26.06.25: learning Vietnamese – in Latin

Referring to:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/latinforstarters/posts/719703460640925/

Vīsne discere linguam Vietnamicam? │ Do you want to learn the Vietnamese language?

Meā sententiā, nōn est difficilis. │ In my opinion, it’s not difficult.

Prīmum omnium, facile est legere et scrībere. │ First of all, it’s easy to read and (to) write.

Anteā ūtēbāmur* 𡨸喃 / Chữ Nôm │ Before (previously) we used 𡨸喃 / Chữ Nôm [the writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language]

Sed nunc, ad scrībendum ūtimur* litterīs Latīnīs. │ But now we use Latin letters to write [literally: for the purpose of writing]

Praetereā nōn sunt dēclīnātiōnēs │ Besides, there are no declensions

nec genera nōminum │ nor genders of nouns

nec coniugātiōnēs verbōrum temporālium. │ nor conjugations of verbs [literally: ‘time’ words]

Exemplī grātiā “muốn” significat: │ For example “muốn” means:

velle│to want

volō│I want

velim│I would like

vīs│you want

volēbāmus │we were wanting

voluimus│we have wanted

et cētera │ and so on.

Omnia illa verba sunt ūnum in linguā Vietnamicā. │ All those words / verbs are one (the same) in Vietnamese.

Nōn necesse est cūrāre dē fōrmā verbī │ It isn’t necessary to bother about the form of the verb / word

quia fōrma numquam mūtātur │ because the form never changes [= is never changed]

__________

*ūtor, utī, ūsus sum [3/deponent]: use; followed by the ablative case

ūtimur litterīs Latīnīs │we use Latin letters

Some useful words related to language learning:

coniugātiō, coniugātiōnis [3/f]: conjugation

dēclīnātiō, dēclīnātiōnis [3/f]: declension

fōrma, -ae [1/f]: form

genus, generis [3/n]: [i] kind; type [ii] (here) gender

lingua, -ae [1/f]: language

nōmen, nōminis [3/n]: [i] name [ii] (here) noun

verbum, -ī [2/n]: word; verb

verbum temporāle: a word denoting time i.e. a verb

Side note: Vietnamese is a beautiful language and, living an hour away from Vietnam, I’ve always felt I should learn it. What Vincent says about the lack of tenses, declensions and conjugations also applies to other Asian languages e.g. Malay (which I taught) and Khmer. What Vincent (Nguyễn Duy Thiên)  doesn’t mention (as a true salesman) is that Vietnamese is a tonal language with six different tones (two more than Mandarin) and a head-spinning number of diacritics above, below and to the side of the vowels! But, in terms of ‘easiness’ Vietnamese is way ahead of Latin.