I got discriminated by my saigon accent before. I was born in Germany but both of my parents are vietnamese. People never had a problem with my vietnamese at all until I went to uni and in my first semester I met this vietnamese girl from Hanoi. We kept arguing because she doesn‘t like my southern accent. She was telling everyone that only her nothern accent is the correct way when it comes to speaking vietnamese. We had this one korean friend who came up to me and wanted me to taught her that one sentence in vietnamese and suddenly the vietnamese girl interfere and said only the nothern accent is the right way to speak vietnamese. It got so bad that she started saying that I don‘t know how to speak vietnamese. The funny thing is whenever I‘m in Vietnam people don‘t know that I‘m actually not from there.
Sorry for you having that bad experience. I am half vietnamese, also born and raised in Germany, and I've been living in Vietnam for the past 5 years now. My mom is from Saigon, so i speak with the southern Saigon accent, and fortunately for me I haven't experienced that kind of discrimination. Actually I experienced the opposite. The couple times I met/dated Vietnamese girls from the north they always complimented me for my accent and told me they like the sound of the southern accent. According to them it sounds cute. Maybe it's because i look partially western and for them it's just cool if a somewhat foreign looking person is able to speak Vietnamese well. I saw discrimination towards the northern account though. A few Saigonese people I met told me they really dislike the Northern accent (I quote: "Nghe giọng miền Bắc thấy ghét"). For me personally I don't really care, both accents sound nice. It's just like british and american english. The northern accent is more like the british one, i.e. sounds more formal and sophisticated, and the southern one sounds more laid back and softer like american english. I used to struggle understanding the northern dialect, but nowadays I only struggle with understanding the central Vietnamese accent, but so do the people from the north and the south do as well 😅 Edit: In Germany ther's also accent discrimination, especially towards east german dialects. Unfortunately I speak Germany's least popular dialect (I am from Saxony 😅)
No worries dear. I'm Vietnamese myself who live in the South of VN, whenever I hear a foreigner speaking Vietnamese with proper Hanoi accent, I roll my eyes as a result of an unconscious reaction from my prejudice loh. Maybe the Northern girl treated you so because she felt inferior from being discriminated right in Vn :) Most educated Southerners dislike people from the North, especially toward those who are like that girl.
Don't worry dear. Just ignore her. I'm Vietnamese and I guarantee, the northern accent is not considered standard in Vietnam. Funny this video said otherwise. lol. Give me a break, some northerners can't even pronounce the L and N correctly.
@@lbkHS Why does it bother you that they speak with a Hanoian accent? People can choose to speak in whatever accent they prefer. It's quite shallow to dislike someone who you don't really know, isn't it? Well-educated Vietnamese people should not be discriminative towards one another at all based on different regional dialects. It's quite sad seeing Vietnamese bringing each other down just for this artificial reason.
It’s obvious that she has no idea about languages and dialects. Hanoian cannot pronounce “r” correctly. Besides, there are a few standards in Vietnamese now. If there was a standard language, there would be like a mix of some dialects which does not sound natural at all (like Hochdeutsch but without the spread through Bible translation)
I remember as a youngster when they introduced northern and Scottish accents on children’s TV in Britain and I couldn’t understand it. My father was saying it was wrong at the time, but now it’s standard and everyone is used to it. It’s called progress in my opinion.
I’ve written a 5000-word essay defending the Mekong Delta accent’s pronunciation and now I’m glad that I’ve found someone agree with my viewpoints. 😊 We Vietnamese are all mispronuncing, comparing to initial and ‘standard’ scribes, regardless region and local. Hence why don’t we only look at the accent/dialect as a the beauty, the cultural identity of that place? ❤
I’ve seen you discuss Vietnamese linguistics before and you’re so good at it. It’s refreshing to hear someone approach this with a descriptive instead of a prescriptive approach to accents and grammar. The US definitely has high- and low-prestige accents, and so does England. In the US, the more distinctive east coast accents like heavy New York and Boston accents have somewhat lower prestige and are sometimes spoken of as “harsh.” The accents that receive the most discrimination or at least negative perceptions are the Southern ones. In the northern mind they are often associated with the worst stereotypes of the south, ignorance and racism. The truth is that there is a whole range of Southern accents that correspond to region as well as degree of contact with outsiders and prestige level of their jobs. For example, if you run a local business there’s little pressure to change your accent, but you won’t see news announcers with strong southern accents. On local TV you’ll hear more local flavor but anchor people will definitely be toning it down. What people call “Black Accents” are based on Southern Accents as well, with certain features that survived from the languages they spoke in Africa. As freed slaves moved north, they faced continued discrimination and very much needed to stay together as a community (and they were forced to as well by policies that didn’t allow them to live where they wanted). So those accents have survived, though with changes. For example, there are distinct local varieties of BEV (Black English Vernacular) in many northern cities today. Because lack of access to equal education has been a huge issue for inner city Black neighborhoods especially, strong “Black” accents are stigmatized, but also the stigma is generalized to the point where Black people who are educated and have good standard English feel pressure to “tone down” their accents. Many code switch, speaking more “proper” in certain formal environments and relaxing into the accents they grew up with otherwise. For many it’s also a “symbol of membership,” and something to be proud of. It’s also socially sensitive - as a white person who loves accents, I’d have no issue putting on a Greek or German or British English accent, but if I imitated a Black American accent, it could be very uncomfortable and easily seen as derisive, whether I intended that or not. White people who move north also feel pressure to lose their accents, and because it’s easy for them to fit into white communities and social life, they often do. They will often still code switch when they go back down south, but their kids are much less likely to have their parents’ accents since there are not generally “southern communities” up north. What’s interesting also is that the US Southern accents have their roots in Northern English and Scottish accents, especially the Ulster Scots (known as “Scotch Irish” the US). Within Great Britain, it’s more the northern accents that have lower prestige, but the accent situation there is extremely complex so I shouldn’t generalize too much.
After immigrated to US and my English was bad (still is LOL) and I am shy too. My family drove down to California from Wisconsin. We drove by Oklahoma and asked for direction. This Black Lady showed me the direction and she have the strong Southern accent that I had a hard time listen to her. You go to the Red Lot (red light) turn rai ...and a lot more... I was popping my eyes and ears tried to make sense of what she had directed me to go. I was thinking the red parking lot back then and not thinking the red-light LOL. Anyway, I really enjoyed reading your comment. For me, it takes times to understand difference culture and its uniqueness. I can handle blue grass music now but not before. US southern or Vietnamese central accent define a culture and should not be lost fade out in the future due to not prestige or whatever. The world is too boring with the same accent. When traveling and hear the sounds of those accent, you know you are there.
@@bobtran2007 Yes those accents can be confusing, and this country is only a few centuries old! Imagine if we’d had a couple thousand years to differentiate… The light-lot thing is classic. They would pronounce “lot” more like “lawt,” more like Vietnamese “o” actually! And some words get an extra syllable…like “four” can become “fawer”, or nearer the coast, “faw” or “fawah”, depending on where you are… Actually that’s one thing that a lot of northerners don’t really understand; they usually think of “the southern accent”, but people from the South can tell what state you’re from, or sometimes even what area/town you’re from!
Great video! Love the "national" perspective, and the graphics were extremely helpful in illustrating accents. Accents make understanding conversations difficult (not sure I'll ever get there), but videos like this can really help!
As a Central dialect speaker, I noted that if the Central accent appears in any film or TV show (super rarely) that shall be a joke or shall be a supporting character that does not contribute anything to that film or TV show. Even if any film or TV show is set in the Central region or tells about a Central person's story, the above "formula" still happens. Wondering whether this is a form of regional discrimination(?)
This is sofuny. In American artistic films about the WW2, all characters, including German characters, were speaking English with American accent. Only few used to speak with British accent.
The same thing happened in England, where I'm from, but with a better outcome. All national newsreaders used to speak with Received Pronunciation, an accent from London in the south. In the 1990s, though, the BBC finally started to use newsreaders with regional accents, including those from the north, which were traditionally looked down upon.
Hello Annie, thank you for your wonderful content! I'm going to Hanoi next week so I'm watching some Vietnamese videos. I really like how you describe and present the Vietnamese language because as a linguistics graduate, I can very much relate to the linguistic terms and concepts that you use, so I am able to understand the explanations well. I must say that among all the Vietnamese teachers online, you are the best! Keep it up :))
I come from the Appalachian part of the US and sometimes people really do not like our accents so we try to change it to a more standard accent with outsiders.
Although I havre studied Vietnamese for quite a while, I always enjoy and em enlightened by the intelligence and knowledge she brings yto any discussion. And this brief aociolinguistic video was fantastic. Hope all is well with you Annie
I speak French and have occasionally heard disparaging comments about my accent because it's not "Parisian" or a "standard European TV" accent. (Note: Well over 90% of these comments came from people whose primary language was not French.) The reason for that is very simple. I'm not from Paris, not from anywhere in France, not from anywhere in Europe, and last but not least... I couldn't care less about how anybody speaks on TV! Anywhere! I speak with a Québec accent and if people don't like it, I'm sorry but that's too bad! I'm not going to "purge" myself of it. But, if it makes anybody feel any better, I can write "standard" French very well. Là-dessus j'en profite pour souhaiter une bonne journée à tous.
I like to say that accent discrimination happens all across Vietnam. It’s not about which accent is superior over the other, it’s more about the Viet’s insular culture, as in, you don’t want to be considered an outsider. And your accent is usually the indicator of your local status. I live in the South, and I have met many people who have Northern accent but they managed to change to a Southern one to get better jobs. Occasionally they would let slip the old Northern accent. Whereas if you go visit the North and let slip your Southern accent, you would face similar discrimination and victimisation. Each and every locale in Vietnam form a pre-conceived notion on each of the rest, and use accents as indicator. It’s dumb and stupid, sure, but that’s human nature. That’s why there is a saying in Vietnamese: Nhập gia tuỳ tục. It means to be adaptive to whichever culture you end up in. I myself do form my own preference in accent. My family is from the Mekong Delta but I grew up in Saigon, yet I spent some time studying in Australia where my identity was seriously challenged, so I decided to adapt a mix of Saigonese and Southern delta accent. I would speak normally like a Saigon person but I deliberately choose to use certain words that are unique to the Mekong region. I do like the southern culture, because it discourages formalities and values personal freedom. I actually fell in love with someone who is from the South, has an affable southern accent while at the same time fluent in English. We are both bilingual, and we had fun.
Cảm ơn chị thật nhiều vì video này, em cảm thấy rất thú vị với nó. Khi em ở Việt Nam, em thường nghe nhiều người nói: giọng miền bắc/giọng Hà Nội là giọng chính thức của tiếng Việt, nhưng em đã luôn nghĩ là không có một giọng nên là giọng chính thức ở Việt Nam, vì Việt Nam là một đất nước có nhiều địa phương đa dạng, và chúng đồng góp làm cho Việt Nam một đất nước đẹp đẽ và đầy văn hóa. Điều mắc cười nhất là, nếu mà em bị buộc lựa chọn một giọng tiếng Việt chuẩn, em sẽ không chọn giọng miền bắc đâu. Em sẽ chọn giọng miền nam/Sài Gòn, vì tất cả cộng đồng người Việt kiều trên khắp thế giới đều nói bằng giọng đó, thì giọng miền nam có thể được coi như là giọng tiếng Việt "quốc tế" nhất. :P
Mainly in the United States is the southern accent. While mainly in Japan, Germany, Eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union countries and recently Australia, the accent is mainly northern and central, so it is ridiculous to say that the southern accent is the most "international" accent.
Không đơn giản vậy đâu bạn à. Việt Kiều miền Nam tỵ nạn nhiều người là Bắc 54, nhiều người Hoa, nhiều người miền Trung. Nhiều Việt kiều, đặc biệt là công chức VNCH, nói giọng bắc 54- cái mà người Sài Gòn 71 gọi là classy như ông lính Mỹ nói là giọng Bắc 54 đấy. Nó khác với giọng Sài Gon gốc.
