Vietnamese Language Books, Audio CDs for Self Study, Textbooks
1. Teach Yourself Vietnamese, Complete Course by Dana Healy, Book + Audio CD, McGraw-Hill
Begins with the basics and gradually promotes the student to a level of smooth and confident communication, including: Up-to-date, graded interactive dialogues; Graded units of culture notes, grammar, and exercises; Step-by-step guide to pronunciation; Practical vocabulary; Regular and irregular verb tables; Plenty of practice exercises and answers; Self-assessment quizzes to test progress; Bilingual glossary.
2. Spoken Vietnamese for Beginners (3 Cassettes + Book, Paperback: 401 pages) by Nguyen Long, Marybeth Clark, Nguyen Bich Thuan, Publisher: Southeast Asia Publications
Designed for English speakers to learn to speak and understand Vietnamese. It is designed primarily for classroom use at the secondary and tertiary education level for beginners without Vietnamese language background. The most widely used classroom text. Also appropriate for self-study.
3. Elementary Vietnamese by Binh Nhu, Ph.D. Ngo, Hardcover: 288 pages, Publisher: Tuttle
Based on material developed by the author for his course at Harvard University, Elementary Vietnamese is a complete language course designed for either self-study or college-level classroom use. The text, consisting of two parts, includes a pronunciation guide and fourteen short-dialogue lessons. The pronunciation guide describes Vietnamese sounds and differences between the Hanoi and Saigon dialects. Examples of Vietnamese advertisements and newspapers are used throughout the lessons. Also included is a Vietnamese-English glossary and an English-Vietnamese glossary.
4. Intermediate Spoken Vietnamese (Language Texts) by Franklin Huffman, Tran Trong Hai, Publisher: Cornell Univ Southeast Asia
A must have for intermediate students of Vietnamese.
5. Vietnamese: A Language Map by Kristine K. Kershul, Paperback, Publisher: Bilingual Books
Contains over 1,000 of the most important words and phrases a traveler will need. When you are sitting in that charming outdoor café and want to order but can't decipher the menu, when you need a telephone, a post office or want to ask the price of a postcard.
6. The Oxford Picture Dictionary: English/Vietnamese by Norma Shapiro, Jayme Adelson-Goldstein, Paperback: 227 pages, Publisher: Oxford University Press
Easy to comprehend and the pictures are well done. For beginner - intermediate levels.
7. NTC's Vietnamese-English Dictionary by Dinh-hoa Nguyen, Paperback: 752 pages, McGraw-Hill
This is very good dictionary if you have a basic understanding of the Vietnamese language. Includes 50,000 definitions and pronunciation tones for northern, central, and southern parts of Vietnam.
8. Langenscheidt's Pocket Dictionary Vietnamese/ English, English, Vietnamese
This dictionary has the benefit of both northern and southern pronunciation, which is rare due to the fact that most textbooks and dictionaries only give the northern pronunciation. The definitions are clear, and provide a wide range of options for translation. This is good, because languages aren't just word codes, and all these options help to give the true meaning of a word. In the Vietnamese-English part, the entries are extensive and offer cultural and grammatical insights.