Vietnamese language

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Tiếng Việt
Pronunciation[tǐəŋ vìəˀt] (Northern)
[tǐəŋ jìək] (Southern)
Native toVietnam
Native speakers
76 million (2009)[1]
Early forms
Latin (Vietnamese alphabet)
Vietnamese Braille
Chữ Hán and Chữ Nôm (historic; current use by Gin people)
Official status
Official language in
Recognised minority
language in
Language codes
ISO 639-1vi
ISO 639-2vie
ISO 639-3vie
Natively Vietnamese-speaking areas.png
Natively Vietnamese-speaking (non-minority) areas of Vietnam[3]
Global distribution of speakers

Vietnamese (Vietnamese: Tiếng Việt or Tiếng Kinh)[a] is an Austroasiatic language that originated in Vietnam, where it is the national and official language. It is by far the most spoken Austroasiatic language with over 70 million native speakers, at least seven times more than Khmer, the next most spoken Austroasiatic language.[4] Its vocabulary has had significant influence from Chinese and French. It is the native language of the Vietnamese (Kinh) people, as well as a second language or first language for other ethnic groups in Vietnam. As a result of emigration, Vietnamese speakers are also found in other parts of Southeast Asia, East Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. Vietnamese has also been officially recognized as a minority language in the Czech Republic.[5]


Vietnamese was historically written in Ancient Vietnamese script (Chữ Việt cỗ), before it was written in a mixture of Chữ Hán (or Chữ Nho) (Chinese characters) for writing Sino-Vietnamese words and Chữ Nôm, a locally invented Chinese-based script for writing vernacular Vietnamese. French colonial rule of Vietnam led to the official adoption of the Vietnamese alphabet (chữ Quốc ngữ) which is based on Latin script. It uses digraphs and diacritics to mark tones and pronunciation. While Chữ Hán and Chữ Nôm fell out of use in Vietnam by the early 20th century, they are still occasionally used by the Gin people in southeast China.[6]

Geographic distribution[edit]

As the national language, Vietnamese is the lingua franca in Vietnam. It is also spoken by the Gin traditionally residing on three islands (now joined to the mainland) off Dongxing in southern Guangxi Province, China.[7] A large number of Vietnamese speakers also reside in neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos.


Official status[edit]


In the Czech Republic, Vietnamese has been recognized as one of 14 minority languages, on the basis of communities that have resided in the country either traditionally or on a long-term basis. This status grants the Vietnamese community in the country a representative on the Government Council for Nationalities, an advisory body of the Czech Government for matters of policy towards national minorities and their members. It also grants the community the right to use Vietnamese with public authorities and in courts anywhere in the country.[12][13]

As a foreign language[edit]

Vietnamese is increasingly being taught in schools and institutions outside of Vietnam, a large part which is contributed by its large diaspora. In countries with strongly established Vietnamese-speaking communities such as the United States, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Czech Republic, Vietnamese language education largely serves as a cultural role to link descendants of Vietnamese immigrants to their ancestral culture. Meanwhile, in countries near Vietnam such as Cambodia, Laos, China, Taiwan, and Thailand, the increased role of Vietnamese in foreign language education is largely due to the recent recovery of the Vietnamese economy.[14][15]

Since the 1980s, Vietnamese language schools (trường Việt ngữ/ trường ngôn ngữ Tiếng Việt) have been established for youth in many Vietnamese-speaking communities around the world, notably in the United States.[16][17]

Similarly, since the late 1980s, the Vietnamese-German community has enlisted the support of city governments to bring Vietnamese into high school curriculum for the purpose of teaching and reminding Vietnamese German students of their mother-tongue. Furthermore, there has also been a number of Germans studying Vietnamese due to increased economic investments and business.[18][19]


Linguistic classification[edit]

Early linguistic work some 150 years ago[21] classified Vietnamese as belonging to the Mon–Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (which also includes the Khmer language spoken in Cambodia, as well as various smaller and/or regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in Laos, southern China and parts of Thailand). Later, Muong was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon–Khmer languages, and a Viet–Muong subgrouping was established, also including Thavung, Chut, Cuoi, etc.[22] The term "Vietic" was proposed by Hayes (1992),[23] who proposed to redefine Viet–Muong as referring to a subbranch of Vietic containing only Vietnamese and Muong. The term "Vietic" is used, among others, by Gérard Diffloth, with a slightly different proposal on subclassification, within which the term "Viet–Muong" refers to a lower subgrouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, Muong dialects, and Nguồn (of Quảng Bình Province).[24]

Lexicon and borrowings[edit]

The result of language contact with Chinese heavily influenced the Vietnamese language overall, causing it to diverge from Viet-Muong and other South East Asian languages into Vietnamese. For example, the Vietnamese word quản lý, meaning management (noun) or manage (verb) is likely descended from the same word as guǎnlǐ (管理) in Chinese, kanri (管理 (かんり)) in Japanese, and gwanli (관리 (管理)) in Korean. Besides English and French which have made some contributions to Vietnamese language, Japanese loanwords into Vietnamese is also a more recently studied phenomenon.

