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Learn Vietnamese

Master Vietnamese tones and pronouns, then speak with confidence.

Free to start. Built from a single prompt. No credit card.

Vietnamese is written in chữ Quốc ngữ, a Latin-based alphabet with diacritics that mark both vowel quality (ă, â, ê, ô, ơ, ư) and tone. Northern Vietnamese has six tones, and the same syllable ma can mean ghost, mother, horse or rice seedling depending on the tone mark. Grammar is light: verbs never conjugate, and time is marked with words like đã, đang and sẽ. The hard part beyond tones is pronouns, which come from family words like anh, chị and em and depend on age and relationship. Learnr builds a personalized Vietnamese course from a single prompt and teaches it in short lessons.

How to learn Vietnamese, step by step

Learn the vowels and diacritics. Vietnamese has twelve vowel letters, including ă, â, ê, ô, ơ and ư, plus đ for a d sound. Learn what each vowel mark does before learning tones, since both appear on the same letter.
Drill the six tones with real words. Practice the level tone (ma), falling huyền (mà), rising sắc (má), dipping hỏi (mả), broken ngã (mã) and heavy nặng (mạ). Record yourself and compare, because tone errors change the meaning.
Pick a dialect for listening. Northern (Hanoi) and Southern (Ho Chi Minh City) Vietnamese differ in some sounds and tones, and Southern speech merges hỏi and ngã. Choose one model for speaking and listen to the other later.
Learn kinship pronouns early. Use anh for an older man, chị for an older woman, em for someone younger, and ông or bà for elders. Pick pronouns for both yourself and the listener, because this choice appears in nearly every sentence.
Use time markers and classifiers. Add đã for past, đang for ongoing and sẽ for future: tôi sẽ đi (I will go). Learn classifiers too, such as con for animals (con mèo) and cái for many objects (cái bàn).
Listen and speak every day. Tones fade without regular use. Short daily Learnr lessons, plus listening to Vietnamese podcasts or songs and speaking aloud, keep your ear and voice tuned.

What you'll learn

Read Vietnamese diacritics and pronounce all six tones
Choose the right kinship pronoun for the person you are speaking with
Talk about past, present and future using time markers
Use classifiers like con and cái with nouns
Handle everyday conversations about food, prices and directions

What's inside your Vietnamese course

A sample path Learnr builds for Vietnamese. Your real course adapts to your goal and level.

1. The alphabet, vowels and diacritics
2. The six tones and how to hear them
3. Greetings and kinship pronouns
4. Sentence structure, time markers and questions
5. Numbers, classifiers and shopping
6. Everyday conversations and listening practice

How long does it take to learn Vietnamese?

Reading the alphabet takes a few weeks, but hearing and producing tones reliably usually takes several months of daily practice. Basic conversations often come within about a year of regular study, with comfortable fluency after a few years.

What you need before you start

Only English. A good ear for pitch helps, but tones can be learned with focused listening, and the grammar needs no background at all.

Common mistakes to avoid

Learning words without their tones, then being misunderstood; treat the tone as part of the spelling and the sound.
Using tôi and bạn for every situation, which sounds stiff; learn the kinship pronouns used in daily speech.
Ignoring final consonants because they are unreleased in Vietnamese, even though they still separate words like các and cát; listen closely to how each syllable ends.

How Learnr builds your course

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Vietnamese questions, answered

How many tones does Vietnamese have?

Northern Vietnamese, the standard used in most teaching materials, has six tones. Southern Vietnamese merges two of them, so it is often described as having five.

Is Vietnamese grammar hard?

No. Vietnamese verbs do not conjugate, nouns do not change for plural, and there is no gender. The main challenges are tones, vowel sounds and the pronoun system.