Vietnamese and Mandarin Chinese look like natural rivals for a learner: both tonal, both free of verb conjugation, both spoken in fast-moving parts of Asia. They are not related, though. Vietnamese is an Austroasiatic language and Chinese is Sino-Tibetan. What they share comes from roughly a thousand years of Chinese rule and many more centuries of cultural contact, which left Vietnamese with a deep layer of borrowed vocabulary.
For most English speakers Vietnamese is the quicker language to get working, and Mandarin the one with more reach. The details below are there to help you decide which of those matters more in your case.
Is Vietnamese easier to learn than Chinese?
Overall, yes, and the reason is almost entirely the writing system. Vietnamese is written in a Latin alphabet you can learn to read aloud in a few weeks. Chinese asks you to memorise several thousand characters before a newspaper stops being a wall.
Take the script away and the picture changes. In speaking and listening, Vietnamese is at least as demanding as Mandarin, and many learners find it harder: more tones, more vowel sounds, and final consonants that are barely released. The honest summary is that Vietnamese is easier to read and harder to pronounce.
Tones: six in Vietnamese, four in Mandarin
Standard Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone. Northern Vietnamese, the Hanoi-based standard, has six. Southern Vietnamese, as spoken in Ho Chi Minh City, merges the hỏi and ngã tones in speech, which leaves five, although all six are still written.
| Vietnamese tone |
Mark |
Example |
Meaning |
| ngang (level) |
none |
ma |
ghost |
| huyền (low falling) |
grave |
mà |
but, that |
| sắc (rising) |
acute |
má |
cheek; mother (southern) |
| hỏi (dipping) |
hook |
mả |
grave, tomb |
| ngã (broken, creaky rising) |
tilde |
mã |
horse (in Sino-Vietnamese words); code |
| nặng (heavy, low and cut short) |
dot below |
mạ |
rice seedling |
| Mandarin tone |
Example |
Meaning |
| First (high level) |
媽 (妈) mā |
mother |
| Second (rising) |
麻 má |
hemp |
| Third (low, dipping) |
馬 (马) mǎ |
horse |
| Fourth (falling) |
罵 (骂) mà |
to scold |
| Neutral |
嗎 (吗) ma |
question particle |
The number is not the whole story. Two Vietnamese tones involve a change of voice quality, a creak or a glottal catch, in addition to pitch, which English speakers have no habit of hearing. Vietnamese also has a larger vowel inventory, with pairs like ư and u or ơ and o that must be kept apart. Mandarin has fewer distinctions to master, and the four tones are tidy by comparison.
One mercy on the Vietnamese side: the tone is printed on every syllable. In Chinese text it is not shown at all, and you have to remember it.
Script: alphabet against characters
Modern Vietnamese uses chữ Quốc ngữ, a Latin-based alphabet of 29 letters with diacritics for vowel quality and tone. Spelling is consistent, so once you know the rules you can pronounce any word you see and look up any word you hear. Until the early twentieth century Vietnamese was written with Chinese characters (chữ Hán) and a home-grown character script (chữ Nôm), which you will still see on temples and nowhere on a menu.
Chinese is written in characters, each a syllable with a meaning. Functional reading takes a few thousand of them, and Pinyin romanisation is a learning aid, not a script anyone reads novels in. You also have to choose between Simplified characters (mainland China, Singapore) and Traditional (Taiwan, Hong Kong).
The character investment does buy something. It carries over to Japanese kanji and makes Chinese-derived vocabulary across East Asia transparent. Vietnamese spelling teaches you Vietnamese.
Grammar: two analytic languages with opposite noun phrases
Neither language conjugates verbs, marks plurals on nouns or bothers with grammatical gender. Tense and aspect are handled by small separate words: Vietnamese đã, đang, sẽ, Mandarin 了 le, 在 zài, 會 (会) huì. Both use classifiers when counting. If you have learned one, the logic of the other will feel familiar.
