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Vietnamese alphabet

Overview

The Vietnamese alphabet has the following 29 letters, in collating

Collation

Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetisation, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...

order:

Vietnamese also uses the ten digraph

Digraph (orthography)

A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...

s and one trigraph

Trigraph (orthography)

A trigraph is a group of three letters used to represent a single sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters combined. For example, in the word schilling, the trigraph sch represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative , rather than the consonant cluster...

below.

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

These groups were formerly considered single letters and are treated as such in older dictionaries. They are no longer considered single letters for collation

Collation

Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetisation, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...

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Encyclopedia

The Vietnamese alphabet has the following 29 letters, in collating

Collation

Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetisation, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...

order:

Majuscule forms Capital letters Capital letters or majuscules [IPA pronunciation: /məˈdʒʌskjuls, ˈmædʒəˌskjuls/], in the Roman alphabet A, B, C, D, etc., may also be called capitals, or caps. Upper case, upper-case, or uppercase is also often used in this context as synonym of capital... (also called uppercase or capital letters)
A A The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled a; the plural is aes, though this is rare.- History :...	Ă A The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled a; the plural is aes, though this is rare.- History :...	Â Â is a letter of the Romanian and Vietnamese alphabets. This letter also appears in Croatian, French, Portuguese, Serbian, Slovenian, Frisian, Welsh, Friulian, Turkish, and Walon language as a variant of the letter “a”.- Croatian and Serbian :...	B B B is the second letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled bee, plural bees.-History:The letter B might have started as a pictogram of the floorplan of a house in Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet...	C C Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiceless postalveolar affricate , and is equivalent to the voiceless postalveolar affricate, , or the voiceless retroflex affricate,...	D D D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled dee, plural dees.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet probably developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this...	Đ D with stroke Đ is a letter of the Latin alphabet, formed from D with the addition of a bar or stroke through the letter. This is the same modification that was used to create eth , but eth is based on an insular variant of d while đ is based on its usual upright shape...	E E E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. It is also the second vowel in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e; the plural is ees, though this is rare...	Ê Ê is a letter in the Kurdish and Vietnamese languages. This letter also appears in Afrikaans, French, Portuguese, Welsh, and Albanian dialects as a variant of letter “e”.-Kurdish:Ê is the 7th letter of the Kurdish Kurmanji alphabet and represents ....	G G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee.-History:The letter G was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of C to distinguish Latin voiced velar from voiceless...	H H H is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in both British and American English is aitch , plural aitches, though it is also pronounced haitch in some dialects .-History:...	I I I is the ninth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its English name is spelled i; the plural is ies, though this is rare.-History:...	K K K is the eleventh letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay.-History and usage:...	L L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni and Dogrib alphabets, and of several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language...	M M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled em.-History:The letter M derives its shape from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water. It is known that Semitic people working in Egypt c...	N N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en.- Usage :N represents the dental or alveolar nasal in virtually all languages that use the Latin alphabet. A common digraph with is , which represents a velar nasal in a variety of languages,...	O O O is the fifteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o; the plural is oes, though this is rare.- History :...	Ô Circumflex The circumflex ' is a diacritic mark used in written Afrikaans, Breton, Croatian, Esperanto, French, Frisian, Italian, Romanized Japanese, Norwegian, Romanized Persian, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Turkish, Vietnamese, Welsh and other languages...	Ơ O O is the fifteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o; the plural is oes, though this is rare.- History :...	P P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled pee.-History:The Semitic Pê , as well as the Greek Π or π , and the Etruscan and Latin letters that developed from the former alphabet, all symbolized , a voiceless bilabial plosive.-Usage:In English and...	Q Q Q is the seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cue.- History :The Semitic sound value of Qôp was , a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones...	R R R is the eighteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ar; its name in Hiberno-English is or .-History:...	S S S is the nineteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess, or usually es- when part of a compound word; the plural is esses.- Usage :...	T T T is the twentieth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled tee. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :...	U U U is the twenty-first letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u; the plural is ues, though this is rare.-History:...	Ư U U is the twenty-first letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u; the plural is ues, though this is rare.-History:...	V V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled vee.-The letter:The letter V ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details....	X X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ex, plural exes .-History:...	Y Y The letter Y is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled wye or occasionally wy, plural wyes.-History:...
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 digraph

Digraph (orthography)

A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...

s and one trigraph

Trigraph (orthography)

below.

