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 FSI Language Courses Forum : Learning Languages : General Discussion
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Palomnik
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Quote Palomnik Replybullet Topic: The Vietnamese Course
    Posted: 25 December 2007 at 11:10am
Pardon me if this subject has already come up; I didn't see it after a search.
 
The dialect of Vietnamese that is used in the FSI course is the southern dialect spoken in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon - not too surprisingly, since the program was put together during the Vietnam war, and it was the one dialect that Americans were most apt to use.
 
There are a couple of reasons that this is significant.  For one thing, the Vietnamese government now considers the northern dialect to be "standard" Vietnamese.  Secondly - and this can be a real problem for Europeans learning the language - the differences in pronunciation include a different tonal structure; southern Vietnamese (and the FSI course) uses five tones, whereas northern has six; it would be wonderful if that only meant that two northern tones are combined into one in the south, but it's not quite that simple.  To complicate matters further, the dialect you're most likely to hear outside of Vietnam is the southern dialect.
 
Another factor to consider is the fact that Hanoi dialect itself has some peculiarities about its tonal structure that are not considered "standard."  You're not likely to piece together all this unless you're made aware of it, and depending on what you plan to do with the language you may want to supplement the FSI course with some additional sources.
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