Vietnamese language

Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt) is an Austroasiatic language that originated in Vietnam, where it is the national and official language. Spoken natively by an estimated 93.8 million people (2020), it is the native language of the Vietnamese (Kinh) people, as well as a first or second language for ethnic groups in Vietnam. Vietnamese speakers are also found in Southeast Asia, East Asia, North America, Australia and Europe (also see Vietnamese emigration). Vietnamese has been officially recognized as a minority language in 10 countries.[6]

Vietnamese
Tiếng Việt
Pronunciation[tǐəŋ vìəˀt] (Northern)
[tǐəŋ jìək] (Southern)
Native toVietnam and China (Dongxing, Guangxi)
Native speakers
100 million (2020 L2 speaker 2 million)[1]
Latin (Vietnamese alphabet)
Vietnamese Braille
Chữ Nôm (formerly used until the 1920s)
Official status
Official language in
 Vietnam
 ASEAN[2]
Recognised minority
language in
Language codes
ISO 639-1vi
ISO 639-2vie
ISO 639-3vie
Glottologviet1252[3]
Linguasphere46-EBA
Natively Vietnamese-speaking (non-minority) areas of Vietnam[4]
Percentage of the ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh), by province[5]
  <20%
  20%–40%
  40%–60%
  60%–80%
  80%–95%
  >95%
Global distribution of speakers

Vietnamese is a Austroasiatic language with currently the most speakers, however due to historical reasons, Vietnamese language is a bit different than its two other relatives, Khmer and Mon.[7] Its vocabulary has strong borrowings from Chinese, a legacy of ancient Chinese rule in northern Vietnam that led to the strong Chinese characteristics in Vietnamese. French is the second most influenced language on Vietnamese due to French Jesuit missionary and later colonization spanned from 16th to 20th century. English and Russian are the two other sources of influence, a consequence of Vietnam War as North Vietnam aligned with Russia while South Vietnam aligned with the United States. Vietnamese used to use Chinese characters and a script called Chữ Nôm which was based on Chinese characters, but used newly invented characters for native Vietnamese words. The Vietnamese alphabet (chữ quốc ngữ) uses the Latin alphabet with diacritics for tones and pronunciation.

Geographic distribution

As the national language, Vietnamese is spoken by practically everyone 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.[8] A significant number of Vietnamese speakers also reside in neighboring Cambodia and Laos.

In the United States, Vietnamese is the fifth 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 in Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia; and fifth in Arkansas and California.[9] Vietnamese is the seventh most spoken language in Australia.[10] In France, it is the most spoken Asian language and the eighth most spoken immigrant language at home.[11]

Official status

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. [12]

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.[13][14]

As a foreign language

Vietnamese is increasingly being taught in schools and institutions outside of Vietnam, a part which was contributed by its large diaspora. In countries with strongly established Vietnamese-speaking communities such as Australia, Germany, Canada, Belgium, France, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic and the United States, 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 and Thailand, the increased role of Vietnamese in foreign language education is largely due to the growth and influence of Vietnam's economy.[15]

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

Historic and stronger trade and diplomatic relations with Vietnam and a growing interest among the French Vietnamese population (one of France's most established non-European ethnic groups) of their ancestral culture have also led to an increasing number of institutions in France, including universities, to offer formal courses in the language.[18]

Since the late 1980s, the Vietnamese German community has enlisted the support of city governments to bring Vietnamese into high school curricula 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 investment in Vietnam.[19][19][20]

Vietnamese is taught in schools in the form of dual immersion to a varying degree in Cambodia,[21] Laos,[22] and the United States.[23][24] Classes teach students subjects in Vietnamese and another language. Furthermore, in Thailand, Vietnamese is one of the most popular foreign languages in schools and colleges.[25]

In East Asia, which share a strong cultural common with Vietnam for being part of Sinosphere, rising number of Vietnamese language learners can also be found in China, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea.[26] Several universities in China since 2010s have incorporated Vietnamese into its education course.[27] The phenomenon also rises in South Korea due to recent improvement of relationship between two countries and due to historical bond dated from Lý Long Tường's fleeing from Vietnam to Korea.[28] Since 2018, Taiwan has started to include Vietnamese as one of its education in elementary schools.[29] Vietnamese also gains significant interest in Japan.[30]

Linguistic classification

Early linguistic work some 150 years ago[31] already classified Vietnamese as belonging to the Mon–Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, 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.[32] The term "Vietic" was proposed by Hayes (1992),[33] 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).[34]

Lexicon

As a result of the historical period of Vietnam under Chinese rule, and consequent influence from China as a neighbour as an independent state, Vietnamese lexicon received a two-fold layer of integration of Chinese words from Middle Chinese (during the time Vietnam was annexed by China) and from Literary Chinese (when Vietnam gained independence after 938 AD) into Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.

Other borrowings, such as those from the Cham language, were due to inter-trading between the two groups and from Vietnam's annexation of the Champa Kingdom, which absorbed the Champa's Indianized culture, creating Central Vietnam. The same happened to the South-East section of the Khmer Kingdom, creating South Vietnam.

