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The Vietnamese alphabet has the following 29 letters, in collating order:

Majuscule Forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
A Ă Â B C D Đ E Ê G H I K L M N O Ô Ơ P Q R S T U Ư V X Y
Minuscule Forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
a ă â b c d đ e ê g h i k l m n o ô ơ p q r s t u ư v x y

Vietnamese also uses the ten digraphs and one trigraph below. Capital letters or majuscules pronunciation /məˈdʒʌskyuls ˈmædʒəˌskyuls/ in the Roman alphabet A, B, C, D, The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is a (eɪ plural Ă ( Upper case) or ă ( Lower case) usually referred to in English as A-breve, is a letter used in standard Romanian language Â, â ( A - Circumflex) is a letter of the Romanian and Vietnamese alphabets B is the second letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled bee or occasionally be (biː plural bees. C is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cee or occasionally ce (siː D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled dee or occasionally de (diː Đ (lowercase đ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, formed from D with the addition of a bar or stroke through the letter E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e (iː plural es or ees (also written E's E Ê, ê ( E - Circumflex) is a letter of Kurdish and Vietnamese language. G is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee or occasionally ge (dʒiː I is the ninth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its English name is i (aɪ K is the eleventh letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay (keɪ L is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is el or occasionally ell (ɛl M is the thirteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled em (ɛm N is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en (ɛn O is the fifteenth letter of the modern Latin Alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o (oʊ plural usually o's or os; sometimes Pitch The circumflex accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it occurred (subject to certain rules on the accented syllable Ơ is one of the 12 Vietnamese language vowels It is pronounced like an Unrounded O. P is the sixteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled pee or occasionally pe (piː Q is the seventeenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cue (kjuː R is the eighteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ar (ɑr pronounced or) S is the nineteenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess or occasionally es (ɛs generally es- T is the twentieth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled tee or occasionally te (tiː U is the twenty-first letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u (juː Ư is one of the 12 Vietnamese language vowels It is pronounced as the Close central unrounded vowel. V is the twenty-second letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled vee or occasionally ve (viː X is the twenty-fourth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ex or occasionally ecks (ɛks plural exes The letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Lower case (also lower-case or lowercase) minuscule, or small letters are the smaller form of letters as opposed to upper A digraph, bigraph, or digram is a pair of characters used to write one Phoneme (distinct sound or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond A trigraph (from the Greek words treis = three and graphein = write is a group of three letters used to represent a single sound or a combination of sounds

CH, GH, GI, KH, NG, NGH, NH, PH, QU, TH, TR

These groups were formerly considered single letters and one can find them in older dictionaries. A dictionary is a book of alphabetically listed Words in a specific language with definitions etymologies pronunciations and other information or a book of alphabetically They are no longer considered single letters for collation and similar purposes; so, for example, CH will be collated between CA and CO in modern dictionaries.

The letters F, J, W and Z are not part of the Vietnamese alphabet, but are used in foreign loanwords. W is sometimes used in place of Ư in abbreviations. In informal writing, W, F, and J are sometimes used as shorthands for QU, PH, and GI, respectively.

Contents

Description

The Vietnamese alphabet, called Chữ Quốc Ngữ (script of the national language), usually shortened to Quốc Ngữ (national language), is the current writing system for the Vietnamese language. Vietnamese ( tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ) formerly known under French colonization as Annamese ( see Annam) It is based on the Latin alphabet (more specifically the Portuguese version of it) with some digraphs and the addition of nine accent marks or diacritics — four of them to create additional sounds, and the other five to indicate the tone of each word. The Portuguese alphabet consists of the following 23 Latin letters: Letter names and pronunciations Only the most frequent sounds are A digraph, bigraph, or digram is a pair of characters used to write one Phoneme (distinct sound or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond A diacritic ( also called a diacritic or diacritical mark, point, or sign, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation A tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words The many diacritics, often two on the same letter, make written Vietnamese easily recognizable.

