The fastest way to learn Vietnamese is to spend most of your study time on Vietnamese you can mostly understand. That kind of Vietnamese is called comprehensible input. What you read and listen to should change as you improve, so the plan below shows what to do at each level and how to split an hour of study.
What to Do at Each Level
Find the level that sounds like you. Its bar shows how to spend an hour of study.
- First Week
I can't read Quốc Ngữ yet.
Learn Quốc Ngữ 40 min. Listen 20 min.
Quốc Ngữ has 29 letters, and only seven of them are new to English readers. Learn those and the five tone marks first, and listen to easy Vietnamese while you do, so the tones start to feel familiar.
- Level 1
I can sound out words but not much else.
Read and listen 35 min. Review 15 min. Speak 10 min.
Read short dialogues with audio and a translation, and match each tone you hear to the mark on its word. Review the words you saved, then say a few lines out loud.
- Level 2
I can handle simple exchanges.
Read and listen 40 min. Review 10 min. Speak 10 min.
Hide the translation and look up only the words that stop you. Read the easiest picture books on StoryWeaver, and start short talks with a tutor or a friend.
- Level 3
I follow conversations on familiar topics.
Read and listen 40 min. Review 5 min. Speak 15 min.
Add a podcast with transcripts, such as Vitamese, and listen to each lesson once more without reading along. Talk about what you heard for longer.
- Level 4
I understand most content but miss some nuance.
Read and watch 45 min. Review 5 min. Speak 10 min.
Watch a Netflix show dubbed into Vietnamese with the Vietnamese subtitles on, one episode a week, and read a lesson on the same topic afterwards.
- Level 5
I read complex topics but rare words slow me down.
Read and watch 50 min. Speak 10 min.
Read and watch the news on BBC News Tiếng Việt, and look up only the words that block the story.
- Level 6
I read at near-native level.
Read and watch 50 min. Speak 10 min.
Read Vietnamese novels and the news on VnExpress, and talk about them, for their own sake.
Move up a level when your lessons start to feel easy, and move back down if you lose the thread by the third line.
How Long Does It Take to Learn Vietnamese?
Vietnamese takes about 1,012 class hours to reach professional fluency, according to the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. That puts Vietnamese in the group it calls hard languages, with Thai, Khmer, Lao and Russian.
| Language | FSI group | Full-time weeks |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish, French | Category I | 30 |
| German, Indonesian | Category II | 36 |
| Vietnamese, Thai, Russian | Category III | 44 |
| Korean, Japanese, Mandarin | Category IV | 88 |
The University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Hanoi (USSH) teaches Vietnamese to foreigners in six levels of 220 hours each, 200 of them in class. Its first two levels take 440 hours, and all six take 1,320. Here is how long those take at different amounts of study a week:
| Study per week | USSH Levels 1–2 (440 hours) | FSI professional fluency (1,012 hours) | All six USSH levels (1,320 hours) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3½ hours | About 2½ years | About 5½ years | About 7¼ years |
| 7 hours | About 14 months | About 2¾ years | About 3⅔ years |
| 14 hours | About 7 months | About 17 months | About 22 months |
| 28 hours | About 3½ months | About 8 months | About 11 months |
These are class hours, so treat them as a rough guide. Time you spend understanding Vietnamese on your own counts too.
What Slows Learners Down
- Skipping the Tone MarksA word read without its mark becomes a different word, so ma means ghost, má means mother and mã means horse.
- Word Lists AloneWords learned with no sentence around them are easy to forget. A list also can't show you that people say thầy to a teacher and bạn to a classmate, where English uses you for both.
- Content Far Too HardA news story where you know one word in five teaches you very little.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Vietnamese app should a beginner choose?
If you are serious about learning Vietnamese, start with Bubblegum. Poppy writes lessons at your level about things you like. Our Vietnamese app comparison covers courses, tutors and speaking apps too.
Can I learn Vietnamese in three months?
You can learn Quốc Ngữ and enough Vietnamese to greet people and order food and coffee. At 14 hours a week, three months is about 180 hours, which is less than one 220-hour level at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Hanoi.
How much should I study Vietnamese each week?
Aim for three to five hours a week of Vietnamese you understand, in sessions of at least 15 to 30 minutes. A longer session lets you get lost in a story, which teaches more than five minutes a day, and steady time each week matters more than a daily streak. Our post on deep sessions over daily streaks explains why.
Is Vietnamese hard for English speakers?
Yes, by the Foreign Service Institute's measure, though it is one group below Japanese and Korean. Vietnamese words don't change form for the past or the future, and nouns have no gender, so most of the time goes into hearing the tones and learning words, which you pick up fastest from Vietnamese you understand.
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 your first one is free, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons.
The Quốc Ngữ course and the Vietnamese lessons on this site are also free and need no account.
Sources
- Basic Vietnamese (Michigan State University), Section 1: Vietnamese Alphabet (29 letters)
- Basic Vietnamese (Michigan State University), Section 2: Tone and Tone Marks (6 tones, 5 tone marks)
- Basic Vietnamese (Michigan State University), Chapter 1 Culture Notes (pronouns)
- Omniglot: About Vietnamese
- U.S. Department of State, Foreign Language Training (FSI language categories)
- University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU Hanoi, Training Program Based on the Vietnamese Language Proficiency Framework for Foreigners
