Videos, podcasts, and stories can all help you learn Vietnamese when you can follow what they mean. That is the idea behind comprehensible input: learning from Vietnamese you can mostly understand. Vietnamese adds one more thing to look for, which is the accent. Northern Vietnamese from Hanoi is the basis of the standard language, while Central and Southern Vietnamese use some different sounds, so it helps to find input in the accent you want to understand.
These apps and sites help you find Vietnamese at your level, or make the Vietnamese you choose easier to follow. For courses, speaking practice, and tutors, see our Vietnamese app comparison.
Custom Lessons Made for You
Bubblegum
Learn Vietnamese with a path made just for you. Start with your level, what you like, and why you want to learn. Your path grows as you learn, with new lessons that fit you. Choose topics such as music, food, family, or everyday life.
Poppy, your AI tutor, writes each lesson for you. If a sentence is hard to follow, just ask her to explain it.
The trade-off is that Bubblegum can't help you read or watch Vietnamese you found yourself. For a show, a video, or a web page you already picked, the tools in Read and Watch Vietnamese You Choose are the better fit.
- Read and listen to lessons, news, and stories about things you care about.
- Northern, Central, and Southern Vietnamese each have their own lessons.
- Regenerative Review™ brings saved words back in new lessons, so you review them by reading instead of using flashcards.
- Ask Poppy about a sentence while you read.
- Lesson audio uses AI voices, not recordings of Vietnamese speakers.
- You cannot bring in your own books, articles, or shows.
- A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so you can ask Poppy for a free one, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn.
- Regenerative Review™
- Teaches Quốc Ngữ
Mobile
Northern, Central, and Southern Vietnamese
Central Vietnamese is the hardest accent to find in material made for learners. This table shows which accents the learner resources on this page use. The tools for Vietnamese you choose work with any accent, because you bring the Vietnamese to them.
| Made for Learners | Northern | Central | Southern |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bubblegum | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Learn Vietnamese With Annie | No | No | Yes |
| SVFF podcast | No | No | Yes |
| Langiri | Yes | No | Yes |
| Vietlingo | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Listen to Conversations Made for Learners
Learn Vietnamese With Annie
Learn Vietnamese With Annie is a library of fun, everyday conversations in Southern Vietnamese, the accent of Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta. It is one of the resources Southern Vietnamese learners recommend most on Reddit.
- More than 800 lessons, from complete beginner to advanced.
- Each conversation is usually under a minute long.
- Two hosts explain the words and grammar in Vietnamese and English.
- Two new lessons come out each week.
MobileWeb
SVFF
SVFF, short for Southern Vietnamese For Foreigners, has taught Southern Vietnamese since 2014. Its podcast is a listening course of real conversations from Ho Chi Minh City, and you can play it in the SVFF Online app or on the web. Live lessons with SVFF's teachers are separate.
- More than 200 podcast episodes in eight series, from A1 to C1.
- Every episode has a read-along transcript.
- Save new words from an episode as flashcards.
- Flashcards
MobileWeb
Read and Watch Vietnamese You Choose
These tools help you learn from shows, videos, and web pages you pick yourself. They suit learners who already know what they want to watch or read.
Migaku
Migaku helps you learn from Vietnamese shows, videos, and websites. Click a word to see what it means, and save it as a flashcard to review later.
- Look up words in Vietnamese shows, YouTube videos, and web pages.
- See how many of the words in a video or page you already know.
- Take a photo of a menu or a sign and turn its words into flashcards.
- Flashcards
MobileBrowser extension
Language Reactor
Language Reactor shows Vietnamese subtitles beside a translation while you watch. Learners on Reddit use it with Netflix shows dubbed into Vietnamese and with YouTube channels made for learners. It is free to install, and some features are paid.
- See Vietnamese subtitles beside a translation on Netflix and YouTube.
- Look up words in a pop-up dictionary.
- Pause and replay one line when it goes too fast.
- Doesn't teach Quốc Ngữ
Browser extension
LingQ
LingQ turns Vietnamese you find online into lessons you can read and listen to. It marks the words you have not met yet and the words you are still learning, and the words you know stay unmarked.
- Start with LingQ's Vietnamese Mini Stories for beginners.
- Import YouTube videos, books, and songs as lessons with text and audio.
- Review words with flashcards.
- Flashcards
MobileWeb
Readlang
Readlang helps you read Vietnamese articles and books on the web, one tap at a time.
- Tap a word or a short phrase on a Vietnamese web page to see what it means.
- Review the words you looked up with flashcards.