Giọng miền Bắc không phải là giọng chính thức ở VN, mà nó "gần" với giọng chuẩn trong tiếng Việt. Giọng miền Nam cũng tương tự giọng Bắc: không chuẩn. Nhưng nó lại nói đúng một số lỗi trong giọng miền Bắc. Và giọng miền Trung cũng vậy. Tuy nhiên, trong tiếng Việt TỒN TẠI, một loại giọng chuẩn, nó đơn thuần là phát âm đúng với chữ được ghi, và thường thì các phát thanh viên miền Bắc cũng phải điều chỉnh cho giống/gần giống với giọng này. Trong cách dùng từ, mỗi địa phương có thể dùng các từ ngữ khác nhau, nhưng đều có thể nói một giọng chuẩn. Và chắc chắn, giọng miền Nam không thể nào được coi là quốc tế được, vì lỗi sai phát âm trong nó quá nhiều, cũng không có thống kê nào cho thấy cộng đồng người Việt trên thế giới nói giọng miền Nam cả. Có lẽ bạn đánh đồng cộng đồng tị nạn sau 75 là những người nói tiếng Nam, nhưng điều đó khá khiên cưỡng vì ở miền Nam trước 75 tầng lớp tri thức đa số là người gốc Bắc, gốc Trung và ngôn từ họ pha khá nhiều. Ngay cả các vị tổng thống, quan chức chính quyền miền Nam cũng ít người nói giọng nam mà =D
That is so sad for her… imagine being demoted because of something that makes your identity you. I suppose a solution to this issue could have been to add subtitles but to make it uniform, they would have to add subtitles to all newsreaders. Only issue with this is that that’s a lot of work and in most cases, would no longer be live. I grew up with some family from central so my ears have been trained to understand the central dialect in conjunction to the southern dialect my parents speaks but my other southern friends always complain they have no clue what is being said in the central accent. I feel like if there is enough exposure, people will eventually pick up and understand the dialect sooner or later. Hmmm… I can see why this is such a debatable topic. Without realising it, I’ve started to engage in this debate hahaha
We have also dialects in Germany: For People from Hamburg or Emden in the North, it is nearly impossible to understand Bajuvarians from Munich talking in their dialect. In TV this is no problem, since the "TV and broadcasting language" is standardized to the dialect from Hannover (the so called "Hochdeutsch"). However, special broadcasts in Dialects are increasingly popular. BTW, robbing people their mother language is an act of barbarischen...
I cant understand central at all, the north i understand a little bit, when the central people speak i have to put that into my brain and processed it a little and think about what they are saying to me, sometime i just want to hand up the damn phone or just tell them to speak english to me, that will be easier for me.
Thailand faces a similar issue, where Central Thai is seen as "the prestigious dialect," and the others "peasants' dialects." That contributed to the decline of dialect use, though the newer generations are starting to make multimedia contents about the dying dialects like Lanna and Southern Thai (Dambro). One dialect which never dies is Isaan (Northeastern Thai or just Lao), despite Central Thais' looking down at them until the near past; though, as far as I know, it still has not appeared in any national media.
Interesting video, which goes along with my own experience. When I was learning Vietnamese in Saigon back in 1971, even then the Hanoi accent was considered classier than the Saigon accent, and the Delta accent was considered very low class! I didn't know about the Hue accent. In 2014, when I visited Vietnam for the first time since the American war, I had forgotten (through disuse) almost all the Vietnamese I had ever learned. Sin Loi! I wish I had a chance to go back and relearn it and use it.
I've never heard it described this way haha. I was adopted by a Vietnamese buddhist temple as a kid so I retained a strong grasp of Vietnamese and watched arguably too much Paris by Night. But I've come to realise that trying to find media these days on the internet that at least what I can find tends to be more of a Northern accent as I'll catch words that tonally throw me off.
I believe the reason why the giong nam is widely accepted along with the standard, much older giong bac (even though it is the youngest accent in the country's history) is due to its large Sai Gon metropolitan population, the diaspora around the world from the southern regions after the war, Sai Gon being the business, commerce/finance, technology, transportation, and entertainment center of VN, and along with the millions of mien tay residents who more or less speak similar Sai Gon accent compared to the Mien Trung region where each province has their own unique accents. All those factors carried some major weight in the overall picture why Sai Gon accent is accepted and widely used.
As a Vietnamese, I don’t think there’s a standard accent or if any accents is more chuẩn than the others. But it does exist one correct pronunciation system and the Hanoi’s pronunciation seems to be the closest to that (closest, not 100% correct). That might be the reason why it’s generally considered “standard”, not really because of the power political reason. Same thing, in most songs (popular music), singers sound kinda “northern”, “hanoi-ish” no matter where they are from to conform with the tones and syllables. I wasn’t aware of the Anh Phương the newsreader case until now and I feel deeply disappointed about this. I love the idea of introducing sounds from different regions. It’s still Tiếng Việt at the end of the day.
I agree. I have Saigon accent (given that's where I was born and grew up) and tbh I can tell my accent does not pronounce every single vietnamese word the way they're supposed to lol. However, for Hanoi accent, you can tell people make an effort in pronounce things the proper way (in this video, it's the thanh ngã, but then we also have these "tr"", "ch" consonants that saigon accent doesn't differentiate but Hanoi does very well). It's considered standard for its proper pronunciation. Me finding Hanoi accent to be the standard accent does not mean I find different dialects inferior to it. In fact, I find dialects in our Vietnamese language soooo fascinating. I feel proud of myself for being able to understand many different dialects and when I can tell someone's background based on their accent - cuz that's so unique on an individual level. 😊
While older people still not accepted the diversity of Vietnamese accents, the younger generation is more tolerate and believe in accents equality. There is still hope
Thank you for this video about accents, and for carefully pronouncing so many Vietnamese words and sentences twice each time. I love languages and the sounds required to speak them. Here in the US we definitely have language discrimination. There's a lot of North-South accent discrimination in the US. Most people who grow up in cities these days have a so-called neutral accent, and whenever anyone speaks with a Southern or rural accent, it's usually considered uneducated, and people will underestimate your intelligence if you speak that way. When I was young I tried to get rid of my Texas accent, but then I decided it would be sad if there were no Southern accents, so I stopped correcting myself. Especially after I considered that Nobel physicist Richard Feynman spoke with an outrageous Queens New York accent, and nobody gave him trouble for that. One interesting thing here in Texas is that there's a particular accent that's associated with ranchers, which is affected heavily by Texas lawyers. You may be in a meeting with a bunch of Texans and not be able to tell where they're from, but then when a lawyer speaks, it's with that deep and sonorous Texas rancher drawl. One last thing, when I was a kid back in the 1960s, the name of your country was spelled in the US as Viet Nam, but then at some point it changed to Vietnam. Would you have any idea why this changed?
I like your comment. I'm VNamese, living in the state. I'm not so sure since I'm not historian, or specialize in languistic...... Just my 2 cents, opinion, about your question: Viet Nam v.s Vietnam. I think American in general don't care or don't pay much attention about the word ( specific meaning ) for the word "Viet Nam". Since American like to shorten the names anyway when they call people " Dave for David etc......". Therefore, overtime habitually, they don't really care to disect or the meaning of "Viet" and "Nam" ( they don't know Vietnamese anyway.....). Since Viet Nam united as one country..... Maybe, the US people: Papers, news, US folks start to regconize or just from habitually combine 2 words into one word "Vietnam" ( it doesn't change the meaning for the country anyway or People don't have to differenciate North VN people and South VN people like Korea (north v.s south Korea, are 2 seperate country.) . Bottom line is this is just my best way to explain it, solely my own opinion (not American English master).
But also a sign of honesty and perhaps intelligence. Like Dr. Phil and a couple of southern drawl guys I knew whom people respected but yet when spoken by some California guy, got no respect (exactly verbatim).
When in truth there are many different kinds of southern accents, based on both region and social/economic class, and in the South they have their own different levels of prestige. My grandmother, who died in the 80s, had the old slow-spoken, non-rhotic Charlotte accent. You hardly hear that way of speech anymore except among the extremely elderly. Among Northerners, that type of accent still carries a bit of “old southern gentry“ associations, very different than say, rural Tennessee or northern Alabama or Mississippi.
I guess is the same in every countries around the World. In Laos and Thailand each province have their own dialects/accents but mutually intelligible. Laos capital city accent is considered to be more prestige/modern while Luang Prabang accent is considered to be an old/adult accent. If you're a foreigners happen to be living in either Laos or Thailand I would suggest anyone to learn the capital city accents.
I notice that majority of the actors and actresses in Vietnamese movies speak Southern accent (even though there are plenty of TV dramas in Northern accent). Is it kind of reverse discrimination?
Well noticed! The fact is that, while Hanoi is where the government and news media are based, Saigon is the film capital of Vietnam. So that’s reflected in the proportion of movies that are filmed here, and in the people who appear in those movies.
I was born and grew up in SG, speaking Viet, SG, southern accent all the way. However, I noted the Viet northerners speak clear and annuciate better. As I recall my childhood education, I got Less grammar errors in every vietnamese literature classes when I had northern vietnamese teachers read story, peotry.....If people know VN history, the Very First College in entire IndoChina (Lao, Cambodia, VN) was in Ha Noi. Plus ,the rich and deep Vietnamese culture for thousand years from Hung Vuong dynasty were oringinated in the north VN..... In general, when we learn about language, we also learn about culture and people. Each region has its own beauty and pride....We shouldn't discriminate, embrace the differences so we can grow above our own limit and simplicity ( like food, we want to enjoy one day rice, other day bu'n ... so on and so on.
We also have accent discrimination in the US, mostly towards us Southerners. Some Northerners and West coast people rather fancy our ways of speaking, but most like to call us dumb and ignorant because of the lies they believe about us based on Stereotypes. I spent years, myself, trying to sound "normal,“ but to be honest I've always been very lousy at it! I can't pronounce some of the mainstream dialect sounds well and end up sounding less clear. Then if I get mad, happy, or just am not thinking about it, my real dialect comes right on out! Now that I'm middle aged I stopped seeking the approval of people who don't like me or my people anyway and mostly just be myself. Unfortunately, all the years of conditioning has an effect and its a process to totally get rid of the habit of trying to sound like a Californian or a yankee. I want to encourage anyone reading this to just be yourself. It is okay to occasionally use more universal terms to some degree when engaging with outsiders, but other than that, don't waste your time playing characters cause it's fake and is not a healthy way to live!
Being a person using English as 2nd language, I really enjoy hearing Southern accent, but it is true that most English programs are taught in Nothern accent and people think it is the standard at some point. But the more I learn, the more I think accents are no longer important, since languages are just our tools for communication. As long as we can understand each other, the purpose of languages is fulfilled.
@@blahvn I kind of agree. I speak Chinese myself as a second language, and I love their northern accent, especially Beijing. But with that accent comes a set of very unique cultures, idioms, ways of behaving, and when I encounter people from Taiwan or some other very different area, I almost have no choice but to talk and act a bit more "neutral" or else they may not totally understand and its harder to get along. It's the same with English. I'd love to just be my country Southern self all the time as its the real me, but when I do so people from other states and whatnot truly do not understand oftentimes. Ironically, I used to live in a very Southern state where in the city there was plenty of northerners. I had to thicken my accent to talk to the people from there or else theyd look at me funny, and to talk to the northerners I had to lessen my natural accent or they would look at me funny.
Indians discriminate between north/south accents too. North Indians have the stereotype of being loud and annoying, South Indians are stereotyped as nervous and nerdy.
I'm from the United States, so I would definitely say there is some discrimination people face if they speak English with a heavy accent. As a Southern I've met people who were seen as dumb or uneducated because they had a strong southern accent. People will also see those from California who have a "valley girl" accent like they're airheads. It's really unfortunate that we always seem to have this desire to be "better" or the "best" instead of just accepting the beauty of everyone's differences. I also think familiarizing yourself with more than one accent (as a language learner at least) can be extremely helpful for improving listening skills. All accents and dialects are beautiful and unique. We may like some over others, but that doesn't mean the ones we prefer are the "best."
America is a large country with many accents. A few regional accents are more difficult to understand for some Americans (such as from the Southeastern States-it is probably similar to the Hue accent situation in Vietnam). But regional accents provide a tonal flavor (that also includes unique local words)-making each area distinctive. I suppose some people like the variety and others don’t….. But to become a national news reader in America, people generally must speak the accent associated with the Midwestern American States. BUT-I find it surprising that another factor is influential to accents now-computers. To make Siri (of Apple computers) understand you, people must speak with a California-American accent. Although it is not much different than the Midwestern accent, there are some distinct differences with some words. Again, to make the computer assistant understand your question easily, you must speak the proper accent. The other computer assistants, from Amazon and Microsoft, have American accents associated with the Western Coastal States of America too (maybe the future “standard” accent of America will be a blend from California and/or Washington State)…. Overall you are correct in saying that one accent is not better than another accent. If you expose yourself to different regions, it isn’t difficult to understand different accents. It creates variety which does create some pleasure… If accents were like food-Imagine if only one recipe of Pho was allowed throughout all of Vietnam, and served in only one type of restaurant (all with the identical decor). It would be like if hamburgers could only be bought in McDonald’s restaurants throughout America. Something wonderful would be lost with such standardization.