Modern linguists describe modern Vietnamese having lost many Proto-Austroasiatic phonological and morphological features that original Vietnamese had.[25] The Chinese influence on Vietnamese corresponds to various periods when Vietnam was under Chinese rule, and subsequent influence after Vietnam became independent. Early linguists thought that this meant Vietnamese lexicon then received only two layers of Chinese words, one stemming from the period under actual Chinese rule and a second layer from afterwards. These words are grouped together as Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.

However, according to linguist John Phan, “Annamese Middle Chinese” was already used and spoken in the Red River Valley by the 1st century CE, and its vocabulary significantly fused with the co-existing Proto-Viet-Muong language, the immediate ancestor of Vietnamese. He lists three major classes of Sino-Vietnamese borrowings:[26][27][28] Early Sino-Vietnamese (Han Dynasty (ca. 1st century CE) and Jin Dynasty (ca. 4th century CE), Late Sino-Vietnamese (Tang Dynasty), Recent Sino-Vietnamese (Ming Dynasty and afterwards)

Additionally, the French presence in Vietnam from 1777 to the Geneva Accords of 1954 resulted in influence from French into eastern Indochina. For Vietnamese, 'cà phê', derived from the French word café (coffee). Yogurt in vernacular Vietnamese is "sữa chua", but also calqued from French (yaourt) into Vietnamese (da ua - /j/a ua). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon especially from English. Some are incorporated into Vietnamese as loan words— e.g., "TV" has been borrowed as "tivi". The musical note is translated into Vietnamese as "nhạc nốt (musical notes)". The Cambodian name for Cambodia, "Kampuchea" becomes "Campuchia". Some other borrowings are calques, translated into Viet, for example, 'software' is translated into 'phần mềm' (literally meaning "soft part"). Some other scientific terms such as "biological cell" may be from Hán-Nôm or Han character texts, ( 细胞 - tế bào), whilst other scientific names such as "acetylcholine" are kept as they are. Some other scientific terms like "peptide", may be Vietnamized to make it easier to pronounce amongst Vietnamese words e.g. peptide may also be seen as peptit in Vietnamese texts. Other words, like muôn thuở meaning forever are seen to be purely Vietnamese invention, being derived from Vietnamese Nôm characters. Hán and Nôm words are also transliterated into the Vietnamese alphabet. Another interesting borrowing is the Vietnamese term for association club, câu lạc bộ, which was borrowed from Chinese (俱乐部; Mandarin pinyin - jùlèbù; Cantonese jyutping - keoi1 lok6 bou6) which was borrowed from Japanese (kanji - 倶楽部; katakana - クラブ; rōmaji - kurabu) which was borrowed from English.

Japanese loanwords are a more recently studied phenomenon, with a paper by Nguyen & Le (2020) classifying three layers of Japanese loanwords, the third layer being the principle study of the paper.[29] The first layer consisted of new Kanji words created by Japanese to represent Western concepts that were not readily available in Chinese and Japanese, where by the end of the 19th century they were imported to the Chinese language. Such words resemble Chinese-made Kanji to the point that most Chinese native speakers failed to acknowledge that they actually came from Japanese (Chung 2001).[30] This first layer is called Sino-Vietnamese words of Japanese origins.

The second layer begun with the Japanese occupation of Vietnam from 1940 until 1945. With Japanese cultural influence in Vietnam starting significantly since the 1980s, the number of Japanese words introduced into Vietnamese has increased. This new, second layer of Japan-origin loanwords is distinctive from Sino-Vietnamese words of Japanese origin in that they were borrowed directly from Japanese, and not through a third language, which was Chinese. This vocabulary includes words representative of Japanese culture, such as kimono, sumo, samurai, and bonsai from modified Hepburn romanisation. These loanwords are coined as "new Japanese loanwords", in contrast with the aforementioned Sino-Vietnamese words of Japanese origin. The new Japanese loanwords are written the same as romanized Japanese words, since they are both based on the Latin alphabet. A significant number of new Japanese loanwords are also of Chinese origin and can also be written in Chinese characters. Sometimes, the same concept can be described using both Sino-Vietnamese words of Japanese origin (first layer) and new Japanese loanwords (second layer). For example, in the Vietnamese language, judo can be referred to as both judo and nhu đạo, the Vietnamese version of the Chinese characters 柔道.[29]

The third layer is a different phenomenon reserved for Vietnamese people in Japan working as technical trainees or technical students, which were introduced into Vietnamese writing and speech. Japanese phrases frequently used among Vietnamese technical trainees and students such as arigatō (あり がとう/thank you) or onegaishimasu (おねがいします/please) were considered to be loanwords rather than code switching. [29]

Phonology (linguistics)[edit]


Vietnamese has a large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Vietnamese from Hanoi (including centering diphthongs):

  Front Central Back
ê [e] ơ [əː]
â [ə]
ô [o]
e [ɛ] a [aː]
ă [a]
o [ɔ]


The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u). They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant.