The main structural difference is inside the noun phrase. Vietnamese puts modifiers after the noun, Chinese puts them before it.
|
Phrase |
Word by word |
| Vietnamese |
một con mèo đen |
one [classifier] cat black |
| Mandarin |
一隻黑貓 (一只黑猫) yì zhī hēi māo |
one [classifier] black cat |
Each language then has its own difficult corner. In Vietnamese it is the pronoun system: you address people with kinship terms such as anh (older brother), chị (older sister) or em (younger sibling), chosen by relative age and relationship, and "I" changes to match. In Mandarin it is the fine print of word order and aspect: when 了 is required, how the 把 bǎ construction works, where complements go.
Vocabulary: how much of Vietnamese comes from Chinese
A lot, but be careful with the figure. Estimates of the Sino-Vietnamese share run from about a third of the lexicon to well over half, depending on whether you count dictionary entries or actual usage. The share is lowest in everyday speech and highest in formal, academic and technical writing. Core words such as numbers, body parts and basic verbs are mostly native.
| Vietnamese |
Chinese |
Pinyin |
Meaning |
| điện thoại |
電話 (电话) |
diànhuà |
telephone |
| đại học |
大學 (大学) |
dàxué |
university |
| quốc gia |
國家 (国家) |
guójiā |
country, nation |
| lịch sử |
歷史 (历史) |
lìshǐ |
history |
| chú ý |
注意 |
zhùyì |
to pay attention |
| kết hôn |
結婚 (结婚) |
jiéhūn |
to marry |
Two cautions. The connection is invisible on the page, since Vietnamese no longer shows the characters, so you only benefit if you already know the Chinese word. And Sino-Vietnamese readings were borrowed long ago, so they often sound closer to Cantonese than to modern Mandarin: they keep final -p, -t and -c sounds that Mandarin has lost, as in quốc and học. Knowing Mandarin does not let you understand Vietnamese. It lets you learn advanced Vietnamese vocabulary much faster.
Which is more useful, Vietnamese or Chinese?
Mandarin wins on scale: it has over a billion speakers and is the main language of mainland China and Taiwan and one of Singapore's official languages. It also has far more learning material at every level, from graded readers to exams such as HSK and TOCFL.
Vietnamese is concentrated in one country of about 100 million people, plus sizeable communities abroad. Inside Vietnam it is not optional in the way people sometimes hope: daily life outside tourist districts runs in Vietnamese. If your work, family or next five years are in Hanoi, Da Nang or Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnamese is the more useful language by a wide margin, whatever the global numbers say.
You will also need to pick an accent. Northern and southern Vietnamese differ in tones, several consonants and some everyday words, so choose teachers and audio that match where you will be. Mandarin has regional accents too, but learners everywhere study one standard.
Usefulness, in short, is about your own map. A language with a billion speakers is of little use if none of them are where you live.
Which should you learn first, Vietnamese or Chinese?
If you want only one, learn that one. Do not take a detour through Mandarin to get a discount on Vietnamese vocabulary. The discount is real and the detour costs years.
If you want both eventually, the order depends on what you value. Chinese first makes the Sino-Vietnamese layer click, because you will recognise the roots inside Vietnamese compounds. Vietnamese first gets you conversational sooner and trains your ear for tones before you face characters. Kungfucius has a slight preference for Chinese first when both are firm goals, and a strong preference for whichever one you will use this year. There is a separate page on learning Vietnamese and Chinese at the same time.
What to do next
Give each language one honest week before committing. For Vietnamese, learn the alphabet and the six tones with audio from the region you care about, and see how your mouth copes. For Mandarin, learn the four tones and your first fifty characters, and see whether characters intrigue or exhaust you.
Then choose and stay with it for at least six months. If an exam helps you keep going, look at the Vietnamese proficiency test or the HSK. Kungfucius notes that both languages reward stubbornness more than aptitude, which is good news for the stubborn.
