u/SpeakSaigon

My wife is a Southern Vietnamese speaker, and my practice loop was basically: say something, watch her wince, ask what was wrong, and get "your tone is just... off?" She could hear it instantly but couldn't explain how to fix it. Then came the classic "no, not mà... má" followed by me staring blankly because I swear she just said the same word twice

That was the real problem: I could tell I was wrong, but I couldn't see what wrong looked like. So I built a tone trainer where you listen to a Southern tone, record yourself, and see your pitch curve drawn on top of theirs.

It's free with no account needed: https://speaksaigon.com/tone-trainer

Covers all 5 Southern tones (Saigon speech merges hỏi and ngã, so 5 not 6). Would love feedback from anyone learning Vietnamese, especially whether the pitch visualization actually helps or just looks cool.

Been learning Southern Vietnamese (my wife's family speaks it) and felt like making some little infographics. Partly to help things stick for myself, partly because I find the South-vs-North differences genuinely interesting, and partly to spread the word for my app that I built over the last year to teach myself.

Sharing a few here. Very open to corrections from native/fluent speakers, especially on the phonetic respellings, that part's always a judgment call. What do you think?