Letter names and pronunciation

Vietnamese alphabet
Letter Name IPA
A a a aː
Ă ă á a
 â ớ ə, ɜ
B b bê, bờ ɓ, ʔb
C c xê, cờ k
D d dê, dờ northern pronunciation: z, southern pronunciation : j
Đ đ đê, đờ ɗ, ʔd
E e e ɛ
Ê ê ê e
(F) (f) ép
G g giê, gờ ɣ
ʒ（before i, ê, and e）
H h hát, hờ h
I i i ngắn i
(J) (j) gi
K k ca, kờ k
L l e-lờ, lờ l
M m em-mờ, mờ m
N n en-nờ, nờ n
O o o ɔ
Ô ô ô o
Ơ ơ ơ əː, ɜː
P p pê, pờ p
Q q cu, quy, quờ k
R r e-rờ, rờ northern pronunciation: z, southern pronunciation : ʐ, ɹ
S s ét-sì, sờ s, southern pronunciation : ʂ
T t tê, tờ t
U u u u
Ư ư ư ɯ
V v vê, vờ v, southern pronunciation : j
(W) (w) vê kép, vê-đúp
X x ích-xì, xờ s
Y y i dài, i-cờ-rét i
(Z) (z) giét

Consonants

Most of the consonants are pronounced approximately as in the International Phonetic Alphabet, with the following clarifications:

The digraph GH and the trigraph NGH are basically variants of g and ng used before i, in order to avoid confusion with the digraph GI. For historical reasons, they are also used before e or ê.

Vowels

Pronunciation

The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is somewhat complicated. In some cases, the same letter may represent several different sounds, and different letters may represent the same sound. This may be due to the fact that the orthography was designed centuries ago and the spoken language has changed, or to an attempt by the inventors to spell the sounds of several dialects at once. (Similarly, standard English spelling includes for historical reasons both the letters h and r, and yet there are many dialects of English pronunciation which drop one or the other. )

The letters y and i are mostly equivalent, and there is no rule that says when to use one or the other. There have been attempts since the early 20th century to standardize the orthography by replacing all the vowel uses of y with i, the latest being a decision from the Vietnamese Ministry of Education in 1984. These efforts seem to have had limited effect, in part because some people bristled at the thought of names such as Nguyễn becoming Nguiễn and Thúy (a common female name) becoming Thúi (stinky), even though the standardization does not apply to diphthongs and triphthongs and allowed exceptions to proper names. (ŋwjěʔn in Vietnamese approximated as /wɪn/ in English is the most common Vietnamese family name. Currently, the spelling that uses i exclusively is found only in scientific publications and textbooks. Most people and the popular media continue to use the spelling that they are most accustomed to.

Spelling Sound Spelling Sound
a  /ɐː/, /ɐ/, /ɜ/ o  /ɔ/, /ɐw/, /w/
ă  /ɐ/ ô  /o/, /ɜw/, /ɜ/
â  /ɜ/ ơ  /əː/, /ɜ/
e  /ɛ/ u  /u/, /w/
ê  /e/, /ɜ/ ư  /ɨ/
i  /i/, /j/ y  /i/, /j/

Spelling

Monophthongs

The table below matches Vietnamese vowels (written in the IPA) and their respective orthographic symbols used in the writing system.

Sound Spelling Sound Spelling
/i/ i, y /e/ ê
/ɛ/ e /ɨ/ ư
/əː/ ơ /ɜ/ â
/ɐː/ a /ɐ/ ă
/u/ u /o/ ô
/ɔ/ o

Notes:

The vowel /i/ is:

  1. preceded by an orthographic vowel: /xwiɜn/ = khuyên 'to advise';
  2. at the beginning of a word derived from Chinese (written as i otherwise): /iɜw/ = yêu 'to love'.