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

These groups were formerly considered single letters and are treated as such in older dictionaries. They are no longer considered single letters for collation

Collation

Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetisation, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...

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.

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 language

Vietnamese , formerly known under French colonization as Annamese , is the national and official language of Vietnam...

. It is based on the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...

(more specifically the Portuguese version

Portuguese alphabet

The Portuguese alphabet, , consists of the following 23 or 26 Latin letters:In addition, the following characters with diacritics are used: Á, Â, Ã, À, Ç, É, Ê, Í, Ó, Ô, Õ, Ú. These are not, however, treated as independent letters in collation, nor do they have entries of their own...

of it) with some digraphs

Digraph (orthography)

A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...

and the addition of nine accent marks or diacritic

Diacritic

A diacritic is an ancillary glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective...

s — four of them to create additional sounds, and the other five to indicate the tone of each word. 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 The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled a; the plural is aes, though this is rare.- History :... a A The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled a; the plural is aes, though this is rare.- History :...	a
Ă A The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled a; the plural is aes, though this is rare.- History :... ă A The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled a; the plural is aes, though this is rare.- History :...	á
Â Â is a letter of the Romanian and Vietnamese alphabets. This letter also appears in Croatian, French, Portuguese, Serbian, Slovenian, Frisian, Welsh, Friulian, Turkish, and Walon language as a variant of the letter “a”.- Croatian and Serbian :... â Â is a letter of the Romanian and Vietnamese alphabets. This letter also appears in Croatian, French, Portuguese, Serbian, Slovenian, Frisian, Welsh, Friulian, Turkish, and Walon language as a variant of the letter “a”.- Croatian and Serbian :...	ớ
B B B is the second letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled bee, plural bees.-History:The letter B might have started as a pictogram of the floorplan of a house in Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet... b B B is the second letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled bee, plural bees.-History:The letter B might have started as a pictogram of the floorplan of a house in Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet...	bê
C C Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiceless postalveolar affricate , and is equivalent to the voiceless postalveolar affricate, , or the voiceless retroflex affricate,... c C Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiceless postalveolar affricate , and is equivalent to the voiceless postalveolar affricate, , or the voiceless retroflex affricate,...	xê
D D D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled dee, plural dees.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet probably developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this... d D D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled dee, plural dees.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet probably developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this...	dê
Đ đ	đê
E E E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. It is also the second vowel in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e; the plural is ees, though this is rare... e E E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. It is also the second vowel in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e; the plural is ees, though this is rare...	e
Ê Ê is a letter in the Kurdish and Vietnamese languages. This letter also appears in Afrikaans, French, Portuguese, Welsh, and Albanian dialects as a variant of letter “e”.-Kurdish:Ê is the 7th letter of the Kurdish Kurmanji alphabet and represents .... ê Ê is a letter in the Kurdish and Vietnamese languages. This letter also appears in Afrikaans, French, Portuguese, Welsh, and Albanian dialects as a variant of letter “e”.-Kurdish:Ê is the 7th letter of the Kurdish Kurmanji alphabet and represents ....	ê
(F F F is the sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ef or eff.-History:The origin of F is the Semitic letter vâv that represented the sound /v/, and originally probably represented either a "hook" or a "club"... ) (f F F is the sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ef or eff.-History:The origin of F is the Semitic letter vâv that represented the sound /v/, and originally probably represented either a "hook" or a "club"... )	ép
G G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee.-History:The letter G was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of C to distinguish Latin voiced velar from voiceless... g G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee.-History:The letter G was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of C to distinguish Latin voiced velar from voiceless...	rê	（before i, ê, and e）
H H H is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in both British and American English is aitch , plural aitches, though it is also pronounced haitch in some dialects .-History:... h H H is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in both British and American English is aitch , plural aitches, though it is also pronounced haitch in some dialects .-History:...	hát
I I I is the ninth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its English name is spelled i; the plural is ies, though this is rare.-History:... i I I is the ninth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its English name is spelled i; the plural is ies, though this is rare.-History:...	i, i ngắn
(J J Ĵ or ĵ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiced postalveolar fricative , and is equivalent to the voiced postalveolar fricative, , or the voiced retroflex fricative, .... ) (j J Ĵ or ĵ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiced postalveolar fricative , and is equivalent to the voiced postalveolar fricative, , or the voiced retroflex fricative, .... )	chê
