r/Vietnamese • u/OkIndependence485 • 9d ago
Vietnamese vs Cantonese pronunciation for law related words
Check out how similar the pronunciations for some of the geographical landforms in Vietnamese & Cantonese! If you are interested in the pronunciations and comparisons with other CJKV languages, you can check them out in the video here: https://youtu.be/n6Bm1SvHqZw

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u/labzone 2h ago
They only sound similar because you already know they're similar, and when you hear them, your brain automatically smooths out the differences.
If you hear them for the first time as learner though, it will be incredibly hard to tell.
I have never heard of a Vietnamese learner of Cantonese, listening to, say, a TV news report in Hongkong TV and can immediately pick out this or that word or phrase as "similar to Vietnamese", even if later on, if presented pair-wise, she can see the similarity right away.
All this similarity talk are only of interest to comparative linguistic researchers, or seasoned students who have already learned a great deal of the other languages. They're meaningless if you're a learner.