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den doi la / ten toi la
One of the interesting/fun parts of learning Vietnamese is successively
improving the pronunciation of the consonants. We can see it going on here.
An "American" "t"
is spoken with a puff of air coming out. Vietnamese have this to, and it is
written
"th" where the "h" means a puff of air should come out. The "h" has the same
"say it with a puff of air" meaning in the combination kh. The Vietnamese
"t" in
"ten toi la" is
pronounced like the "American" "t", but with OUT the puff of air. For an
"American",
it takes some practice to do this. It is not identical to an "American"
"d", though
to an untrained "American" ear, it is so close that it is not distinguishable.
I assure you, however, that the Vietnamese hear the distinction very clearly.
At least for me, it has been possible to train my ear to hear this and my
mouth to say it (thought I still have an "American" accent). I'm very sure
there are variations
from person to person in the ability to do this. There is some evidence
that the
developing brain of a child can learn any language, but somewhere around the age
of puberty (roughly 12) unused language paths in the brain start to die;
this would
explain why languages become harder to learn as one gets older, and why
older persons never lose their foreign accent. For what it's worth,
I'm in my forties and I still seem to be able to learn a new language, though I
think more slowly than a younger person. It's also a matter of interest.
I enjoy
the challenge of trying to speak so that my Vietnamese friends understand
me. And ..
I of course have other interests in them as well, which is part of why I am
on this list. Anyway, it's all motivation to learn more.
Actually, I believe you'll be understood with an "American" "d" instead of
the Vietnamese "t" for "ten toi". What will cause much more trouble is the
missing tone-shift mark
for "la"; for email, with tone-shift, it is written "la`". (The tone shift mark
normally goes over the vowel). You can see this tone shift mark slants
downward,
and that is exactly what the pitch of your voice must do when you say this word.
(It also kind of fades out). Note that I say tone-SHIFT. This has nothing
whatsoever
to do with hitting a particular pitch or note. If you're not going to
bother with the
tone shifts, you can forget about trying to be understood when you "speak"
Vietnamese.
The tone shifts are so essential to the Vietnamese that they are heard on a
subconcious
level; there's no such thing as saying the "right" word with the wrong
tone-shift;
instead what you say becomes a string of random words without meaning.
The tone shifts take a lot of work to memorize for an "American". I still
find myself
forgetting the tone-shift for some words I "know" and as soon as that happens I
know I will not be understood. But, if you learn those tone shifts, and you
speak slowly enough so you get them all correctly, then you start
getting rewarded with comments like: "Wow! I can understand you speak
Vietnamese"
and "Oh! Your Vietnamese so well!"
Minh Minneapolis
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