Vietnamese language

De Rhodes's orthography also made use of an apex diacritic on o and u to indicate a final labial-velar nasal /ngm/, an allophone of /ng/ that is peculiar to the Hanoi dialect to the present day. An example is xao /cawngm^A1/, which later became xong. This diacritic is often mistaken for a tilde in modern reproductions of early Vietnamese writing.

Following the defeat of Southern Vietnam in 1975 by Northern Vietnam in the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese language within Vietnam has gradually shifted towards the Northern dialect.^[48] Hanoi, the largest city in Northern Vietnam was made the capital of Vietnam in 1976. A study stated that "The gap in vocabulary use between speakers in North and South Vietnam is now much narrower than before. There is little to distinguish between how the generations that were born and grew up in the South after 1975 now speak, compared to their peers in the North. This gap is almost non-existent in newspapers, on radio and television, and in websites."^[48] However, this convergence does not apply to emigrants, in which the study states represent "culture freeze", a phenomenon that describes when culture among emigrants is frozen in time and does not evolve with culture in their home country once they move to a new country. Here, culture freeze describes that the use of the language of emigrants from Vietnam has been "frozen" in both vocabulary and pronunciation, and as languages gradually evolve over time, has become a little different than the present Vietnamese language in Vietnam. Additionally, as immigration to the United States following the Vietnam war was primarily driven due to political reasons, the Southern Vietnamese dialect was initially strongly linked to social identity. During and after the Vietnam War, thousands of Southern Vietnamese immigrated to the United States with the partnership between Saigon and the US.^[49][50] In contrast, during and following the Vietnam War, thousands of Northern Vietnamese moved to the Czech Republic due to Hanoi's partnership with the now obsolete Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. As a result, today, the Vietnamese language is generally taught through the Northern dialect in the Czech Republic in contrast with the Southern dialect in the United States.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[c]

As the national language, Vietnamese is the lingua franca in Vietnam. It is also spoken by the Jing people traditionally residing on three islands (now joined to the mainland) off Dongxing in southern Guangxi Province, China.^[51] A large number of Vietnamese speakers also reside in neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos.

In the United States, Vietnamese is the sixth most spoken language, with over 1.5 million speakers, who are concentrated in a handful of states. It is the third-most spoken language in Texas and Washington; fourth-most in Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia; and fifth-most in Arkansas and California.^[52] Vietnamese is the third most spoken language in Australia other than English, after Mandarin and Arabic.^[53] In France, it is the most spoken Asian language and the eighth most spoken immigrant language at home.^[54]

Vietnamese is the sole official and national language of Vietnam. It is the first language of the majority of the Vietnamese population, as well as a first or second language for the country's ethnic minority groups.^[55]

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.^[56][57]

In the U.S. city of San Francisco, municipal services began to be offered in Vietnamese starting in 2024.^[58]

Vietnamese is taught in schools and institutions outside of Vietnam, a large part contributed by its diaspora. In countries with Vietnamese-speaking communities Vietnamese language education largely serves as a role to link descendants of Vietnamese immigrants to their ancestral culture. In neighboring countries and vicinities near Vietnam such as Southern China, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, Vietnamese as a foreign language is largely due to trade, as well as recovery and growth of the Vietnamese economy.^[59][60]

Since the 1980s, Vietnamese language schools (truong Viet ngu/ truong ngon ngu Tieng Viet) have been established for youth in many Vietnamese-speaking communities around the world such as in the United States,^[61] Germany,^[62] and France.^[63][64][65]

Vietnamese has a large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Standard Vietnamese and Vietnamese from Hanoi (including centering diphthongs):^{[66][67][68][69]}

	Front	Central	Back
Centering	ia/ie [i@] (~[ie])	ua/uo [W@] (~[Wu])	ua/uo [u@] (~[uo])
Close	i/y [i]	u [W]	u [u]
Close-mid/ Mid	e [e]	o [u] a [u]/[^]	o [o]
Open-mid/ Open	e [e]	a [a] a [a]/[a]	o [o]

Front and central vowels (i, e, e, u, a, o, a, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, o, o) are rounded. The vowels a [u] and a [a] are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, o and a are basically pronounced the same except that o [u] is of normal length while a [u] is short - the same applies to the vowels long a [a] and short a [a].^[d]

