How widely is Mandarin spoken/understood in Vietnam?

Question

More or less than English?

Answer 1

I dunno, I think it would be cause there might be more chinese since it is in asia. So, I can imagine, speaking Mandarin there might get you a better chance of being understood, or ultimately; learning Vietnamese would get you understood 100% no question. (if you were speaking it right.)

Answer 2

A little bit less and mainly for political reasons.

While the roots of the languages are similar (they share many words with slightly different pronounce) and the contact have been many, historically and ethnically, during the 70s confrontation there was a crack down on Chinese.

Many ethnic Chinese in Vietnam  even "Vietnamised" their family names and stopped using Chinese characters that were still common (and now much, much less) .

It is more or less what happened, for different reasons,  in many South East Asian countries.

So you will definitely find people speaking Chinese, at least more than the few grannies speaking French in and around Hanoi.

Meanwhile more you go South more you will find English useful

Answer 3

Well I heard that in some countries, accepting China as a strong, developing country are learning Mandarin as their second language and English as a third. I heard that Belgium and other countries on the continent do this, however i could be mistaken. As to whether Vietnam take this approach, I can only assume that Mandarin isn't widely spoken or understood.

Answer 4

Probably pretty rare. None of my Vietnamese friends claimed to speak any variant of Chinese. One friend's sister was studying Chinese, along with English I believe. I remember talking with a friend and saying I thought that Chinese would be the language to learn (major potential trading partner there) but I don't think it is being studied anywhere near the level that English is.

I could be wrong - I had a very limited sample.