Essential Vietnamese Grammar is designed for use by English-speakers to help them speak and write Vietnamese more naturally.

The twelve chapters in this book cover the essential sentence constructions of Vietnamese—from beginning to intermediate and advanced levels. Strong emphasis is placed on the differences between translating directly from English, which can yield awkward and incorrect sentences, and the use of idiomatic Vietnamese grammar and expressions. This book can be used for self-study or classroom instruction, as well as for review or brushing up your language skills.

All Vietnamese grammatical concepts are clearly explained and copiously illustrated with example phrases and sentences. The chapters progress from fundamental concepts (the sounds of Vietnamese, spelling, the use of accent marks and tones) to structural elements (parts of speech, grammatical functions, the structure of phrases and sentences), and then to nuances expressed through word choice, word order and cultural elements.

Each chapter is accompanied by a set of exercises (with answer keys provided) that the learner can use to reinforce their understanding of the materials and their ability to apply them to real-life situations.

Audio recordings by native speakers are available online for all the Vietnamese sentences to help the learner acquire good pronunciation and intonation patterns for various types of sentences.

Tri C. Tran, PhD, teaches linguistics and Vietnamese at the University of California, Irvine. He obtained his PhD and MA in Romance Linguistics and Literatures from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his BA in Spanish Linguistics from the University of California, Irvine. His publications include Spanish and Vietnamese language textbooks and a bilingual dictionary for students of linguistics. He is the author of Reading and Writing Vietnamese and co-author of Vietnamese Stories for Language Learners, both published by Tuttle.