Additionally, from the French presence in Vietnam (1777) to the 1954 Geneva Conference (1954), Vietnamese has been influenced by 177 years of the French language. For example, the word 'cà phê' is derived from the French word 'café'. Following the end of French colonization, Vietnamese receives influence from English and Russian languages, a fact that was contributed by the Vietnam War.

Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon due to influence from the Western World; for example 'TV' is written as 'tivi'. Sometimes these words are calques translated into Vietnamese (for example, 'software' is calqued into 'phần mềm', which means "soft-part"). Some calques are multi-syllabic, e.g. Campuchia (Cambodia).

Phonology
Main article: Vietnamese phonology

Vowels

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

  Front Central Back
Centering ia/iê [iə̯] ưa/ươ [ɨə̯] ua/uô [uə̯]
Close i/y [i] ư [ɨ] u [u]
Close-mid/
Mid		 ê [e] ơ [əː]
â [ə]		 ô [o]
Open-mid/
Open		 e [ɛ] a [aː]
ă [a]		 o [ɔ]

Front and central vowels (i, ê, e, ư, â, ơ, ă, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â [ə] and ă [a] are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, ơ and â are basically pronounced the same except that ơ [əː] is of normal length while â [ə] is short – the same applies to the vowels long a [aː] and short ă [a].[35]

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[36] and triphthongs. The closing diphthongs and triphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide /j/ or /w/.[37] 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.[38]

  /w/ offglide /j/ offglide
Front Central Back
Centering iêu [iə̯w] ươu [ɨə̯w] ươi [ɨə̯j] uôi [uə̯j]
Close iu [iw] ưu [ɨw] ưi [ɨj] ui [uj]
Close-mid/
Mid		 êu [ew] –
âu [əw]		 ơi [əːj]
ây [əj]		 ôi [oj]
Open-mid/
Open		 eo [ɛw] ao [aːw]
au [aw]		 ai [aːj]
ay [aj]		 oi [ɔj]

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 [āj] and [āːj] the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = ă + /j/, ai = a + /j/. Thus, tay "hand" is [tāj] while tai "ear" is [tāːj]. Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = ă + /w/, ao = a + /w/. Thus, thau "brass" is [tʰāw] while thao "raw silk" is [tʰāːw].

Consonants

The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.

Labial Dental/
Alveolar		 Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m [m] n [n] nh [ɲ] ng/ngh [ŋ]
Stop tenuis p [p] t [t] tr [ʈ] ch [c] c/k/q [k]
aspirated th [tʰ]
glottalized b [ɓ] đ [ɗ]
Fricative voiceless ph [f] x [s] s [ʂ] kh [x] h [h]
voiced v [v] d/gi [z~j] g/gh [ɣ]
Approximant l [l] y/i [j] u/o [w]
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").

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.

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

Tones
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as spoken by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyễn & Edmondson (1998).

Each Vietnamese syllable is pronounced with an inherent tone,[39] centered on the main vowel or group of vowels. 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).[40] The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi), with their self-referential Vietnamese names, are:

Name Description Diacritic Example Sample vowel
ngang   'level' mid level (no mark) ma  'ghost' a 
huyền   'deep' low falling (often breathy) ◌̀ (grave accent) mà  'but' à 
sắc   'sharp' high rising ◌́ (acute accent) má  'cheek, mother (southern)' á 
hỏi   'asking' mid dipping-rising ◌̉ (hook above) mả  'tomb, grave' ả 
ngã   'tumbling' high breaking-rising ◌̃ (tilde) mã  'horse (Sino-Vietnamese), code' ã 
nặng   'heavy' low falling constricted (short length) ◌̣ (dot below) mạ  'rice seedling' ạ 

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

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

Tone group Tones within tone group
bằng "level, flat" ngang and huyền
trắc "oblique, sharp" sắc, hỏi, ngã, and nặng

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 đọc kinh, in which each tone is assigned a specific note or sequence of notes.

Language variation

The Vietnamese language has several mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects). The five main dialects are as follows:[41]

Dialect region Localities Names under French colonization
Northern Vietnamese Hanoi, Haiphong, Red River Delta, Northwest and Northeast Tonkinese
North-central (or Area IV) Vietnamese Thanh Hoá, Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh Annamese
Mid-Central Vietnamese Quảng Bình, Quảng Trị, Huế, Thừa Thiên Annamese
South-Central Vietnamese (or Area V) Đà Nẵng, Quảng Nam, Quảng Ngãi, Bình Định, Phú Yên, Nha Trang Annamese
Southern Vietnamese Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu, Ho Chi Minh City, Lâm Đồng, Mekong Delta Cochinchinese

Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Ferlus and Nguyễn Tài Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. 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.

These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar.[42] The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount 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 due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative; 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, while 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, despite the fact that their pronunciation fits the written language the most closely; this is typically because of various words in their vocabulary which are unfamiliar to other speakers (see the example vocabulary table below).

The large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a sizeable number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and, to a greater extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that 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 Biên Hòa and Vũng Tàu, and the surrounding areas) as part of Operation Passage to Freedom. About 3% (~30,000) of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction (Tập kết ra Bắc, literally "go to the North".)