In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs) and centering diphthongs, Vietnamese has closing diphthongs[32] and triphthongs. The closing diphthongs and triphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide /j/ or /w/.[33] There are restrictions on the high offglides: /j/ cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and /w/ cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus.[34]

  /w/ offglide /j/ offglide
Front Central Back
êu [ew]
ơi [əːj]
ây [əj]
ôi [oj]
eo [ɛw] ao [aːw]
au [aw]
ai [aːj]
ay [aj]
oi [ɔj]




Labial Dental/
Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
aspirated th [tʰ]
glottalized b [ɓ] đ [ɗ]
Fricative voiceless ph [f] x [s] s [ʂ~s] kh [x~kʰ] h [h]
Rhotic r [r]






Each Vietnamese syllable is pronounced with an inherent tone,[35] centered on the main vowel or group of vowels. Tonal language in Vietnamese translates to "ngôn ngữ âm sắc". Tones differ in:

Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel).[36] The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi), with their self-referential Vietnamese names, are:

Name Description Contour Diacritic Example Sample vowel
ngang   'level' mid level ˧ (no mark) ma  'ghost' About this sounda 
huyền   'deep' low falling (often breathy) ˨˩ ◌̀ (grave accent)  'but' About this soundà 
sắc   'sharp' high rising ˨˩ ◌́ (acute accent)  'cheek, mother (southern)' About this soundá 
hỏi   'questioning' mid dipping-rising ˧˩˧ ◌̉ (hook above) mả  'tomb, grave' About this sound 
ngã   'tumbling' creaky high breaking-rising ˧ˀ˦˥ ◌̃ (tilde)  'horse (Sino-Vietnamese), code' About this soundã 
nặng   'heavy' creaky low falling constricted (short length) ˨˩ˀ ◌̣ (dot below) mạ  'rice seedling' About this sound 

Other dialects of Vietnamese may have fewer tones (typically only five).

Tonal differences of three speakers as reported in Hwa-Froelich & Hodson (2002).[37] The curves represent temporal pitch variation while two sloped lines (//) indicates a glottal stop.
Tone Northern dialect Southern dialect Central dialect
Ngang (a) Vietnamese-tone-ngang-northern.png Vietnamese-tone-ngang-southern.png Vietnamese-tone-ngang-central.png
Huyền (à) Vietnamese-tone-huyen-northern.png Vietnamese-tone-huyen-southern.png Vietnamese-tone-huyen-central.png
Sắc (á) Vietnamese-tone-sac-northern.png Vietnamese-tone-sac-southern.png Vietnamese-tone-sac-central.png
Hỏi (ả) Vietnamese-tone-hoi-northern.png Vietnamese-tone-hoi-southern.png Vietnamese-tone-hoi-central.png
Ngã (ã) Vietnamese-tone-nga-northern.png Vietnamese-tone-nga-southern.png Vietnamese-tone-nga-central.png
Nặng (ạ) Vietnamese-tone-nang-northern.png Vietnamese-tone-nang-southern.png Vietnamese-tone-nang-central.png


Tone group Tones within tone group
bằng "level, flat" ngang and huyền



Language variation[edit]

The Vietnamese language has several mutually intelligible regional varieties:[38]

Dialect region Localities
Northern Hà Nội, Hải Phòng, Red River Delta, Northwest and Northeast
North-central (Area IV) Thanh Hoá, Vinh, Hà Tĩnh
Mid-Central Quảng Bình, Quảng Trị, Huế, Thừa Thiên
South-Central (Area V) Đà Nẵng, Quảng Nam, Quảng Ngãi, Bình Định, Phú Yên, Nha Trang
Southern Hồ Chí Minh, Lâm Đồng, Mê Kông, Southeast

Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. Michel Ferlus and Nguyễn Tài Cẩn also proved that there was a separate North-Central dialect for Vietnamese as well. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern Nghệ An Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.



Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh, and Quảng Bình have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities, beginning with the new government's "New Economic Zones program" which lasted from 1975 to 1985.[40] The first half of the program (1975–80), resulted in 1.3 million people sent to the New Economic Zones (NEZs), majority of which were relocated to the southern half of the country in previously uninhabited areas, of which 550,000 were Northerners.[40] The second half (1981–85) saw almost 1 million Northerners relocated to the NEZs.[40] Government and military personnel from Northern and North-central Vietnam are also posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system has resulted in increased interregional movement and relations between distant parts of Vietnam through business and travel. These movements have also resulted in some blending of dialects, but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. Most Southerners, when singing modern/old popular Vietnamese songs or addressing the public, do so in the standardized accent if possible (which is Northern pronunciation). This is true in Vietnam as well as in overseas Vietnamese communities.

Modern Standard Vietnamese is based on the Hanoi dialect. Nevertheless, the major dialects are still predominant in their respective areas and have also evolved over time with influences from other areas. Historically, accents have been distinguished by how each region pronounces the letters d ([z] in the Northern dialect and [j] in the Central and Southern dialect) and r ([z] in the Northern dialect, [r] in the Central and Southern dialects). Thus, the Central and Southern dialects can be said to have retained a pronunciation closer to Vietnamese orthography and resemble how Middle Vietnamese sounded in contrast to the modern Northern (Hanoi) dialect which underwent shifts.


Regional variation in vocabulary[41]
Northern Central Southern English gloss
này ni, "this"
thế này như ri như vầy "thus, this way"
đấy nớ, đó "that"
kia, kìa , tề đó "that yonder"
đâu đâu "where"
nào mồ nào "which"
tại sao răng tại sao "why"
tui, tôi tui tui "I, me (polite)"
mày mi mày "you (arrogant, familiar)"
ruộng nương ruộng,rẫy "field"
bát đọi chén "rice bowl"
bẩn nhớp "dirty"
muôi môi "ladle"
đầu trốc đầu "head"
lười nhác làm biếng, lười "lazy"
thìa thìa muỗng "spoon"
xấu tệ dở, xấu "bad"

Although regional variations developed over time, most of these words can be used interchangeably and be understood well, albeit, with more or less frequency then others or with slightly different but often discernible pronunciations.



Regional consonant correspondences
Syllable position Orthography Northern North-central Central Southern
syllable-initial x [s] [s]
s [ʂ] [s, ʂ][42]
ch [t͡ɕ] [c]
tr [ʈ] [c, ʈ][42]
r [z] [r]
d [ɟ] [j]
gi [z]
v [v] [v, j][43]
syllable-final t [t] [k]
c [k]
after i, ê
[t] [t]
ch [k̟]
after u, ô
[t] [kp]
after u, ô, o
n [n] [ŋ]
ng [ŋ]
after i, ê
[n] [n]
nh [ŋ̟]
after u, ô
[n] [ŋm]
after u, ô, o


l, n variation
Orthography "Mainstream" varieties Rural varieties
n [n] [l]
l [l]



r, g variation
Orthography "Mainstream" varieties Rural varieties
r [r] [ɣ]
g [ɣ]



Although there are six tones in Vietnamese, some tones may slightly[clarification needed] "merge", but are still highly distinguishable due to the context of the speech.[clarification needed] The hỏi and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have somewhat[clarification needed] merged in Central, Southern, and some North-Central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-Central varieties (such as Hà Tĩnh Vietnamese) have a slight[clarification needed] merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the hỏi tone distinct. Still, other North-Central varieties have a three-way merger of hỏi, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.

Regional tone correspondences
Tone Northern North-central Central Southern
 Vinh  Thanh
Hà Tĩnh
ngã ˧ʔ˥ 3ʔ5 ˩˧̰ 13̰ ˨̰ 22̰
nặng ˨˩̰ʔ 21̰ʔ ˨ 22 ˨̰ 22̰ ˨̰ 22̰ ˨˩˨ 212








giáo viên


Minh là {giáo viên}

Minh BE teacher.

"Min is a teacher."







Trí 13 tuổi

Trí 13 age

"Trí is 13 years old,"



có vẻ



sinh viên

student (college)



học sinh.

student (under-college)

Mai {có vẻ} là {sinh viên} hoặc {học sinh}.

Mai seem BE {student (college)} or {student (under-college)}








Tài đang nói.

Tài PRES.CONT talk

"Tài is talking."







Giáp rất cao.

Giáp INT tall

"Giáp is very tall."







older brother





Người đó là anh của nó.

person that.DET BE {older brother} POSS 3.PRO

"That person is his/her brother."









bao giờ






Con chó này chẳng {bao giờ} sủa cả.

CL dog DET NEG ever bark all

"This dog never barks at all."








Việt Nam




Nó chỉ ăn cơm {Việt Nam} thôi.

3.PRO just eat rice.FAM Vietnam only












Tôi thích con ngựa đen.

1.PRO like CL horse black

"I like the black horse."















Tôi thích cái con ngựa đen đó.

1.PRO like FOC CL horse black DET

"I like that black horse."



ở lại








cho tới










Hãy {ở lại} đây ít phút {cho tới} khi tôi quay lại.

HORT stay here few minute until when 1.PRO turn come


Dates and numbers writing formats[edit]


English month name Vietnamese month name
Normal Traditional
January Tháng Một Tháng Giêng
February Tháng Hai
March Tháng Ba
April Tháng Tư
May Tháng Năm
June Tháng Sáu
July Tháng Bảy
August Tháng Tám
September Tháng Chín
October Tháng Mười
November Tháng Mười Một
December Tháng Mười Hai Tháng Chạp



  • English: 28 March 2018
  • Vietnamese long form: Ngày 28 tháng 3 năm 2018
  • Vietnamese short form: 28/3/2018


Writing systems[edit]

"I speak Vietnamese" (Tôi nói tiếng Việt Nam - 碎呐㗂越南) is written in Latin (Vietnamese alphabet) or written in mixed scripts of chữ Hán (Chinese characters) and chữ Nôm (underline).
In the bilingual dictionary Nhật dụng thường đàm (1851), Chinese characters (chữ Nho) are explained in chữ Nôm.

Up to the late 19th century, a writing system that was a mix of two types of scripts was used in Vietnam: chữ Hán (Chinese characters) and chữ Nôm (lit.'Southern characters').[47] All formal writing, including government business, scholarship and formal literature, was done in Classical Chinese (called as "văn ngôn" - 文言 or "Hán văn" - 漢文 in Vietnamese) with chữ Hán.

Folk literature in Vietnamese was recorded using the chữ Nôm script, which is based on borrowed Chinese characters and mostly modified and invented to represent native Vietnamese words. This was because chữ Hán could only be used for Sino-Vietnamese words, and was not enough to write native Vietnamese words. For example, the Vietnamese numerals for 1-2-3 are read in "một-hai-ba" in Vietnamese or "nhất-nhị-tam" by Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation. Although the "nhất-nhị-tam" represented by 一二三 in chữ Hán was used in official contexts, Vietnamese speakers modified its chữ Nôm equivalent to 𠬠𠄩𠀧 in order to represent "một-hai-ba", which is the colloquial native equivalent.

Created in the 13th century or earlier, the Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Nôm, most notably Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry"). However, it was only used for official purposes during the brief Hồ and Tây Sơn dynasties.


A romanization of Vietnamese was codified in the 17th century by the Avignonese Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes (1591–1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries, particularly Francisco de Pina, Gaspar do Amaral and Antonio Barbosa.[49][50] Still, chữ Nôm was the dominant script in Vietnamese Catholic literature for more than 200 years.[51] Starting from the late 19th century, the Vietnamese alphabet (chữ Quốc ngữ or "national language script") was gradually expanded from its initial usage in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.

The Vietnamese alphabet contains 29 letters, including one digraph (đ) and nine with diacritics, five of which are used to designate tone (i.e. à, á, , ã, and ) and the other four used for separate letters of the Vietnamese alphabet (ă, â/ê/ô, ơ, ư).[52]

This Romanized script became predominant over the course of the early 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found to be more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population. Under French colonial rule, French superseded Chinese in administration. Vietnamese written with the alphabet became required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. In turn, Vietnamese reformists and nationalists themselves encouraged and popularized the use of chữ quốc ngữ. By the middle of the 20th century, most writing was done in chữ quốc ngữ, which became the official script on independence.

Nevertheless, Chữ Hán was still in use during the French colonial period and as late as World War II was still featured on banknotes,[53][54] but fell out of official and mainstream use shortly thereafter. The education reform by North Vietnam in 1950 eliminated the use of chữ Hán and chữ Nôm.[55] Today, only a few scholars and some extremely elderly people are able to read chữ Nôm or use it in Vietnamese calligraphy. In contrast, members of the Gin minority in China still write in chữ Nôm.

Chữ quốc ngữ reflects a "Middle Vietnamese" dialect that combines vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects with initial consonants most similar to southern dialects. This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of Late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after the Great Vowel Shift.)


The Tale of Kieu is an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyễn Du, (), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Chữ Nôm (titled Đoạn Trường Tân Thanh 斷腸) and is widely taught in Vietnam (in chữ quốc ngữ transliteration).

Computer support[edit]

The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as Vietnamese Standard Code for Information Interchange (VSCII) or Windows-1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type Roman-script Vietnamese on English keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh, with popular methods of encoding Vietnamese using Telex, VNI or VIQR input methods. Telex input method is often set as the default for many devices.


In the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in South East Asia and with the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language since Chinese influence. Vietnamese is heavily influenced by its location in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and phonemically distinctive tones, through processes of tonogenesis. These characteristics have become part of many of the genetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature. The ancestor of the Vietnamese language is usually believed to have been originally based in the area of the Red River Delta in what is now northern Vietnam.[56][57][58]


Vietnamese was primarily influenced by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century BC. After Vietnam achieved independence in the 10th century, the ruling class adopted Classical Chinese as the formal medium of government, scholarship and literature. With the dominance of Chinese came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. A portion of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Sino-Vietnamese words (They are about a third of the Vietnamese lexicon, and may account for as much as 60% of the vocabulary used in formal texts.[59])


Henri Maspero described six periods of the Vietnamese language:[60][61]

  1. Proto-Viet–Muong, also known as Pre-Vietnamese or Proto-Vietnamuong, the ancestor of Vietnamese and the related Muong language (before 7th century AD).
  2. Proto-Vietnamese, the oldest reconstructable version of Vietnamese, dated to just before the entry of massive amounts of Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary into the language, c. 7th to 9th century AD. At this state, the language had three tones.
  3. Archaic Vietnamese, the state of the language upon adoption of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and the beginning of creation of the Vietnamese characters during the Ngô Dynasty, c. 10th century AD.
  4. Ancient Vietnamese, the language represented by Chữ Nôm (c. 15th century), widely used during the Lê and the Chinese–Vietnamese, and the Ming glossary "Annanguo Yiyu" 安南國譯語 (c. 15th century) by the Bureau of Interpreters 会同馆 (from the series Huáyí Yìyǔ (Chinese: 华夷译语). By this point, a tone split had happened in the language, leading to six tones but a loss of contrastive voicing among consonants.
  5. Middle Vietnamese, the language of the Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum of the Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes (c. 17th century); the dictionary was published in Rome in 1651. Another famous dictionary of this period was written by P. J. Pigneau de Behaine in 1773 and published by Jean-Louis Taberd in 1838.
  6. Modern Vietnamese, from the 19th century.


The following diagram shows the phonology of Proto-Viet–Muong (the nearest ancestor of Vietnamese and the closely related Muong language), along with the outcomes in the modern language:[62][63][64][65]

Labial Dental/Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
aspirated * > ph * > th * > kh
Affricate * > x 1
Fricative voiceless *s > t *h > h

^1 According to Ferlus, */tʃ/ and */ʄ/ are not accepted by all researchers. Ferlus 1992[62] also had additional phonemes */dʒ/ and */ɕ/.

^2 The fricatives indicated above in parentheses developed as allophones of stop consonants occurring between vowels (i.e. when a minor syllable occurred). These fricatives were not present in Proto-Viet–Muong, as indicated by their absence in Muong, but were evidently present in the later Proto-Vietnamese stage. Subsequent loss of the minor-syllable prefixes phonemicized the fricatives. Ferlus 1992[62] proposes that originally there were both voiced and voiceless fricatives, corresponding to original voiced or voiceless stops, but Ferlus 2009[63] appears to have abandoned that hypothesis, suggesting that stops were softened and voiced at approximately the same time, according to the following pattern:

  • *p, *b > /β/
  • *t, *d > /ð/
  • *s > /r̝/
  • *k, *ɡ > /ɣ/


^4 It is unclear what this sound was. According to Ferlus 1992,[62] in the Archaic Vietnamese period (c. 10th century AD, when Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary was borrowed) it was *, distinct at that time from *r.

The following initial clusters occurred, with outcomes indicated:

  • *kl, *gl > MV tl > tr
  • *ml > MV ml > mnh > nh
  • *kj > gi


Origin of the tones[edit]


Register Initial consonant Smooth ending Glottal ending Fricative ending
Low (second) register Voiced A2 huyền "deep" B2 nặng "heavy" C2 ngã "tumbling"




Old Vietnamese[edit]

Old Vietnamese Phonology[66]
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m (m) n (n) nh (ɲ) ng/ngh (ŋ)
Stop tenuis b/v ([p b]) d/đ ([t ɗ]) ch/gi (c) c/k/q ([k ɡ]) # (ʔ)
aspirated ph () th () t/r (s) kh () h (h)
Implosive stop m (ɓ) n (ɗ) nh (ʄ)
Fricative voiced v (v) d (j)
Affricate x ()
Liquid r [r] l [l]

Old Vietnamese/Ancient Vietnamese was a Vietic language which was separated from Viet–Muong around 9th century, and evolved to Middle Vietnamese by 16th century. The sources for the reconstruction of Old Vietnamese are Nom texts, such as the 12th-century/1486 Buddhist scripture Phật thuyết Đại báo phụ mẫu ân trọng kinh ("Sūtra explained by the Buddha on the Great Repayment of the Heavy Debt to Parents"),[67] old inscriptions, and late 13th-century (possibly 1293) Annan Jishi glossary by Chinese diplomat Chen Fu (c. 1259 – 1309).[68] Old Vietnamese used Chinese characters phonetically where each word, monosyllabic in Modern Vietnamese, is written with two Chinese characters or in a composite character made of two different characters.[69]

For examples, the modern Vietnamese word "trời" (heaven) was read as *plời in Old/Ancient Vietnamese.

Middle Vietnamese[edit]


The following diagram shows the orthography and pronunciation of Middle Vietnamese:

Labial Dental/
Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
voiced glottalized b [ɓ] đ [ɗ]
Rhotic r [r]




  • tl /tl/ > modern tr




Word play[edit]

A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers.[70] Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:

Original phrase Phrase after nói lái transformation Structural change
bầy tôi "all the king's subjects" bồi tây "west waiter " initial consonant, rime, and tone switch



la ăn "to eat" la ăn lăn a



Vietnamese slang (tiếng lóng) changed from time to time. Vietnamese slang consists of pure Vietnamese words or words borrowed from other languages such as Mandarin or Indo-European languages.[73] It is estimated that Vietnamese slang that originated from Mandarin accounts for a tiny proportion of all Vietnamese slang (4.6% of surveyed data in newspapers).[73] On the contrary, slang that originated from Indo-European languages accounts for a more significant proportion (12%) and is much more common in today's uses.[73] Slang borrowed from these languages can be either transliteration or vernacular.[73] Some examples:

