VIETNAMESE

VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE

 

Almost all people in Vietnam speak Vietnamese  language (tiếng Việt). This is the official language of the country. Vietnamese (tiếng Việt) is the national, official language of Vietnam. It is the native language of Vietnamese people (The Viet, Kinh), and of about three million Vietnamese residing elsewhere. It also is spoken as a first or second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam.

Vietnamese is one of the most spoken languages in the world, with around 90 million native speakers. It is the official language in Vietnam and also widely spoken in places where the Vietnamese have immigrated such as United States, France, Cambodia, Russia and Taiwan..

Vietnamese grammar is very simple: nouns and adjectives don't have genders, and verbs aren't conjugated. Vietnamese is a tonal language; the meaning of a word depends on how high or low your voice is. Vietnamese is not related to Chinese, though it contains many loan words from Chinese due to centuries of Chinese rule in Vietnam, and even used Chinese-like characters as its writing system, called "chữ Nôm" given vernacular pronunciation, until Vietnam was colonised by the French. The Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ) in use today is a Latin alphabet with additional diacritics for tones, and certain letters.

The majority of Vietnamese population (around 90%) speak this language as native, however, the other 10% only speak Vietnamese as a second language. Vietnam is ethnically diverse country, and it has various minority groups, living, mostly, in mountainous regions in the north of the country and in the Central Highlands region. Each minority group speaks their own, and distinct from others, language. From the linguistic point of view, most of these minority languages are not related to Vietnamese at all. 

Language variation

Vietnamese spelling is more or less phonetic, and generally similar to Portuguese (which it is based on). Once you figure out how to pronounce each letter and tone, you have a pretty good idea of how to pronounce Vietnamese, which has very few exceptions compared to English.

Unless otherwise indicated, pronunciation throughout this phrasebook is for Northern (Hanoi) Vietnamese, which is quite different from Southern (Saigon), North Central (Vinh) or Central (Hue) Vietnamese.

There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main five being:

Dialect region	Localities	Names under French colonization
Northern Vietnamese	Hanoi, Haiphong, Red River Delta	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, Phú Yên	Annamese
Southern Vietnamese	Nha Trang, Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu, Saigon, Mekong Delta (Miền Tây)	Cochinchinese

Tones

Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. (More formally, diacritics indicate the tone of the entire word, centered on the main vowel or group of vowels, whereas accents qualify the vowel(s).) 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; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). 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 (help·info)
huyền   'hanging'	low falling (often breathy)	` (grave accent)	mà  'but'	à (help·info)
sắc   'sharp'	high rising	´ (acute accent)	má  'cheek, mother (southern)'	á (help·info)
hỏi   'asking'	mid dipping-rising	̉ (hook)	mả  'tomb, grave'	ả (help·info)
ngã   'tumbling'	high breaking-rising	˜ (tilde)	mã  'horse (Sino-Vietnamese), code'	ã (help·info)
nặng   'heavy'	low falling constricted (short length)	̣ (dot below)	mạ  'rice seedling'	ạ (help·info)

Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.

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.

WRITING VIETNAMESE

Vietnamese script / writing system was developed in as early as the 17th century by the French Catholic priest Alexandre de Rhodes. It came into the official use hundreds of years later, though, in the first decades of the 20th centrury.

Present-day Vietnamese alphabet looks surprisingly similar to the one we use in English and other European languages. It has 29 letters, compared to 26 letters commonly used in Latin-based alphabets. Unlike English, however, nine accent marks (diacritics) are used in Vietnamese script to help distinguish the pronunciation of different tones.

It would be easy for a native speaker of European languages to identify familiar letters in Vietnamese script and even to read most of them. However, the overall reading ability seems to be somewhat problematic for anyone unfamiliar with Vietnamese tone system.

 EASY TO LEARN VIETNAMESE?
 

Vietnamese language is fairly straightforward and easy to master when it comes to learning its grammar and sentence structure.

The same may not be said about pronunciation. It would be quite difficult (albeit, not impossible) for a speaker of European languages and many non-tonal Asian languages (e.g. Japanese and Korean) to learn and use six tones in Vietnamese language.

