectives come after the noun (cà phê đen, coffee black), which takes a day to get used to.

You also know more words than you think. French left a lot of everyday vocabulary, and English is adding more: wifi, OK and check-in are all normal Vietnamese now. Longer words are built from short pieces you keep meeting again: once you know xe (vehicle), you see it in xe máy (motorbike), xe buýt (bus) and xe ôm (motorbike taxi).

And people are encouraging. Say two sentences and someone will tell you your Vietnamese is great. Have the modest reply ready.

The order matters. If you learn from text first and fix the sounds later, you end up with habits that are hard to undo, so put sound first.

• Weeks 1 to 2: sounds and tones. Learn how each letter sounds and drill the tones with audio, ten minutes a day.
• Choose an accent. Northern or Southern, based on where you live or who you talk to.
• Learn anh, chị and em and use them from your first conversation.
• Learn the most common words first. The top 1,000 words carry most everyday conversation. At ten new words a day, you meet them all in about three months.
• Talk to people early. Order your coffee in Vietnamese, ask prices, ask what things are called. People are patient with learners.
• Listen every day. Vlogs, songs, the table next to you at lunch.

easy1000words is built for the fourth step: the 1,000 most common Vietnamese words in order, each with a recorded example sentence, a few minutes a day. For realistic timelines, see how long it takes to learn Vietnamese.