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TIlE COLLOQUIA L SERI ES
Serirs Advisrr. G.ry King
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The Complete Course
for Beginners
Tuan Due Vuong and John Moore
CO LLO Q UIAL 2s srrir s: Th ~ Nm S/~p i" La"guQg~ L~artli"g
Chinese
Dutch
french
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Spanish of Latin
Ameri ca
All these Colloquials are avai lable in book & C D packs, or separately. You can order
them through your bookse ller or via our website www.routJedge.oom.
11
~
Routledge
TayIc<6.f'"""IsG/Oup
LO NDON AND NEW VORK
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Contents
First published 1994
by Routledge
2 Park Square. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
1
Introduction
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York. NY 10016
1 Bang chO' cal va h~ th6ng ngO' Am
Reprinted 1995, 1996 (twice), 1997. 2001, 2003. 2005, 2007
2 Elfn Hil NQI
The alphabet and sound system
Transferred 10 Digital Printing 2008
Routledge is an imprint oflhe Taywr & Francis Group, an in/enna business
Arriving in Hanoi
C 1994 Tuan Due Vuong and John Moore
Typeset in Times Ten by FIorencttype Lid. Sioodieigh, Devon
Illus trations by Rebecca Mey
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJI Digital, Padstow, Cornwall
All righu reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any ronn or by any electronic, mechanical. or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any inronnation storage or retrieval system, without pennission in
writing rrom the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record ror this book is available rrom the British Library
Library oj Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record is available rOt this book on request
ISBNIO : 0-415-09205-1 (Book)
ISBNI O: 0-415-15536-3 (CDs)
ISBNI O: 0-415-43607-9 (Book and CDs course)
ISBN 13 : 978-0-415-09205-0 (Book)
ISBN 13 : 978- 0-415-15536--6 (CDs)
ISBN 13 : 978-0-415-43607-6 (Book and CDs course)
14
3 Eliln khach s,n
Going to the hotel
Co-published in Thailand with Asia Books Co. Ltd.
5 Sukhumvit Road, Soi 61, Bangkok 10110
10
4 Vilo khBch S,ln
Checking in at the hotel
5 CAu chuy~n vli b,ln it Hil NQI
Talking about your stay in Hanoi
27
41
53
6 Vilo it khBch s,n
Settling into the hotel
7 Llin
ht
64
77
Making contact
8 K6 vll ban thAn mlnh
Telling someone about yourself
9 MO'l b,n
91
101
An invitation
10 ThAm b,n
Calling on some friends
11 N61 chuy~n
vo gla dlnh
Talking about the family
12 Ell mua hang
13
A shopping trip
Trong tI~m An
At the restaurant
11S
125
138
ISS
www.uz-translations.net
vi --------------------------------------
14 Urn quen val nhau
Getting to k.now someone
15 Phong t\le
VI~t
ehuy~n
Introduction
Nam
Vietnamese customs
16 NOI
168
181
lam lin buOn ban
Talking business
CHINJII
194
17 £>1 dAy dl dO
V/fTNIWI
Travelling around
209
Grammar summary
Key to exercises
224
Vietname• ...engli.h glossary
Engli.h-Vietname.e glossary
249
288
303
LAOS
THillLANO
CAMBODIA
_______________________________
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2 - -___________________________
Vietnam
Vietnam is shaped like an elongated S and suctches the length of the
Indochinese peninsula. bordering the China Sea in the east. It shares
borders with China in the nonh, Laos and Cambodia in the west, and also
encompasses a vast sea area including a string of thousands of
archipelagos stretching from the Tonkin Gulf to the Gulf of Thailand; its
coastline is dotted with beautiful beaches and unspoilt resons. Vietnam
has three principal regions, with the central region flanked by two rice.
producing areas supplied by the rich aUuvial deltas of the Red River
in the north and the Mekong in the south. Mountains and forests make
up more than three-quarters of the country's total area and there is a
multitude of wildlife in its mountains, tropical forests, plains and
plateaux.
The population
The present-day population of Vietnam is about 70 million. The origins
of the Vietnamese people are mainly in China, the high plateaux of central Asia, and islands in the South Pacific. The first natives of Vietnam
originated from several ethnic groups; the most important of these were
the Lac, specialists in wet rice cultivation and inventors of the bronze
drums, who inhabited the Red River Delta and the central regions and the
Muong. The ethnic groups which followed in the fifth century BC were
the Viet. who came mainly from the coastal and southern provinces of
China. The Viet or Kinh fonn the majority (90 per cent) of the population, but more than fifty ethnic minorities inhabit the mountainous
regions which cover almost two-thirds of Vietnam.
