I am a relatively new user, and as my first post, I just wanted to wish everyone a very happy new year. I hope the "year of the snake" brings you much happiness, success, good health, and fortune.
I figured I would share a few of the resources I have been using to help learn Tiếng Việt. I am not of Vietnamese descent, but I volunteer in Hà Nội each summer and hope to improve my speaking and understand a little more each year, as everyone there seems to sincerely appreciate my effort even if I'm not very good.
So my general strategy thus far has been tackling Rosetta Stone along with video lessons that I've found online. I spend the majority of my time using an older version of Rosetta Stone, which is perfect for me as I am studying the northern dialect. I also bought a newer version which seems to use a slightly different dialect which is confusing me a little.
Other than that, I have been scouring youtube and elsewhere for videos and such to help with some of the basics that Rosetta Stone does not teach. Here are some pretty good resources that I've found. They mostly use the southern dialect, but they are still very useful for me in learning the actual rules behind pronunciation, spelling, and grammar.
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http://www.everydayviet.com/ - This is a helpful resource for learning basic greetings and survival phrases. The videos are short which is good but also means it doesn't go into great depth.
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http://www.youtube.com/user/EKProductions1991?v=6Xhg-9Vhzng&lr=1 - This channel is probably my favorite as she speaks very clearly, goes into a good level of detail, and uses humorous examples.
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http://www.youtube.com/user/o0oNyto0o - This channel has a lot of longer videos with lots of great detail. She is a little difficult to understand at times for a native English speaker, but the information she provides is just excellent.
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https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/vietnamese-survivalphrases/id257186042 - This has some free podcasts which were really only helpful to me as far as hearing things pronounced by yet another speaker. There is really no new information on these podcasts that are not in the above videos.
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http://mylanguages.org/learn_vietnamese.php - No videos on this site, but I use it as a quick reference when I forget how to say certain phrases. I really like how the information is laid out and everything seems to be very accurate to me.
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http://unikey.org/ - This is a tool hopefully you all know about already. It makes typing in Vietnamese a total breeze.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyubhBnVNTY - This guy only has one video but it's one of the best introductory lessons I've seen. He promises to make more, so stay tuned. He even uses the northern accent!
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As far as dictionaries, I am currently using google translate along with http://vdict.com/. I like to compare them as some words just don't seem to be quite right either in one or the other. I would love suggestions for other good English-Vietnamese dictionaries, even if a hard copy.
I've pretty much exhausted Rosetta Stone at this point, and I'm nowhere close to where I want to be. Not having anyone to help teach me, I'm starting to watch actual Vietnamese videos with English subtitles or even the other way around. A lot of TED talks have Vietnamese subtitles available, which is awesome because I love those videos anyway.
A bit long winded, but hopefully there is some helpful information here for someone.
An khang thịnh vượng :)
