tang viet

You may have heard how Chinese is difficult for Westerners to learn because of its four "tones". Vietnamese has six. Tones are variations in pitch used to create different meanings from what would otherwise be the same word. They make the language sound more like singing, or whining.

On the upside, grammar is not complex and almost all words are a single syllable. The script is romanized, but based off an old version of the French alphabet and somewhat elaborated to accomodate a confusing list of consonants.

In other words, we mostly rely hand gestures.