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 1975–85.[43] 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 in the southern half of the country in previously uninhabited areas, of which 550,000 were Northerners.[43] The second half (1981–85) saw almost 1 million Northerners relocated to the NEZs.[43] As well, government and military personnel, many from Northern and north-central Vietnam, are 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 business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have 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 Standardised accent if possible (which is Northern pronunciation). This is true in Vietnam as well as in overseas Vietnamese communities.

Vocabulary
Regional variation in vocabulary[44]
NorthernCentralSouthernEnglish gloss
nàyni, nìnè"this"
thế nàynhư rinhư vầy"thus, this way"
đấynớ, têđó"that"
thế, thế ấyrứa, rứa têvậy, vậy đó"thus, so, that way"
kia, kìatê, tềđó"that yonder"
đâumôđâu"where"
nàomồnào"which"
tại saorăngtại sao"why"
thế nào, như nàorăng, làm rănglàm sao"how"
tôituitui"I, me (polite)"
taotautao"I, me (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng taochoa, bọn choatụi tao, tụi tui, bọn tui"we, us (but not you, colloquial, familiar)"
màymimày"you (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng màybây, bọn bâytụi mầy, tụi bây, bọn mày"you guys (arrogant, familiar)"
nó hắn nó "he/she/it (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng nóbọn nớtụi nó"they/them (arrogant, familiar)"
ông ấyông nớổng"he/him, that gentleman, sir"
bà ấybà nớbả"she/her, that lady, madam"
anh ấyanh nớảnh"he/him, that young man (of equal status)"
ruộngnươngruộng,rẫy"field"
bátđọichén"rice bowl"
bẩnnhớpdơ"dirty"
muôimôivá"ladle"
đầutrốcđầu"head"
lườinháclàm biếng, lười"lazy"
ô tôô tôxe hơi (ô tô)"car"
thìathìamuỗng"spoon"

Consonants

The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-Central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-Central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.

Regional consonant correspondences
Syllable positionOrthographyNorthernNorth-centralCentralSouthern
syllable-initial x [s] [s]
s [ʂ][s, ʂ][45]
ch [t͡ɕ] [c]
tr [ʈ][c, ʈ][45]
r [z] [r]
d [ɟ] [j] [j]
gi [z]
v [v] [v, j][46]
syllable-final t [t] [k]
c [k]
t
after i, ê		 [t] [t]
ch [k̟]
t
after u, ô		 [t] [kp]
c
after u, ô, o		 [kp]
n [n] [ŋ]
ng [ŋ]
n
after i, ê		 [n] [n]
nh [ŋ̟]
n
after u, ô		 [n] [ŋm]
ng
after u, ô, o		 [ŋm]

In addition to the regional variation described above, there is a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties in the North:[47]

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

Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as năm by itself and in compound numerals like năm mươi "fifty" but appears as lăm in mười lăm "fifteen" (see Vietnamese grammar#Cardinal). In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mươi nhăm "twenty-five", instead of mainstream hai mươi lăm.[48]

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

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

The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blời with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô, Ninh Bình Province) but trời in Southern Vietnamese and giời in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants /ʈ/, /z/, respectively).

Tones

Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The hỏi and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have 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 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
Chương		Hà Tĩnh
ngang ˧ 33˧˥ 35˧˥ 35˧˥ 35, ˧˥˧ 353˧˥ 35˧ 33
huyền ˨˩̤ 21̤˧ 33˧ 33˧ 33˧ 33˨˩ 21
sắc ˧˥ 35˩ 11˩ 11, ˩˧̰ 13̰˩˧̰ 13̰˩˧̰ 13̰˧˥ 35
hỏi ˧˩˧̰ 31̰3˧˩ 31 ˧˩ 31 ˧˩̰ʔ 31̰ʔ ˧˩˨ 312 ˨˩˦ 214
ngã ˧ʔ˥ 3ʔ5˩˧̰ 13̰ ˨̰ 22̰
nặng ˨˩̰ʔ 21̰ʔ˨ 22˨̰ 22̰˨̰ 22̰˨˩˨ 212

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

Grammar
Main articles: Vietnamese grammar and Vietnamese morphology

Vietnamese, like Chinese 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).[49] 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. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.

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

Minh

Minh

là

BE

giáo viên

teacher.

Minh là {giáo viên}

Minh BE teacher.

"Min is a teacher."

Trí

Trí

13

13

tuổi

age

Trí 13 tuổi

Trí 13 age

"Trí is 13 years old,"

Tài

Tài

đang

PRES.CONT

nói.

talk

Tài đang nói.

Tài PRES.CONT talk

"Tài is talking."

Mai

Mai

có vẻ

seem

là

BE

sinh viên

student (college)

hoặc

or

học sinh.

student (under-college)

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

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

"Mai seems to be a college or high school student."

Giáp

Giáp

rất

INT

cao.

tall

Giáp rất cao.

Giáp INT tall

"Giáp is very tall."

Người

person

đó

that.DET

là

BE

anh

older brother

của

POSS

nó.

3.PRO

Người đó là anh của nó.

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

"That person is his/her brother."

Con

CL

chó

dog

này

DET

chẳng

NEG

bao giờ

ever

sủa

bark

cả.

all

Con chó này chẳng {bao giờ} sủa cả.