- Flashcards
- Doesn't teach Quốc Ngữ
WebBrowser extension
Read Two Languages Side by Side
Beelinguapp
Beelinguapp puts Vietnamese beside a language you know. Read the Vietnamese first, then check the other side when you get stuck.
- Keep a translation beside the Vietnamese to check what you read.
- Listen to the text read aloud as you follow along.
- Pick from stories, news, and music.
- Flashcards
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More Free Vietnamese to Watch and Read
On YouTube, Lazy Vietnamese and Actually Understand Vietnamese make videos in easy Vietnamese for beginners and intermediate learners, with stories and everyday scenes. Langiri is a website of videos by Vietnamese speakers that you can sort by level, accent, and teacher, and some of its videos are free.
For reading, StoryWeaver has hundreds of free picture books in Vietnamese, sorted into reading levels. For listening, the Vitamese podcast talks about everyday topics in Southern Vietnamese at three levels and shares its transcripts.
When easy videos feel comfortable, try Vietnamese made for everyone. BBC News Tiếng Việt and VnExpress publish the news in Vietnamese. Some Netflix shows dubbed into Vietnamese have matching Vietnamese subtitles, and one learner keeps a list of them. VietnameseLessons.com lists many more resources, with categories for comprehensible input and for each accent.
Learn Vietnamese in Your Language
These counts cover menu-language choices, including script variants. Other apps’ counts and full lists come from their iPhone listings, except Language Reactor (Chrome Web Store) and Readlang (its help forum). The free videos, podcasts, and news sites are in English or Vietnamese. Word meanings, lesson explanations, and other platforms may differ.
| App | Supported Display Languages | Full List |
|---|---|---|
| Bubblegum | 74 | Full list
|
| Learn Vietnamese With Annie | 1 | Full list |
| SVFF Online | 1 | Full list |
| Migaku | 4 | Full list |
| Language Reactor | 27 | Full list |
| LingQ | 17 | Full list |
| Readlang | 1 | Full list |
| Beelinguapp | 22 | Full list |
Other Apps We Looked At (12)
- LangiMore than 450 short stories and news stories at levels A1 to B2, with recorded audio for each sentence and review cards. Six lessons are free.
- VietlingoA new app from SVFF with podcast lessons in Northern, Central, and Southern Vietnamese, plus tutors and interactive textbooks. It is new and growing.
- VietBuddyShort lessons about real situations, where you listen and guess before you see the words. You can choose Northern or Southern voices. It is new and growing.
- VietnamesePod101Audio and video lessons built around short dialogues, with notes on the words and grammar in each one.
- Lilian Vietnamese and Slow VietnameseTwo more YouTube channels of easy Vietnamese for learners. Slow Vietnamese shares free transcripts on Patreon.
- Tiếng Việt ƠiA school in Hanoi and Da Nang with free YouTube lessons and a podcast about everyday spoken Vietnamese.
- Fluent Fiction – VietnameseA podcast of short stories in Vietnamese, each with a transcript.
- Vietnamese Stories for Language LearnersA Tuttle book of 40 folktales, with Vietnamese and English on facing pages and audio online.
- Dict BoxAn offline Vietnamese and English dictionary for looking up words while you read.
- LuteA reading tool you install on your computer. You can save terms made of several words, so a two-syllable Vietnamese word stays together.
- asbplayerA browser video player and Chrome extension for studying a show line by line from its subtitles.
- AnkiA flashcard tool that many learners use alongside the listening and reading apps above.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to learn Quốc Ngữ first?
Yes. Quốc Ngữ is the Vietnamese alphabet, made of Latin letters with extra marks for some letters and for the tones, so learn what the marks mean before you read much. Bubblegum's Quốc Ngữ course teaches them in your browser, in a Northern, Central, or Southern version.
Which Vietnamese accent should I listen to?
Choose the accent of the people you want to talk with. Northern Vietnamese has six tones, and Central and Southern Vietnamese have five. Speakers of all three accents understand each other, so you can add the others later.
Is Bubblegum free?
Yes. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn. It holds lessons that other learners asked Poppy for. A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so you can ask Poppy for a free one, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons.
The Quốc Ngữ course on this site is also free and needs no account.
Sources
- Hu and Nation (2000), Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension
- Britannica: Viet-Muong languages (Northern, Central, and Southern Vietnamese)
- Omniglot: About Vietnamese (tones by region)
- Omniglot: Vietnamese language and alphabet (Quốc Ngữ)
- Bubblegum
- Learn Vietnamese With Annie
- SVFF
- Migaku
- Language Reactor
- LingQ
- Readlang
- Beelinguapp
Checked on October 8, 2026 against each app's own pages.
