I'd like to start learning Vietnamese (and if possible laddering on Japanese. I passed N1 in December, so I think my Japanese is at a level where I can start learning another language in it--my Japanese still sucks though). The problem that I've run into is that I haven't been able to find any good online resources for Vietnamese in Japanese or English.

Here are the things on my wish list:

- A good E-V/V-E or J-V/V-J dictionary. Ideally this would be like the 研究社 新和英大辞典 第５版, in that it has a lot of example sentences. I love example sentences.
- A good V-V dictionary. Ideally this would be like スーパー大辞林 or 広辞苑 or any of the other good 国語 dictionaries.
- A learners V-V dictionary. Ideally this would be like 学研 パーソナル現代国語辞典, where the definitions are really easy to understand.
- A textbook/grammar guide. Something like Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar. I basically plan on mining this for sentences. So far I've bought one text book that has a bunch of example sentences. It's called バッチリ話せるベトナム語. It's definitely a beginner's text book. There is audio for every example sentence. I'm definitely planning on putting everything in Anki. Let me know if you have any other recommendations.
- A Core 6000 for Vietnamese. This probably doesn't exist :-(

I'm really interested in the dictionaries, so let me know if you know of any. I'd prefer electronic (if possible, EPWING) dictionaries to paper dictionaries. I'd even be willing to pay a lot of money for a good EPWING dictionary because it's just so useful.

- The best E-V/V-E Dictionaries:
Langenscheidt is the best one I've used and it took me through the beginner stages. Last year I bought a more concise dictionary by Le Kha Ke; "Từ Diển Việt-Anh Hiện Đại," which I picked up in a Vietnamese book store.

-V-V Dictionaries:
I have a very good one called: (Viện Ngôn Ngữ Học) Từ Điển Tiếng Việt (nhà xuất bản Đà Nẵng). This dictionary is frequently referenced (ripped off) by the online "dictionary project" and even Le Kha Ke's dictionary. (Tons of example sentences)

-Textbook: The best textbook is the one by Binh Nhu Ngo (Harvard U). You may be able to find a grammar guide in Vietnam or online somewhere.

There are dictionaries available, go to this site and click download: http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~duc/Dict/ *this dictionary occasionally has wrong tones, missing words, poor definitions, erratic formatting, and the example sentences are usually embellished versions of the V-V TDTV mentioned earlier. I use "Opendict" to run the dictionaries.

As a beginner, I'd suggest focusing 100% on learning to read and pronounce properly before cramming vocabulary. If you're in CA (ideally San Jose or LA) I can recommend places to go to get supplies or take classes.

*Edit: coming from Japanese, you're going to want a character dictionary to cross-reference. The best one I've come across is "Tự Điển Hán Việt/Hán Việt Tự Điển" (典字越漢) by Thiều Chửu. You'll need to visit a Vietnamese book store in person or find a reliable one online to buy it.

Here's the Vietnamese section of a great Japanese site for learning languages. I found the dialogues in 会話モジュール > 教室用 good for beginners because you can turn subs (and Japanese translation subs) on & off, granted, I'm using their learning Portuguese site, but I think they're all pretty similar in content.

Thanks for your help. I've done some more research on Vietnamese learning resources and I want to share what I've found.

There seem to be two electronic 日越・越日 (J-V/V-J) dictionaries floating around the net. One is the PDIC dictionary from this site: http://www.vietden.net/Product/vdOther/Default.aspx. I was able to convert this PDIC dictionary to a CSV file if anyone is interested.

The other is a dictionary used on this site (http://satoh-lab.ex.nii.ac.jp/users/ledd...=%E5%84%84), and in the Android application JDict (http://www.hoang8f.info/2011/06/jdict.html). The JDict application packs the dictionary in a sqlite db, and I was able to rip it out so I could query it from my computer.

I was able to find one other site using what appears to be a dictionary different from the above two (http://www.sketch-travel.com/vietnam/dic...search.php).

If anyone has any idea on where these dictionaries came from (or who created them), please let me know. I wonder if it's something like EDict...?

As far as English-Vietnamese dictionaries, there is a stardict-format dictionary available within this zip file: http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~du...ietAnh.zip. This is from the site mentioned by stehr.

There is also a torrent on Pirate bay with a bunch of beginner Vietnamese textbooks + audio, including the book mentioned by stehr. These all appear to be in English. So far the only digital textbook-type information in Japanese for Vietnamese is the site mentioned by Bokusenou.

stehr Wrote:...

Thanks for your dictionary recommendations. I'm currently living in Tokyo, so I don't know how easy it will be for me to get my hands on the E-V dictionaries you mentioned, but I will be on the lookout for J-V dictionaries, especially the 典字越漢. I wonder if there are any Vietnamese bookstores in Tokyo...?

Bokusenou Wrote:...

Thanks for the site. I will definitely check it out.

The 漢越字典 (sorry, typo, it's printed backwards on the front cover) is not really J-V. It's a character dictionary for the Sino-Chinese loan words in Vietnamese, with which you can look up a Chinese character and find the Vietnamese root-word, or a root-word and find the character. There were a few of these floating around online for awhile, but I always found the book more useful, so I lost track of the sites.

Here's two more things I've found.

1) http://www.hanviet.org/
This appears to be a character dictionary for the Sino-Chinese loan words in Vietnamese, like what stehr was talking about. I don't know Chinese or Vietnamese, so I don't really understand how to use the site, but it seems that if you put in a Chinese character (like "頭"), it will give the Vietnamese word ("đầu"?). I imagine there are a lot of times when this doesn't work out (like the difference between 玉子, 卵, and 蛋: http://suzuki-egg.jugem.jp/?eid=55).

There are also sometimes when it doesn't have a word I'm looking for. For instance, the beginner's textbook I have says that "髪" is "tóc", but when I search for either "髪" or "tóc", I get no results. I'm not sure if the dictionary they are using is just too small, or I'm doing something wrong. Maybe the Japanese character "髪" doesn't exist in Chinese? Maybe the word "tóc" doesn't have a Kanji associated with it?


2) http://tudientiengviet.net/index.php?lp=jp
This is a J-V/V-J dictionary. It is the same data that the JDict application uses. It is download-able in Stardict format.

Here is another Kanji-Vietnamese dictionary:

http://kanji.tudiennhatviet.com/

It seems to be better than the previous site I posted, but it's just so slow. I'm thinking of screen scraping all of the information and throwing it into a csv file or something. Basically anything would be better than having to use the website.

I found a very detailed grammar guide written by the author of Vietnamese for Busy People at http://tinhhoavietnam.net/special/camnang.html

... regarding your search, "tóc" is a Vietnamese word not originating from Chinese, so it does not have a Hanzi equivalent, but it should have a Nôm equivalent (Vietnamese antiquated characters).

The character you wrote 髪 is missing a stroke → 髮 and is pronounced "phát." I don't think it is a common particle.

Vietnamese words which can be easily translated to Hanzi or Kanji are generally compound words that are nouns, like the 音読 compound words in Japanese. For example: 複雑 - phức tạp, 越南 - Việt Nam, 不便 - bất tiện, 云云 - vân vân... I usually search for Hanzi from Vietnamese words to eliminate the risk of encountering uncommon vocabulary.

Does anyone know if One Piece or any other anime is dubbed into Vietnamese? Thanks.