Vlel Nam means the South (Nam) where the Viets live. In the course
of its long history Vietnam has been known by many different names; it
received its present name in 1945.
twelve feudal principalities constantly fighting each other. A succession
of dynasties ruled the country until. after many periods of unrest,
the country was finally partitioned at the Linh River, which marks the
18th parallcl. In 1788 China sent an expeditionary corps to conquer
the divided country, but the Chinese troops were defeated by the man
who became Emperor Quang Tnmg in a whirlwind campaign. He then
devoted his energies to national rehabilitation, administrative reorganization and economic development Quang Trong replaced the classic
Chinese Han with the popular NOm as the official Janguagc.
In 1861 the French look Saigon. Six years later the entire southern part
of the country, rechristened Cochinchina. was annexed as a French
colony. Vietnam lost its independence in 1883 with the extension of
French control to the north. In February 1930. H'h eM Minh founded the
Indochinese Communist Party, which later fonned the Revolutionary
League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh). The August
Revolution began on 16 August 1945. and this was followed by a decadelong war of resistance against the French. On 7 May 1954 the French
base at Dien Bien Phi'! suffered a major defeat. The war for independence
ended on 20 July 1954. when the two sides signed the Geneva Agreement
which divided the country at the 17th paraJlel. The North became the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the South became the Republic of
South Vietnam.
The beginning of 1965 marked the stan of direct United States
involvement in Vietnam as President Lyndon B. Johnson decided to send
troops to Vietnam and bomb the North. The 1973 Paris Peace Agreement
ended the United States involvement in Vietnam; the US troops pulled
out of the country, but the two Vietnamese parties violated the agreement
and continued the fighting. On 30 April 1975 the communist troops took
over Saigon and the civil war was over. A number of countries in the
west have large groups of Vietnamese immigrants.
The economy
History
The history of Vietnam is the history of struggle against foreign domination lasting thousands of years.
Until the tenth century Vietnam was ruled largely by the Chinese.
In 939. with the celebrated battle of Bach Dang, General Ngo Quyen
vanquished the Chinese invaders and founded the first national dynasty.
On the death of Ngo Quyen in 967, the kingdom fell into chaos with
Vietnam is basica1ly an agricultural country and over 80 per cent of the
population live in rural areas supported by agriculture. forestry
and fishing. The principal crops are rice, sugar cane, fruit and vegetables,
sweet potatoes and cassava, while the principal livestock are pigs. poul·
try, buffalo and cattle. Most of the country's mineral resources. the most
important of which are coal, tin, copper. chromium ore and phosphate,
are found in the NOM. Industry is also mainly concentrated in the North:
the main industries are machinery. chemicals. construction materials,
3
4 _____________________________
____________________________________ 5
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paper, food processing and textiles. It is hoped that in the future the oil
industry will be high on the country's list of priorities.
language. In the spoken Janguage, too. there are a lot of words and
phrases originaling from Chinese and
~xisling
with pure Vielllamese
words. From the beginning of the twentieth century it has also incorpo-
The culture and the people
Vietnam is known as a land of culture and refinement and its people have
the reputation of being industrious, graceful. orderly, skilful. adaptable
and well educated. One of the most striking characteristics of the
Vietnamese is their sensc of uadition. The Confucian tradition left the
Vietnamese with an acute sense of social relationships and high standards
of politeness, and they are willing to help each other and love children.
Also originating from Confucianism is the ancestor cult, which is the
chief form of religious observance. Most Vietnamese houses have a place
set aside in the main living room, where the ancestors are venerated.
Traditionalism also accounts for the great variety of customs and
observances in Vietnam which do not belong to any particular religion
but comprise some of the most picturesque features of Vietnamese life.
Most of them are associated with the anniversaries or festivals which
occur at various times during the year: one of the most colourful is the
Autumn Festival, when mooncakes are made, children carry coloured
lanterns and dragon dances are performed. Then there is the Feast of the
Wandering Souls. restless spirits of the dead who have to be hospitably
received during their brief return to the world. But the most imponant
celebration in the Vietnamese calendar is the Lunar New Year, which
now generally lasts for four days, although in former times it is said to
have continued for a month. This is essentially a family celebration, the
main feature of which is or should be a gathering of the whole clan at the
house of the particular relative whose responsibility and prerogative it is
to keep and preserve all the ancestral relics. There are numerous other
traditional Vietnamese feasts and customs, to which the Vietnamese are
greatly attached and which do much to enliven Vietnamese life. Perhaps
it is they more than anything which give it the poetic quality which is part
of the charm of Vietnam.
The Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is a mixture of Austro-Asiatic languages, sharing many
similarities with the Mon-Khmer, Thai and Muong languages. Because of
the Chinese inHuence during many centuries of Vietnam's history, the
Vietnamese used the Chinese Han language as their official written
rated words from some weSlem languages such as French. English and
Russian. In addition. Vietnamese is the main language for the whole
Vietnamese nation and draws on the other dia1cclS of the minorities in
Viebl.am. In this way present-day Vietnamese is a blend of several
languages, ancient and modem. and has evolved through contact with
other races. Although there are some regional fonns of Vietnamese (and
the accent of the North is different from that of the South), you can use
the Vietnamese you learn with anyone from thaI country and with any of
the overseas Vietnamese scattered around the world.
TIle Vietnamese written language has a different background. Because
of thousands of years of Chinese domination and influence, the
Vietnamese used Chinese characters known as Chit nho as their official
written language for many centuries. Chil nbo was not easy to learn,
however, and only the Vietnamese scholars could use it, while nearly
99 per cent of the population were illiterate. TIle Vietnamese scholars
realized the need for developing a separate written Vietnamese language,
and several tentative attempts were made to modify the original Chinese
characters: only under the rule of Emperor Quang Trung (1776-92) was
the classic Chinese Han replaced by Chit n6m, a kind of native adaptation of the Chinese writing system. (Chit means word and n6m means
prose which is easy to understand.) But in fact that kind of writing system
was still very complicated. it never received official recognition and the
Vietnamese intellectuals continued to use the Chinese calligraphic script.
The Vietnamese had to wait until 1548 before the new Vietnamesc
writing system was introduced by a French Jesuit missionary, Alexandre
de Rhodes. He introduced the first Vietnamese aJphabet, which was
phoneticized using the Roman alphabet and was recognized by the
Vietnamese as Qu6c neft, the national language. Since then, Qu6i;: ngil
has replaced the Chinese calligraphic script officially and has become a
compulsory subject in schools.
The written fonn of the language, Qu6C ngil, is much easier for the
Vietnamese themselves to learn. After the 1945 August Revolution in
Vietnam there was a literacy campaign, and it took. from three to six
months for a Vietnamese adult to learn how to read and write the language. The alphabet does not present too many problems for the foreign
learner, either. You will learn the alphabet, as well as the basic vowel and
consonant sounds, in Lesson 1.
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6---------------------------------Syl/ables
7
letter for one distinct sound), ao ('pond') (two vowel letters for one
distinct sound).
Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language, with each word consisting of
only onc syllable although in a few cases polysyllabic words have been
made by hyphenation. These polysyllabic words are known as tit ghfp
(compound words) as in sd-mi ('shin'), thf-ch,l ('example'), m\lc..m'ch
('objective'), phtt
! I>a I>!
co cO 00 cu elf cO c6 cb cd cO c~ cd c6' dI clJ c(J CfJ
mu mlf md mu mu mil ml,l mll mil' mlf mll mil mll
ban Mn Mn bin h
..
d'
w,
to go
Exercise 14
Find out as much as you can about:
I the person Joe is with
2 Mrs Vu's husband
3 Joe's luggage
th61
d,
just. only, that is, OK
(polite expression. means
'yes, OK'. but sometimes
is jusl used 10 acknowledge pllilely whal
someone has said)
also, how aboul
.1
I
~
•Co •
~
..
Co
Co
Co
.
~~
1
=.tr
J
:::r
u--__________________________
___
_ _____________________________
www.uz-translations.net
ChuAn b! dlln khich 51,10
m
Andrew and Anna are ready to leave 1M airport. They nud to find out
abow their hotel and the QffQngelmflls f or their luggage
6NO HoAN:
BAy gilf xin mlJi cit vl Ong v'lllich S{lll.
nlln Ong. Web SfO c6 xa lim kh6ng?
ONo HoAN; Thtta Ong, khOng xa Itm. ·Cach sin bay
NOi kho&ng
chlrng hai mU'
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