I find the northern Vietnamese accent a lot easier to learn for Americans because the alphabet pronunciation is somewhat similar and not a lot of slang like the central and South vietnamese dialect.
@@solidstudd22 That maybe true but most Vietnamese in America originate from south Vietnam, and my girlfriend is from central Vietnam. So in America the most common Vietnamese accent is from south Vietnam
@@GeologyDude I’m with you there. I live in a heavily Vietnamese neighborhood in Seattle and almost everyone speaks Southern dialect. So even though sometimes people say “Northern is standard, you should learn that,” it’s not really practical if everyone I can practice with here speaks southern. (Actually my barber comes from a northern family that moved south, and his accent is somewhere in between.)
in the USA most reporters use the mid western accent as it is considered the clearest. but the vietnamese discrimination on accent is ridiculous to me. I favor having multiple accents on TV and Media makes it more interesting.
I noticed Huế also pronounce the 'g' as in giờ as a 'y' sound like the southern accent. At what point, north of Huế, does the 'g' stop being a 'y' sound and start being a 'z' sound? Is there one village with the 'y' sound then the next has a 'z' sound 😅 Which book did you find this in? I want to learn more about Vietnamese phonology 😀
“Gi” starts being a ‘z’ from Nghe An as far as I know. Nghe An is also famous for villages and towns next to each other but having their own accents and dialects (and very proud about that!). You can find all this stuff in a book called “Phương ngữ học tiếng Việt” by Hoàng Thị Châu.
it's really hard to find a good book for this, because I-native Vietnam speaker doe not hear any good book help us improve pronunciation especially phonology. Althought there are some book study about Vietnam phonology and phonentic but they are really really hard to understand. I read all of that and I tell you the truth: You waste your time for trash.
In Vietnam I heard many Hanoi northerners saying their accent is the only correct one. I disagree. In fact I really do not like VTV using ONLY Hanoi accent readers to read the national news, which is then retransmitted all over VN, with no local accent news readers. When living in Nha Trang, neither my Vietnamese wife nor I could understand the Hanoi news readers because of their accent and because they read WAY too fast. Local tv stations should all have news read in the local accent, so the everyone in the area can understand. I should add that I can understand many accents in VN, but definitely not the Hue dialect, which to me sounds like a different language. But I still support the Hue tv station transmitting in the local dialect for the local people.
Thank you for this video and explanation. Viet Nam's news seems to focus on national concerns, whereas news in the US tries to have a local focus; that is, reporters ("news readers") will explain how national events will affect local regions.
For those who do not know, there is a "standard" voice in Vietnam, which is the voice that pronounces correctly the way you write Vietnamese. It's neither a northern nor a southern accent. The reason why the Northern accent (especially the old Hanoi accent - which is different from the current Northern accent, is a mixture of other dialects in the North) "often misunderstood" as the standard accent is because it limits errors in Vietnamese pronunciation. But of course it also has certain flaws. In light of this, people who are educated and interested in languages today begin to practice speaking "correctly" by saying it exactly the way the word is written. It is very natural and also very promising to help Vietnamese progress to an international language.
Hi Anne, Thank you for that video. I am from Silesia (Oak-shaped land localized in Czechia, Germany, and Poland (the major part). For Polish people, my language (Slavic Silesian) is considered a dialect/accent. They mostly used a word that historically comes from Silesian - 'gwara' (szl. 'speak, talk, language')- to describe our language as a sub-dialect. I don't know if it's on purpose or because of ignorance. Similar happened to other languages such as Masurian, Kashubian, Podlachian, etc. They're mostly discriminated against and ridiculed. According to polish law dialects (and one vernacular language - Kashubian) should be protected and cherished, however, polish society does exactly the opposite. I hope this will change. And yeah, according to Vietnamese - I do like the most Southern Accent but I also learn how to pronounce all distinguished sounds - accent discrimination is really sad.
It's funny to me seeing people learn Vietnamese as a second language and when they get good they pick up a thick Ha Noi accent despite the fact that there's not many diasporas from Ha Noi compared to other regions in the US.
Actually there are 2 sides of the coin here. On one hand, the northern accent is more accepted on national TV. On the other hand, if you are Northern guy moving to the South and people can hear your accent, there are lot of discriminations going on like "Northern people are dishonest, evil, etc" which is in my opinion a big pity it has come to that phase. The discrimination was even worse back in the days right after the reunion but even now in today's society, the stigma is still there. A lot of hatred for nothing. And I do agree with some other user who posted here before: It is in fact easier to unite people if everyone has the same accent - doesn't matter which one of them, but just pick one. People have tendency to split up in groups: We Vs. THEM. To break up this attitude and human error, you will have to find similarties between them so they can connect with each other. Or else you are back to square one basically. I actually wish Vietnam had only one accent. You can also see in other countries that the accents are disappearing slowly and steady for example like in Sweden, people tend to use "Rikssvenska" instead which means: national accent. It is not Stockholm accent btw but more like a uniform accent where everyone can speak. Makes it easier to unite people. Less hatred because of a simple fact: humans have a hard time to respect each other and tend to dislike "special uniques".
I think your understanding of what Rikssvenska is it a bit flawed. First off though, Rikssvenska is a compound of "rike" meaning "kingdom" or "nation" (it does not map well to one single word in English), and "svenska" meaning "Swedish", so it means perhaps something like "National Swedish". Rikssvenska isn't really an accent, nor a dialect, but a written standard, described by Svenska Akademien. You're right that it isn't the Stockholm accent, but it's no accent or dialect really. The idea that Rikssvenska would be something close to Stockholm (some people mention Uppsala, or Nyköping) or even Sveamål (the group of accents in "central" Sweden) is itself the same tendency that she speaks about in this video. Svealand, and particularly the Stockholm region is the seat of power in Sweden, and therefore that's where the prestige language has located itself, but it's important to understand that that isn't Rikssvenska, and you still have to choose an accent after deciding to pronounce a word you find in the dictionary. There are a variety of ways that are all accepted as correct, but there is certainly the tendency you describe of more and more people choosing to do so in a style similar to the Stockholm regional accent. I understand your reasoning for thinking this is nice, it makes it much easier to just communicate, but I think it's sad to be honest.
Linguistic prejudice, accent discrimination = *glottophobia* From "glottophobie", a *French neologism* from a Greek source, *coined and defined by Philippe Blanchet* in 2008. Blanchet himself is from Marseille in southern France and has himself been discriminated against by Parisians.
Northern accent in Vietnam is considered closer to the true accent of the language, the hue accent is influenced by the Cham language and people whos country was in central vietnam while the southern dialect in south vietnam is slightly influenced from the native cambodians(Khmer Krom) who were the natives of south vietnam before we conquered it 200 years ago.
@@jerryle379 The Vietnamese language it self is heavily influenced by chinese(over 60% of the vocabulary is imported from old chinese which is closer to modern cantonese then to modern mandarin) Accent wise most researchers agree the central dialect is influenced by the Cham(the whole of central vietnm was a completely different country(Champa Kingdom a Austronesian speaking people related to filipinos and malays) 400 years ago) and 250 years ago southern vietnam was a apart of the Cambodian kingdom til we annexed it from them in the mid 1700s early 1800s. We didnt deport the cambodians there we "assimilated" them hence the difference in accents between the Vietnamese dialects today. random fun fact- Vietnamese and Cambodian language is also from the same language family as well. "Austroasiatic language family" All basic vocabulary like numbers,animals,plants,body parts,verbs,nouns etc is actually the same with some difference in pronunciation. like numbers in Viet is Moc hai ba bon nam(spelled wrong sorry) and cambodian Muay bi ba buon pram etc or vietnamese cut hair is cắt tóc in cambodian its kat soc etc pretty cool
@@jerryle379 thats great, vietnamization is working then. Always hated the chinese infleunce. In turkey they use to speak with 80% persian and arabic then in 1920s they started reusing and making new words with old turkic roots. Also I would love to see your link to your claim, seems like a good read!
@@teovu5557 nothing to do with vietnamesezation the 60%claim was too high from begin already plenty of study and people who research about vietnamese agree it around 30-40% ish also nothing to do with hate of Chinese , we don't hate Chinese if we hate Chinese why the hell we watch Chinese movie or accept Chinese culture influence ? We just don't like the current china govt and they retard 9 dash line claim
Where I am from we also have Ve Te Ve (VTV) haha but also similar sociolinguistic problem but in my country it’s West vs Central+East. Thank you for this very informative lesson! Actually makes me want to learn Vietnamese even more in depth.
I wouldn't say that the Hue accent has gone from the prestige accent to not being considered good enough for reading the news. The main issue is many people have much more difficult time understanding Hue accent compared to Northern or Southern accents.
*Vietnam in the Nguyen Dynasty came to the Republic of Vietnam, all from Hue to the central region communicated with the common accent, which is the Southern accent, still the same today*
Thank you for this video, interesting graphs too. I’ve been travelling a lot lately, met many different people, and it seems like the whole accent discrimination fiasco is a lot more abundant than I thought. Like you’ve said, it tends to gravitate towards the Central region, where the people are the primary target of this. Aside from the dialect/accent being “heavier” or “harder to understand”, I’ve also noticed how a lot of people often, consciously or not, associate accent with socioeconomic/educational levels. In other words, the Northen accent would sound “more inteligent” and “high class” , whereas Southern and Central sounds “inferior”, “working class” or even “distasteful”. I’ve been to Hue, Quang Binh, Quang Ngai, Vinh and many other Central region cities and I’ve noticed the fellow tourists’ condescending and disrespectful views towards the people just because of the accent. These are just some observations I’ve gathered throughout the years , and by also talking to people I’ve also learned their perspectives in regards of this topic. I personally believe all accents and dialects in my country to be beautiful, unique and all bears significant cultural values. Here in Vietnam, accent discrimination eats into the people’s subconscious mindset, and it’s something that arises through generations.
Of course. The North won the war so they make the rules. I’m an American married to a woman from North Viet Nam. I have noticed that people from South Viet Nam say people from the North have a Northern accent. Whereas people from the North say that people from the South speak wrong. In the U.S. there is also a large difference between N and S accent. My wife learned English from TV and from me (I’m from Northeast) and is fairly advanced in English. But when we moved next door to an older gentleman from Georgia (“deep South”), she told me she could not understand anything he said. The North also won the U.S civil war 150 years ago. And I’d guess that is why, here also, the Northern accent is regarded as more standard and correct. The Sai Gon woman you spoke of who was the first non-Northern news person must have been far better than everyone around her. That is what it takes to break through a barrier. In the U.S., examples are Jackie Robinson in baseball and Barack Obama in politics. To overcome prejudice, being the best is not enough. You have to be the best by a large margin.
My country is the United States, where there are a lot of regional accents. But I have noticed that most if not all national news programs use readers with "standard" American English accent. And the standard American accent, is of course, the California accent.
Southern, AAVE and Appalachian English dialects tend to be less prestigious than the Midwestern or Northeastern dialects of the USA mainly because the dialects are associated with the South (which tends to be more economically deprived), with Blacks (which tend to be more economically deprived) and Appalachians (which tend to be more economically deprived); Midwestern is promoted to be most neutral or standard of American English because so many news broadcasters are from there; and the New England states are also promoted because those states are rich.
Hà Nội is not the standard but it is closest to the standard what is the standard of Vietnamese ? It is the one without replacing or missing speech sounds
It is not accent discrimination. This is the act of enforced Cultural Assimilation. The history of segregation between North and South 'Nam existed long before the Proxy War. Officials know the segregation is deep and with the globalisation, it become further worse. Let it continue unchecked then the course of population would steer country to the fate of dissolution of enforced united entities like Czechoslovakia or even worse, Yugoslavia. With internal tension, crisis on the rise around the globe, esp in Russia and China, they must hasten their effort. Throughout history, enforced assimilation of culture did work. Vietnamese nearly decimated the Champa people and completely whitewashed their culture. The Khmer population did not fair much better. On television, ethnic minorities are represented by northern ethnics. Minorities in Western Plateau, Champa, Khmer are barely mentioned in local news. So, openly discrimination working with school indoctrination and mass propaganda will soon make Central, Southern culture vanish.
