Comment by vkazanov
15 hours ago
Only somewhat related: I was surprised by how simple and sound vietnamese grammar is when read through the latin alphabet. Tones are only a problem when speaking but it's increadibly easy to start understanding signs and labels in the country. Slavic and baltic languages i can read are MUCH harder to start with.
So i kind of suspect it might also be the case for chinese: tones and the alphabet are obscuring a clean grammar.
Conveying what I've heard from a few Vietnamese that also speak Chinese, so not any kind of firsthand experience since I speak neither: Vietnamese is more difficult to speak but is a simpler (less expressive) language.
I agree that written Vietnamese is relatively straightforward. It isn't that difficult to read to the eyes of someone used to latin script.
So Vietnamese is the “Danish” of East Asia it seems
Or the Golang of East Asia.
Personally I find Vietnamese and Chinese to be about the same difficulty overall, just not on the same areas.
Vietnamese is massively harder to pronounce with way less room for mistakes whereas reading is easier.