CL dog DET NEG ever bark all

"This dog never barks at all."

Nó

3.PRO

chỉ

just

ăn

eat

cơm

rice.FAM

Việt Nam

Vietnam

thôi.

only

Nó chỉ ăn cơm {Việt Nam} thôi.

3.PRO just eat rice.FAM Vietnam only

"He/she/it only eats Vietnamese rice (or food, especially spoken by the elderly)."

Tôi

1.PRO

thích

like

con

CL

ngựa

horse

đen.

black

Tôi thích con ngựa đen.

1.PRO like CL horse black

"I like the black horse."

Tôi

1.PRO

thích

like

cái

FOC

con

CL

ngựa

horse

đen

black

đó.

DET

Tôi thích cái con ngựa đen đó.

1.PRO like FOC CL horse black DET

"I like that black horse."

Hãy

HORT

ở lại

stay

đây

here

ít

few

phút

minute

cho tới

until

khi

when

tôi

1.PRO

quay

turn

lại.

come

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

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

"Please stay here for a few minutes until I come back."

Dates and numbers writing formats

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

English month nameVietnamese month name
NormalTraditional
JanuaryTháng mộtTháng giêng
FebruaryTháng hai
MarchTháng ba
AprilTháng tư
MayTháng năm
JuneTháng sáu
JulyTháng bảy
AugustTháng tám
SeptemberTháng chín
OctoberTháng mười
NovemberTháng mười một
DecemberTháng mười haiTháng chạp

When written in the short form, "DD/MM/YYYY" is preferred. Historically, the Vietnamese order was the same as Chinese, Korean and Japanese (YYYY/MM/DD), but it changed because of French influence in the 20th century. Today, the latter format is still comprehensible by most Vietnamese.

Example:

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

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 fifteen). Because a comma is used as the decimal separator, a semicolon is used to separate two numbers instead.

Writing systems
Main articles: History of writing in Vietnam, Vietnamese alphabet, Chữ Nôm, and Vietnamese Braille
In the bilingual dictionary Nhật dụng thường đàm (1851), Chinese characters (chữ nho) are explained in chữ Nôm.
Jean-Louis Taberd's dictionary Dictionarium anamitico-latinum (1838) represents Vietnamese (then Annamese) words in the Latin alphabet and chữ Nôm.
A sign at the Hỏa Lò Prison museum in Hanoi lists rules for visitors in both Vietnamese and English.

Up to the late 19th century, two writing systems based on Chinese characters were used in Vietnam.[50] All formal writing, including government business, scholarship and formal literature, was done in Classical Chinese (chữ nho 𡨸儒 "scholar's characters").

Folk literature in Vietnamese was recorded using the chữ Nôm script, in which many Chinese characters were borrowed and many more modified and invented to represent native Vietnamese words. 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 Vietnamese Catholic, Nguyễn Trường Tộ, sent petitions to the Court which suggested a Chinese character-based syllabary which would be used for Vietnamese sounds; however, his petition failed. The French colonial administration sought to eliminate the Chinese writing system, Confucianism, and other Chinese influences from Vietnam by getting rid of Nôm.[51]

A romanization of Vietnamese was codified in the 17th century by the French Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes (1591–1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa. This Vietnamese alphabet (chữ quốc ngữ or "national script") was gradually expanded from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population. Under French Indochina 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. By the middle of the 20th century virtually all writing was done in chữ quốc ngữ, which became the official script on independence. Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after World War II,[52][53] but fell out of official use shortly thereafter. Only a few scholars and some extremely elderly people are able to read chữ Nôm today. In China, members of the Jing minority still write in chữ Nôm.

Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954–1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyễn 1996). 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.)

Computer support
Main article: Vietnamese language and computers

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 true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.

History

It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been 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.[54][55]

Distinctive tonal variations emerged during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon.

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 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 comprise about a third of the Vietnamese lexicon, and may account for as much as 60% of the vocabulary used in formal texts.[56])

When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as đầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sơ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French.

Henri Maspero described six periods of the Vietnamese language:[57][58]

  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 charaters 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.

Proto-Viet–Muong

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:[59][60][61][62]

Labial Dental/Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Stop tenuis *p > b *t > đ *c > ch *k > k/c/q *ʔ > #
voiced *b > b *d > đ *ɟ > ch *ɡ > k/c/q
aspirated *pʰ > ph *tʰ > th *kʰ > kh
voiced glottalized *ɓ > m *ɗ > n *ʄ > nh 1
Nasal *m > m *n > n *ɲ > nh *ŋ > ng/ngh
Affricate *tʃ > x 1
Fricative voiceless *s > t *h > h
voiced 2 *(β) > v 3 *(ð) > d *(r̝) > r 4 *(ʝ) > gi *(ɣ) > g/gh
Approximant *w > v *l > l *r > r *j > d

^1 According to Ferlus, */tʃ/ and */ʄ/ are not accepted by all researchers. Ferlus 1992[59] 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[59] proposes that originally there were both voiced and voiceless fricatives, corresponding to original voiced or voiceless stops, but Ferlus 2009[60] 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/
  • *c, *ɟ, *tʃ > /ʝ/
  • *k, *ɡ > /ɣ/

^3 In Middle Vietnamese, the outcome of these sounds was written with a hooked b (), representing a /β/ that was still distinct from v (then pronounced /w/). See below.

^4 It is unclear what this sound was. According to Ferlus 1992,[59] in the Archaic Vietnamese period (c. 10th century AD, when Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary was borrowed) it was *r̝, distinct at that time from *r.

The following initial clusters occurred, with outcomes indicated:

  • *pr, *br, *tr, *dr, *kr, *gr > /kʰr/ > /kʂ/ > s
  • *pl, *bl > MV bl > Northern gi, Southern tr
  • *kl, *gl > MV tl > tr
  • *ml > MV ml > mnh > nh
  • *kj > gi

A large number of words were borrowed from Middle Chinese, forming part of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. These caused the original introduction of the retroflex sounds /ʂ/ and /ʈ/ (modern s, tr) into the language.

Origin of the tones

Proto-Viet–Muong had no tones to speak of. The tones later developed in some of the daughter languages from distinctions in the initial and final consonants. Vietnamese tones developed as follows:

Register Initial consonant Smooth ending Glottal ending Fricative ending
High (first) register Voiceless A1 ngang "level" B1 sắc "sharp" C1 hỏi "asking"
Low (second) register Voiced A2 huyền "deep" B2 nặng "heavy" C2 ngã "tumbling"

Glottal-ending syllables ended with a glottal stop /ʔ/, while fricative-ending syllables ended with /s/ or /h/. Both types of syllables could co-occur with a resonant (e.g. /m/ or /n/).

At some point, a tone split occurred, as in many other Southeast Asian languages. Essentially, an allophonic distinction developed in the tones, whereby the tones in syllables with voiced initials were pronounced differently from those with voiceless initials. (Approximately speaking, the voiced allotones were pronounced with additional breathy voice or creaky voice and with lowered pitch. The quality difference predominates in today's northern varieties, e.g. in Hanoi, while in the southern varieties the pitch difference predominates, as in Ho Chi Minh City.) Subsequent to this, the plain-voiced stops became voiceless and the allotones became new phonemic tones. Note that the implosive stops were unaffected, and in fact developed tonally as if they were unvoiced. (This behavior is common to all East Asian languages with implosive stops.)

As noted above, Proto-Viet–Muong had sesquisyllabic words with an initial minor syllable (in addition to, and independent of, initial clusters in the main syllable). When a minor syllable occurred, the main syllable's initial consonant was intervocalic and as a result suffered lenition, becoming a voiced fricative. The minor syllables were eventually lost, but not until the tone split had occurred. As a result, words in modern Vietnamese with voiced fricatives occur in all six tones, and the tonal register reflects the voicing of the minor-syllable prefix and not the voicing of the main-syllable stop in Proto-Viet–Muong that produced the fricative. For similar reasons, words beginning with /l/ and /ŋ/ occur in both registers. (Thompson 1976[62] reconstructed voiceless resonants to account for outcomes where resonants occur with a first-register tone, but this is no longer considered necessary, at least by Ferlus.)

Middle Vietnamese

The writing system used for Vietnamese is based closely on the system developed by Alexandre de Rhodes for his 1651 Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum. It reflects the pronunciation of the Vietnamese of Hanoi at that time, a stage commonly termed Middle Vietnamese (tiếng Việt trung đại). The pronunciation of the "rime" of the syllable, i.e. all parts other than the initial consonant (optional /w/ glide, vowel nucleus, tone and final consonant), appears nearly identical between Middle Vietnamese and modern Hanoi pronunciation. On the other hand, the Middle Vietnamese pronunciation of the initial consonant differs greatly from all modern dialects, and in fact is significantly closer to the modern Saigon dialect than the modern Hanoi dialect.

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

Labial Dental/
Alveolar		 Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m [m] n [n] nh [ɲ] ng/ngh [ŋ]
Stop tenuis p [p]1 t [t] tr [ʈ] ch [c] c/k [k]
aspirated ph [pʰ] th [tʰ] kh [kʰ]
voiced glottalized b [ɓ] đ [ɗ]
Fricative voiceless s/ſ [ʂ] x [ɕ] h [h]
voiced ꞗ [β]2 d [ð] gi [ʝ] g/gh [ɣ]
Approximant v/u/o [w] l [l] y/i/ĕ [j]3
Rhotic r [r]
The first page of the ꞗ section in Alexandre de Rhodes's Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum (Vietnamese–Portuguese–Latin dictionary)

^1 [p] occurs only at the end of a syllable.
^2 This symbol, "Latin small letter B with flourish", looks like: . It has a rounded hook that starts halfway up the left side (where the top of the curved part of the b meets the vertical, straight part) and curves about 180 degrees counterclockwise, ending below the bottom-left corner.
^3 [j] does not occur at the beginning of a syllable, but can occur at the end of a syllable, where it is notated i or y (with the difference between the two often indicating differences in the quality or length of the preceding vowel), and after /ð/ and /β/, where it is notated ĕ. This ĕ, and the /j/ it notated, have disappeared from the modern language.

Note that b [ɓ] and p [p] never contrast in any position, suggesting that they are allophones.

The language also has three clusters at the beginning of syllables, which have since disappeared:

  • tl /tl/ > modern tr
  • bl /ɓl/ > modern gi (Northern), tr (Southern)
  • ml /ml/ > mnh /mɲ/ > modern nh

Most of the unusual correspondences between spelling and modern pronunciation are explained by Middle Vietnamese. Note in particular:

  • de Rhodes' system has two different b letters, a regular b and a "hooked" b in which the upper section of the curved part of the b extends leftward past the vertical bar and curls down again in a semicircle. This apparently represented a voiced bilabial fricative /β/. Within a century or so, both /β/ and /w/ had merged as /v/, spelled as v.
  • de Rhodes' system has a second medial glide /j/ that is written ĕ and appears in some words with initial d and hooked b. These later disappear.
  • đ /ɗ/ was (and still is) alveolar, whereas d /ð/ was dental. The choice of symbols was based on the dental rather than alveolar nature of /d/ and its allophone [ð] in Spanish and other Romance languages. The inconsistency with the symbols assigned to /ɓ/ vs. /β/ was based on the lack of any such place distinction between the two, with the result that the stop consonant /ɓ/ appeared more "normal" than the fricative /β/. In both cases, the implosive nature of the stops does not appear to have had any role in the choice of symbol.
  • x was the alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕ/ rather than the dental /s/ of the modern language. In 17th-century Portuguese, the common language of the Jesuits, s was the apico-alveolar sibilant /s̺/ (as still in much of Spain and some parts of Portugal), while x was a palatoalveolar /ʃ/. The similarity of apicoalveolar /s̺/ to the Vietnamese retroflex /ʂ/ led to the assignment of s and x as above.
de Rhodes's entry for dĕóu᷄ shows distinct breves, acutes and apices.

De Rhodes's orthography also made use of an apex diacritic to indicate a final labial-velar nasal /ŋ͡m/, an allophone of /ŋ/ that is peculiar to the Hanoi dialect to the present day. This diacritic is often mistaken for a tilde in modern reproductions of early Vietnamese writing.

Word play

A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers.[63] 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 phrasePhrase after nói lái transformationStructural change
đái dầm "(child) pee "→dấm đài (literal translation "vinegar stage")word order and tone switch
chửa hoang "pregnancy out of wedlock"→hoảng chưa "scared yet?"word order and tone switch
bầy tôi "all the king's subjects"→bồi tây "French waiter"initial consonant, rime, and tone switch
bí mật "secrets"→bật mí "revealing secrets"initial consonant and rime switch

The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm đài and hoảng chưa (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bồi tây.[64] Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect.[65]

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 syllableTarget wordIntermediate form with prefixed syllableResulting "secret" word
laphở "beef or chicken noodle soup"→la phở→lơ phả
laăn "to eat"→la ăn→lăn a
lahoàn cảnh "situation"→la hoàn la cảnh→loan hà lanh cả
chimhoàn cảnh "situation"→chim hoàn chim cảnh→choan hìm chanh kỉm

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

Examples

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

gollark: Wondrous.
gollark: <@!113673208296636420> What iß "eight"?
gollark: I know, I accidentally topple governments *all the time*. It's getting irritating.
gollark: PotatOS doesn't have selfdestruct right now.
gollark: - going into solar orbit/escaping Earth's SOI would require a lot of fuel- it would just stay in solar orbit for absolutely ages