Note that i and y are also used to write the approximant consonant /j/. Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants

Diphthongs and triphthongs

Sound Spelling Sound Spelling
Diphthongs
/uj/ ui /iw/ iu
/oj/ ôi /ew/ êu
/ɔj/ oi /ɛw/ eo
/əːj/ ơi /əːw/ ơu
/ɜj/ ây, ê /ɜw/ âu, ô
/ɐːj/ ai /ɐːw/ ao
/ɐj/ ay, a /ɐw/ au, o
/ɨj/ ưi /ɨw/ ưu
/iɜ/ ia, ya, iê, yê /uɜ/ ua, uô
/ɨɜ/ ưa, ươ /uw/ uy
Triphthongs
/iɜw/ iêu, yêu /uɜj/ uôi
/ɨɜj/ ươi /ɨɜw/ ươu

Notes:

The diphthong /iɜ/ is written:

  1. ia in open syllables: /miɜ/ = mía 'sugar cane' (note: open syllables end with a vowel; closed syllables end with a consonant);
  2. iê before a consonant: /miɜŋ/ = miếng 'piece';

The i changes to y at the beginning of words or after an orthographic vowel:

The diphthong /uɜ/ is written:

  1. ua in open syllables: /muɜ/ = mua 'to buy';
  2. uô before a consonant: /muɜn/ = muôn 'ten thousand'.

The diphthong /ɨɜ/ is written:

  1. ưa in open syllables: /mɨɜ/ = mưa 'to rain';
  2. ươ before consonants: /mɨɜŋ/ = mương 'irrigation canal'.

Tone marks

Vietnamese is a tonal language, i. A tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words e. the meaning of each word depends on the "tone" (basically a specific tone and glottalization pattern) in which it is pronounced. Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the Glottis during the articulation of another sound There are six distinct tones in the standard, Northern, dialect (Southern dialects have only five). The first one ("level tone") is not marked, and the other five are indicated by diacritics applied to the vowel part of the syllable.

Name Contour Diacritic Accented Vowels
Ngang mid level, ˧ unmarked A/a, Ă/ă, Â/â, E/e, Ê/ê, I/i, O/o, Ô/ô, Ơ/ơ, U/u, Ư/ư, Y/y
Huyền low falling, ˨˩ grave accent À/à, Ằ/ằ, Ầ/ầ, È/è, Ề/ề, Ì/ì, Ò/ò, Ồ/ồ, Ờ/ờ, Ù/ù, Ừ/ừ, Ỳ/ỳ
Sắc high rising, ˧˥ acute accent Á/á, Ắ/ắ, Ấ/ấ, É/é, Ế/ế, Í/í, Ó/ó, Ố/ố, Ớ/ớ, Ú/ú, Ứ/ứ, Ý/ý
Hỏi dipping, ˧˩˧ hook Ả/ả, Ẳ/ẳ, Ẩ/ẩ, Ẻ/ẻ, Ể/ể, Ỉ/ỉ, Ỏ/ỏ, Ổ/ổ, Ở/ở, Ủ/ủ, Ử/ử, Ỷ/ỷ
Ngã glottalized rising, ˧ˀ˥ tilde Ã/ã, Ẵ/ẵ, Ẫ/ẫ, Ẽ/ẽ, Ễ/ễ, Ĩ/ĩ, Õ/õ, Ỗ/ỗ, Ỡ/ỡ, Ũ/ũ, Ữ/ữ, Ỹ/ỹ
Nặng glottalized falling, ˧ˀ˨ dot below Ạ/ạ, Ặ/ặ, Ậ/ậ, Ẹ/ẹ, Ệ/ệ, Ị/ị, Ọ/ọ, Ộ/ộ, Ợ/ợ, Ụ/ụ, Ự/ự, Ỵ/ỵ

In syllables where the vowel part consists of more than one vowel (such as diphthongs and triphthongs), the placement of the tone is still a matter of debate. Generally, there are two methodologies, an "old style" and a "new style". While the "old style" emphasizes aesthetics by placing the tone mark as close as possible to the center of the word (by placing the tone mark on the last vowel if an ending consonant part exists and on the next-to-last vowel if the ending consonant doesn't exist, as in hóa), the "new style" emphasizes linguistic principles and tries to apply the tone mark on the main vowel (as in hoá). In both styles, when one vowel already has a quality diacritic on it, the tone mark must be applied to it as well, regardless of where it appears in the syllable (thus thuế is acceptable while thúê is not). In the case of the ươ diphthong, the mark is placed on the ơ. The u in qu is considered part of the consonant. Currently, the new style is usually used in new documents, while some people still prefer the old style.

