Sạo hay xấu

[eagerbeagle]

Up till now, I am still unable to pronounce these two correctly. Is there a method to help get them right?

thanks

[vietnamese4u]

they were pronoun very different each other
sạo : tone down
xấu: tone up

[Qinshi]

By Chinese, I assume your mother language is Mandarin. Therefore (as I am learning Mandarin incidentally) I will use pinyin to aid you.

Sạo
The letter s though technically should be pronounced a bit like sh, nowadays is becoming more and more like x in Vietnamese (s in pinyin). The vowel cluster ao is not like Mandarin ao, the a is pronounced like in cat whereas the Mandarin a is like in father. in fact, ao sounds like the sound in cow. The nặng tone (in Southern vietnamese) is practically the same as Mandarin third tone (第三声). So overall, it is pronounced like Mandarin sǎo where the a is soft like in cat, not hard like in father.

Xấu
Simply like pinyin sou and unlike 第二声, the sắc tone rises immediately, unlike in Mandarin where it dips slightly before rising.

Oh and I speak the Australian variety of English and Southern variety of Vietnamese so I understand my explanations may be a bit off.

[eagerbeagle]

By Chinese, I assume your mother language is Mandarin. Therefore (as I am learning Mandarin incidentally) I will use pinyin to aid you.

Sạo
The letter s though technically should be pronounced a bit like sh, nowadays is becoming more and more like x in Vietnamese (s in pinyin). The vowel cluster ao is not like Mandarin ao, the a is pronounced like in cat whereas the Mandarin a is like in father. in fact, ao sounds like the sound in cow. The nặng tone (in Southern vietnamese) is practically the same as Mandarin third tone (第三声). So overall, it is pronounced like Mandarin sǎo where the a is soft like in cat, not hard like in father.

Xấu
Simply like pinyin sou and unlike 第二声, the sắc tone rises immediately, unlike in Mandarin where it dips slightly before rising.

Oh and I speak the Australian variety of English and Southern variety of Vietnamese so I understand my explanations may be a bit off.

thanks for the detail explanation! English pronunciation with mandarin tone helps heaps! Mandarin is my mother tongue, and English is my first language and I also speak Hai Nan, Cantonese, and Fukien dialects! Sometimes it makes things easy and other times it creates more confusion