See also

References
  1. Vietnamese at Ethnologue (22nd ed., 2019)
  2. "Languages of ASEAN". Retrieved 7 August 2017.
  3. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Vietnamese". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. From Ethnologue (2009, 2013)
  5. "The 2009 Vietnam Population and Housing Census: Completed Results". General Statistics Office of Vietnam: Central Population and Housing Census Steering Committee. June 2010. Archived from the original on October 18, 2013. Retrieved 26 November 2013.
  6. Citizens belonging to minorities, which traditionally and on long-term basis live within the territory of the Czech Republic, enjoy the right to use their language in communication with authorities and in front of the courts of law (for the list of recognized minorities see National Minorities Policy of the Government of the Czech Republic, Belorussian and Vietnamese since 4 July 2013, see Česko má nové oficiální národnostní menšiny. Vietnamce a Bělorusy). The article 25 of the Czech Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedoms ensures right of the national and ethnic minorities for education and communication with authorities in their own language. Act No. 500/2004 Coll. (The Administrative Rule) in its paragraph 16 (4) (Procedural Language) ensures, that a citizen of the Czech Republic, who belongs to a national or an ethnic minority, which traditionally and on long-term basis lives within the territory of the Czech Republic, have right to address an administrative agency and proceed before it in the language of the minority. In the case that the administrative agency doesn't have an employee with knowledge of the language, the agency is bound to obtain a translator at the agency's own expense. According to Act No. 273/2001 (About The Rights of Members of Minorities) paragraph 9 (The right to use language of a national minority in dealing with authorities and in front of the courts of law) the same applies for the members of national minorities also in front of the courts of law.
  7. Driem, George van (2001). Handbuch Der Orientalistik. 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.
  8. Tsung, Linda (2014). Language Power and Hierarchy: Multilingual Education in China. Bloomsbury. p. 188. ISBN 978-1-4411-4235-1.
  9. MLA Language Map Data Center, Modern Language Association, retrieved 2018-01-20
  10. CIA World factbook
  11. La dynamique des langues en France au fil du XXe siècle Insee, enquête Famille 1999. (in French)
  12. "Vietnamese language". Britannica.
  13. Government Council for National Minorities, Belorussian and Vietnamese since 4 July 2013
  14. Česko má nové oficiální národnostní menšiny. Vietnamce a Bělorusy (in Czech)
  15. More Thai Students Interested in Learning ASEAN Languages Archived 2015-01-10 at the Wayback Machine. April 16, 2014. The Government Public Relations Department. Retrieved 2015-01-10.
  16. Nguyen, Angie; Dao, Lien, eds. (May 18, 2007). "Vietnamese in the United States" (PDF). California State Library. p. 82. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 4, 2016. Retrieved January 10, 2015.
  17. Lam, Ha (2008). "Vietnamese Immigration". In González, Josué M. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications. pp. 884–887. ISBN 978-1-4129-3720-7.
  18. Blanc, Marie-Eve (2004), "Vietnamese in France", in Ember, Carol (ed.), Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World, Springer, p. 1162, ISBN 978-0-306-48321-9
  19. Vietnamese teaching and learning overwhelming Germany. Retrieved 2015-06-13.
  20. School in Berlin maintains Vietnamese language. Retrieved 2015-06-13.
  21. Vietnamese students in Cambodia usher in new school year Archived 2018-07-11 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2015-06-13.
  22. Teaching the Vietnamese language in Laos. Retrieved 2015-06-13.
  23. More US schools join Seattle, add Vietnamese to dual immersion. Retrieved 2015-06-13.
  24. Vietnamese taught at school with community in mind. Retrieved 2015-06-13.
  25. Teaching Vietnamese in Thailand
  26. https://vietnamtimes.org.vn/more-and-more-foreigners-have-need-to-learn-vietnamese-20847.html
  27. https://123vietnamese.com/multi-motivation-vietnamese-study-method-teaching-vietnamese-foreign-language/
  28. https://e.vnexpress.net/news/business/koreans-rush-to-study-vietnamese-for-new-business-opportunities-amidst-china-s-boycott-3739631.html
  29. https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/taiwan-to-teach-vietnamese-in-elementary-schools-from-2018-3527413.html
  30. https://www.languagemagazine.com/2017/08/20/vietnamese-rise-japan/
  31. "Mon–Khmer languages: The Vietic branch". SEAlang Projects. Retrieved November 8, 2006.
  32. Ferlus, Michel. 1996. Langues et peuples viet-muong. Mon-Khmer Studies 26. 7–28.
  33. Hayes, La Vaughn H (1992). "Vietic and Việt-Mường: a new subgrouping in Mon-Khmer". Mon-Khmer Studies. 21: 211–228.
  34. Diffloth, Gérard. (1992). "Vietnamese as a Mon-Khmer language". Papers from the First Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 125–128. Tempe, Arizona: Program for Southeast Asian Studies.
  35. There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
    Front Central Back
    unrounded rounded
    Centering ia~iê [iə̯] ưa~ươ [ɯə̯] ua~uô [uə̯]
    Close i [i] ư [ɯ] u [u]
    Close-mid ê [e] ơ [ɤ] ô [o]
    Open-mid e [ɛ] ă [ɐ] â [ʌ] o [ɔ]
    Open a [a]
    This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of ă and â would then be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel ă [ɐ] as being slightly higher (upper low) than a [a].
  36. In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm đôi.
  37. The closing diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
      /w/ offglide /j/ offglide
    Centering iêu [iə̯w] ươu [ɯə̯w] ươi [ɯə̯j] uôi [uə̯j]
    Close iu [iw] ưu [ɯw] ưi [ɯj] ui [uj]
    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]    		  
  38. The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., [əːw]) is an apparent gap.
  39. Called thanh điệu or thanh in Vietnamese
  40. Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel.
  41. Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyễn (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoàng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyễn, Đ.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), Vũ (1982), Vương (1981).
  42. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns.
  43. Desbarats, Jacqueline. "Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation". Indochina report; no. 11. Executive Publications, Singapore 1987. Retrieved 28 November 2013.
  44. Table data from Hoàng (1989).
  45. In southern dialects, ch and tr are increasingly being merged as [c]. Similarly, x and s are increasingly being merged as [s].
  46. In southern dialects, v is increasingly being pronounced [v] among educated speakers. Less educated speakers have [j] more consistently throughout their speech.
  47. Kirby (2011), p. 382.
  48. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
  49. Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions.
  50. DeFrancis, John (1977). Colonialism and language policy in Viet Nam. Mouton. ISBN 978-90-279-7643-7.
  51. Marr, David G. (1984). Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945. University of California Press. p. 145. ISBN 978-0-520-90744-7.
  52. "French Indochina 500 Piastres 1951". art-hanoi.com.
  53. "North Vietnam 5 Dong 1946". art-hanoi.com.
  54. 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
  55. Ferlus, Michael (2009). "A Layer of Dongsonian Vocabulary in Vietnamese". Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. 1: 105.
  56. DeFrancis (1977), p. 8.
  57. Maspero, Henri (1912). "Études sur la phonétique historique de la langue annamite" [Studies on the phonetic history of the Annamite language]. Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient (in French). 12 (1): 10. doi:10.3406/befeo.1912.2713.
  58. Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà (2009), "Vietnamese", in Comrie, Bernard (ed.), The World's Major Languages (2nd ed.), Routledge, pp. 677–692, ISBN 978-0-415-35339-7.
  59. Ferlus, Michel (1992), "Histoire abrégée de l'évolution des consonnes initiales du Vietnamien et du Sino-Vietnamien", Mon–Khmer Studies, 20: 111–125.
  60. Ferlus, Michel (2009), "A layer of Dongsonian vocabulary in Vietnamese", Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 1: 95–109.
  61. Ferlus, Michel (1982), "Spirantisation des obstruantes médiales et formation du système consonantique du vietnamien", Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale, 11 (1): 83–106, doi:10.3406/clao.1982.1105.
  62. 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.
  63. Nguyễn Đ.-H. (1997)
  64. Nguyễn Đ.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning 'all the king's subjects'. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bồi tây meaning 'servant in a French household'."
  65. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html Archived 2008-02-22 at the Wayback Machine, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.

