What's up y'all - Vietnamese coming in peace. I'm gonna try to answer some of the questions in this thread:

"Vietnam got people with surname Trieu (Zhao in Mandarin)? Never come across any."

We do have that surname. Triệu to be exact.

"Believe it or not, most vietnamese can speak mandarin before they even speak English."

Troi oi, this is wrong on so many levels. Most Vietnamese people know "nihao" "xiexie" only. Those who can speak/read Mandarin (excluding Chinese-Vietnamese) are the ones who take classes at language schools or happen to live close to the border.

"I would say there are prob more french speakers than mandarin in Vietnam."

Same goes with the French speakers in VN, though I'd argue that there are more Chinese speakers than French speakers. Probably different back then, as I know for a fact that my great grandma did speak a bit French and even read French poems for me.

"North Vietnam have Chinese ancestry from the south. Many still identified themselves as Chinese ethnicity."

Not entirely sure about where our ancestry's from, BUT most Vietnamese don't identify themselves as being of Chinese descent, again, excluding the Chinese-Vietnamese ppl (mostly live in the south).

Haha! Every Vietnamese nationalist ever!! Hate is too strong of a word though; we're just not a fan of the Chinese gov't but generally get along fine with Chinese.

Guess karma can't come to me soon enough - I'm seeing a Msian Cainis guy, that's why I'm here browsing as many VN-related threads as possible. Quite an experience to see what y'all think about us Vietnamese.

I won't ever deny that Vietnamese culture got influenced by Chinese culture. A damn lot indeed, and not just the naming system. Looks wise, I've got lots of comments saying I (Northern Viet) look Chinese from both ang moh and Chinese people. But but, unless I take the DNA test and find out this and that, I won't come out saying "Look, I have Chinese blood in me" and act as if I'm Chinese because someone tells me VNese = Chinese.

Also, just because someone here has happened to meet Mandarin- or Cantonese-speaking groups in Vietnam doesn't mean you should start generalizing that most Vietnamese can speak/read/write the two languages. That's simply not the case, I'll tell you that much.