Victories, however minor, are good for the morale. So I was very pleased this morning when I found I fully understood the short message sent to me by Huyền, my Vietnamese teacher (not in picture). That is to say, I knew ten of the eleven words (plus the emoji) and I could guess the other one. Guessing words from context is a common thing to do, even in your mother tongue sometimes, so I don’t consider that to be a stain.
Of course, I’d read and understood sentences before, but this was the first time someone actually communicated something to me in Vietnamese, and I got it; this was about something approaching real life, a micro conversation if you like.
Her message was in reply to my recommending a book (which I did in English, though the book is in German). She wrote back,
Cảm ơn bác vì quyển sách hay. Cháu sẽ đọc nó 
that is, ‘Thank you for the interesting book. I will read it :D’ My sparkling repartee was không sao – ‘don’t mention it’, ‘you’re welcome’. Still, I would say that under a lenient definition, that qualifies as a genuine dialogue in Vietnamese, with the required two participants.
Next stop: understanding simple spoken sentences. Huyền is trying those on me too, but with spectacularly little success so far.
****
You can find the other blogposts about my adventures in Vietnamese here.