A few historical points for foreigners (Auslander in German). I was born in Hanoi. Mama carried me south in her arms in 53. I left for the US in 71, never been back. I harbor no ill will against the people of VN. After all we speak the same language, albeit with different accents and sometimes different vocabulary. That the North dominates is no rocket science. It won the war. The last ruling dynasty was rightly considered traitorous by the current government in my opinion. The Nguyen Gia Long dynasty asked for French help to defeat its arch enemy Nguyen Hue. Unfortunately for them, Nguyen Hue is a bona fide venerated Vietnamese hero. It was he who defeated the Qing in the 19th century otherwise China would claim Vietnam the same way it claimed Tibet. Once inside Vietnam, the French decided to make the country its colony for the next 100 years. We have a saying to that effect : "to invite the snake into the chicken coop so that it can eat all the chicken". The difference between Northern/Southern Vietnamese accent is also present in the Chinese language between Mandarin(Putonghua) vs Cantonese. I see the same difference here in the land of the free and home of the brave. Below the Maxon-Dixon line people tend to drawl, which is what i notice people in hot, southern climates tend to do. Some day I'll be back to visit, hopefully before i kick the can. What i don't quite get is why Auslander find the North more friendlier than the South. Although a Northerner myself I am wary in general of other Northerners, afraid of the Central folk, and am generally at ease with Southerners. But I am married to a Northerner myself lol.
Very interesting. Got a dozen of vietnamese friends while studied tertiary in australia. Didnt know there are many accents for vietnamese language. Now i know. I am chinese with sub dialect of teochew... pronounce in mandarin as chao chow... there are many dialects of chao chow too in mainland china, some of them i could not understand at all... some speaks with variation of a singing style fashion. By the way this dialect has 6-8 tonal differentiation....
The changes are based on the inherent qualities of the accent, though. More people could understand the Saigon accent because it had more similarities with the Hà Nội accent. There were fewer complaints because overall, more people understood the Saigon newscaster better.
Just a question I had in mind after watching the video. Could the northern accent be the standard accent, because it's also viewed as the older one? I know that many British english speaker seeing themselves as the correct way to speak english towards others accents due that reasoning. I do not know how much truth there is about that though. Vietnamese history started in the north and then went south with conquest in the medieval to pre-modern times, no? Perhaps I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.
Gosh I feel so bad for Anh Thuong, the excitement and achievement to be the first, and then for the result to be so negative and to not have a chance to continue :(
It's a bit more complicated than that. I find the "Vietnamese Phonology" on Wikipedia explains this fairly well, maybe you'd want to take a look at that.
Viet Canadian here and southern accent all the way. Whenever I hear a northern accent (and sometimes even with central), it's like nails on a chalkboard.
My Vietnamese wife and her family (devoted to Saigon accent, living in France) told me that in literature and especially songs, the "Northern" accent was and is used, hence (in addition to the North winning the war and dominating the whole country now) the domination of the Ha Noi accent as the official Vietnamese pronunciation.
I agree in all aspects, although I despise the so-called official 'Ha Loi' (pun intended) pronunciation. Instead of embracing Viet diversity they choose to push the northern accent as a 'standard', which is a trait deeply rooted in political viewpoint.
@@maxt4874 I personally have a problem with the Northern accent. I find, the 6 different accents do not appear as clearly as in thr Southern accent. The "dau nang" does not really go down etc. I find Southern accent easier to understand. And what's more, there are sounds which are very(!) close to the Bavarian accent (I am Bavarian). Already the very broad "a", and even whole words. I definitively prefer Saigon accent. 😊
@@maxt4874 the L and N are not really true Hanoi dialect issue , what you consider Hanoi and Hanoian now day are not the real Hanoi when the dialect consider standard ( record by the dutch vietnamese and dutch protuge )guy in 16th century ) like Saigon of the old is not the same of HCM city ( which include many new rural place into the city = include lot of none native saigonese ) same shit for Hanoi lot of current Hanoian are not really origin from Hanoi or from the old district of Hanoi ( as the city expand ) my suggestion are try to find some legit Hanoi ( from the old quarter ) you will find out they doesn't have the mispronounce / ngọng problem. I'm from Saigon but growth up with folk from many region of Vietnam ( i actually can understand all the region dialect in Vietnam 😂 ) some time girl from Thanh hoa or nghe an surprise that i can understand they chitchat cause most southerner can't ( btw i doesn't have family member from Thanh Hoa or Nghe An )
@@jerryle379 l know. That's why my first teacher happened to mix them up. My second teacher (Saigonese as well, 10 years of private class) put it straight again.
The standard accent and pronounciation of Vietnamese is the northern tone not because they're the capital city. Its because the origin of Vietnamese ancestry (Dai Viet) are from the north. If you look back at history thousands of years ago Vietnam territory was in north and part of southern China today. The central and southern part of Vietnam was annexed to country when it conquered the Champa empire and part of Cambodia empire 17th and 18th century. Hanoi is the capital but the real city that is the commercial economic backbone of Vietnam is Ho Chi Minh City in the south. This is the place where everyone come to do business. Only politicians stay in Hanoi. All of the famous tourist destination in Vietnam are in the central and the south.
Fact. Unless southern people declare independent from the north, like American did. Or else with whatever ethnic mixed there, they will always considered not pure vietnamese.
@@user-kc7yp5sw8t Actually Vietnam used to be seperated into two countries before 1975 similar to Korea today. I don't want to get into politics but since the North Vietnamese won the war they make the rule to considered what is considered to be the right standard. But if you actually live in Vietnam for a long period of time you will notice there's huge difference between the north and south.
It's so pretty sad, I have the same problem with her: Binh-Tri-Thien (Hue) accent. They said my voice so thick, so strong that make them uncomfortable and cannot understand at all. Almost people feel that are Northern people. It's looke like yoy get racist with someone with the same skin, same language. If you are English speakers, it would be like this: You speak Irish-accent to England people or you speak Scottish-accent to American peole. However, I don't think all of you (except Vietnam) racist each others by dialects.
It's not Hanoi accent is considered to be standard but Nghe An accent is. The thing is the Hanoian always makes the sound lighter and easier to listen to, especially s and x, r, gi and d (they all sound the same sometimes). Also, the southern accent cannot be considered to be standard because the pronunciation and the writing are not compatible, not because POWER. Also, the southern vocab aren't fully developed.
As a Vietnamese, i do love every accent and the diversity we have within the Vietnamese language. But i do have to note that you completely brushed over the fact that the Vietnamese civilization and language are originated in the north. Because of the fact that 90% of the history of Vienamese are based in the north, it is absolutely undisputable that the north should be granted as the official dialect of the language. And in the case of the National television, i think it should be able to reach as many people as possible. Would you want some one from Guangdong speak a completely unintelligable dialect on a News channel on Chinese national TV? (Again, i wholeheartedly agree that you should never, NEVER judge someone with any accent)
When the Northerners keep saying their dialect is standard but they say the southerners discriminate them! It’s them who discriminate the Mid and southerners that They always say the southerners don’t pronounce words correctly!
Here in China nobody would even try doing this, I mean, when it comes to southern dialects the majority of whole China wouldn't understand ONE WORD because the difference between standard Mandarin and southern dialects is as big as English is to French or even German.😂
@@fnrjekkdbrnrj9972 i agree , cantonese is a language on its own but actually , there are also dialects of mandarin spoken in southern regions which are the southwestern and jianghuai mandarin which are also unintelligible to other mandarin speakers w/o prior exposure
So when Anh Phuong (sorry no VN keyboard) read the news, was all of her vocabulary standard/Northern, with only her pronunciation differing, or did she also use regional words and expressions?
If I'm honest...I do agree with their decision. If the majority of the population finds it difficult to understand this accent, it shouldn't be on national TV. That's why I think standardization is important. It doesn't necessarily mean it's worse, but ultimately we use languages to communicate. If you can't understand it, then what's the point?
Germany has many dialects. My own dialect (Swabian) seems inferior, because we lack ö and ü. Hm. However, we use eh and ieh instead. Ok, so maybe not inferior. But then we merge most Ps and Ks and Ts with B, G and D. So it is inferior in terms of word distinctions. My dialect is also inferior in prestige. The Bavarian accent has many serieses on TV. Mine has only one series, I think.
A little bit is not really right here, southerners don’t discriminate the other two regional groups of people. The southerners usually say straight what they think about things, while the other two regions use their arts of language or don’t like to say things straight out! But not so worried because Nations of the World are like that!
I'm Vietnamese American male. I recommend you non Vietnamese to learn the southern accent. It sounds better and way more attractive on all levels. My grandparents are originally from the North. They ran/escaped to the south decades ago when the communist took over the North. We hate communism in Vietnam, and we see how they have progressively pushed the accent and agendas last few decades. They even changed the name Sai Gon city to Ho Chi Minh city! The Northern accent on government controlled social media in VN, and some new spelling/wording...etc. have been pushed everywhere politically last few decades by the communist party which originated from the North. This is how communism brainwash and control everybody. There're no human rights, and their fake "jungle" laws only apply to common people. I was born in the south of VN and speaks with the northern accent mixed with southern. My family for most part speak with southern accent, especially our kids. Some people with good gentle vocals speak northern, mid, southern accents with very attractive tone though, so the Northern/mid accents are extremely nice to hear...especially from a romantic love one! *Just my 2cents, no editing.
Im northern Vietnamese born and raised in Saigon my entire life, yes I call it Saigon, not Ho Chi Minh city and I hate communism but I speak Vietnamese with a northern accent because thats how the Vietnamese is supposed to sound like. Only you jungle monkeys speak Vietnamese with a Cambodian accent and call it the “southern accent”
@@CenturionSS Calling people from the south "jungle monkeys" is you contributing to the problem, when you claim you are born and raised in the south. Trying to fight discrimination with more discrimination isn't going to help the issue. There is nothing wrong with speaking with a dialect. By you choosing not to use Southern Vietnamese, you are contributing to its erasure because you think it's inferior.
@@aznmochibunny Blah blah nothing wrong. It's everything wrong. South vietnamese is an inferior subhuman accent. Your accent is the reason why non-Vietnamese speakers think Vietnamese is an ugly language. 99% Vpop songs are sung in northern accent. All Vietnamese should learn the northern accent and call it the national accent. Northern central southern accents should not exist
I got discriminated by my saigon accent before. I was born in Germany but both of my parents are vietnamese. People never had a problem with my vietnamese at all until I went to uni and in my first semester I met this vietnamese girl from Hanoi. We kept arguing because she doesn‘t like my southern accent. She was telling everyone that only her nothern accent is the correct way when it comes to speaking vietnamese. We had this one korean friend who came up to me and wanted me to taught her that one sentence in vietnamese and suddenly the vietnamese girl interfere and said only the nothern accent is the right way to speak vietnamese. It got so bad that she started saying that I don‘t know how to speak vietnamese. The funny thing is whenever I‘m in Vietnam people don‘t know that I‘m actually not from there.
Sorry for you having that bad experience. I am half vietnamese, also born and raised in Germany, and I've been living in Vietnam for the past 5 years now.
My mom is from Saigon, so i speak with the southern Saigon accent, and fortunately for me I haven't experienced that kind of discrimination. Actually I experienced the opposite. The couple times I met/dated Vietnamese girls from the north they always complimented me for my accent and told me they like the sound of the southern accent. According to them it sounds cute. Maybe it's because i look partially western and for them it's just cool if a somewhat foreign looking person is able to speak Vietnamese well.
I saw discrimination towards the northern account though. A few Saigonese people I met told me they really dislike the Northern accent (I quote: "Nghe giọng miền Bắc thấy ghét").
For me personally I don't really care, both accents sound nice. It's just like british and american english. The northern accent is more like the british one, i.e. sounds more formal and sophisticated, and the southern one sounds more laid back and softer like american english. I used to struggle understanding the northern dialect, but nowadays I only struggle with understanding the central Vietnamese accent, but so do the people from the north and the south do as well 😅
Edit: In Germany ther's also accent discrimination, especially towards east german dialects. Unfortunately I speak Germany's least popular dialect (I am from Saxony 😅)
No worries dear. I'm Vietnamese myself who live in the South of VN, whenever I hear a foreigner speaking Vietnamese with proper Hanoi accent, I roll my eyes as a result of an unconscious reaction from my prejudice loh. Maybe the Northern girl treated you so because she felt inferior from being discriminated right in Vn :) Most educated Southerners dislike people from the North, especially toward those who are like that girl.
Don't worry dear. Just ignore her. I'm Vietnamese and I guarantee, the northern accent is not considered standard in Vietnam. Funny this video said otherwise. lol. Give me a break, some northerners can't even pronounce the L and N correctly.
