Viet Classes

Today we learned different occupations, common places, how to use possessive grammar, and make questions about these things. So finally we can have longer conversations in class beyond "How are you?" and "What nationality are you?" - which is only so interesting.

Q: Chị làm nghế gì? (What do you do?, with "you" = slightly older girl)
A: Tôi là sinh viên y khoa....(I am a medical student)

The grammar is surprisingly easy, it's the pronunciation that is difficult. Sometimes I feel my tongue is too heavy or slow to make the right sounds...

An easy part of Vietnamese is that you do not have to conjugate verbs according to person or time. In English you conjugate a few verbs, in Spanish all verbs are conjugated according to who is doing the action (1st, 2nd, 3rd person).

In Vietnamese, "đi" (pronounced "dee"in English") means "to go".

Tôi đi làm = I go to work
Chị đi làm = you (female) go to work
Chị ấy đi làm = She goes to work
Các chị ấy đi làm = They (plural female) go to work

Add "đã" in front of the verb to indicate past tense:
Tôi đã đi làm = I went to work

Add "sẽ" in front of the verb to indicate present tense:
Chị ấy sẽ đi làm = She will go to work

Easy! And then my friend explaining the verbs started talking about "perfect present" tense, which I really had no idea what that was about. The amount of English grammar that I do not remember/know is a bit unnerving. Speaking in Vietnamese takes me a lot of brain power because I have to think of what I want to say in English, recall the Vietnamese vocabulary, get the right pronunciation (don't want to say "ghost" or "rice seedling" when I want to say "mother"), make sure it's in the right order, and then SAY it. After just two hours of practicing with friends, my throat is dry and my brain hurts. So easy but difficult.

Like the saying you hear a lot when at the touristy shops: "same same, but different!"