The Vietnamese alphabet (Vietnamese: ch? Qu?c ng?; literally "national language script") is the modern writing system for the Vietnamese language. It uses the Latin script, based on its employment in the alphabets of Romance languages,^[3] in particular the Portuguese alphabet,^[1] 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. These many diacritics, often two on the same vowel, make written Vietnamese easily recognizable among localized variants of Latin alphabets.^[4]

Letter names and pronunciation

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

There are 29 letters in the Vietnamese alphabet. There are 4-6 tones, which are marked in the IPA as suprasegmentals following the phonemic value.

Vietnamese alphabet in cursive

Note:

• Naming b bê bò and p pê ph? is to avoid confusion in some dialects or some contexts, the same for s s? m?nh (n?ng) and x x? nh?, i i ng?n and y y dài.
• Q, q is always followed by u in every word and phrase in Vietnamese, e.g. qu?n (trousers), quy?n r? (to attract), etc.
• The name i-c?-rét for y is from the French name for the letter: i grec (Greek I),^[6] referring to the letter's origin from the Greek letter upsilon.

Consonants

The alphabet is largely derived from the Portuguese, although the usage of gh and gi was borrowed from Italian (compare ghetto, Giuseppe), and that for c/k/qu from Greek and Latin (compare canis, kinesis, qu? v?dis), mirroring the English usage of these letters (compare cat, kite, queen).

Consonants

Grapheme	Word-Initial (IPA)		Word-Final		Notes
	Northern	Southern	Northern	Southern
B b
C c					⟨k⟩ is used when preceding ⟨i y e ê⟩. ⟨qu⟩ is used instead of ⟨co cu⟩ if a /w/ on-glide exists. Realized as in word-final position following rounded vowels ⟨u ô o⟩.
Ch ch			/?k/		Multiple phonemic analyses of final ⟨ch⟩ have been proposed (main article).
D d					In Middle Vietnamese, ⟨d⟩ represented . The distinction between ⟨d⟩ and ⟨gi⟩ is now purely etymological (and is the only one) in most modern dialects.
? ?
G g
Gh gh					Spelling used ⟨gh⟩ instead of ⟨g⟩ before ⟨i e ê⟩, seemingly to follow the Italian convention. ⟨g⟩ is not allowed in these environments.
Gi gi					In Middle Vietnamese, ⟨gi⟩ represented . The distinction between ⟨d⟩ and ⟨gi⟩ is now purely etymological (and is the only one) in most modern dialects. Realized as [?] in Northern spelling pronunciation. [Spelled ⟨g⟩ before another ⟨i⟩.[a]
H h
K k					Spelling used instead of ⟨c⟩ before ⟨i y e ê⟩ to follow the European tradition. ⟨c⟩ is not allowed in these environments.
Kh kh					In Middle Vietnamese, ⟨kh⟩ was pronounced
L l
M m
N n					In Southern Vietnamese, word-final ⟨n⟩ is realized as if not following ⟨i ê⟩.
Ng ng					Realized as [m] in word-final position following rounded vowels ⟨u ô o⟩.
Ngh ngh					Spelling used instead of ⟨ng⟩ before ⟨i e ê⟩ in accordance with ⟨gh⟩.
Nh nh			//		Multiple phonemic analyses of final ⟨nh⟩ have been proposed (main article).
P p					Only occurs initially in loanwords. Some Vietnamese pronounce it as a "b" sound instead (as in Arabic).
Ph ph					In Middle Vietnamese, ⟨ph⟩ was pronounced
Qu qu					Spelling used in place of ⟨co cu⟩ if a /w/ on-glide exists.
R r					Variably pronounced as a fricative , approximant , flap or trill in Southern speech.
S s					Realized as [?] in Northern spelling pronunciation.
T t					In Southern Vietnamese, word-final ⟨t⟩ is realized as if not following ⟨i ê⟩.
Th th
Tr tr					Realized as [t?] in Northern spelling pronunciation.
V v					In Middle Vietnamese, it was represented by a b with flourish ⟨⟩ and was pronounced . Can be realized as in Southern speech through spelling pronunciation and in loanwords.
X x					In Middle Vietnamese, ⟨x⟩ was pronounced .

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 is because the orthography was designed centuries ago and the spoken language has changed, as shown in the chart directly above that contrasts the difference between Middle and Modern Vietnamese.

The letters y and i are mostly equivalent, and there is no concrete rule that says when to use one or the other, except in sequences like ay and uy (i.e. tay ("arm, hand") is read /tj/ while tai ("ear") is read /t?j/). There have been attempts since the late 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 textbooks published by Nhà Xu?t b?n Giáo d?c ("Publishing House of Education"), y is used to represent /i/ only in Sino-Vietnamese words that are written with one letter y alone (diacritics can still be added, as in ý, ?), at the beginning of a syllable when followed by ê (as in y?m, y?t), and after u; therefore such forms as *lý and *k? are not "standard", though they are much preferred elsewhere. Most people and the popular media continue to use the spelling that they are most accustomed to.

Spelling	Sound	Spelling	Sound
a	/a/ ([æ] in some dialects) except as below  /?/ in au /?w/ and ay /?j/ (but /a/ in ao /aw/ and ai /aj/)  /?j/ before syllable-final nh /?/ and ch /k/, see  Vietnamese phonology#Analysis of final ch, nh  // in ?a //, ia /i/ and ya /i/  // in ua except after q[note 1]	o	/?/ except as below  /?w/ before ng and c[note 2]  /w/ after any vowel letter (= after a or e)  /w/ before any vowel letter except i (= before ?, a or e)
?	/?/	ô	/o/ except as below  /w/ before ng and c except after a u that is not preceded by a q[note 3]  // in uô except after q[note 4]
â	//	?	/?/ except as below  // in //
e	/?/	u	/u/ except as below  /w/ after q or any vowel letter  /w/ before any vowel letter except a, ô and i  Before a, ô and i: /w/ if preceded by q, /u/ otherwise
ê	/e/ except as below  /j/ before syllable-final nh /?/ and ch /k/, see  Vietnamese phonology#Analysis of final ch, nh  // in iê /i/ and yê /i/	?	/?/
i	/i/ except as below  /j/ after any vowel letter	y	/i/ except as below  /j/ after any vowel letter except u (= after â and a)

The uses of the letters i and y to represent the phoneme /i/ can be categorized as "standard" (as used in textbooks published by Nhà Xu?t b?n Giáo d?c) and "non-standard" as follows.

Context	"Standard"	"Non-standard"
In one-lettered non-Sino-Vietnamese syllables	i (e.g.: i t?, í ?i, ì ?ch, ? ôi, ?i ?)
In one-lettered Sino-Vietnamese syllables	y (e.g.: y h?c, ý ki?n, ? l?i)
Syllable-initial, not followed by ê	i (e.g.a ?ái, im l?ng, ích l?i, ?u xìu)
Syllable-initial, followed by ê	y (e.g.: y?u ?t, y?m dãi, y?t h?u)
After u	y (e.g.: uy l?c, huy hoàng, khuya kho?t, tuy?n m?, khuy?t t?t, khu?u tay, huýt sáo, khuynh hng)
After qu, not followed by ê, nh	y (e.g.: quý giá, qu?n quýt)	i (e.g.: quí giá, qu?n quít)
After qu, followed by ê, nh	y (e.g.: quyên góp, x?o quy?t, m?ng quýnh, hoa qu?nh)
After b, d, ?, r, x	i (e.g.: b?a t, diêm dúa, ch th?, r? r?, tri?u i, xinh x?n)
After g, not followed by a, ?, â, e, ê, o, ô, ?, u, ?	i (e.g.: cái gì?, gi? gìn)
After h, k, l, m, t, not followed by any letter, in non-Sino-Vietnamese syllables	i (e.g.: ti hí, kì c?, lí nhí, mí m?t, tí xíu)
After h, k, l, m, t, not followed by any letter, in Sino-Vietnamese syllables	i (e.g.: hi v?ng, kì thú, lí lu?n, m? thu?t, gi? Tí)	y (e.g.: hy v?ng, k? thú, lý lu?n, m? thu?t, gi? Tý)
After ch, gh, kh, nh, ph, th	i (e.g.: chíp hôi, ghi nh?, ý ngh?a, khiêu khích, nhí nh?, phi?n ?á, bu?n thiu)
After n, s, v, not followed by any letter, in non-proper-noun syllables	i (e.g.: ni cô, si tình, vi khu?n)
After n, s, v, not followed by any letter, in proper nouns	i (e.g.: Ni, Thu? S?, Vi)	y (e.g.: Ny, Th?y S?, Vy)
After h, k, l, m, n, s, t, v, followed by a letter	i (e.g.: thng hi?u, kiên trì, b?i li?t, ngôi mi?u, n?ng n?u, siêu ng, m?n ti?p, c vi?c)
In Vietnamese personal names, after a consonant	i	either i or y, depending on personal preference

This "standard" set by Nhà Xu?t b?n Giáo d?c is not definite. It is unknown why the literature books use Lí while the history books use Lý.

Spelling

Vowel nuclei

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

	Front		Central		Back
	Sound	Spelling	Sound	Spelling	Sound	Spelling
Centering	/i/	iê/ia*	//	/?a*	/u/	uô/ua*
Close	/i/	i, y	/?/	?	/u/	u
Close-mid/ Mid	/e/	ê	/?/	?	/o/	ô
			//	â
Open-mid/ Open	/?/	e	/a/	a	/?/	o
			/?/	?