@@lbkHS Why does it bother you that they speak with a Hanoian accent? People can choose to speak in whatever accent they prefer. It's quite shallow to dislike someone who you don't really know, isn't it? Well-educated Vietnamese people should not be discriminative towards one another at all based on different regional dialects.
It's quite sad seeing Vietnamese bringing each other down just for this artificial reason.
It’s obvious that she has no idea about languages and dialects. Hanoian cannot pronounce “r” correctly. Besides, there are a few standards in Vietnamese now. If there was a standard language, there would be like a mix of some dialects which does not sound natural at all (like Hochdeutsch but without the spread through Bible translation)
Whether it's in English or Vietnamese, Annie's voice is so pleasant.
I remember as a youngster when they introduced northern and Scottish accents on children’s TV in Britain and I couldn’t understand it. My father was saying it was wrong at the time, but now it’s standard and everyone is used to it. It’s called progress in my opinion.
Comment của anh hay lắm!
No Welsh Accent?
man you're from the UK. Do not tell me that you could not understand northern accent like the Manchester accent or the Yorkshire accent....
Amen
I’ve written a 5000-word essay defending the Mekong Delta accent’s pronunciation and now I’m glad that I’ve found someone agree with my viewpoints. 😊 We Vietnamese are all mispronuncing, comparing to initial and ‘standard’ scribes, regardless region and local. Hence why don’t we only look at the accent/dialect as a the beauty, the cultural identity of that place? ❤
I’ve seen you discuss Vietnamese linguistics before and you’re so good at it. It’s refreshing to hear someone approach this with a descriptive instead of a prescriptive approach to accents and grammar.
The US definitely has high- and low-prestige accents, and so does England. In the US, the more distinctive east coast accents like heavy New York and Boston accents have somewhat lower prestige and are sometimes spoken of as “harsh.” The accents that receive the most discrimination or at least negative perceptions are the Southern ones. In the northern mind they are often associated with the worst stereotypes of the south, ignorance and racism. The truth is that there is a whole range of Southern accents that correspond to region as well as degree of contact with outsiders and prestige level of their jobs. For example, if you run a local business there’s little pressure to change your accent, but you won’t see news announcers with strong southern accents. On local TV you’ll hear more local flavor but anchor people will definitely be toning it down.
What people call “Black Accents” are based on Southern Accents as well, with certain features that survived from the languages they spoke in Africa. As freed slaves moved north, they faced continued discrimination and very much needed to stay together as a community (and they were forced to as well by policies that didn’t allow them to live where they wanted). So those accents have survived, though with changes. For example, there are distinct local varieties of BEV (Black English Vernacular) in many northern cities today. Because lack of access to equal education has been a huge issue for inner city Black neighborhoods especially, strong “Black” accents are stigmatized, but also the stigma is generalized to the point where Black people who are educated and have good standard English feel pressure to “tone down” their accents. Many code switch, speaking more “proper” in certain formal environments and relaxing into the accents they grew up with otherwise. For many it’s also a “symbol of membership,” and something to be proud of. It’s also socially sensitive - as a white person who loves accents, I’d have no issue putting on a Greek or German or British English accent, but if I imitated a Black American accent, it could be very uncomfortable and easily seen as derisive, whether I intended that or not.
White people who move north also feel pressure to lose their accents, and because it’s easy for them to fit into white communities and social life, they often do. They will often still code switch when they go back down south, but their kids are much less likely to have their parents’ accents since there are not generally “southern communities” up north.
What’s interesting also is that the US Southern accents have their roots in Northern English and Scottish accents, especially the Ulster Scots (known as “Scotch Irish” the US). Within Great Britain, it’s more the northern accents that have lower prestige, but the accent situation there is extremely complex so I shouldn’t generalize too much.
After immigrated to US and my English was bad (still is LOL) and I am shy too. My family drove down to California from Wisconsin. We drove by Oklahoma and asked for direction. This Black Lady showed me the direction and she have the strong Southern accent that I had a hard time listen to her. You go to the Red Lot (red light) turn rai ...and a lot more... I was popping my eyes and ears tried to make sense of what she had directed me to go. I was thinking the red parking lot back then and not thinking the red-light LOL.
Anyway, I really enjoyed reading your comment. For me, it takes times to understand difference culture and its uniqueness. I can handle blue grass music now but not before. US southern or Vietnamese central accent define a culture and should not be lost fade out in the future due to not prestige or whatever. The world is too boring with the same accent. When traveling and hear the sounds of those accent, you know you are there.
@@bobtran2007 Yes those accents can be confusing, and this country is only a few centuries old! Imagine if we’d had a couple thousand years to differentiate… The light-lot thing is classic. They would pronounce “lot” more like “lawt,” more like Vietnamese “o” actually! And some words get an extra syllable…like “four” can become “fawer”, or nearer the coast, “faw” or “fawah”, depending on where you are… Actually that’s one thing that a lot of northerners don’t really understand; they usually think of “the southern accent”, but people from the South can tell what state you’re from, or sometimes even what area/town you’re from!
Great video! Love the "national" perspective, and the graphics were extremely helpful in illustrating accents. Accents make understanding conversations difficult (not sure I'll ever get there), but videos like this can really help!
Cảm ơn anh!
As a Central dialect speaker, I noted that if the Central accent appears in any film or TV show (super rarely) that shall be a joke or shall be a supporting character that does not contribute anything to that film or TV show. Even if any film or TV show is set in the Central region or tells about a Central person's story, the above "formula" still happens. Wondering whether this is a form of regional discrimination(?)
This is sofuny. In American artistic films about the WW2, all characters, including German characters, were speaking English with American accent. Only few used to speak with British accent.
I found this channel today, without any knowledge of the Vietnamese language. I’m very amazed with it and with your stories and videos 😀.
I don't speak Vietnamese and am not learning it, but this video is so fascinating! I'm following you!
The same thing happened in England, where I'm from, but with a better outcome. All national newsreaders used to speak with Received Pronunciation, an accent from London in the south. In the 1990s, though, the BBC finally started to use newsreaders with regional accents, including those from the north, which were traditionally looked down upon.
Hello Annie, thank you for your wonderful content! I'm going to Hanoi next week so I'm watching some Vietnamese videos. I really like how you describe and present the Vietnamese language because as a linguistics graduate, I can very much relate to the linguistic terms and concepts that you use, so I am able to understand the explanations well. I must say that among all the Vietnamese teachers online, you are the best! Keep it up :))
I come from the Appalachian part of the US and sometimes people really do not like our accents so we try to change it to a more standard accent with outsiders.
Annie, these videos are fascinating. I really enjoy them and thank you for explaining the language from a linguistic perspective. Love it.
Although I havre studied Vietnamese for quite a while, I always enjoy and em enlightened by the intelligence and knowledge she brings yto any discussion. And this brief aociolinguistic video was fantastic. Hope all is well with you Annie
I speak French and have occasionally heard disparaging comments about my accent because it's not "Parisian" or a "standard European TV" accent. (Note: Well over 90% of these comments came from people whose primary language was not French.) The reason for that is very simple. I'm not from Paris, not from anywhere in France, not from anywhere in Europe, and last but not least... I couldn't care less about how anybody speaks on TV! Anywhere! I speak with a Québec accent and if people don't like it, I'm sorry but that's too bad! I'm not going to "purge" myself of it. But, if it makes anybody feel any better, I can write "standard" French very well. Là-dessus j'en profite pour souhaiter une bonne journée à tous.
I like to say that accent discrimination happens all across Vietnam. It’s not about which accent is superior over the other, it’s more about the Viet’s insular culture, as in, you don’t want to be considered an outsider. And your accent is usually the indicator of your local status. I live in the South, and I have met many people who have Northern accent but they managed to change to a Southern one to get better jobs. Occasionally they would let slip the old Northern accent. Whereas if you go visit the North and let slip your Southern accent, you would face similar discrimination and victimisation. Each and every locale in Vietnam form a pre-conceived notion on each of the rest, and use accents as indicator. It’s dumb and stupid, sure, but that’s human nature. That’s why there is a saying in Vietnamese: Nhập gia tuỳ tục. It means to be adaptive to whichever culture you end up in.
I myself do form my own preference in accent. My family is from the Mekong Delta but I grew up in Saigon, yet I spent some time studying in Australia where my identity was seriously challenged, so I decided to adapt a mix of Saigonese and Southern delta accent. I would speak normally like a Saigon person but I deliberately choose to use certain words that are unique to the Mekong region. I do like the southern culture, because it discourages formalities and values personal freedom. I actually fell in love with someone who is from the South, has an affable southern accent while at the same time fluent in English. We are both bilingual, and we had fun.
Cảm ơn chị thật nhiều vì video này, em cảm thấy rất thú vị với nó. Khi em ở Việt Nam, em thường nghe nhiều người nói: giọng miền bắc/giọng Hà Nội là giọng chính thức của tiếng Việt, nhưng em đã luôn nghĩ là không có một giọng nên là giọng chính thức ở Việt Nam, vì Việt Nam là một đất nước có nhiều địa phương đa dạng, và chúng đồng góp làm cho Việt Nam một đất nước đẹp đẽ và đầy văn hóa. Điều mắc cười nhất là, nếu mà em bị buộc lựa chọn một giọng tiếng Việt chuẩn, em sẽ không chọn giọng miền bắc đâu. Em sẽ chọn giọng miền nam/Sài Gòn, vì tất cả cộng đồng người Việt kiều trên khắp thế giới đều nói bằng giọng đó, thì giọng miền nam có thể được coi như là giọng tiếng Việt "quốc tế" nhất. :P
David viết tiếng Việt siêu ghê!!! Làm mình bật cười khi đọc đến đoạn “tiếng Việt quốc tế nhất”. :)
Mainly in the United States is the southern accent. While mainly in Japan, Germany, Eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union countries and recently Australia, the accent is mainly northern and central, so it is ridiculous to say that the southern accent is the most "international" accent.
Không đơn giản vậy đâu bạn à. Việt Kiều miền Nam tỵ nạn nhiều người là Bắc 54, nhiều người Hoa, nhiều người miền Trung. Nhiều Việt kiều, đặc biệt là công chức VNCH, nói giọng bắc 54- cái mà người Sài Gòn 71 gọi là classy như ông lính Mỹ nói là giọng Bắc 54 đấy. Nó khác với giọng Sài Gon gốc.
Giọng miền Bắc không phải là giọng chính thức ở VN, mà nó "gần" với giọng chuẩn trong tiếng Việt.
Giọng miền Nam cũng tương tự giọng Bắc: không chuẩn. Nhưng nó lại nói đúng một số lỗi trong giọng miền Bắc.
Và giọng miền Trung cũng vậy.
Tuy nhiên, trong tiếng Việt TỒN TẠI, một loại giọng chuẩn, nó đơn thuần là phát âm đúng với chữ được ghi, và thường thì các phát thanh viên miền Bắc cũng phải điều chỉnh cho giống/gần giống với giọng này. Trong cách dùng từ, mỗi địa phương có thể dùng các từ ngữ khác nhau, nhưng đều có thể nói một giọng chuẩn.
Và chắc chắn, giọng miền Nam không thể nào được coi là quốc tế được, vì lỗi sai phát âm trong nó quá nhiều, cũng không có thống kê nào cho thấy cộng đồng người Việt trên thế giới nói giọng miền Nam cả.
Có lẽ bạn đánh đồng cộng đồng tị nạn sau 75 là những người nói tiếng Nam, nhưng điều đó khá khiên cưỡng vì ở miền Nam trước 75 tầng lớp tri thức đa số là người gốc Bắc, gốc Trung và ngôn từ họ pha khá nhiều. Ngay cả các vị tổng thống, quan chức chính quyền miền Nam cũng ít người nói giọng nam mà =D
@@benevolentmisanthropist2588 Bạn này nói đúng nè.
That is so sad for her… imagine being demoted because of something that makes your identity you. I suppose a solution to this issue could have been to add subtitles but to make it uniform, they would have to add subtitles to all newsreaders. Only issue with this is that that’s a lot of work and in most cases, would no longer be live.
I grew up with some family from central so my ears have been trained to understand the central dialect in conjunction to the southern dialect my parents speaks but my other southern friends always complain they have no clue what is being said in the central accent. I feel like if there is enough exposure, people will eventually pick up and understand the dialect sooner or later.
Hmmm… I can see why this is such a debatable topic. Without realising it, I’ve started to engage in this debate hahaha
We have also dialects in Germany: For People from Hamburg or Emden in the North, it is nearly impossible to understand Bajuvarians from Munich talking in their dialect. In TV this is no problem, since the "TV and broadcasting language" is standardized to the dialect from Hannover (the so called "Hochdeutsch"). However, special broadcasts in Dialects are increasingly popular. BTW, robbing people their mother language is an act of barbarischen...