Bibliography

General
  • Dương, Quảng-Hàm. (1941). Việt-nam văn-học sử-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bộ Quốc gia Giáo dục.
  • Emeneau, M. B. (1947). "Homonyms and puns in Annamese". Language. 23 (3): 239–244. doi:10.2307/409878. JSTOR 409878.
  • Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). "Current developments in Sino-Vietnamese studies". Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1–26. JSTOR 23752818
  • Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1995). NTC's Vietnamese–English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, Illinois: NTC Pub. Press.
  • Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Việt không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
  • Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ điển Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoàng, & Q. C. Đỗ, Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa học Xã hội. (Original work published 1651).
  • Thompson, Laurence C. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965)
  • Uỷ ban Khoa học Xã hội Việt Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Việt [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa học Xã hội.

Sound system

Language variation
  • Alves, Mark J. 2007. "A Look At North-Central Vietnamese" In SEALS XII Papers from the 12th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 2002, edited by Ratree Wayland et al. Canberra, Australia, 1–7. Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University
  • Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyễn, Duy Hương. (2007). "Notes on Thanh-Chương Vietnamese in Nghệ-An province". In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1–9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
  • Hoàng, Thị Châu. (1989). Tiếng Việt trên các miền đất nước: Phương ngữ học [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Nội: Khoa học xã hội.
  • Honda, Koichi. (2006). "F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones". In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454–459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland.
  • Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). "Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report". In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183–459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland.
  • Vũ, Thanh Phương. (1982). "Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects". In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55–75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
  • Vương, Hữu Lễ. (1981). "Vài nhận xét về đặc diểm của vần trong thổ âm Quảng Nam ở Hội An" [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quảng Nam speech in Hội An]. In Một Số Vấn Ðề Ngôn Ngữ Học Việt Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311–320). Hà Nội: Nhà Xuất Bản Ðại Học và Trung Học Chuyên Nghiệp.

Pragmatics

Historical and comparative
  • Alves, Mark J. (2001). "What's So Chinese About Vietnamese?" (PDF). In Thurgood, Graham W. (ed.). Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University, Program for Southeast Asian Studies. pp. 221–242. ISBN 978-1-881044-27-7.
  • Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Ferlus, Michael (2009). "A Layer of Dongsonian Vocabulary in Vietnamese". Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. 1: 95–108.
  • Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). "A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology". Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135–193. (Reprinted in 1981).
  • Maspero, Henri (1912). "Etudes sur la phonétique historique de la langue annamite. Les initiales". Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient. 12 (1): 1–124. doi:10.3406/befeo.1912.2713.
  • Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà (1986). "Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary". Papers in Linguistics. 19: 1–18. doi:10.1080/08351818609389247.
  • Sagart, Laurent (2008), "The expansion of Setaria farmers in East Asia", in Sanchez-Mazas, Alicia; Blench, Roger; Ross, Malcolm D.; Ilia, Peiros; Lin, Marie (eds.), Past human migrations in East Asia: matching archaeology, linguistics and genetics, Routledge, pp. 133–157, ISBN 978-0-415-39923-4
  • Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon–Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
  • Thompson, Laurence E (1967). "The history of Vietnamese final palatals". Language. 43 (1): 362–371. doi:10.2307/411402. JSTOR 411402.

Orthography
  • Haudricourt, André-Georges (1949). "Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien". Dân Việt-Nam. 3: 61–68.
  • Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1955). Quốc-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, DC: Author.
  • 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.
  • Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691–699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-507993-7.

Pedagogical
  • Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
  • Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach Yourself Vietnamese. Teach Yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
  • Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
  • Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge.
  • Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, Vermont: C.E. Tuttle.
  • Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; von den Steinen, Diether. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
  • Nguyễn, Đăng Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
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