Despite the difficulties, learning at least some Vietnamese may be a very rewarding experience. It helps to improve your status among Vietnamese people, who will certainly appreciate an effort you make to learn their difficult language. Most importantly, though, it will help tremendously to understand the culture, lifestyles and relationships within the Vietnamese society. In fact, the complete understanding of how Vietnamese people interact with each other will only come to those foreigners, who are willing to spend time and effort to the language of the country.

WHAT DO EXPATS/ FOREIGNERS THINK OF STUDYING VIETNAMESE?

 

From  members of http://www.tripadvisor.com

luce_uk  

How hard is it to learn Vietnamese?

Hi......probably a questions geared towards all the expats here!

I am planning to spend a little while in Vietnam next year and have picked up a phrasebook (one of those lonely planet ones) but am finding it very tough to learn without the help of a Vietnamese to help pronounce the words/tones! I learnt quite a lot of Thai whilst i was there and found this a lot easier, e.g the words are pronounced the way the word is written but it seems a lot harder to learn Vietnamese as the words are often spoken a lot different to how they look on paper! I'm not sure i'm going to be able to get to grips with this! It looks pretty damn hard! :(

69bertie

It is hard! Not impossible though but tones are everything. And unless you can get to grips with them, nearly everything else falls by the wayside. i was in a cafe the other day and a Vietnamese man who had a very sore throat was bemoaning, in perfectly understandable English that no one around could understand him if he spoke Vietnamese. Try going to www.everydayviet.com to get a flavour. Good luck.

jaxfl1

I agree 110% with 69bertie

. It also depends on where you are in the country. If you are trying to speak common vietnamese or upper class vietnamese. Just changing the sound a slight bit can change the meaning. My wife is vietnamese and I have tried several CDs for different companies to really learn ont just find my way around, and each of the companies have sent North Vietnamese CDs. They talk different there than in the South. Kind of like a Northerner trying to understand the Southerner in America with :Ya All" and "we be goin to the store for some POP" Like stated it can be done and the Vietnamese will like it that you are trying.

Owee

It is the hardest thing I have ever done. After 2 years of practice I can still only talk like a child. The problem is that the tones do not come natural as they do in Chinese. They are forced sounds, and the tone is so important that a slight miss pronunciation will just leave them gazing at you slack jawed. I think I might have almost mistakenly got Bertie married with my accent ;)

molly2004

jax, I'm curious to know what you mean by "upper class" vs "common class" vietnamese.

Thanks.

jaxfl1

Molly2004 You are from Boston, so I know you will understand this. If you get a bunch of the wealthy educated folks from the great state of Mass in a room and some others from the hills of Georgia (nothing wrong with them) in the same room they have a hard time communicating. A word like PROMT to the Mass folks means quick, swift, timely or hasty; to the Georgia folks they might not be sure of what you mean. In Vietnam you have the folks that have been to college, some here in the USA attending collages and then you have your villagers and farmers that may be able to read and write or not. The way they talk and pronounce the words they use are different. I can play a tape recording of a northerner Vietnamese Doctor in Vietnam, to a Central Vietnamese and most of the central “common” folks cannot understand what is being said. It is a cultural and economic difference. Just like in the USA.

daawgon

Basically, it's near impossible to learn it without total immersion once inside this country - even if you know proper words and accent symbols, the pronunciation is the real difficult part. The only thing waiters understand of my Vietnamese is "ca fe sua da" - iced coffee!

quynhvy

No wonder I am having such a hard time to teach my Japanese American how to greet my relatives in VN for our up coming trip :), especially one supposed to greet each person differently according to rank/title/gender etc...

:)

69bertie

And of course just a slight alteration in the tone can impart a totally different meaning to the word. It would help if the letters of the alphabet were pronounced the same as in the west (or vice versa) ....but they're not. I was told that even living here it might take 5 years to get to grips with it.

And even if you do know Vietnamese, because you're a foreigner, the locals are sometimes taken aback and go into he didn't really speak Vietnamese to me mode. Having heard Owee with his Vietnamese, I take my hat off to him for it. I always like to see the expression on the local faces when he replies to them. It's like their mask is stripped away with nowhere to hide.