K K K is the eleventh letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay.-History and usage:... k K K is the eleventh letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay.-History and usage:...	ca
L L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni and Dogrib alphabets, and of several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language... l L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni and Dogrib alphabets, and of several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language...	en-lờ, lờ
M M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled em.-History:The letter M derives its shape from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water. It is known that Semitic people working in Egypt c... m M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled em.-History:The letter M derives its shape from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water. It is known that Semitic people working in Egypt c...	em-mờ, mờ
N N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en.- Usage :N represents the dental or alveolar nasal in virtually all languages that use the Latin alphabet. A common digraph with is , which represents a velar nasal in a variety of languages,... n N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en.- Usage :N represents the dental or alveolar nasal in virtually all languages that use the Latin alphabet. A common digraph with is , which represents a velar nasal in a variety of languages,...	en-nờ, nờ
O O O is the fifteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o; the plural is oes, though this is rare.- History :... o O O is the fifteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o; the plural is oes, though this is rare.- History :...	o
Ô O O is the fifteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o; the plural is oes, though this is rare.- History :... ô O O is the fifteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o; the plural is oes, though this is rare.- History :...	ô
Ơ O O is the fifteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o; the plural is oes, though this is rare.- History :... ơ O O is the fifteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o; the plural is oes, though this is rare.- History :...	ơ	\|,
P P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled pee.-History:The Semitic Pê , as well as the Greek Π or π , and the Etruscan and Latin letters that developed from the former alphabet, all symbolized , a voiceless bilabial plosive.-Usage:In English and... p P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled pee.-History:The Semitic Pê , as well as the Greek Π or π , and the Etruscan and Latin letters that developed from the former alphabet, all symbolized , a voiceless bilabial plosive.-Usage:In English and...	pê
Q Q Q is the seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cue.- History :The Semitic sound value of Qôp was , a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones... q Q Q is the seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cue.- History :The Semitic sound value of Qôp was , a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones...	quy, cu
R R R is the eighteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ar; its name in Hiberno-English is or .-History:... r R R is the eighteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ar; its name in Hiberno-English is or .-History:...	e-rờ, rờ
S S S is the nineteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess, or usually es- when part of a compound word; the plural is esses.- Usage :... s S S is the nineteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess, or usually es- when part of a compound word; the plural is esses.- Usage :...	ét, ét-sì
T T T is the twentieth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled tee. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :... t T T is the twentieth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled tee. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :...	tê
U U U is the twenty-first letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u; the plural is ues, though this is rare.-History:... u U U is the twenty-first letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u; the plural is ues, though this is rare.-History:...	u
Ư U U is the twenty-first letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u; the plural is ues, though this is rare.-History:... ư U U is the twenty-first letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u; the plural is ues, though this is rare.-History:...	ư
V V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled vee.-The letter:The letter V ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.... v V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled vee.-The letter:The letter V ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details....	vê
(W W W is the twenty-third letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled double-u; the plural is double-ues, though this is rare.-History:... ) (w W W is the twenty-third letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled double-u; the plural is double-ues, though this is rare.-History:... )	vê kép, vê đúp, đúp liu
X X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ex, plural exes .-History:... x X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ex, plural exes .-History:...	ít, ít-xì
Y Y The letter Y is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled wye or occasionally wy, plural wyes.-History:... y Y The letter Y is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled wye or occasionally wy, plural wyes.-History:...	i, i dài, i-cờ-rét
(Z Z Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In many dialects of English, the letter's name is zed, , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta . In American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal form... ) (z Z Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In many dialects of English, the letter's name is zed, , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta . In American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal form... )	giét

