Hey, it’s great to see other people learn Vietnamese! And your feedback is on point. I’m still at the beginning and just built a tool to help me learn basic phrases. I will very much appreciate the feedback! https://envn.app

I haven't figured out what works for me yet when learning Vietnamese, so I'm not really sure yet was advice to give.

Trying out your tool, I'd really like to know if the sound is north or southern Vietnamese. I think your tool is southern vietnamese, but idk.. I personally prefer learning southern, but all the AI TTS tools use the north dialect. Ideally, I'd like a 'pure' southern accent and not a hybrid.

For your tool, You might want to get into the way to address people (Anh, em, ba, co, etc). You seem to just use toi (which I hear vietnamese people using with each other too...) but my understanding is the (Anh/Em/Ba/etc) are more 'intimate' whereas toi is more formal/business like?

One idea I haven't tried too much of yet is making flash cards that teach me a sentence structure, but introduce new vocabulary. Learning a diaspora of phrases works for short 2-3 word ones, but when I try to learn more complex sentences, my brain isn't able to draw the patterns as nothing is connected.

For example, trying to learn "bạn tên là gì" and "nhà vệ sinh ở đâu" (from your website) is harder than learning "Bạn tên là gì?", "Bạn nghề là gì?", "Bạn số điện thoại là gì?"

The other huge challenge I have is feeling like I am making progress. I'm definitely getting better, but its pretty disheartening to study for 40+ hours and still can't pronounce words like Can Tho properly, despite knowing how to read and write.

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My email is in my profile. Feel free to reach out to me if you have more updates or want to bounce ideas.

Thanks! Would appreciate your feedback once you try it out.

Good catch. If put into stock market, It would be closer to 55-60 years, adjusted for inflation.

How do you learn about brands? Let's say you want to buy a watch, how do you find and pick one?

Presumably I would go find a catalog or a review site and read about the options, until I felt like I understood what was available well enough to make a choice.

It's a push vs pull thing. I don't object to the existence of marketing material being made available for those who want to go looking for it, but to the preemptive intrusion of advertising into spaces where it hasn't been requested.

Hey, author here. Good point! Historically, all sales people are in a way manipulators, and the best of them are those who know human psychology and behavior. This hasn't changed with how we advertise today. But we should be more restrictive with how we handle the data, who can access it and what they can have access to. That's not as much on the advertising industry as it is on regulations around technology, which is only a recent subject for discussion.

> That's not as much on the advertising industry as it is on regulations around technology

What I hear in that is "treating people badly is OK as long as it's legal". That may or may not be what you meant, but that's what it sounds like to me. I think that's an ethically unsupportable stance.

Good point! In truth, that was the first starting point for me as well. Then browser. Then everything else :)

This is neat! I will take a look.

https://blymp.ca is about $600/mo with two clients.

Building an MVP took two weeks, and getting the first paying customers another two.

I wrote about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42344002

It’s a B2B SaaS in out-of-home advertising. We found that buying ads outside the digital realm is hard and the only alternative are marketplaces that take away control over media owner’s inventory. So we did for those companies what Shopify did for small businesses — we gave them the tools to sell and to market.

.ca! very cool

having a hard time figuring out what you do from your website, do you allow businesses to rent billboards?

Hi! Author here. You are very much on point. I only recently started looking for part-time jobs, and perhaps I should have mentioned it in the post. It's precisely what you said -- financial stress started impacting my hobbies and sports, and that's where I don't feel as comfortable anymore.

Wishing you the best! I think if you will be able to find a part time job that will cover your lifestyle financially, while dedicating the other half to entrepreneurship and hobbies/sport, it’s the best

Good luck man, glad you had a great two years, thanks for sharing!

Also, keep operating costs super cheap so you can keep the side hustle going and watch it grow over years. Don't shut it down unless you have to.

To make $600/m you would have to invest $180k at 5%, so from that perspective you have created something valuable already.

Thank you, kind stranger!