ComeAndGoVietnam

VERY difficult. I've been here nearly 8 years but am little more than a beginner. The biggest problem isn't the language itself, which is actually very simple as languages go, but the reactions of the locals when foreigners try to speak it - generally they laugh. Not maliciously it has to be said, but it is very discouraging for foreign learners. For example if I go into a shop and ask for something in Vietnamese, say for example fresh water ("mot chai nuoc suoi"), the reaction will often be to repeat what I've said to any other locals there, and they all laugh. Very annoying.

Also, as Bertie said, if you get the intonation even slightly wrong, people make no effort to work out what you're trying to say from the context. "Ga" can mean "chicken" or "railway station", depending on the intonation. Get in a taxi & say "ga Saigon", and if you pronounce it wrong, the driver will still not twig from the context (bloke with suitcase/backpack getting into taxi) that you want to go to the station.

I've tried my hardest to learn the language but the way the locals respond to me has put me off taking it further. I can get by for sure but doubt I'll ever be able to do more.

Also I learned to speak French fluently by living in France and watching French TV every day. Unfortunately Vietnamese TV is so terrible that isn't an option here :)

birdy_booo

Vietnamese is a lot easier than English in that there are no grammars and verbs. If you bought a hat yesterday, you just say you buy hat yesterday. The key to pronouncing the words correctly are the tones. The symbols used with the Vietnamese language indicate how you should pronounce them. So a / on top of a word will mean that you should pronounce that word from a lower tone to a higher tone and vice versa for \

A . under a word means you should deepen your voice while pronouncing the word.

A ~ over a word means start low, go high then go low again.

If you can't master these accent symbols, you will not make sense as one word can mean 5 other things depending on the symbols used.

Hope that helped a little.

SweetPotatoOnEarth

I would say it is very different from English, due to its tonal features. It would be difficult to master Vietnamese at the level of native speakers (well as for any languages a foreigner want to learn), but if you want a level for communication like my English level here only, it could be a piece of cake. Especially you have learnt Thai before.

Have a look at this site of a Canadian man who could speak Vietnamese as a native speaker (even better than many native speakers indeed). His accent is northern:http://joe.vn/

Maurizio04

<<<<<I learnt quite a lot of Thai whilst i was there and found this a lot easier, e.g the words are pronounced the way the word is written

I never tried with thai language just because is written in those nice and cute little vertical lines with dots, like music. Nobody knows why, like the russian alphabet, it was a matter of bad luck during history.

English is the worst language if you compare speaking and writing...at least for languages written with western alphabet.

Chinese or Japanese written in simplified western alphabet is beautiful, i can just read it like italian and people really understand...of course that system is known only to joung student and computer users...

Vietnamese seemed promising, but here is raining every day and Pho is pronounced faa, so i'd better find another hobby than learning it. :(

Just to note that each region (Northern, Central, Southern) has its own accents, which people from one region may not understand ones from the other two! But the Hanoi accent is used as the national one.

Unforturnately, having a look at www.everydayviet.com, you would never want to learn the language. The site is completely not pedagogical at all! It is just too complicated, and packed with such huge things for some first lessons!

As said earlier, there are maximally 6 tones which can be applied to a VOWEL/DIPHTHONG. This is probably the most difficult task for any non-tonal language speakers. But with, say, a two-week practice, you are able to master it. Unlike some example above, "ga" never means "chicken" at all! (chicken = "gà", not "ga"). The level of difficulty for an English person to speak Vietnamese is just the SAME level for a Vietnamese to speak English. Many Vietnamese people, for example, just pronounce these words the same: lie, like, line, light (since the last consonant is always silent in Vietnamese language).

The second most difficult thing may be how to address one you want to communicate to. "I" in English can be addressed by a dozen of different words. But there always one simple word that can be used for formal use for anyone, regardless of ages, relationship, etc...

The Vietnamese grammar itself is super simple. You do not need to conjugate verbs! Tenses are simple too. Even no subjunctive exists! Immagine: I "be" a teacher, you "be" a boss, she "be" a guide... How simple!