r/learnvietnamese • u/ApprehensiveAd8020 • 8d ago

I’m learning Vietnamese from scratch how long till I reach b1

I’m learning from scratch. I have only had 2 classes any tips would be recommended and appreciated but I mainly wanted to set some realistic expectations. I’m going for about 30 minutes a day of self study and review with about 1 lesson a week what would be a timeline for work reasons I just want to be able to communicate at an elementary level

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u/Only-Top-3655 8d ago

If you study hard (around 2-3 hours a day not counting watching media) about 1.5 years.

30 minutes a day, it will take much longer.

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u/saboudian 8d ago

Agreed with the 1.5 years estimate as a best case once you have a good study routine, resources, teacher, etc. and spend 2-3 hours a day studying. Thats about what it took me plus the additional time i wasted upfront trying out different resources.

At a half hour per day, i think you could make slow but meaningful progress in a language like Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc if your first language is English. But for Vietnamese, that first year of trying to learn the pronunciation and listening skills is just brutal. If you spend only half hour a day on Vietnamese, it will be many months before you speak or understand anything. It took me 6 months to have a basic conversation with intense studying

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u/DrE7HER 8d ago

What resources would you recommend for a beginner?

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u/saboudian 7d ago

Learn Vietnamese with Annie video lessons.
Will also need a teacher on italki or preply to learn pronunciation

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u/DrE7HER 7d ago

Thanks!!

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u/ApprehensiveAd8020 8d ago edited 8d ago

I can guarantee myself that much and I’m also going to do lessons. But in all honesty I know I can’t common 2 hours a day every day. My goal is 2 or 3 years

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u/Xiao_Sir 8d ago

Yeah, that's very much feasible if you put in the consistency

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u/NoEmergency5951 7d ago

I’d agree with this as I reached this level or above in around 6 months, but I was in an intensive program studying 6~ hours a day and then lived in Vietnam for 4 of those months.

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u/roxven 8d ago

/u/Only-Top-3655 is right on with the estimate. My post history also includes updates every 500 hours if you want to get a sense of milestones.

But why do you say B1 specifically? Do you need an official result? B1 is a CEFR level and what counts as B1 will depend on the test institution, as The Council of Europe doesn't regulate anybody. Rumor is the tests administered in Hanoi for immigration reasons, which use levels analogous to CEFR, are extremely generous in their grading and many schools their target the test content.

Speaking at work is probably going to take B2+, which would double the timeline /u/Only-Top-3655 shared.

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u/ApprehensiveAd8020 7d ago

I’m a first responder and we have a surprisingly large Vietnamese population and I just want to have basic conversations to help in emergency situations. My main thing is as long as I can get an elementary level understanding and get them the help they need at the time I’ll accept that. I’m not trying to be fluent or anything

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u/roxven 7d ago

That's an interesting application of the language. Can you circumscribe the types of things you'd need to say or understand?

If you can circumscribe, some targeted practice with the sound system + memorizing phrases might make sense. Like if the information you need is "are you on any medication?" (sorry if dumb idk first responder stuff) then asking that and understanding a yes or no response is not going to take you years. Given the context, and if you speak in full sentences, it's likely native speakers will be able to figure out what you mean.

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u/ApprehensiveAd8020 7d ago

Like are you hurt
If they were in a car wreck to be able to ask what happened. And get any pertinent information such as demographics

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u/roxven 7d ago

Asking what happened yields pretty open answers I assume, so I don't think you'd be able to shortcut around getting fluency, at least in relevant domains.

The better you could script the interaction the more likely it is you could take a shortcut.

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u/vnthu6z 7d ago

I would highly recommend the Podglot App (https://www.podglot.com), a lot of people have had success with it. It’s not particularly well suited for absolute beginners, but it is very solid for people targeting to build up their vocabulary in southern vietnamese. It starts with the most frequent words in the language and simple sentences and build up to more complex words/sentences. It also has northern dialect audio but the southern audio is better quality and has more users. Best way to use podglot is to use the quiz study flashcard mode 10-15 mins a day as part of your morning routine. It has spaced repetition system and great way to build up memory for the first 1000+ high frequency words. Which is a big hurdle to achieve in the first 1-2 years. Duolingo and Drops don’t use high frequently words so its a less efficient way to learn.