Vietnamese Audio CD Language Course, Volume 1.

Includes 18 audio CD discs ( = 15? hours), and a 328-page textbook. This course provides introductory teaching materials for spoken Vietnamese, and is intended for general use by English speakers. Special attention has been given both in the text and in the tapes to make this course as useful as possible for self-instruction. This course begins with a guide to pronunciation (in the Southern dialect), because the Vietnamese language is a "tone language" in which the meaning of a word can change when it is pronounced with a different musical pitch or pitch contour. Once you have mastered the sounds, the basic dialogs and common language structures are introduced.