I cant understand central at all, the north i understand a little bit, when the central people speak i have to put that into my brain and processed it a little and think about what they are saying to me, sometime i just want to hand up the damn phone or just tell them to speak english to me, that will be easier for me.
I've missed you and your lessons Annie. Hope you are safe and well.
Thailand faces a similar issue, where Central Thai is seen as "the prestigious dialect," and the others "peasants' dialects." That contributed to the decline of dialect use, though the newer generations are starting to make multimedia contents about the dying dialects like Lanna and Southern Thai (Dambro). One dialect which never dies is Isaan (Northeastern Thai or just Lao), despite Central Thais' looking down at them until the near past; though, as far as I know, it still has not appeared in any national media.
Wow interesting. Thank you for sharing!
Northeastern dialect never die . Their music and song are popular in Thailand and play on national media.
I think in coming years from now there will have multiple media outlets throughout Thailand to represent theirs own dialects.
Interesting video, which goes along with my own experience. When I was learning Vietnamese in Saigon back in 1971, even then the Hanoi accent was considered classier than the Saigon accent, and the Delta accent was considered very low class! I didn't know about the Hue accent. In 2014, when I visited Vietnam for the first time since the American war, I had forgotten (through disuse) almost all the Vietnamese I had ever learned. Sin Loi! I wish I had a chance to go back and relearn it and use it.
Loooved this video and you’re a great teacher. I’ve been so curious about this topic for a long time. Thank you! 😇
I'm a westernized (basically a banana), and this video taught me so much! thank you
I've never heard it described this way haha. I was adopted by a Vietnamese buddhist temple as a kid so I retained a strong grasp of Vietnamese and watched arguably too much Paris by Night. But I've come to realise that trying to find media these days on the internet that at least what I can find tends to be more of a Northern accent as I'll catch words that tonally throw me off.
Hey Annie, your content is great to watch. I hope your channel grows in the future.
I believe the reason why the giong nam is widely accepted along with the standard, much older giong bac (even though it is the youngest accent in the country's history) is due to its large Sai Gon metropolitan population, the diaspora around the world from the southern regions after the war, Sai Gon being the business, commerce/finance, technology, transportation, and entertainment center of VN, and along with the millions of mien tay residents who more or less speak similar Sai Gon accent compared to the Mien Trung region where each province has their own unique accents. All those factors carried some major weight in the overall picture why Sai Gon accent is accepted and widely used.
As a Vietnamese, I don’t think there’s a standard accent or if any accents is more chuẩn than the others. But it does exist one correct pronunciation system and the Hanoi’s pronunciation seems to be the closest to that (closest, not 100% correct). That might be the reason why it’s generally considered “standard”, not really because of the power political reason. Same thing, in most songs (popular music), singers sound kinda “northern”, “hanoi-ish” no matter where they are from to conform with the tones and syllables.
I wasn’t aware of the Anh Phương the newsreader case until now and I feel deeply disappointed about this. I love the idea of introducing sounds from different regions. It’s still Tiếng Việt at the end of the day.
I agree. I have Saigon accent (given that's where I was born and grew up) and tbh I can tell my accent does not pronounce every single vietnamese word the way they're supposed to lol. However, for Hanoi accent, you can tell people make an effort in pronounce things the proper way (in this video, it's the thanh ngã, but then we also have these "tr"", "ch" consonants that saigon accent doesn't differentiate but Hanoi does very well).
It's considered standard for its proper pronunciation.
Me finding Hanoi accent to be the standard accent does not mean I find different dialects inferior to it.
In fact, I find dialects in our Vietnamese language soooo fascinating. I feel proud of myself for being able to understand many different dialects and when I can tell someone's background based on their accent - cuz that's so unique on an individual level. 😊
@@hong-nhungt.nguyen1735 you’re right! Something is standard doesn’t mean the others are inferior.
While older people still not accepted the diversity of Vietnamese accents, the younger generation is more tolerate and believe in accents equality. There is still hope
Thanks dear. 😊👍
Hi from Can Tho. 🤗🇻🇳
Thank you for this video about accents, and for carefully pronouncing so many Vietnamese words and sentences twice each time. I love languages and the sounds required to speak them.
Here in the US we definitely have language discrimination. There's a lot of North-South accent discrimination in the US. Most people who grow up in cities these days have a so-called neutral accent, and whenever anyone speaks with a Southern or rural accent, it's usually considered uneducated, and people will underestimate your intelligence if you speak that way. When I was young I tried to get rid of my Texas accent, but then I decided it would be sad if there were no Southern accents, so I stopped correcting myself. Especially after I considered that Nobel physicist Richard Feynman spoke with an outrageous Queens New York accent, and nobody gave him trouble for that.
One interesting thing here in Texas is that there's a particular accent that's associated with ranchers, which is affected heavily by Texas lawyers. You may be in a meeting with a bunch of Texans and not be able to tell where they're from, but then when a lawyer speaks, it's with that deep and sonorous Texas rancher drawl.
One last thing, when I was a kid back in the 1960s, the name of your country was spelled in the US as Viet Nam, but then at some point it changed to Vietnam. Would you have any idea why this changed?
I like your comment. I'm VNamese, living in the state. I'm not so sure since I'm not historian, or specialize in languistic...... Just my 2 cents, opinion, about your question: Viet Nam v.s Vietnam. I think American in general don't care or don't pay much attention about the word ( specific meaning ) for the word "Viet Nam". Since American like to shorten the names anyway when they call people " Dave for David etc......". Therefore, overtime habitually, they don't really care to disect or the meaning of "Viet" and "Nam" ( they don't know Vietnamese anyway.....). Since Viet Nam united as one country..... Maybe, the US people: Papers, news, US folks start to regconize or just from habitually combine 2 words into one word "Vietnam" ( it doesn't change the meaning for the country anyway or People don't have to differenciate North VN people and South VN people like Korea (north v.s south Korea, are 2 seperate country.) . Bottom line is this is just my best way to explain it, solely my own opinion (not American English master).
In the United States, the southern drawl is stereotyped as a sign that the person is uneducated or unrefined. Lower class.
But also a sign of honesty and perhaps intelligence. Like Dr. Phil and a couple of southern drawl guys I knew whom people respected but yet when spoken by some California guy, got no respect (exactly verbatim).
When in truth there are many different kinds of southern accents, based on both region and social/economic class, and in the South they have their own different levels of prestige. My grandmother, who died in the 80s, had the old slow-spoken, non-rhotic Charlotte accent. You hardly hear that way of speech anymore except among the extremely elderly. Among Northerners, that type of accent still carries a bit of “old southern gentry“ associations, very different than say, rural Tennessee or northern Alabama or Mississippi.
Lol. Ill gladly outwit a northerner in a TX accent if need be.
I guess is the same in every countries around the World.
In Laos and Thailand each province have their own dialects/accents but mutually intelligible.
Laos capital city accent is considered to be more prestige/modern while Luang Prabang accent is considered to be an old/adult accent.
If you're a foreigners happen to be living in either Laos or Thailand I would suggest anyone to learn the capital city accents.
I notice that majority of the actors and actresses in Vietnamese movies speak Southern accent (even though there are plenty of TV dramas in Northern accent). Is it kind of reverse discrimination?
Well noticed! The fact is that, while Hanoi is where the government and news media are based, Saigon is the film capital of Vietnam. So that’s reflected in the proportion of movies that are filmed here, and in the people who appear in those movies.
@Annie you must be a Viet southerner
I was born and grew up in SG, speaking Viet, SG, southern accent all the way. However, I noted the Viet northerners speak clear and annuciate better. As I recall my childhood education, I got Less grammar errors in every vietnamese literature classes when I had northern vietnamese teachers read story, peotry.....If people know VN history, the Very First College in entire IndoChina (Lao, Cambodia, VN) was in Ha Noi. Plus ,the rich and deep Vietnamese culture for thousand years from Hung Vuong dynasty were oringinated in the north VN..... In general, when we learn about language, we also learn about culture and people. Each region has its own beauty and pride....We shouldn't discriminate, embrace the differences so we can grow above our own limit and simplicity ( like food, we want to enjoy one day rice, other day bu'n ... so on and so on.
We also have accent discrimination in the US, mostly towards us Southerners. Some Northerners and West coast people rather fancy our ways of speaking, but most like to call us dumb and ignorant because of the lies they believe about us based on Stereotypes. I spent years, myself, trying to sound "normal,“ but to be honest I've always been very lousy at it! I can't pronounce some of the mainstream dialect sounds well and end up sounding less clear. Then if I get mad, happy, or just am not thinking about it, my real dialect comes right on out! Now that I'm middle aged I stopped seeking the approval of people who don't like me or my people anyway and mostly just be myself. Unfortunately, all the years of conditioning has an effect and its a process to totally get rid of the habit of trying to sound like a Californian or a yankee. I want to encourage anyone reading this to just be yourself. It is okay to occasionally use more universal terms to some degree when engaging with outsiders, but other than that, don't waste your time playing characters cause it's fake and is not a healthy way to live!
Being a person using English as 2nd language, I really enjoy hearing Southern accent, but it is true that most English programs are taught in Nothern accent and people think it is the standard at some point. But the more I learn, the more I think accents are no longer important, since languages are just our tools for communication. As long as we can understand each other, the purpose of languages is fulfilled.
@@blahvn I kind of agree. I speak Chinese myself as a second language, and I love their northern accent, especially Beijing. But with that accent comes a set of very unique cultures, idioms, ways of behaving, and when I encounter people from Taiwan or some other very different area, I almost have no choice but to talk and act a bit more "neutral" or else they may not totally understand and its harder to get along. It's the same with English. I'd love to just be my country Southern self all the time as its the real me, but when I do so people from other states and whatnot truly do not understand oftentimes. Ironically, I used to live in a very Southern state where in the city there was plenty of northerners. I had to thicken my accent to talk to the people from there or else theyd look at me funny, and to talk to the northerners I had to lessen my natural accent or they would look at me funny.
Indians discriminate between north/south accents too. North Indians have the stereotype of being loud and annoying, South Indians are stereotyped as nervous and nerdy.
I'm from the United States, so I would definitely say there is some discrimination people face if they speak English with a heavy accent. As a Southern I've met people who were seen as dumb or uneducated because they had a strong southern accent. People will also see those from California who have a "valley girl" accent like they're airheads.
It's really unfortunate that we always seem to have this desire to be "better" or the "best" instead of just accepting the beauty of everyone's differences. I also think familiarizing yourself with more than one accent (as a language learner at least) can be extremely helpful for improving listening skills. All accents and dialects are beautiful and unique. We may like some over others, but that doesn't mean the ones we prefer are the "best."
Do you understand Northern Britain accents?
America is a large country with many accents. A few regional accents are more difficult to understand for some Americans (such as from the Southeastern States-it is probably similar to the Hue accent situation in Vietnam). But regional accents provide a tonal flavor (that also includes unique local words)-making each area distinctive. I suppose some people like the variety and others don’t….. But to become a national news reader in America, people generally must speak the accent associated with the Midwestern American States. BUT-I find it surprising that another factor is influential to accents now-computers. To make Siri (of Apple computers) understand you, people must speak with a California-American accent. Although it is not much different than the Midwestern accent, there are some distinct differences with some words. Again, to make the computer assistant understand your question easily, you must speak the proper accent. The other computer assistants, from Amazon and Microsoft, have American accents associated with the Western Coastal States of America too (maybe the future “standard” accent of America will be a blend from California and/or Washington State)…. Overall you are correct in saying that one accent is not better than another accent. If you expose yourself to different regions, it isn’t difficult to understand different accents. It creates variety which does create some pleasure… If accents were like food-Imagine if only one recipe of Pho was allowed throughout all of Vietnam, and served in only one type of restaurant (all with the identical decor). It would be like if hamburgers could only be bought in McDonald’s restaurants throughout America. Something wonderful would be lost with such standardization.
I find the northern Vietnamese accent a lot easier to learn for Americans because the alphabet pronunciation is somewhat similar and not a lot of slang like the central and South vietnamese dialect.