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

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

	/w/ offglide		/j/ offglide
	Front	Central		Back
Centering	ieu [i@w]	uou [W@w]	uoi [W@j]	uoi [u@j]
Close	iu [iw]	uu [Ww]	ui [Wj]	ui [uj]
Close-mid/ Mid	eu [ew]	- au[@w]	oi [uj] ay [uj]	oi [oj]
Open-mid/ Open	eo [ew]	ao [a:w] au [aw]	ai [a:j] ay [aj]	oi [oj]

The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide /j/ is usually written as i; however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs [aj] and [a:j] the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = a + /j/, ai = a + /j/. Thus, tay "hand" is [taj] while tai "ear" is [ta:j]. Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = a + /w/, ao = a + /w/. Thus, thau "brass" is [thaw] while thao "raw silk" is [tha:w].

The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the left.^[66]

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m (m)	n (n)		n (nh)	ng (ng/ngh)
Stop	tenuis	p (p)	t (t)	t ~ ts (tr)	c (ch)	k (c/k/q)
	aspirated		th (th)
	implosive	b (b)	d (d)
Fricative	voiceless	f (ph)	s (x)	s~s (s)		x (kh)	h (h)
	voiced	v (v)	z~j (d/gi)	z (r)		g (g/gh)
Approximant			l (l)		j (y/i)	w (u/o)
Rhotic			r (r)

Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q"). In some cases, they are based on their Middle Vietnamese pronunciation; since that period, ph and kh (but not th) have evolved from aspirated stops into fricatives (like Greek phi and chi), while d and gi have collapsed and converged together (into /z/ in the north and /j/ in the south).

Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.

Syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes /c/, /n/ contrasting with syllable-final t, c /t/, /k/ and n, ng /n/, /ng/ and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch /c/. The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes /k/ and /ng/ that occur after the upper front vowels i /i/ and e /e/; although they also occur after a, but in such cases are believed to have resulted from an earlier e /e/ which diphthongized to ai (cf. ach from aic, anh from aing). (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)

Each Vietnamese syllable is pronounced with one of six inherent tones,^[h] centered on the main vowel or group of vowels. Tones differ in:

• length (duration)
• pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
• pitch height
• phonation

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

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

In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups: (tone pattern)

Words with tones belonging to a particular tone group must occur in certain positions within the poetic verse.

Vietnamese Catholics practice a distinctive style of prayer recitation called doc kinh, in which each tone is assigned a specific note or sequence of notes.

Before Vietnamese switched from a Chinese-based script to a Latin-based script, Vietnamese had used the traditional Chinese system of classifying tones. Using this system, Vietnamese has 8 tones, but modern linguists only count 6 phonemic tones.

Vietnamese tones were classified into two main groups, bang (Ping ; 'level tones') and trac (Ze ; 'sharp tones'). Some tones such as ngang belong to the bang group, while others such as nga belong to the trac group. Then, these tones were further divided in several other categories: binh (Ping ; 'even'), thuong (Shang ; 'rising'), khu (Qu ; 'departing'), and nhap (Ru ; 'entering').

Sac and nang are counted twice in the system, once in khu (Qu ; 'departing') and again in nhap (Ru ; 'entering'). The reason for the extra two tones is that syllables ending in the stops /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/ are treated as having entering tones, but phonetically they are exactly the same.

The tones in the old classification were called Am binh Yin Ping (ngang), Duong binh Yang Ping (huyen), Am thuong Yin Shang (hoi), Duong thuong Yang Shang (nga), Am khu Yin Qu (sac; for words that do not end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/), Duong khu Yang Qu (nang; for words that do not end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/), Am nhap Yin Ru (sac; for words that do end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/), and Duong nhap Yang Ru (nang; for words that do end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/).

Vietnamese, like Thai and many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).^[j] Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to subject-verb-object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. The topic-comment structure is also prevalent in Vietnamese. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.

Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.

Many early studies hypothesized Vietnamese language-origins to have been either Kra-Dai, Sino-Tibetan, or Austroasiatic. Austroasiatic origins are so far the most tenable to date, with some of the oldest words in Vietnamese being Austroasiatic in origin.^[36][71] Vietnamese shares a large amount of vocabulary with the Muong languages, a close relative of the Vietnamese language.

Other compound words, such as nuoc non (chu Nom: Re , "country/nation", lit. "water and mountains"), appear to be of purely Vietnamese origin and used to be inscribed in chu Nom characters (compounded, self-coined Chinese characters) but are now written in the Vietnamese alphabet.

Although Vietnamese roots are classified as Austroasiatic, Vietic, and Viet-Muong, language contact with Chinese heavily influenced the Vietnamese language, causing it to diverge from Viet-Muong around the 10th to 11th century and become Modern Vietnamese. For instance, the Vietnamese word quan ly, meaning "management" (noun) or "manage" (verb), likely descended from the same word as guanli (Guan Li ) in Chinese (also kanri (Guan Li , kanri) in Japanese and gwalli (gwan+ri; Korean: gwanri; Hanja: Guan Li ) in Korean). Instances of Chinese contact include the historical Nam Viet (aka Nanyue) as well as other periods of influence. Besides English and French, which have made some contributions to the Vietnamese language, Japanese loanwords into Vietnamese are also a more recently studied phenomenon.

Modern linguists describe modern Vietnamese having lost many Proto-Austroasiatic phonological and morphological features that original Vietnamese had.^[72] 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 the Vietnamese lexicon had only two influxes of Chinese words, one stemming from the period under actual Chinese rule and a second 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:^[73][74][75] Early Sino-Vietnamese (Han dynasty ca. 1st century CE and Jin dynasty ca. 4th century CE), Late Sino-Vietnamese (Tang dynasty), and Recent Sino-Vietnamese (Ming dynasty and afterwards)

Vietnam became a French protectorate/colonial territory in 1883 (until the Geneva Accords of 1954), which resulted in significant influence from French into the Indochina region (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam). Examples include:

Ca phe in Vietnamese was derived from the French cafe (coffee). Yogurt in Vietnamese is sua chua (lit. 'sour milk'), but it is also calqued from French (yaourt) into Vietnamese (da ua - /j/a ua). Pho mai (cheese) is from the French fromage. Musical note was borrowed into Vietnamese as not or not nhac, from the French note de musique. The Vietnamese term for steering wheel is vo lang, a partial derivation from the French volant directionnel. A necktie (cravate in French) is rendered into Vietnamese as ca vat.

In addition, modern Vietnamese pronunciations of French names correspond directly to the original French pronunciations (Pa-ri for Paris, Mac-xay for Marseille, Booc-do for Bordeaux, etc.), whereas pronunciations of other foreign names (Chinese excluded) are generally derived from English.

Some English words were incorporated into Vietnamese as loan words - such as "TV", borrowed as "tivi" or just TV, but still officially called truyen hinh. Some other borrowings are calques, translated into Vietnamese. For example, 'software' is translated into "phan mem" (literally meaning "soft part"). Some scientific terms, such as "biological cell", were derived from chu Han. For example, the word te bao is Xi Bao in chu Han, whilst other scientific names such as "acetylcholine" are unaltered. Words like "peptide" may be seen as peptit.

Japanese loanwords are a more recently studied phenomenon, with a paper by Nguyen & Le (2020) classifying three waves of Japanese influence - with the first two waves being the principal influxes and the third wave coming from the Vietnamese who studied Japanese.^[76] The first wave consisted of Kanji words created by Japanese to represent Western concepts that were not readily available in Chinese or Japanese, where by the end of the 19th century they were imported to other Asian languages.^[77] This first influx is called Sino-Vietnamese words of Japanese origins. For example, the Vietnamese term for "association club", cau lac bo, which was borrowed from Chinese (Ju Le Bu , pinyin: julebu, jyutping: keoi1 lok6 bou6), and then in turn from Japanese (kanji: Ju Le Bu , katakana: kurabu, romaji: kurabu) which came from the English "club", resulting in indirect borrowing from Japanese.

The second wave was during the brief Japanese occupation of Vietnam from 1940 until 1945. However, Japanese cultural influence in Vietnam started significantly from the 1980s. This newer second wave of Japanese-origin loanwords is distinctive from the Sino-Vietnamese words of Japanese origin in that they were borrowed directly from Japanese. 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". A significant number of new Japanese loanwords were also of Chinese origin. Sometimes the same concept can be described using both Sino-Vietnamese words of Japanese origin (first wave) and new Japanese loanwords (second wave). For example, judo can be referred to as both judo and nhu dao, the Vietnamese reading of Rou Dao .^[76]

Some words, such as lap xuong from La Chang (Chinese sausage), primarily keep to the Cantonese pronunciations, having been brought over by southern Chinese migrants, whereas in Han-Viet, which has been described as being close to Middle Chinese pronunciation, it is actually pronounced lap truong. However, the Cantonese term is the better-known name for Chinese sausage in Vietnam. Meanwhile, any new terms calqued from Chinese would be based on the Mandarin pronunciation. Additionally, in the southern provinces of Vietnam, the term xi ngau [vi] can be used to refer to dice, which may have derived from a Cantonese or Teochew idiom, "xap xi, xap ngau" (Shi Si , Shi Wu , Sino-Vietnamese: thap tu, thap ngu), literally "fourteen, fifteen" to mean 'uncertain'.

Vietnamese slang (tieng long) has changed over time. Vietnamese slang consists of pure Vietnamese words as well as words borrowed from other languages such as Mandarin or Indo-European languages.^[78] It is estimated that Vietnamese slang originating from Mandarin accounts for a tiny proportion (4.6% of surveyed data in newspapers).^[78] On the other hand, slang originating from Indo-European languages accounts for a more significant proportion (12%) and is much more common in today's usage.^[78] Slang borrowed from these languages can be either transliteral or vernacular.^[78] Some examples:

With the rise of the Internet, new slang is generated and popularized through social media. This modern slang is commonly used in the younger generation's teenspeak in Vietnam. This recent slang is mostly pure Vietnamese, and almost all the words are homonyms or some form of wordplay. Some slang words may include profanity swear words (derogatory) or just a play on words.

Some examples with newer and older slang that originate from northern, central, or southern Vietnamese dialects include:

Whilst older slang has been used by previous generations, the prevalence of modern slang used by young people in Vietnam (as teenspeak) has made conversations more difficult for older generations to understand. This has become subject for debate. Some believe that incorporating teenspeak or internet slang in daily conversation among teenagers will affect the formality and cadence of their general speech.^[85] Others argue that it is not 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 adequately informed to recognise when to use it and when it is inappropriate.

After ending a millennium of Chinese rule in 939, the Vietnamese state adopted Literary Chinese (called van ngon Wen Yan or Han van Han Wen in Vietnamese) for official purposes.^[86] Up to the late 19th century (except for two brief interludes), all formal writing, including government business, scholarship and formal literature, was done in Literary Chinese, written with Chinese characters (chu Han).^[87] Although the writing system is now mostly in chu Quoc ngu (Latin script), Chinese script known as chu Han in Vietnamese as well as chu Nom (together, Han-Nom) is still present in such activities as Vietnamese calligraphy.

From around the 13th century, Vietnamese scholars used their knowledge of the Chinese script to develop the chu Nom (lit. 'Southern characters') script to record folk literature in Vietnamese. The script used Chinese characters to represent both borrowed Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and native words with similar pronunciation or meaning. In addition, thousands of new compound characters were created to write Vietnamese words using a variety of methods, including phono-semantic compounds.^[88] For example, in the opening lines of the classic poem The Tale of Kieu,

• the Sino-Vietnamese word menh 'destiny' was written with its original character Ming ;
• the native Vietnamese word ta 'our' was written with the character Xie of the homophonous Sino-Vietnamese word ta 'little, few; rather, somewhat';
• the native Vietnamese word nam 'year' was written with a new character that is compounded from Nan nam and Nian 'year'.

The oldest example of an early form of the Nom is found in a list of names in the Thap Mieu Temple Inscription, dating from the early 13th century AD.^[89][90] Nom writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Nom, most notably Nguyen Du and Ho Xuan Huong (dubbed "the Queen of Nom poetry"). However, it was only used for official purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son dynasties (1400-1406 and 1778-1802 respectively).^[91]

A Vietnamese Catholic, Nguyen Truong To, unsuccessfully petitioned the Court suggesting the adoption of a script for Vietnamese based on Chinese characters.^[92][93]

A romanisation 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.^[94][95] It reflects a "Middle Vietnamese" dialect close to the Hanoi variety as spoken in the 17th century. Its vowels and final consonants correspond most closely to northern dialects while its initial consonants are most similar to southern dialects. (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 Vietnamese alphabet contains 29 letters, supplementing the Latin alphabet with an additional consonant letter (d) and 6 additional vowel letters (a, a/e/o, o, u) formed with diacritics. The Latin letters f, j, w and z are not used.^[96][97] The script also represents additional phonemes using ten digraphs (ch, gh, gi, kh, ng, nh, ph, qu, th, and tr) and a single trigraph (ngh). Further diacritics are used to indicate the tone of each syllable:

Thus, it is possible for diacritics to be stacked e.g. e, combining letter with diacritic, e, with diacritic for tone, e, to make e.

