Learning Vietnamese

We had our second Vietnamese lesson today. While Greg is going well, having studied from a book before we left, Stef is still a beginner.

Did you know that the Vietnamese alphabet (and thank goodness there is one) has 29 letters.
Here it is.
You may noticed that there is no "F, J, W or Z" but there are 3 "A and O"s, 2 "D, E and U"s.
Once we learnt the alphabet, then it was onto tones. For those who haven't learnt a tonal language (and whatever you think of Australian english and vowels, it is not tonal!) - tones indicate the way to pronounce a word. It's almost like singing. Vietnamese has 6 tones which take some getting used to, but are essential to communication as the words drastically change their meaning with different tones!
Here are some phrases I have learnt: