LanguageVietnam's official language is Vietnamese. It is spoken throughout the country and there are dialectical differences between different regions in the North, the Center & the South. There are also dozens of different languages spoken by the various ethnic minorities, particularly in the central highlands and in the far north of the country. Khmer, the Campodia language, is spoken in parts of the Mekong Delta, and Lao and various Chinese dialects are evident in areas bordering Laos and China.
English is now a popular foreign language and is used in most restaurants, hotels, offices....in big cities or in tourist destinations. This reflects the country's relationship with foreign country. French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean… are also popular and can be found in tourist places.
Vietnamese Language and Scripts
More than 80% of the population speak Vietnamese (or Kinh), the national language.
Ethnic minorities have native languages. Three scripts have influenced Vietnam’s history:
- Han (Chinese) ideograms were used until the beginning of the 20th century.
- The Nom script, created between the 11th and 14th centuries, base on the Han script.
- European missionaries in the 17th century used the Roman alphabet to record the Vietnamese language and created the Quoc Ngu script (national language). After the Independent Day 1945, the Quoc Ngu (national language) was developed and used as the officially national language.
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Pronunciation
Most of the names of the letters of the Quoc Ngu (national language) alphabet are pronounced like the letters of the French alphabet. Dictionaries are alphabetised as in English except that each vowel/ tone combination is treated as a different letter.
Most of the consonants of the Romanised Vietnamese alphabet are pronounced more or less as they are in English with a few exceptions. Vietnamese doesn't use the English letters "F", "J", "W", and "Z".
SYMBOL AND PRONUNCIATION | |
| C, K | an unaspirated "k" |
| đ | (with crossbar) á in 'do' |
| d | without crossbar) á the 'z' in 'zoo' |
| gi | á a 'z' |
| kh | á the 'ch' in German buch |
| ng | á the '-nga-' sound in 'long ago' |
| nh | as the 'ny' in 'canyon' |
| ph | as in 'farm' |
| r | as 'z' |
| s | as 's' |
| tr | as 'ch' |
| th | a strongly aspirated 't' |
| x | like an 's' |
| ch | lik a 'k' |
| ng | as the 'ng' in 'long' but lips closed, sounds like English 'm' |
| nh | as in 'singing' |
Tones
There are six tones in spoken Vietnamese. Thus, every syllable in Vietnamese can be pronounced six different ways. For example, depend on the tones, the word ma can be read to mean ' phantom', 'but', 'mother', 'rice seedling', 'tomb' or 'horse'.
The six tones of spoken Vietnamese are represented by five diacritical marks in the written language (the first tone is left unmarked). These should not be confused with the four other diacritical marks that are used to indicate special consonants and vowel.
Hereunder the examples represent the six different tone in Vietnamese.
| ma | (ghost): middle of the vocal range |
| mà | (which): begins low & fall lower |
| mả | (tomb): begin low, dips and then rises to higher pitch |
| mã | (horse): begin high, dips slightly, then rises sharply |
| mạ | (rice seedling): begin low, falls to a lower lever, then stops |
| má | (mother): begin high and rises sharply |
Other minority languages:
Vietnam has 54 other ethnic groups besides Viet (making up nearly 10% of the population, many living in mountainous areas), each with their own languages. 24 even have a written form. A few popular languages besides Vietnamese are:
- Chinese: spoken by Ethnic Chinese immigrants who have settled in Vietnam during the last 300 years, living mainly in big cities and provincial towns.
- Muong: spoken by the Muong ethnic group inhabiting the Northern mountainous regions of Vietnam.
It is not necessary to know these languages when visiting places with ethnic minorities, as Vietnamese is a common language used between groups.