Despite the missionaries' creation of the alphabetic script, chu Nom remained the dominant script in Vietnamese Catholic literature for more than 200 years.^[98] Starting from the late 19th century, the Vietnamese alphabet (chu Quoc ngu or 'national language script') gradually expanded from its initial usage in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.

The romanised 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. The French colonial administration sought to eliminate Chinese writing, Confucianism, and other Chinese influences from Vietnam.^[93] French superseded Literary Chinese in administration. Vietnamese written with the alphabet became required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Resident Superieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. In turn, Vietnamese reformists and nationalists themselves encouraged and popularized the use of chu Quoc ngu. By the middle of the 20th century, most writing was done in chu Quoc ngu, which became the official script on independence.

Nevertheless, chu Han was still in use during the French colonial period and as late as World War II was still featured on banknotes,^[99][100] but fell out of official and mainstream use shortly thereafter. The education reform by North Vietnam in 1950 eliminated the use of chu Han and chu Nom.^[101] Today, only a few scholars and some extremely elderly people are able to read chu Nom or use it in Vietnamese calligraphy. Priests of the Jing minority in China (descendants of 16th-century migrants from Vietnam) use songbooks and scriptures written in chu Nom in their ceremonies.^[102]

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 all included. Telex input method is often set as the default for many devices. Besides third-party software tools, operating systems such as Windows or macOS can also be installed with Vietnamese and Vietnamese keyboard, e.g. Vietnamese Telex in Microsoft Windows.

Tieng Viet speak date in the format "day month year". Each month's name is just the ordinal of that month appended after the word thang, which means "month". Traditional Vietnamese, however, assigns other names to some months; these names are mostly used in the lunar calendar and in poetry.

When written in the short form, "DD/MM/YYYY" is preferred.

Example:

• English: 2 September(nd), 2025
• Vietnamese long form: Ngay hai Thang chin Nam hai nghin khong tram hai muoi lam
• Vietnamese short form: 2 September 2025

The Vietnamese prefer writing numbers with a comma as the decimal separator in lieu of dots, and either spaces or dots to group the digits. An example is 1 629,15 (one thousand six hundred twenty-nine point one five). Because a comma is used as the decimal separator, a semicolon is used to separate two numbers instead.

The Tale of Kieu is an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyen Du, (Ruan You ), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in chu Nom (titled Doan Truong Tan Thanh Duan Chang Xin Sheng ) and is widely taught in Vietnam (in chu Quoc ngu transliteration).

Currently the Nguon language is considered by the Vietnamese government to be a dialect of Vietnamese, however it is also considered a separate Viet-Muong language or the southernmost dialect of Muong language. The Vietnamese language also has several mutually intelligible regional varieties:^[k]

Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North (45%), Central (10%), and South (45%). Michel Ferlus and Nguyen Tai Can found that there was a separate North-Central dialect for Vietnamese as well. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from the northern Nghe An Province to the southern (former) Thua Thien Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.

The dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below) but also in vocabulary (including basic and non-basic vocabulary) and grammar.^[l] The North-Central and the Central regional varieties, which have a significant number of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions because of its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese-speakers (around the end of the 15th century). The North-Central region is particularly conservative since its pronunciation has diverged less from Vietnamese orthography than the other varieties, which tend to merge certain sounds. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent, but more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-Central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects although their pronunciation fits the written language the most closely; that is typically because of various words in their vocabulary that are unfamiliar to other speakers (see the example vocabulary table below).

The large movements of people between North and South since the mid-20th century has resulted in a sizable number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and, to a greater extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. After the Geneva Accords of 1954, which called for the temporary division of the country, about a million northerners (mainly from Hanoi, Haiphong, and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved south (mainly to Saigon and heavily to Bien Hoa and Vung Tau and the surrounding areas) as part of Operation Passage to Freedom. About 150,000 moved in the reverse direction (Tap ket ra Bac, literally "regroup to the North".)

After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally-poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh, and Quang Binh have continued to move south to look for better economic opportunities allowed by the new government's New Economic Zones, a program that lasted from 1975 to 1985.^[103] The first half of the program (1975-1980) resulted in 1.3 million people sent to the New Economic Zones (NEZs), most of which were relocated to the southern half of the country in previously uninhabited areas, and 550,000 of them were Northerners.^[103] The second half (1981-1985) saw almost 1 million Northerners relocated to the New Economic Zones.^[103] Government and military personnel from Northern and North-Central Vietnam are also posted to various locations throughout the country that were 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. The movements have also resulted in some blending of dialects and 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 uses the Northern pronunciation. That is true in both Vietnam and 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 and [r] in the Central and Southern dialects). Thus, the Central and the 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 has since undergone pronunciation shifts.

Although regional variations developed over time, most of those words can be used interchangeably and be understood well, albeit with more or less frequency then others or with slightly different but often discernible word choices and pronunciations. Some accents may mix, with words such da vang combining da and vang, being created.

The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in the North-Central, Central, and Southern varieties but are merged in Northern varieties, which pronounce them the same way. Many North-Central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r, but the Northern varieties have a three-way merger, and the Central and the Southern varieties have a merger of d and gi but keep r distinct. At the end of syllables, the palatals ch and nh have merged with the alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in the Central and the Southern varieties.

In addition to the regional variation described above, there is a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties in the North:^[105]

Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nam by itself and in compound numerals like nam muoi "fifty", but it appears as lam in muoi lam "fifteen" (see Vietnamese grammar#Cardinal). In some northern varieties, the numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai muoi nham "twenty-five", instead of the mainstream hai muoi lam.^[o]

There is also a merger of r and g in certain rural varieties in the South:

The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (in the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties although they have been retained in other closely related Vietic languages. However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is bloi with a cluster in Hao Nho (Yen Mo, Ninh Binh Province) but troi in Southern Vietnamese and gioi in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants /t/, /z/, respectively).

There are six tones in Vietnamese, with phonetic differences between dialects, mostly in the pitch contour and phonation type.

The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation in which 1 represents the lowest pitch, and 5 the highest; glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the <*> symbol; murmured voice with <*> ; glottal stop with <?> ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)

A basic form of word play in Vietnamese involves disyllabic words in which the last syllable forms the first syllable of the next word in the chain. This game involves two members versing each other until the opponent is unable to think of another word. For instance:

Another language game known as noi lai is used by Vietnamese speakers.^[106] Noi lai involves switching, adding or removing the tones in a pair of words and may also involve switching the order of words or the first consonant and the rime of each word. Some examples:

Original phrase		Phrase after noi lai transformation	Structural change
dai dam "peeing oneself"	-	dam dai (literal translation "vinegar stage")	word order and tone switch
chua hoang "pregnancy out of wedlock"	-	hoang chua "scared yet?"	word order and tone switch
bay toi "all the king's subjects"	-	boi tay "waiter (of Western origin)"	initial consonant, rime, and tone switch
bi mat "secrets"	-	bat mi "reveal secrets"	initial consonant and rime switch
Tay Ban Nha "Spain (Espana)"	-	Tay Ban Nha (literal translation "West Sell House", mainly used to mock Spain national football team[107])	initial consonant, rime, and tone switch
Bo Dao Nha "Portugal"	-	Nha Dao Bo (literal translation "House Dig Potty", mainly used to mock Portugal national football team)	word order and tone switch

The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Noi lai can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dam dai and hoang chua (above), or when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with boi tay.^[p] Naturally, noi lai can be used for a humorous effect.^[108]

Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.

Nonsense syllable	Target word		Intermediate form with prefixed syllable		Resulting "secret" word
la	pho "beef or chicken noodle soup"	-	la pho	-	lo pha
la	an "to eat"	-	la an	-	lan a
la	hoan canh "situation"	-	la hoan la canh	-	loan ha lanh ca
chim	hoan canh "situation"	-	chim hoan chim canh	-	choan him chanh kim

This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.

• Vietnamese Wikipedia
• Vietnamese calligraphy
• Vietnamese pronouns
• Vietnamese studies

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Online lessons

• Online Vietnamese lessons Archived 10 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine from Northern Illinois University

Vocabulary

• Vietnamese Vocabulary List (from the World Loanword Database)
• Swadesh list of Vietnamese basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)

Language tools

• The Vietnamese keyboard Archived 13 August 2024 at the Wayback Machine its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
• The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project

Research projects and data resources

• rwaai | Projects RWAAI (Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage)
• Vietnamese in RWAAI Digital Archive