Word IPA Description
Ex a word borrowed from English used to describe ex-lover, usually pronounced similarly to ếch ("frog"). This is an example of vernacular slang.[73]
ʂo a word derived from the English's word "show" which has the same meaning, usually pair with the word chạy ("to run") to make the phrase chạy sô, which translates in English to "running shows", but its everyday use has the same connotation as "having to do a lot of tasks within a short amount of time". This is an example of transliteration slang.[73]

With the rise of the Internet, new slang is generated and popularized through social media. This more modern slang is commonly used among the younger generation in Vietnam. This more recent slang is mostly pure Vietnamese, and almost all the words are homonyms or some form of wordplay. Some examples:

Word IPA Description
Vãi vǎˀj One of the most popular slang in Vietnamese. Vãi can be a noun, or a verb depends on the context. It refers to a female pagoda-goer in its noun form and refers to spilling something over in its verb form. Nowadays, it's commonly used to emphasize an adjective or a verb. For example, ngon vãi  ("so delicious"), sợ vãi ("so scary").[74] Similar uses to expletive, bloody.
Trẻ trâu ʈʂɛ ʈʂəw A noun whose literal translation is "young buffalo". It is usually used to describe younger children or people who behave like a child, like putting on airs, and act foolishly to attract other people's attention (with negative actions, words, and thoughts).[75]
Gấu ɣə̆w A noun meaning "bear". It is also commonly used to refer to someone's lover.[76]
ɣà A noun meaning "chicken". It is also commonly used to refer to someone's lack of ability to complete or compete in a task.[75]
Cá sấu ka səw A noun meaning "crocodile". It is also commonly used to refer to someone's lack of beauty. The word sấu can be pronounced similar to xấu (ugly).[76]
Thả thính tʰaː tʰiŋ̟ A verb used to describe the action of dropping roasted bran as bait for fish. Nowadays, it is also used to describe the act of dropping hints to another person that one is attracted to.[76]
Nha (and other variants) [ɲaː˧˧] Similar to other particles: nhé, nghe, nhỉ, nhá. It can be used to end sentences. "Rửa chén, nhỉ" can mean "Wash the dishes... yeah?" [77]
Dzô [zo˧˧],[jow˧˧] Eye dialect of the word vô, meaning "in". The letter "z" which is not usually present in the Vietnamese alphabet, can be used for emphasis or for slang terms.[78]

There are debates on the prevalence of uses of slang among young people in Vietnam, as certain teen speak conversations become difficult to understand for older generations. Many critics believed that incorporating teenspeak or internet slang into daily conversation among teenagers would affect the formality and cadence of speech.[79] Others argue that it is not the slang that is the problem but rather the lack of communication techniques for the instant internet messaging era. They believe slang should not be dismissed, but instead, youth should be informed enough to know when to use them and when it is appropriate.[80]

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Written as 㗂越 in Chữ Nôm


  3. ^ From Ethnologue (2009, 2013)
  4. ^ Driem, George van (2001). Languages of the Himalayas, Volume One. BRILL. p. 264. ISBN 90-04-12062-9. Of the approximately 90 millions speakers of Austroasiatic languages, over 70 million speak Vietnamese, nearly ten million speak Khmer and roughly five million speak Santali.
  6. ^ James Stuart Olson (28 February 1998). An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of China. Greenwood Press. p. 158. ISBN 978-0313288531.
  8. ^ MLA Language Map Data Center, Modern Language Association, retrieved 2018-01-20
  9. ^ "CIA World factbook".
  11. ^ "Vietnamese language". Britannica.
  12. ^ "National Minorities | Government of the Czech Republic".
  13. ^ Česko má nové oficiální národnostní menšiny. Vietnamce a Bělorusy (in Czech)
  15. ^ Times, Vietnam (May 30, 2020). "More and more foreigners have need to learn Vietnamese". Vietnam Times.
  18. ^ Vietnamese teaching and learning overwhelming Germany. Retrieved 2015-06-13.
  19. ^ School in Berlin maintains Vietnamese language. Retrieved 2015-06-13.
  23. ^ Hayes, La Vaughn H (1992). "Vietic and Việt-Mường: a new subgrouping in Mon-Khmer". Mon-Khmer Studies. 21: 211–228.
  25. ^ LaPolla, Randy J. (2010). ""Language Contact and Language Change in the History of the Sinitic Languages."". Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 2 (5): 6858–6868. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.05.036.
  26. ^ Phan, John (2013-01-28). "Lacquered Words: The Evolution Of Vietnamese Under Sinitic Influences From The 1St Century Bce Through The 17Th Century Ce". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  27. ^ Phan, John D. & de Sousa, Hilário (2016). "(Paper presented at the International workshop on the history of Colloquial Chinese – written and spoken, Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ, 11–12 March 2016.)" (PDF).CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  28. ^ Phan, John (2010). ""Re-Imagining 'Annam': A New Analysis of Sino–Viet–Muong Linguistic Contact"". Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies. 4: 3–24.
  29. ^ a b c Nguyen & Le (2020). "Japanese Loanwords Adopted into the Vietnamese Language" (PDF). Asian and African Languages and Linguistics. 14: 21.
  30. ^ Chung (2001). "Some returned loans, Japanese loanwords in Taiwan Mandarin". Language Change in East Asia: 161–179.
    Front Central Back
    unrounded rounded
    Open a [a]