@@solidstudd22 That maybe true but most Vietnamese in America originate from south Vietnam, and my girlfriend is from central Vietnam. So in America the most common Vietnamese accent is from south Vietnam
@@GeologyDude I’m with you there. I live in a heavily Vietnamese neighborhood in Seattle and almost everyone speaks Southern dialect. So even though sometimes people say “Northern is standard, you should learn that,” it’s not really practical if everyone I can practice with here speaks southern. (Actually my barber comes from a northern family that moved south, and his accent is somewhere in between.)
in the USA most reporters use the mid western accent as it is considered the clearest. but the vietnamese discrimination on accent is ridiculous to me. I favor having multiple accents on TV and Media makes it more interesting.
This is a very good video for those learning Vietnamese❤❤ Good job🎉🎉
thank you for this very clear, detailed and well organized explanation!
I noticed Huế also pronounce the 'g' as in giờ as a 'y' sound like the southern accent.
At what point, north of Huế, does the 'g' stop being a 'y' sound and start being a 'z' sound?
Is there one village with the 'y' sound then the next has a 'z' sound 😅
Which book did you find this in? I want to learn more about Vietnamese phonology 😀
“Gi” starts being a ‘z’ from Nghe An as far as I know. Nghe An is also famous for villages and towns next to each other but having their own accents and dialects (and very proud about that!). You can find all this stuff in a book called “Phương ngữ học tiếng Việt” by Hoàng Thị Châu.
it's really hard to find a good book for this, because I-native Vietnam speaker doe not hear any good book help us improve pronunciation especially phonology. Althought there are some book study about Vietnam phonology and phonentic but they are really really hard to understand. I read all of that and I tell you the truth: You waste your time for trash.
Very interesting! Thank you so much for discussing this.
In Vietnam I heard many Hanoi northerners saying their accent is the only correct one. I disagree. In fact I really do not like VTV using ONLY Hanoi accent readers to read the national news, which is then retransmitted all over VN, with no local accent news readers.
When living in Nha Trang, neither my Vietnamese wife nor I could understand the Hanoi news readers because of their accent and because they read WAY too fast. Local tv stations should all have news read in the local accent, so the everyone in the area can understand.
I should add that I can understand many accents in VN, but definitely not the Hue dialect, which to me sounds like a different language. But I still support the Hue tv station transmitting in the local dialect for the local people.
Thank you for this video and explanation. Viet Nam's news seems to focus on national concerns, whereas news in the US tries to have a local focus; that is, reporters ("news readers") will explain how national events will affect local regions.
For those who do not know, there is a "standard" voice in Vietnam, which is the voice that pronounces correctly the way you write Vietnamese. It's neither a northern nor a southern accent.
The reason why the Northern accent (especially the old Hanoi accent - which is different from the current Northern accent, is a mixture of other dialects in the North) "often misunderstood" as the standard accent is because it limits errors in Vietnamese pronunciation. But of course it also has certain flaws.
In light of this, people who are educated and interested in languages today begin to practice speaking "correctly" by saying it exactly the way the word is written. It is very natural and also very promising to help Vietnamese progress to an international language.
Hi Anne,
Thank you for that video. I am from Silesia (Oak-shaped land localized in Czechia, Germany, and Poland (the major part). For Polish people, my language (Slavic Silesian) is considered a dialect/accent. They mostly used a word that historically comes from Silesian - 'gwara' (szl. 'speak, talk, language')- to describe our language as a sub-dialect. I don't know if it's on purpose or because of ignorance. Similar happened to other languages such as Masurian, Kashubian, Podlachian, etc. They're mostly discriminated against and ridiculed. According to polish law dialects (and one vernacular language - Kashubian) should be protected and cherished, however, polish society does exactly the opposite. I hope this will change.
And yeah, according to Vietnamese - I do like the most Southern Accent but I also learn how to pronounce all distinguished sounds - accent discrimination is really sad.
It's funny to me seeing people learn Vietnamese as a second language and when they get good they pick up a thick Ha Noi accent despite the fact that there's not many diasporas from Ha Noi compared to other regions in the US.
same goes with English learners, they don't teach in Southern accent either :/
Actually there are 2 sides of the coin here. On one hand, the northern accent is more accepted on national TV.
On the other hand, if you are Northern guy moving to the South and people can hear your accent, there are lot of discriminations going on like "Northern people are dishonest, evil, etc" which is in my opinion a big pity it has come to that phase.
The discrimination was even worse back in the days right after the reunion but even now in today's society, the stigma is still there.
A lot of hatred for nothing.
And I do agree with some other user who posted here before:
It is in fact easier to unite people if everyone has the same accent - doesn't matter which one of them, but just pick one.
People have tendency to split up in groups: We Vs. THEM.
To break up this attitude and human error, you will have to find similarties between them so they can connect with each other. Or else you are back to square one basically.
I actually wish Vietnam had only one accent.
You can also see in other countries that the accents are disappearing slowly and steady for example like in Sweden, people tend to use "Rikssvenska" instead which means: national accent.
It is not Stockholm accent btw but more like a uniform accent where everyone can speak. Makes it easier to unite people.
Less hatred because of a simple fact: humans have a hard time to respect each other and tend to dislike "special uniques".
I think your understanding of what Rikssvenska is it a bit flawed. First off though, Rikssvenska is a compound of "rike" meaning "kingdom" or "nation" (it does not map well to one single word in English), and "svenska" meaning "Swedish", so it means perhaps something like "National Swedish".
Rikssvenska isn't really an accent, nor a dialect, but a written standard, described by Svenska Akademien. You're right that it isn't the Stockholm accent, but it's no accent or dialect really. The idea that Rikssvenska would be something close to Stockholm (some people mention Uppsala, or Nyköping) or even Sveamål (the group of accents in "central" Sweden) is itself the same tendency that she speaks about in this video.
Svealand, and particularly the Stockholm region is the seat of power in Sweden, and therefore that's where the prestige language has located itself, but it's important to understand that that isn't Rikssvenska, and you still have to choose an accent after deciding to pronounce a word you find in the dictionary. There are a variety of ways that are all accepted as correct, but there is certainly the tendency you describe of more and more people choosing to do so in a style similar to the Stockholm regional accent. I understand your reasoning for thinking this is nice, it makes it much easier to just communicate, but I think it's sad to be honest.
Linguistic prejudice, accent discrimination = *glottophobia*
From "glottophobie", a *French neologism* from a Greek source, *coined and defined by Philippe Blanchet* in 2008. Blanchet himself is from Marseille in southern France and has himself been discriminated against by Parisians.
Northern accent in Vietnam is considered closer to the true accent of the language, the hue accent is influenced by the Cham language and people whos country was in central vietnam while the southern dialect in south vietnam is slightly influenced from the native cambodians(Khmer Krom) who were the natives of south vietnam before we conquered it 200 years ago.
South i will say are more influence by the Chinese migrant especially cantonese then the Khmer
@@jerryle379 The Vietnamese language it self is heavily influenced by chinese(over 60% of the vocabulary is imported from old chinese which is closer to modern cantonese then to modern mandarin) Accent wise most researchers agree the central dialect is influenced by the Cham(the whole of central vietnm was a completely different country(Champa Kingdom a Austronesian speaking people related to filipinos and malays) 400 years ago) and 250 years ago southern vietnam was a apart of the Cambodian kingdom til we annexed it from them in the mid 1700s early 1800s. We didnt deport the cambodians there we "assimilated" them hence the difference in accents between the Vietnamese dialects today.
random fun fact-
Vietnamese and Cambodian language is also from the same language family as well. "Austroasiatic language family"
All basic vocabulary like numbers,animals,plants,body parts,verbs,nouns etc is actually the same with some difference in pronunciation.
like numbers in Viet is Moc hai ba bon nam(spelled wrong sorry)
and cambodian Muay bi ba buon pram etc
or vietnamese cut hair is cắt tóc in cambodian its kat soc etc pretty cool
@@teovu5557 i won't say 60% most recent study suggest it around 30-40%
@@jerryle379 thats great, vietnamization is working then. Always hated the chinese infleunce. In turkey they use to speak with 80% persian and arabic then in 1920s they started reusing and making new words with old turkic roots.
Also I would love to see your link to your claim, seems like a good read!
@@teovu5557 nothing to do with vietnamesezation the 60%claim was too high from begin already plenty of study and people who research about vietnamese agree it around 30-40% ish also nothing to do with hate of Chinese , we don't hate Chinese if we hate Chinese why the hell we watch Chinese movie or accept Chinese culture influence ? We just don't like the current china govt and they retard 9 dash line claim
Where I am from we also have Ve Te Ve (VTV) haha but also similar sociolinguistic problem but in my country it’s West vs Central+East. Thank you for this very informative lesson! Actually makes me want to learn Vietnamese even more in depth.
Very interesting video.
I wouldn't say that the Hue accent has gone from the prestige accent to not being considered good enough for reading the news. The main issue is many people have much more difficult time understanding Hue accent compared to Northern or Southern accents.
*Vietnam in the Nguyen Dynasty came to the Republic of Vietnam, all from Hue to the central region communicated with the common accent, which is the Southern accent, still the same today*
Your english accent is so soothing!!!
Thank you for this video, interesting graphs too.
I’ve been travelling a lot lately, met many different people, and it seems like the whole accent discrimination fiasco is a lot more abundant than I thought. Like you’ve said, it tends to gravitate towards the Central region, where the people are the primary target of this.
Aside from the dialect/accent being “heavier” or “harder to understand”, I’ve also noticed how a lot of people often, consciously or not, associate accent with socioeconomic/educational levels. In other words, the Northen accent would sound “more inteligent” and “high class” , whereas Southern and Central sounds “inferior”, “working class” or even “distasteful”. I’ve been to Hue, Quang Binh, Quang Ngai, Vinh and many other Central region cities and I’ve noticed the fellow tourists’ condescending and disrespectful views towards the people just because of the accent. These are just some observations I’ve gathered throughout the years , and by also talking to people I’ve also learned their perspectives in regards of this topic.
I personally believe all accents and dialects in my country to be beautiful, unique and all bears significant cultural values. Here in Vietnam, accent discrimination eats into the people’s subconscious mindset, and it’s something that arises through generations.
Of course. The North won the war so they make the rules. I’m an American married to a woman from North Viet Nam. I have noticed that people from South Viet Nam say people from the North have a Northern accent. Whereas people from the North say that people from the South speak wrong. In the U.S. there is also a large difference between N and S accent. My wife learned English from TV and from me (I’m from Northeast) and is fairly advanced in English. But when we moved next door to an older gentleman from Georgia (“deep South”), she told me she could not understand anything he said. The North also won the U.S civil war 150 years ago. And I’d guess that is why, here also, the Northern accent is regarded as more standard and correct. The Sai Gon woman you spoke of who was the first non-Northern news person must have been far better than everyone around her. That is what it takes to break through a barrier. In the U.S., examples are Jackie Robinson in baseball and Barack Obama in politics. To overcome prejudice, being the best is not enough. You have to be the best by a large margin.
totally agree. man, some people just like to discriminate just to discriminate. We humans are so tribal....lol
saigon people are usually better at english
Awesome background info Annie! Thanks so much!
Lâu quá không gặp em, tôi rất thích lessons của em 🤗🤗
The difference in accents gets me every time d & z , at least it’s all written the same
My country is the United States, where there are a lot of regional accents. But I have noticed that most if not all national news programs use readers with "standard" American English accent. And the standard American accent, is of course, the California accent.
Southern, AAVE and Appalachian English dialects tend to be less prestigious than the Midwestern or Northeastern dialects of the USA mainly because the dialects are associated with the South (which tends to be more economically deprived), with Blacks (which tend to be more economically deprived) and Appalachians (which tend to be more economically deprived); Midwestern is promoted to be most neutral or standard of American English because so many news broadcasters are from there; and the New England states are also promoted because those states are rich.
Hà Nội is not the standard but it is closest to the standard
what is the standard of Vietnamese ?
It is the one without replacing or missing speech sounds
It is not accent discrimination. This is the act of enforced Cultural Assimilation. The history of segregation between North and South 'Nam existed long before the Proxy War. Officials know the segregation is deep and with the globalisation, it become further worse. Let it continue unchecked then the course of population would steer country to the fate of dissolution of enforced united entities like Czechoslovakia or even worse, Yugoslavia. With internal tension, crisis on the rise around the globe, esp in Russia and China, they must hasten their effort. Throughout history, enforced assimilation of culture did work. Vietnamese nearly decimated the Champa people and completely whitewashed their culture. The Khmer population did not fair much better. On television, ethnic minorities are represented by northern ethnics. Minorities in Western Plateau, Champa, Khmer are barely mentioned in local news. So, openly discrimination working with school indoctrination and mass propaganda will soon make Central, Southern culture vanish.
