Survival Vietnamese

Survival Vietnamese is a small paperback phrasebook meant for travelers and total beginners who need practical Vietnamese quickly. It is designed more as a carry-around reference than a structured course.

You get themed sections of common expressions, travel vocabulary, and basic communication tools, plus help for building simple sentences. Entries include romanized forms and phonetic spellings, and the book also prints Vietnamese script so you can point to what you mean if pronunciation is hard.

It is especially useful if you want a quick pronunciation and tones overview and an English to Vietnamese A to Z index that works like a mini dictionary. The tradeoff is that it does not give much depth for grammar study, and there is no built-in listening practice or conversation feedback. For details, see the book page on Tuttle Publishing.