The lowercase letter i should retain its dot even when accented. (However, this detail is often lost in computers and on the Internet, due to the obscurity of Vietnamese specialty fonts and limitations of encoding systems. )

In lexical ordering, differences in letters are treated as primary, differences in tone markings as secondary, and differences in case as tertiary differences. Ordering according to primary and secondary differences proceeds syllable by syllable. According to this principle, a dictionary lists tuân thủ before tuần chay because the secondary difference in the first syllable takes precedence over the primary difference in the second.

Structure

Due to influence from the Chinese writing system, each syllable in Vietnamese is written separately as if it were a word. A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds In the past, syllables in multisyllabic words were concatenated with hyphens, but this practice had died out, and hyphenation is now reserved for foreign borrowings. A written syllable consists of at most three parts, in the following order from left to right:

  1. An optional beginning consonant part
  2. A required vowel syllable nucleus and the tone mark, if needed, applied above or below it
  3. An optional ending consonant part, can only be one of the following: c, ch, m, n, ng, nh, p, t, or nothing.

History

Further information: Hán Tự, Chữ Nôm
A page from Alexandre de Rhodes' 1651 dictionary
A page from Alexandre de Rhodes' 1651 dictionary

The Vietnamese language was first written down, from the 13th century onwards, using variant Chinese characters (chữ nôm 字喃), each of them representing one word. Hán tự ( {{IPA|/han˦˥ tɯ˨/}}; 漢[[wikt 字|字]] meaning " Chinese character " or chữ Nho ( {{IPA|/tɕɯ˧˨˧ ɲɔ/}} Chữ Nôm ( IPA: /cɨ3ˀ5 nom33/ chữ Nôm in Unicode: 字[[wikt 喃|喃]]/ 𡨸 喃/ 𡦂 喃 chữ Nôm in Unicode A Chinese character, also known as a Han character ( is a Logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi Japanese ( Chữ Nôm ( IPA: /cɨ3ˀ5 nom33/ chữ Nôm in Unicode: 字[[wikt 喃|喃]]/ 𡨸 喃/ 𡦂 喃 chữ Nôm in Unicode The system was based on the script used for writing classical Chinese (chữ nho), but it was supplemented with characters developed in Vietnam (chữ thuần nôm, proper Nom characters) to represent native Vietnamese words. Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of Written Chinese based on the Grammar and Vocabulary of ancient Chinese Hán tự ( {{IPA|/han˦˥ tɯ˨/}}; 漢[[wikt 字|字]] meaning " Chinese character " or chữ Nho ( {{IPA|/tɕɯ˧˨˧ ɲɔ/}}

As early as 1527, Portuguese Christian missionaries in Vietnam began using the Latin alphabet to transcribe the Vietnamese language for teaching and evangelization purposes. Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic (República Portuguesa is a country on the Iberian Peninsula. A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth A missionary is a member of a Religion who works to convert those who do not share the missionary's faith someone who proselytizes. Vietnamese ( tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ) formerly known under French colonization as Annamese ( see Annam) These informal efforts led eventually to the development of the present Vietnamese alphabet, largely by the work of French Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes, who worked in the country between 1624 and 1644. This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. The Society of Jesus ( Latin: Societas Iesu, SJ and SI or SJ, SI) is a Catholic religious order Father Alexander de Rhodes (A-Lịch-Sơn Đắc-Lộ ( 15 March 1591 - 5 November 1660) was a French Jesuit Missionary who Building on previous Portuguese-Vietnamese dictionaries by Gaspar d'Amaral and Duarte da Costa, Rhodes wrote a Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary, which was printed in Rome in 1651, using his spelling system. Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Rome ( Roma ˈroma Roma is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city with more than 2

In spite of this development, chữ nôm and chữ nho remained in use until the early 20th century, when the French colonial administration made Rhodes's alphabet official. Nationalists embraced the script as a weapon to fight the French administration and heavily promoted its use, setting up schools such as the Tonkin Free School and publishing periodicals utilizing this script. The Tonkin Free School ( Vietnamese: Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục, Hán tự: 東京義塾 was a short-lived but historically-significant educational institution By the late 20th century, quốc ngữ was universally used to write Vietnamese, such that literacy in the previous Chinese character-based writing systems for Vietnamese is now limited to a small number of scholars and specialists. The twentieth century of the Common Era began on

Because the period of education necessary to gain initial literacy is considerably less for the largely phonetic Latin-based script compared to the several years necessary to master the full range of Chinese characters, the adoption of the Vietnamese alphabet also facilitated widespread literacy among Vietnamese speakers—whereas a majority of Vietnamese in Vietnam could not read or write prior to the 20th century, the population is now almost universally literate.