Consonants

Most of the consonants are pronounced approximately as in the International Phonetic Alphabet

International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...

, with the following clarifications:

Both D and GI are pronounced either in the northern dialects (including Hanoi), or (similar to English y) in the central and Saigon dialects.
Đ is similar to a sound in many languages. Vietnamese đ, however, is additionally pronounced with a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English the feature is represented for example by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those attempting an authentic pronunciation of...

immediately preceding or simultaneous with it.
S is pronounced like the English sh for the southern dialect and some central dialects; however, it is pronounced like English s among the northern dialects.
V is pronounced in the northern dialects, or and in the southern dialects.
X is pronounced like English s (at the beginning of a word, e.g. "sing").
CH is a voiceless palatal stop (IPA: , similar to English c in "cute") or affricate (IPA: , similar to English ch in "chip").
KH is a voiceless velar fricative
Voiceless velar fricative
The voiceless velar fricative, informally known as the hard ch, is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is x...

(IPA: ). It is similar to the German or Scottish ch, Russian x, Mandarin h, Spanish j, or Arabic and Persian "خ" (kh). It is never pronounced like English k or Hindi "ख" (kh).
NG is a velar nasal
Velar nasal
The velar nasal is the sound of ng in English sing. It is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is <>, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N.As a phoneme, the velar nasal does not occur in...

(IPA: ). It is similar to both occurrences of ng in English "singing". It is never pronounced like English n, or n plus g.
NH is a palatal nasal
Palatal nasal
The palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J. The IPA symbol is a lowercase letter n with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom...

(IPA: ), similar to Polish ń, Spanish ñ, Portuguese nh, or French and Italian gn.
PH is pronounced , as in English "Philip". It is never pronounced like English p or Hindi "फ" (ph).
TH is an aspirated
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say tore ...

t (IPA: ). It is similar to the "थ" (th) sound in Hindi or the t sound in English when pronounced at the beginning of a word. It is never pronounced like the English th in path or French/Spanish t.
TR is a retroflex
Retroflex consonant
In phonetics, retroflex consonants are consonant sounds used in some languages. The tongue articulates with the roof of the oral cavity behind the alveolar ridge, and may even be curled back to touch the palate: that is, they are articulated in the postalveolar to palatal region of the...

t (in the southern regions) and pronounced like the Vietnamese ch in the northern dialects. Its only other equivalent is the Mandarin Chinese retroflex ch. Mandarin Chinese words that start with ch or zh usually correspond to Sino-Vietnamese words that start with tr.

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

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 the letter "c", which can take the sound of either "k" or "s", and the combination "ough" can be pronounced as in "cough", "bough", "dough", "ought", and various other options.)

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. 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		o
ă		ô
â		ơ
e		u
ê		ư
i		y

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, y		ê
	e		ư
	ơ		â
	a		ă
	u		ô
	o

Notes:

The vowel is:

usually written i: = sĩ (A suffix indicating profession, similar to the English suffix -er).
sometimes written y: = Mỹ 'America'.
- It is always written y when:

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

Note that i and y are also used to write the approximant consonant

Approximant consonant

Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence. Approximants are...

