Vietnamese · Tiếng Việt
Directory 10 resource listings . A short orientation and a solid starting list.
Honest start for Vietnamese: pick one beginner course or community program from the list, add 10–15 minutes of listening most days, and bookmark one reference. Ignore the rest of the directory until those three habits are alive. Use the First 500 trainer for high-frequency words. Last reviewed 2026-08-01
About Vietnamese
- Language family
-
Austroasiatic, Vietic branch Source: Glottolog viet1252
- Where it's spoken
- Vietnam
- Speakers
-
roughly 85–95 million speakers Estimate source: Ethnologue language page (vie)
- Writing
- Latin
Vietnamese's closest relative is Muong, spoken by a smaller ethnic minority in northern Vietnam; more distantly it belongs to the same Austroasiatic family as Khmer. Centuries of Chinese rule left a heavy layer of borrowed vocabulary, once written with Chinese-derived Chữ Nôm characters. French colonial administrators later promoted the Latin-based Chữ Quốc Ngữ alphabet with its distinctive tone-marking diacritics, which is now the sole standard writing system.
Speaker counts are approximate orders of magnitude for learners, not census figures. Family labels follow Glottolog-style classification; vitality notes (when shown) follow UNESCO WAL / Ethnologue-style framing and should be re-checked for program planning.
Sources
- ISO 639-3:
vie - Glottocode:
viet1252 - Ethnologue — Vietnamese (vie)
- Glottolog — Vietnamese (viet1252)
How to start
- Pick one free course (or free-with-upgrades) below and finish a short beginner unit before hopping apps.
- Bookmark one dictionary or grammar reference and look up every unknown word for a week.
- Add 10–15 minutes of listening most days — news, radio, or a teaching channel.
- Drill vocabulary with First 500 words.
- When ready, use a tutor marketplace listing below for short speaking sessions.
Practice on this site
Deep links into trainers and drills that already cover Vietnamese.
About the word-roots method here
Cognate bridges from English are thinner here than for Romance or Germanic languages. Use the resource list and on-site tools that match this language’s writing system and morphology.
Some outbound links may earn us a commission. Commission never affects inclusion or ranking. Full disclosure.
| Resource | Type | Levels | Cost | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
BBC Vietnamese
Vietnamese BBC news.
|
listening | B1-C2 | free | — |
|
Duolingo Vietnamese
Beginner Vietnamese course with tone practice.
|
course paid | A1-A2 | freemium | — |
|
Easy Vietnamese (Easy Languages)
Dual-subtitled Vietnamese street interviews.
|
youtube channel | A2-B2 | free | — |
| Glosbe Vietnamese | reference | A1-C2 | free | — |
|
Tieng Viet Oi YouTube
Popular educational Vietnamese teaching channel.
|
youtube channel | A1-B1 | free | — |
|
Tuoi Tre
Major Vietnamese newspaper.
|
reading | B1-C2 | free | — |
|
vdict Vietnamese dictionary
Vietnamese–English dictionary useful for learners.
|
reference | A1-C1 | free | — |
|
VietnamesePod101
Audio lesson library.
|
course paid | A1-C1 | freemium | — |
|
VOA Vietnamese
News immersion.
|
listening | B1-C2 | free | — |
|
Wikipedia Vietnamese
Open reading practice by topic.
|
reading | A2-C2 | free | — |
Know a better classroom-friendly resource for Vietnamese? Suggest it with attribution.