Sino-Vietnamese and quốc ngữ

Further information: Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary

Writing Sino-Vietnamese words with quốc ngữ caused some confusion about the origins of some terms, due to the large number of homophones in Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese. Sino-Vietnamese ( Hán Việt; 漢越) are the elements in the Vietnamese language derived from Chinese. Sino-Vietnamese ( Hán Việt; 漢越) are the elements in the Vietnamese language derived from Chinese. For example, both 明 (bright) and 冥 (dark) are read as minh, which therefore has two opposite meanings (although the meaning of "dark" is now esoteric and is used in only a few compound words). Perhaps for this reason, the Vietnamese name for Pluto is not Minh Vương Tinh (冥王星 - lit. underworld king star) as in other East Asian languages, but is Diêm Vương Tinh (閻王星), named after the Buddhist deity Yama. Buddhism is a family of beliefs and practices Yama is the name of the Buddhist Dharmapala and judge of the dead who presides over the Buddhist Narakas ( Pāli: Nirayas "Hells" During the Ho Dynasty, Vietnam was officially known as Đại Ngu (大虞 - Great Yu). The Hồ Dynasty ( Vietnamese: Nhà Hồ; Hán Việt: Hồ Triều) in Vietnam was a short-lived seven-year reign of two emperors Unfortunately, most modern Vietnamese know ngu as "stupid" (愚), consequently some misinterpret it as "Big Idiot". However, the homograph/homophone problem is not as serious as it may seem, because although many Sino-Vietnamese words have multiple meanings when written with quốc ngữ, usually only one has widespread usage, while the others are relegated to obscurity. Furthermore, Sino-Vietnamese words are usually not used alone, but in compound words; thus, the meaning of the compound word is preserved even if individually each has multiple meanings. Most importantly, since quốc ngữ is an exact phonemic transcription of the spoken language, its understandability is as high or higher than a normal conversation. A phonemic orthography is a Writing system where the written Graphemes correspond to Phonemes the spoken sounds of the language

Computer support

The universal character set Unicode has full support for the Vietnamese writing system, although it does not have a separate segment for it; the required characters are scattered throughout the Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional segments. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's An ASCII-based writing convention, Vietnamese Quoted Readable, and several byte-based encodings including TCVN3, VNI, and VISCII were widely used before Unicode became popular. American Standard Code for Information Interchange ( ASCII) Vietnamese Quoted-Readable, usually abbreviated VIQR and also known as Vietnet, is a convention for writing Vietnamese using ASCII characters The Vietnamese Standard Code for Information Interchange ( VISCII) is a Character set comprising the Vietnamese alphabet, Punctuation, and other Most new documents now exclusively use the Unicode format UTF-8. UTF-8 (8- Bit UCS / Unicode Transformation Format) is a variable-length Character encoding for Unicode.

Unicode allows the user to choose between precomposed characters and combining characters in inputting Vietnamese. A precomposed character (alternatively decomposable character) is a Unicode entity that can be decomposed into an equivalent string of several other characters In Digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters Due to the nonstandard way combining characters are implemented in various operating systems, most people use precomposed characters when composing Vietnamese-language documents.

Most keyboards used by Vietnamese-language users do not support direct input of diacritics by default. Various free utilities that act as keyboard drivers exist. Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified They support the most popular input methods, including Telex, VIQR and its variants, and VNI. Telex is a convention for writing Vietnamese using ASCII characters commonly found on Computer keyboard layouts Vietnamese Quoted-Readable, usually abbreviated VIQR and also known as Vietnet, is a convention for writing Vietnamese using ASCII characters VNI Software Company is the Westminster California &ndashbased family-owned developer of various education entertainment office and utility software packages

See also

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

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