Diphthongs and triphthongs

Sound	Spelling	Spelling
Diphthongs
	ui	iu
	ôi	êu
	oi	eo
	ơi	ơu
	ây, ê	âu, ô
	ai	ao
	ay, a	au, o
	ưi	ưu
	ia, ya, iê, yê	ua, uô
	ưa, ươ	uy
Triphthongs
	iêu, yêu	uôi
	ươi	ươu

Notes:

The diphthong is written:

ia in open syllables: = mía 'sugar cane' (note: open syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...

s end with a vowel; closed syllables end with a consonant);
iê before a consonant: = miếng 'piece';

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

ya: = khuya 'late at night'
yê: = khuyên 'to advise'; = yên 'calm'.

The diphthong is written:

ua in open syllables: = mua 'to buy';
uô before a consonant: = muôn 'ten thousand'.

The diphthong is written:

ưa in open syllables: = mưa 'to rain';
ươ before consonants: = mương 'irrigation canal'.

Tone marks

Vietnamese is a tonal language, i.e. the meaning of each word depends on the "tone" (basically a specific tone

Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation, but...

and glottalization

Glottalization

Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and voiced consonants is most often realized as creaky voice...

pattern) in which it is pronounced. 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 Grave accent The grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, and other languages....	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 Acute accent The acute accent is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-History:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels....	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 Hook (diacritic) In typesetting, the hook is a diacritic mark placed on top of vowels in the Vietnamese alphabet. In shape it looks like a tiny question mark without the dot underneath. For example, a capital A with a hook is "Ả", and a lower case "u" with a hook is "ủ". It functions as a tone marker...	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,	tilde Tilde The tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning a title or superscription, though the term “tilde” has evolved in that language and now has a different meaning in linguistics.It was originally written over a letter as a mark...	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,	dot below Dot (diacritic) When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the Interpunct , or to the glyphs 'combining dot above' and 'combining dot below' which may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in use in Central European languages and Vietnamese.-Overdot:Language...	Ạ/ạ, Ặ/ặ, Ậ/ậ, Ẹ/ẹ, Ệ/ệ, Ị/ị, Ọ/ọ, Ộ/ộ, Ợ/ợ, Ụ/ụ, Ự/ự, Ỵ/ỵ

Unmarked vowels are pronounced with a level voice, in the middle of the speaking range.
The grave accent indicates that the speaker should start somewhat low and drop slightly in tone.
The acute accent indicates that the speaker should start high and rise sharply in tone.
The hook indicates that the speaker should start somewhat low, and fall, then rise, as in a question.
A tilde indicates that the speaker should start high, then dip and rise like a question in tone.
The dot signifies that the speaker should start low and fall lower in tone.

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

As a result of influence from the Chinese writing system, each syllable

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...

in Vietnamese is written separately as if it were a word. 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:

An optional beginning consonant part
A required vowel syllable nucleus
Syllable nucleus
In phonetics and phonology, the nucleus is the central part of the syllable, most commonly a vowel. In addition to a nucleus, a syllable may begin with an onset and end with a coda, but in most languages the only part of a syllable that is mandatory is the nucleus...

and the tone mark, if needed, applied above or below it
An optional ending consonant part, can only be one of the following: c, ch, m, n, ng, nh, p, t, or nothing.

History

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. The system was based on the script used for writing classical Chinese

Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...

(chữ nho), but it was supplemented with characters developed in Vietnam (chữ thuần nôm, proper Nom characters) to represent native Vietnamese words.

As early as 1527, Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east...

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, and the Son of God.The term "Christian" is also used adjectivally to...

missionaries

Missionary

A missionary is a member of a religion who works to convert those who do not share the missionary's faith; someone who proselytizes. The word "mission" is derived from the Latin missioninimus A missionary is a member of a religion who works to convert those who do not share the missionary's faith;...

in Vietnam began using the Latin alphabet to transcribe the Vietnamese language

Vietnamese language

Vietnamese , formerly known under French colonization as Annamese , is the national and official language of Vietnam...

for teaching and evangelization purposes. These informal efforts led eventually to the development of the present Vietnamese alphabet, largely by the work of French

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...

Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes, who worked in the country between 1624 and 1644. Building on previous Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago...

-Vietnamese dictionaries by Gaspar d'Amaral and Duarte da Costa, Rhodes wrote Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum

Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum

The Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum is a trilingual Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary written by the French Jesuit lexicographer Alexandre de Rhodes after 12 years in Vietnam, and published by the Propaganda Fide in Rome in 1651 upon Rhodes' visit to Europe.Before Rhodes's work,...

, a Vietnamese

Vietnamese language

Vietnamese , formerly known under French colonization as Annamese , is the national and official language of Vietnam...

-Portuguese

Portuguese language

-Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...

dictionary, which was printed in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...

in 1651, using his spelling system.

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

Tonkin Free School

The Tonkin Free School was a short-lived but historically-significant educational institution in Hanoi that aimed to reform Vietnamese society under French colonialism during the beginning of the 20th century....

and publishing periodicals utilizing this script. 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.

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

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. For example, both (bright) and (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

Pluto

Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-largest body observed directly orbiting the Sun...

is not Minh Vương Tinh ( - lit. underworld king star) as in other East Asian languages, but is Diêm Vương Tinh , named after the Buddhist

Buddhism

Buddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...

deity Yama

Yama (Buddhism and Chinese mythology)

Yama the name of the Buddhist dharmapala and judge of the dead, who presides over the Buddhist Narakas , "Hells" or "Purgatories". Although ultimately based on the god Yama of the Hindu Vedas, the Buddhist Yama has developed different myths and different functions from the Hindu deity...

. During the Ho Dynasty, Vietnam was officially known as Đại Ngu ( - Great Yu). Unfortunately, most modern Vietnamese know ngu as "stupid" ; 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

Phonemic orthography

A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. These are sometimes termed true alphabets, but non-alphabetic writing systems like syllabaries can be phonemic as well....

of the spoken language, its understandability is as high or higher than a normal conversation.

Computer support

The universal character set Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

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. An ASCII

ASCII

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

-based writing convention, Vietnamese Quoted Readable, and several byte-based encodings including TCVN3, VNI, and VISCII

VISCII

The Vietnamese Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character set comprising the Vietnamese alphabet, punctuation, and other graphemes. Vietnamese requires slightly too many letter/diacritic combinations to make a traditional extended ASCII character set for it...

were widely used before Unicode became popular. Most new documents now exclusively use the Unicode format UTF-8

UTF-8

UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding for Unicode. It is able to represent any character in the Unicode standard, yet is backwards compatible with ASCII...

.

Unicode allows the user to choose between precomposed character

Precomposed character

A precomposed character is a Unicode entity that can be decomposed into an equivalent string of several other characters...

s and combining character

Combining character

In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks ....

s in inputting Vietnamese. Because various operating systems implement combining characters in a nonstandard way (see Verdana font), 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

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also...

utilities that act as keyboard drivers exist. They support the most popular input methods, including Telex

Telex (IME)

Telex is a convention for writing Vietnamese using ASCII characters commonly found on computer keyboard layouts. Because the Vietnamese alphabet uses a complex system of diacritical marks, Telex requires the user to type in a base letter, followed by one or two characters that represent the...

, VIQR and its variants, and VNI

VNI

VNI Software Company is the Westminster, California–based, family-owned developer of various education, entertainment, office, and utility software packages.-History:...

External links

Scanned version of Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary
Vietnamese Writing System
Essay comparing the orthography variants
Vietnamese Unicode FAQs
Doctoral dissertation comparing learning efficiency between quoc ngu and Chinese characters
Chữ viết (in Vietnamese)
The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.

Vietnamese alphabet

Description

Letter names and pronunciation

Consonants

Pronunciation

Monophthongs

Diphthongs and triphthongs

Tone marks

Structure

History

Sino-Vietnamese and quốc ngữ

Computer support

See also

Further reading

External links