  32. ^ In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm đôi.
      /w/ offglide /j/ offglide
    Close-mid êu [ew]
    âu [ʌw]
    ơi [ɤj]
    ây [ʌj]
    ôi [oj]
    Open-mid eo [ɛw] oi [ɔj]
    Open   ao [aw]
    au [ɐw]
    ai [aj]
    ay [ɐj]
  35. ^ Called thanh điệu or thanh in Vietnamese
  37. ^ Deborah, H.-F., W., H. B., & T., E. H. (2002). Characteristics of Vietnamese Phonology. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 11(3), 264–273.
  41. ^ Table data from Hoàng (1989).
  44. ^ Kirby (2011), p. 382.
  49. ^ Jacques, Roland (2002). Portuguese Pioneers of Vietnamese Linguistics Prior to 1650 – Pionniers Portugais de la Linguistique Vietnamienne Jusqu'en 1650 (in English and French). Bangkok, Thailand: Orchid Press. ISBN 974-8304-77-9.
  50. ^ Trần, Quốc Anh; Phạm, Thị Kiều Ly (October 2019). Từ Nước Mặn đến Roma: Những đóng góp của các giáo sĩ Dòng Tên trong quá trình La tinh hoá tiếng Việt ở thế kỷ 17. Conference 400 năm hình thành và phát triển chữ Quốc ngữ trong lịch sử loan báo Tin Mừng tại Việt Nam. Hochiminh City: Committee on Culture, Catholic Bishops' Conference of Vietnam.
  52. ^ admin (2014-02-05). "Vietnamese Language History". Vietnamese Culture and Tradition. Retrieved 2021-01-30.
  53. ^ "French Indochina 500 Piastres 1951".
  54. ^ "North Vietnam 5 Dong 1946".
  55. ^ Vũ Thế Khôi (2009). "Ai “bức tử” chữ Hán-Nôm?".
  56. ^ Sagart, Laurent (2008), "The expansion of Setaria farmers in East Asia", Past human migrations in East Asia: matching archaeology, linguistics and genetics, pp. 141–145
  57. ^ Ferlus, Michael (2009). "A Layer of Dongsonian Vocabulary in Vietnamese". Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. 1: 105.
  58. ^ Alves, Mark (2019-05-10). "Data from Multiple Disciplines Connecting Vietic with the Dong Son Culture". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  59. ^ DeFrancis (1977), p. 8.
  65. ^ a b Thompson, Laurence C. (1976), "Proto-Viet–Muong Phonology", Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications, Austroasiatic Studies Part II, University of Hawai'i Press, 13 (13): 1113–1203, JSTOR 20019198.
  66. ^ Maasaki 2015, p. 143–155.
  67. ^ Gong 2019, p. 60.
  68. ^ Nguyen 2018, p. 162.
  69. ^ Gong 2019, p. 58–59.
  70. ^ Nguyễn Đ.-H. (1997)
  72. ^ Archived 2008-02-22 at the Wayback Machine, Language Log's, and for more examples.
  73. ^ a b c d e f "Tiếng lóng trên các phương tiện truyền thông hiện nay".
  74. ^ "Vãi là gì? Tại sao các bạn trẻ lại hay sử dụng từ này?". 2020-07-18.
  75. ^ a b "10 từ lóng thường dùng của giới trẻ ngày nay". 2016-06-25.
  76. ^ a b c "10 từ lóng thường dùng của giới trẻ ngày nay". 2016-06-25.
  77. ^ "What is the difference between "nhé" and "nha, nghe, nhà, nhỉ" ? "nhé" vs "nha, nghe, nhà, nhỉ" ?". Retrieved 2021-03-14.
  78. ^ "Vã mồ hôi "giải mã" tiếng lóng tuổi teen - Xã hội - VietNamNet". Retrieved 2021-04-06.
  79. ^ "Lo ngại thực trạng sử dụng ngôn ngữ mạng trong học sinh". 2018-12-07.
  80. ^ "Lạm dụng tiếng lóng trong giới trẻ - Thực trạng đáng báo động". 2013-10-17.



  • Emeneau, M. B. (1947). "Homonyms and puns in Annamese". Language. 23 (3): 239–244. doi:10.2307/409878. JSTOR 409878.
  • Rhodes, Alexandre de (1991). L. Thanh; X. V. Hoàng; Q. C. Đỗ (eds.). Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum. Hanoi: Khoa học Xã hội.
  • Nguyen, Dinh Tham (2018). Studies on Vietnamese Language and Literature: A Preliminary Bibliography. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-1-501-71882-3.

Sound system[edit]

Language variation[edit]



Historical and comparative[edit]


  • Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà (1990). "Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script". Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica. 61: 383–432.



External links[edit]

Online lessons
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Research projects and data resources