Good for beginners, though with quite a few careless mistakes. Cassette tapes use the Northern Accents and not clearly recorded so they are pretty useless. The pronunciation section at the beginning (with some mistakes again) is not clearly written so you have to find a Vietnamese firend to help you on this. The context is written in Northern Vietnamese (with almost no reference or hints of Southern Vietnamese), this can be frustrating if you're in the South. Lessons (18 in total) are quite well designed, with some cultural notes. This book is so far the most popular learning material for foreigners, and even the HCMC Publishing House (Nh?xuất bản TPHCM) got a license to produce this book (blue cover with a big Tiếng Việt, costs 28000 ?#7891;ng). You may also consider the Colloquial Vietnamese (published by Routiledge) and it seems to be better than than the TY one.

I have learnt Tibetan for about two months in India, I found this book extremely helpful for Tibetan students too. The text, though simple, are written with Tibetan script, transiliteration and English translation, the story is good too. I found it quite touching that finally His Holiness (in the comics) said, "Tibet is in your heart".

Yes, Tibet is in my heart, I'm going back there one day.

This is a simple audio course offered by Pimsleur, a reputable way to teach foreign languages. This set consists of 10 lessons, each of about 30 minute, every lesson contains a simple conversation at the beginning, step by step the instructor will help you to decode the message. The publisher claimed that after 10 lessons you will be able to understand about 120 Vietnamese words and their usages. The so-called Pimsleur approach was actually quite repetitive, but they said this repetitiness is dfferent and innovative because every time when you are asked to repeat, the audio course gives you about 2 seconds to think, so it enhances your memory. I had finished this simple course before I came to Vietnam, I found it easy and quite enjoyed using it, it gave me some very brief concept of the sounds and structures of Vietnamese in a lazy-to-learn way, but there're some tricky and important sounds in Vietnamese (e.g. ? that you probably can't hear the differences in the audio. There's no written copy of the dialogues in this package which could be quite annoying if you wanted to see how they were written, though this may also be a part of the Pimsleur approach, which forces you to learn a language by your ears like what you did when you were young. The only drawback of this course is its price, US$60 for 300 minutes of repetitive instructions, just too expensive per minute but you can probably find this at your local library. Note that the audio instructions are all in Northern Vietnamese.

I've been studying Vietnamese for 4 months and can speak it quite fluently now, I bought this book before I started learning anything, it was just too difficult to use for those who don't know Vietnamese at all (most travellers). Now because I know more Vietnamese, I tried to re-read this book and I still find this quite useless. The conversation are organized by topics rather than by alphabetical order so it limits yourself from point and choose and talk with Vietnamese with the same kinds of topics again and again. Very poorly designed, almost useless and very disappointing, probably one of the worst LP phrasebooks on the market (I have used the Hindi/Urdu, Persian, French and German before). Vocabulary list is not as comprehensive as the Rough Guide, the tiny (*tiny!) dictionary at the back doesn't even have the word "spoon"! This phrasebook is, however, much more popular than the Rough Guide because of the "reputation" and popularity of the Lonely Planet.

Extremely useful and probably the first dictionary-cum-phrasebook for all Vietnamese learners (or just travellers in Vietnam) who can read English. A comprehensive English-Vietnamese word list covers all common words used in daily conversation, in some words simple dialogues are provided. The Vietnamese-English section is rather weak.

This book is not as popular as the Lonely Planet phrasebook which is really a ptiy because it's much better. Whenever I met some other travellers using the LP phrasebook (Vietnamese) I showed them this one of mine, all of them were impressed and hoped to buy this instead!

As I'm now travelling in the Southeast Asia I would want to read some books about this area. I found Ms Luong Ung's book in a bookstore in Nha Trang of Vietnam (original copy!). Once I started to read it I had to stop for some time to get some fresh air before I could finish it. The book was so greatly written but the story was so horrible, it's impossible to be unmoved by the knowledge that this is not a fiction but a real life story that happened at the time of my generation. I felt the sorrow when Ms Luong's father, and later her mother, were taken away by the Khmer Rough, I felt the happiness when she finally started a new life in America. I was born in Aug 1977 and it's somehow quite difficult to imagine that when I was well brought up in a peaceful place (in Hong Kong), then a girl and other children of my generation living very near to me would force to serve for the children army and suffer from great miseries and unspeakable carnage. This book definitely tells us how lucky we are, how precious a life can be, and how one politician's stupid idea would ruin so many lives and families. Thanks Ms Loung for writing such a great book to share her experience with all of us, it must have taken you great courage to tell us your story, which moved me so much on the human spirit.

I hope they can have 90 lessons (just like the Chinese, Japanese, French programme) for Thai, I like this learning method very well. Learning a tonal language can never be easier! You really have to listen and listen until you get used to the tones, so here's the way.