So.... Vietnamese has a lot of chinese words too. Nam, bec, trung, all sound like chinese nam, bei, zhong.
A few historical points for foreigners (Auslander in German). I was born in Hanoi. Mama carried me south in her arms in 53. I left for the US in 71, never been back. I harbor no ill will against the people of VN. After all we speak the same language, albeit with different accents and sometimes different vocabulary. That the North dominates is no rocket science. It won the war. The last ruling dynasty was rightly considered traitorous by the current government in my opinion. The Nguyen Gia Long dynasty asked for French help to defeat its arch enemy Nguyen Hue. Unfortunately for them, Nguyen Hue is a bona fide venerated Vietnamese hero. It was he who defeated the Qing in the 19th century otherwise China would claim Vietnam the same way it claimed Tibet. Once inside Vietnam, the French decided to make the country its colony for the next 100 years. We have a saying to that effect : "to invite the snake into the chicken coop so that it can eat all the chicken". The difference between Northern/Southern Vietnamese accent is also present in the Chinese language between Mandarin(Putonghua) vs Cantonese. I see the same difference here in the land of the free and home of the brave. Below the Maxon-Dixon line people tend to drawl, which is what i notice people in hot, southern climates tend to do. Some day I'll be back to visit, hopefully before i kick the can. What i don't quite get is why Auslander find the North more friendlier than the South. Although a Northerner myself I am wary in general of other Northerners, afraid of the Central folk, and am generally at ease with Southerners. But I am married to a Northerner myself lol.
Thanks for the video, I learned something from the lessons today
thank you for posting this 🙂 very fascinating to learn
Great video !!!
In my opinion southern accent in general is the coolest sounding accent in Vietnam🙂
Very interesting.
Got a dozen of vietnamese friends while studied tertiary in australia. Didnt know there are many accents for vietnamese language. Now i know.
I am chinese with sub dialect of teochew... pronounce in mandarin as chao chow... there are many dialects of chao chow too in mainland china, some of them i could not understand at all... some speaks with variation of a singing style fashion. By the way this dialect has 6-8 tonal differentiation....
there are 3 main accents in Vietnam and 54 different languages compared to China's 56 languages?
Dạ cảm ơn chị ạ. Theo anh tiếng quảng ngãi rất là khó . Chuyện này rất là thú vị chị ơi
Có một lần mình xem VTV, họ phỏng vấn một ngư dân người Quảng Ngãi. Họ có phụ đề tiếng Việt cho ảnh!
@@LearnVietnameseWithAnnie 😂 hài hước quá
@@elfinzilla theo mình tiếng Quảng Nam, Bình định, Phú yên, quảng trị, nghệ an... Khi họ nói nhanh thật sự không biết họ đang nói tiếng gì!
The changes are based on the inherent qualities of the accent, though. More people could understand the Saigon accent because it had more similarities with the Hà Nội accent. There were fewer complaints because overall, more people understood the Saigon newscaster better.
really great video! thanks for this
Xin chào!
Lâu rồi tôi không xem video của bạn.
Cảm ơn nhiều!
Just a question I had in mind after watching the video. Could the northern accent be the standard accent, because it's also viewed as the older one? I know that many British english speaker seeing themselves as the correct way to speak english towards others accents due that reasoning. I do not know how much truth there is about that though. Vietnamese history started in the north and then went south with conquest in the medieval to pre-modern times, no? Perhaps I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.
Gosh I feel so bad for Anh Thuong, the excitement and achievement to be the first, and then for the result to be so negative and to not have a chance to continue :(
So final "ng" is like [m] & "n" is like [ng] & "nh" is [n] in Southern accent? I'm so confused.
It's a bit more complicated than that.
I find the "Vietnamese Phonology" on Wikipedia explains this fairly well, maybe you'd want to take a look at that.
Viet Canadian here and southern accent all the way. Whenever I hear a northern accent (and sometimes even with central), it's like nails on a chalkboard.
I remember growing up, saying phat am is also a way to say dialect/accent. That correct too?
My Vietnamese wife and her family (devoted to Saigon accent, living in France) told me that in literature and especially songs, the "Northern" accent was and is used, hence (in addition to the North winning the war and dominating the whole country now) the domination of the Ha Noi accent as the official Vietnamese pronunciation.
I agree in all aspects, although I despise the so-called official 'Ha Loi' (pun intended) pronunciation. Instead of embracing Viet diversity they choose to push the northern accent as a 'standard', which is a trait deeply rooted in political viewpoint.
@@maxt4874 I personally have a problem with the Northern accent. I find, the 6 different accents do not appear as clearly as in thr Southern accent. The "dau nang" does not really go down etc. I find Southern accent easier to understand. And what's more, there are sounds which are very(!) close to the Bavarian accent (I am Bavarian). Already the very broad "a", and even whole words. I definitively prefer Saigon accent. 😊
@@peterwimmer1259 south only have 5 accent , north have 6 ( south mix ngã and hỏi ) I'm saigonese btw
@@maxt4874 the L and N are not really true Hanoi dialect issue , what you consider Hanoi and Hanoian now day are not the real Hanoi when the dialect consider standard ( record by the dutch vietnamese and dutch protuge )guy in 16th century ) like Saigon of the old is not the same of HCM city ( which include many new rural place into the city = include lot of none native saigonese ) same shit for Hanoi lot of current Hanoian are not really origin from Hanoi or from the old district of Hanoi ( as the city expand ) my suggestion are try to find some legit Hanoi ( from the old quarter ) you will find out they doesn't have the mispronounce / ngọng problem. I'm from Saigon but growth up with folk from many region of Vietnam ( i actually can understand all the region dialect in Vietnam 😂 ) some time girl from Thanh hoa or nghe an surprise that i can understand they chitchat cause most southerner can't ( btw i doesn't have family member from Thanh Hoa or Nghe An )
@@jerryle379 l know. That's why my first teacher happened to mix them up. My second teacher (Saigonese as well, 10 years of private class) put it straight again.
Love to hear your voice..
The standard accent and pronounciation of Vietnamese is the northern tone not because they're the capital city. Its because the origin of Vietnamese ancestry (Dai Viet) are from the north. If you look back at history thousands of years ago Vietnam territory was in north and part of southern China today. The central and southern part of Vietnam was annexed to country when it conquered the Champa empire and part of Cambodia empire 17th and 18th century. Hanoi is the capital but the real city that is the commercial economic backbone of Vietnam is Ho Chi Minh City in the south. This is the place where everyone come to do business. Only politicians stay in Hanoi. All of the famous tourist destination in Vietnam are in the central and the south.
Fact. Unless southern people declare independent from the north, like American did. Or else with whatever ethnic mixed there, they will always considered not pure vietnamese.
@@user-kc7yp5sw8t Actually Vietnam used to be seperated into two countries before 1975 similar to Korea today. I don't want to get into politics but since the North Vietnamese won the war they make the rule to considered what is considered to be the right standard. But if you actually live in Vietnam for a long period of time you will notice there's huge difference between the north and south.
It's so pretty sad, I have the same problem with her: Binh-Tri-Thien (Hue) accent. They said my voice so thick, so strong that make them uncomfortable and cannot understand at all. Almost people feel that are Northern people. It's looke like yoy get racist with someone with the same skin, same language. If you are English speakers, it would be like this: You speak Irish-accent to England people or you speak Scottish-accent to American peole. However, I don't think all of you (except Vietnam) racist each others by dialects.
Does the last sentence mean that you think all Vietnamese discriminates one another base on accent and dialects?
@@jenpotatz6194 Yes, absolutely
@@jenpotatz6194 Yes, absolutely
It's not Hanoi accent is considered to be standard but Nghe An accent is. The thing is the Hanoian always makes the sound lighter and easier to listen to, especially s and x, r, gi and d (they all sound the same sometimes). Also, the southern accent cannot be considered to be standard because the pronunciation and the writing are not compatible, not because POWER. Also, the southern vocab aren't fully developed.
rất tú vị. Cảm ơn annie
It’s alway a surprise to hear a foreigner speaking an accent other than Saigon accent.
As a Vietnamese, i do love every accent and the diversity we have within the Vietnamese language. But i do have to note that you completely brushed over the fact that the Vietnamese civilization and language are originated in the north. Because of the fact that 90% of the history of Vienamese are based in the north, it is absolutely undisputable that the north should be granted as the official dialect of the language. And in the case of the National television, i think it should be able to reach as many people as possible. Would you want some one from Guangdong speak a completely unintelligable dialect on a News channel on Chinese national TV? (Again, i wholeheartedly agree that you should never, NEVER judge someone with any accent)
When the Northerners keep saying their dialect is standard but they say the southerners discriminate them! It’s them who discriminate the Mid and southerners that They always say the southerners don’t pronounce words correctly!
Rất hay. Cảm ơn chị
Here in China nobody would even try doing this, I mean, when it comes to southern dialects the majority of whole China wouldn't understand ONE WORD because the difference between standard Mandarin and southern dialects is as big as English is to French or even German.😂
If Southern dialects as you said above is Cantonese, so i think it can be called a language instead of a dialect.
@@fnrjekkdbrnrj9972 i agree , cantonese is a language on its own but actually , there are also dialects of mandarin spoken in southern regions which are the southwestern and jianghuai mandarin which are also unintelligible to other mandarin speakers w/o prior exposure
So when Anh Phuong (sorry no VN keyboard) read the news, was all of her vocabulary standard/Northern, with only her pronunciation differing, or did she also use regional words and expressions?
The script was all standard. It was just her accent, from what I heard in the video.
Sociolinguistics in action! Fellow linguist here :)
If I'm honest...I do agree with their decision. If the majority of the population finds it difficult to understand this accent, it shouldn't be on national TV. That's why I think standardization is important. It doesn't necessarily mean it's worse, but ultimately we use languages to communicate. If you can't understand it, then what's the point?
Linguisticism really is sadly prevalent today
If is not good enough because you pronounce -nh as -n, which is historically wrong. 青 was always a -ng word (-nh is -ing).
Germany has many dialects. My own dialect (Swabian) seems inferior, because we lack ö and ü. Hm. However, we use eh and ieh instead. Ok, so maybe not inferior. But then we merge most Ps and Ks and Ts with B, G and D. So it is inferior in terms of word distinctions.
My dialect is also inferior in prestige. The Bavarian accent has many serieses on TV. Mine has only one series, I think.
Annie, what accent do you speak with?
A little bit is not really right here, southerners don’t discriminate the other two regional groups of people. The southerners usually say straight what they think about things, while the other two regions use their arts of language or don’t like to say things straight out! But not so worried because Nations of the World are like that!
Power: Đúng rồi
I'm Vietnamese American male. I recommend you non Vietnamese to learn the southern accent. It sounds better and way more attractive on all levels.
My grandparents are originally from the North. They ran/escaped to the south decades ago when the communist took over the North.
We hate communism in Vietnam, and we see how they have progressively pushed the accent and agendas last few decades. They even changed the name Sai Gon city to Ho Chi Minh city!
The Northern accent on government controlled social media in VN, and some new spelling/wording...etc. have been pushed everywhere politically last few decades by the communist party which originated from the North. This is how communism brainwash and control everybody. There're no human rights, and their fake "jungle" laws only apply to common people.
I was born in the south of VN and speaks with the northern accent mixed with southern. My family for most part speak with southern accent, especially our kids.
Some people with good gentle vocals speak northern, mid, southern accents with very attractive tone though, so the Northern/mid accents are extremely nice to hear...especially from a romantic love one!
*Just my 2cents, no editing.
Delusional Cambodian
Im northern Vietnamese born and raised in Saigon my entire life, yes I call it Saigon, not Ho Chi Minh city and I hate communism but I speak Vietnamese with a northern accent because thats how the Vietnamese is supposed to sound like. Only you jungle monkeys speak Vietnamese with a Cambodian accent and call it the “southern accent”
@@CenturionSS Calling people from the south "jungle monkeys" is you contributing to the problem, when you claim you are born and raised in the south. Trying to fight discrimination with more discrimination isn't going to help the issue. There is nothing wrong with speaking with a dialect. By you choosing not to use Southern Vietnamese, you are contributing to its erasure because you think it's inferior.
@@aznmochibunny Blah blah nothing wrong. It's everything wrong. South vietnamese is an inferior subhuman accent. Your accent is the reason why non-Vietnamese speakers think Vietnamese is an ugly language. 99% Vpop songs are sung in northern accent. All Vietnamese should learn the northern accent and call it the national accent. Northern central southern accents should not exist
XIn chau!, cam on
I thought that was Kelly Stamps in the thumbnail.