Yesterday I again tried ordering fried chicken gà chiên and got fried fish cá chiên instead.
Vietnamese consonants are just soooooo difficult 
Anyone else had any Vietnamese pronunciation problesm recent?
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I remember studying Vietnamese C an G initials indeed required a lot of minimal pair practice.
Do you think it could also be a tone issue? When I started learning Chinese I really had put a lot of work into differentiating Dau Huyen vs. 四声 and Dau Sac vs. 二声. As they are similar and opposite in a way.
VN Dau Huyen and CN 四声 are both falling, but to my ear the 四声 is fast and sharp, while Dau Huyen is slow and deep. Then to my ear, Dau Sac and 二声 have the opposite situation, to my ear Dau Sac is fast sharp rising, while 二声 is is slow blunt rising.
In other words, to my ear the Chinese falling tone and and Vietnamese rising tone have a similar contour but going the opposite direction. And Chinese rising tone and Vietnamese falling tone have a similar contour, but again opposite direction.
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You got catfished 
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I can totally relate to your experience 
. I am studying Mandarin at the beginner level, and I usually get confused by dấu huyền, dấu sắc in Vietnamese with the 2nd and 4th tone in Madarin.
Do the G and C sound come very similar then?
@Andreas_Admin_Flexi - it’s been a year and a half since this post. How has your progress been? Are you still finding consonants hard or are you making progress?
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They are similar but not the same. To a Vietnamese person as different as a fish and a chicken. To me less so, but definitely making progress. I am taking an hour of Vietnamese class a day at the moment and that really is making a difference. Just have to keep it up during the Christmas holidays now…
This is great. Consistency is key.
I’m also taking an Italian course I purchased on Black Friday. Definitely helped get me back into a consistent mindset.
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