· 6 min read
Learn Vietnamese for Free: University Course
By Language Lab editorial team
Learn Vietnamese for free with Northern Illinois University's open online course: 20 lessons of spoken Vietnamese, a pronunciation guide with audio, and more.
A beginners' course in spoken Vietnamese is open on the web from a US university. SEAsite, run by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University, offers a series of 20 lessons for teaching spoken Vietnamese, an interactive Guide to Pronunciation with audio for the consonants, vowels and tones, a page on how to address people, a quick course for tourists, flash cards and matching exercises. On 13 October 2026 the lessons opened without any sign-in or payment. The site is old, and a few of its pages still show Vietnamese in an outdated font, so use the lessons marked as Unicode. Vietnamese is written in the Latin alphabet, but its six tones need audio from the first day.
What the course contains
| Part | What you get |
|---|---|
| 20 lessons | Spoken Vietnamese, from greetings to bargaining and eating at a restaurant, with review lessons |
| Guide to Pronunciation | Tables of consonants, vowels and tones, with a sound icon for each |
| How to address people | Forms of address outside the home and within the family |
| Quick Vietnamese for Tourists | Just enough language for travel |
| Practice | Flash cards and matching exercises |
| Culture | A clickable map of Vietnam, food and travel pages |
The 20 lessons
The site's overview calls the lesson series the core of the Vietnamese pages. The lessons run in a fixed order, with a review after every four.
- Lesson 1: greetings. You learn to introduce yourself, ask someone's name and where they come from, and address people properly.
- Lesson 2: telling time and numbers.
- Lesson 3: occupations and subjects of study.
- Lesson 4: days of the week and dates.
- Lessons 6 to 9: travel destinations, daily activities, family and school, transportation.
- Lessons 11 to 14: shopping and house rental, travel and eating out, phone conversations, shopping and geography.
- Lessons 16 to 19: daily activities, more on travel, bargaining, at the restaurant.
- Lessons 5, 10, 15 and 20: review.
Lesson 1 opens with dialogues you can hear in full, each followed by a vocabulary list. It begins with a short exchange in which two people greet each other and ask each other's names.
Start with the pronunciation guide
The Guide to Pronunciation describes itself as a brief and simple account of the consonants, vowels and tones, based on Laurence C. Thompson's A Vietnamese Grammar, with tables where you click a sound icon to hear each sound. It takes the pronunciation of educated speakers from the Hanoi area as the standard, and notes the contrasting features of the Saigon dialect separately. Vietnamese has six tones. Work through the tone table with the audio before you begin Lesson 1.
Why forms of address matter
The introduction to Lesson 1 tells learners to practise it until they have memorised the gender words and use them correctly, because gender and age are very important in face-to-face conversation in Vietnamese. The site gives this topic a page of its own.
First phrases from Lesson 1
| Vietnamese | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Chào bà. | I greet you (to a woman addressed as Mrs.) |
| Xin lỗi | Excuse me |
| Tên bà là gì? | What is your name? (to a woman addressed as Mrs.) |
| Tên tôi là Hà. | My name is Ha. |
| Còn kia là ai? | And who is that over there? |
What to know before you rely on it
- Age. The Vietnamese pages carry a design date of 2000 and a note from 2012 about the move to Unicode.
- Fonts. Most material now displays in Unicode, but the site itself warns that some pages have not been converted. On 13 October 2026 the tone table and the address table still showed some Vietnamese text as wrong characters. Use them for the audio and the English explanations.
- No tutor. It is a self-study resource. Nobody corrects your tones.
- Textbooks. The site links to printed textbooks that can be ordered; the web lessons opened without them.
A free weekly plan
- Week one: the Guide to Pronunciation, ten minutes a day, repeating every sound.
- From week two: one lesson a week. Listen to each dialogue before you read it.
- Daily, 5 minutes: the forms of address, in short greetings.
- Every fifth lesson: do the review before moving on.
- Each week: use the flash cards to test yourself on older vocabulary.
The plan relies on practice testing and distributed practice, the two techniques a 2013 review of learning research rated as high utility.
How far free takes you
The US State Department places Vietnamese in Category III, hard languages, at about 44 weeks or 1,012 class hours for English speakers, so twenty lessons are a beginning. They give you sounds, core sentences and the address system. Speaking needs a partner who responds. Language Lab's Vietnamese course is built around voiced real-life scenarios with an AI tutor, which supplies spoken practice.
Frequently asked
Can I learn Vietnamese for free?
Yes. Northern Illinois University's SEAsite has 20 lessons of spoken Vietnamese and a pronunciation guide with audio. On 13 October 2026 they opened without sign-in or payment.
Who makes SEAsite?
The Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University. It also has sections for Indonesian, Thai, Tagalog, Khmer, Lao and Burmese.
Does the free course have audio?
Yes. The dialogues can be heard in full, and the pronunciation guide has a sound icon for each consonant, vowel and tone.
Is Vietnamese hard for English speakers?
The US State Department places it in Category III, hard languages, at about 44 weeks or 1,012 class hours.
How many tones does Vietnamese have?
Six. France's national institute for oriental languages describes Vietnamese as an isolating language with a six-tone system.
Do I need to learn a new alphabet for Vietnamese?
No. Vietnamese is written in the Latin alphabet, with additional marks.
Sources: Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, SEAsite Vietnamese: Overview, Table of contents, Guide to Pronunciation, The Tone System and Lesson 1 (pages opened on 13 October 2026); Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Inalco), Vietnamese; US Department of State, National Foreign Affairs Training Center, Foreign Language Training; Dunlosky et al., Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2013. Checked on 13 October 2026. Photo: Road into Mù Cang Chải with terraced hills, Viethavvh / Public domain (Wikimedia Commons).
