Basic Viet for GI Joes

Overview

Getting fed up with not understanding those dirty, communist Viet Cong dogs? Want to insult a fascist American pig in Vietnamese? Then this guide’s for you!

Introduction

Want to learn how to speak Vietnamese and understand what the bad guys are saying? Want to roleplay or scream random things to expendable American GI? They will give you a medal GI, but only after you are dead! You’re in luck, since I’m gonna teach you basic Viet!

To be honest, I don’t know any Vietnamese but I asked my friend to help me… So bring your bánh mì, your phở, and your Sriracha, Mr. Americano and Ms. Americana, because we’re about to learn a new language!

Vietnamese Phonetics

Bro, bro, bro! These dirty communist rats speak real weird, so don’t read this section!

Oh, you didn’t skip? High five! Wait…
Anyways, time to get serious, since this part is the heart of all languages in the world, including yours, Amerikkkans. Vietnamese is naturally nasally, so the accent should be relatively “easy” for most of you basement dwellers.

Hard consonants are omitted at the end of any word that doesn’t contain a vowel at the end. The end of the word is replaced with a hard stop for whatever sound you are doing. For example, with “truck” only the “ck” part of the word is omitted. Also, if there is more than one consonant in a row, such as in “ask” or “promise” only the first consonant is pronounced.

Any “th” sound, such as in throw or that, is replaced with either a “d,” as in dog, or a “z,” as in zombie, sound, depending on the word. I recommend using “d” since it’s more universal for Asian languages such as Cantonese Chinese and Korean. For words that end in “th,” the sound is replaced with a “t” sound, such as boat, or a “s” sound, such as in pass.

“Sh” sounds, as in “she” and at the beginning and end of words are replaced with a simple “s” sound. “S” sounds in the middle of words are replaced with a “sh” sound. So to butcher the classic English language tounge twister, it sounds like “see sells sea sells by the sea sore” instead of the proper “She sells sea shells by the sea shore.”

The Vietnamese language takes an L for this one. Oh wait, it can’t since the language doesn’t have any form of “L.” It’s usually replaced with an “n” as in night. Why is it like that? Don’t ask me. Ask the dead people who made the language. Actually, it does have an “L” sound, but a vowel just has to come after it.

For words that end in a “ng” sound, such as running and gunning, it is replaced with a “nk” sound in words such as drink and blink. And for words that have an “u” sound such as put and foot, it’s replaced with a “oo” sound in words like rude and tooth.

I’m not even done with this section, but these are the most common things you should know or else we’d be here until we’re both seventy with grey, thinning hair and raisin-textured gentials.

Vietnamese Grammar

Basically, the sentence structure goes like this: Subject > Verb > Object. Does it look familiar? It’s basically English’s sentence structure, so lesson over. Remember, we’re Americanized Vietnamese, not legit Viets, so we’re gonna speak some broken Viet. Damn dinks stealing American things…

Alright, so if you didn’t skip this part, good job! The last thing you need to know about grammar is that adjectives go right after the nouns they modify no matter where in the sentence it is.

Pronunciation of Vietnamese Text

This stuff gets hella confusing since there are around 10 tones in the proper language, so Imma try to make it easy for you by saying, “Screw that.” The only things you need to know are how to say Viet words like a Vietnamese refugee’s Americanized, good-for-nothing hoodrat child.

You see that? That’s a big no no for us, since we’re not from Vietnam. The only tones you need to know for now are rising tones and falling tones, since most Vietnamese will understand what you’re trying to say. If you can smoothly sing higher or lower in pitch from your middle note, like middle C to C# or middle C to B, then you can speak very basic Vietnamese.

Basic Vietnamese Words and Phrases

To be honest, you only need to know one phrase to be an effective Viet Cong soldier/translator, and that’s “đụ má,” but here you go.

You know what… just Google the words because I hate myself :^(

Example phrase: đụ má. hút con cặc của em

Examples of Vietnamese (and Accent)

Guide Feedback

If you know some essential military phrases in Vietnamese and can type it out with the phonetic unicode alphabet, or want more words, send them in the comments. If you want to help improve my guide by saying “Make it shorter,” “Separate the list,” or “Make it more offensive,” put down a comment! If you want to learn more about North or South Vietnamese culture, don’t ask me.

insert some rant about offensive jokes and being tasteful here