Notes:

• The vowel /i/ is:
  • usually written i: /s/ = s? (A suffix indicating profession, similar to the English suffix -er).
  • sometimes written y after h, k, l, m, n, s, t, v, x: /m/ = M? 'America'.
    • It is always written y when:

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

• The vowel /?/ is written oo before c or ng (since o in that position represents /?w/): /k/ = oóc 'organ (musical)'; /k k/ = kính coong. This generally only occurs in recent loanwords or when representing dialectal pronunciation.
• Similarly, the vowel /o/ is written ôô before c or ng: // = ôông (Ngh? An/Hà T?nh variant of ông /?w?/). But unlike oo being frequently used in onomatopoeia, transcriptions from other languages and words "borrowed" from Ngh? An/Hà T?nh dialects (such as vo?c), ôô seems to be used solely to convey the feel of the Ngh? An/Hà T?nh accents. In transcriptions, ô is preferred (e.g. các-tông 'cardboard', ?c-coóc-?ê-ông 'accordion').

Diphthongs and triphthongs

		Rising Vowels	Rising-Falling Vowels	Falling Vowels
	nucleus (V)	/w/ on-glides	/w/ + V + off-glide	/j/ off-glides	/w/ off-glides
front	e	/w?/ oe/(q)ue*	/w?w/ oeo/(q)ueo*		/?w/ eo
	ê	/we/ uê			/ew/ êu
	i	/wi/ uy	/wiw/ uyu		/iw/ iu
	ia/iê/yê*	/wi/ uyê/uya*			/iw/ iêu/yêu*
central	a	/wa/ oa/(q)ua*	/waj/ oai/(q)uai, /waw/ oao/(q)uao*	/aj/ ai	/aw/ ao
	?	/w?/ o?/(q)u?*	/w?j/ oay/(q)uay*	/?j/ ay	/?w/ au
	â	/w/ uâ	/wj/ uây	/j/ ây	/w/ âu
	?	/w?/ u?		/?j/ ?i	/?w/ ?u
	?			/?j/ ?i	/?w/ ?u
	?a/*			/j/ i	/w/ u
back	o			/?j/ oi
	ô			/oj/ ôi
	u			/uj/ ui
	ua/uô*			/uj/ uôi

Notes:

The glide /w/ is written:

• u after /k/ (spelled q in this instance)
• o in front of a, ?, or e except after q
• o following a and e
• u in all other cases; note that /?w/ is written as au instead of *?u (cf. ao /aw/), and that /i/ is written as y after u

The off-glide /j/ is written as i except after â and ?, where it is written as y; note that /?j/ is written as ay instead of *?y (cf. ai /aj/) .

The diphthong /i/ is written:

• ia at the end of a syllable: /m/ = mía 'sugar cane'
• iê before a consonant or off-glide: /m?/ = mi?ng 'piece'; /sw/ = xiêu 'to slope, slant'

Note that the i of the diphthong changes to y after u:

• ya: /xw/ = khuya 'late at night'
• yê: /xwn/ = khuyên 'to advise'

iê changes to yê at the beginning of a syllable (ia does not change):

• /n/ = yên 'calm'; /w/ y?u' 'weak, feeble'

The diphthong /u/ is written:

• ua at the end of a syllable: /m/ = mua 'to buy'
• uô before a consonant or off-glide: /mn/ = muôn 'ten thousand'; /sj/ = xuôi 'down'

The diphthong // is written:

• ?a at the end of a syllable: /m?/ = m?a 'to rain'
• before a consonant or off-glide: /m/ = mng 'irrigation canal'; /t?j/ = ti 'to water, irrigate, sprinkle'

Tone marks

Vietnamese is a tonal language, i.e., the meaning of each word depends on the "tone" (basically a specific tone and glottalization pattern) in which it is pronounced. There are six distinct tones in the standard northern dialect. In the south, there is a merging of the h?i and ngã tones, in effect leaving five basic tones. The first one ("level tone") is not marked, and the other five are indicated by diacritics applied to the vowel part of the syllable. The tone names are chosen such that the name of each tone is spoken in the tone it identifies.

• 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, with the voice becoming increasingly breathy.
• The hook indicates in Northern Vietnamese that the speaker should start in the middle range and fall, but in Southern Vietnamese that the speaker should start somewhat low and fall, then rise (as when asking a question in English).
• In the North, a tilde indicates that the speaker should start mid, break off (with a glottal stop), then start again and rise like a question in tone. In the South, it is realized identically to the H?i tone.
• The acute accent indicates that the speaker should start mid and rise sharply in tone.
• The dot signifies in Northern Vietnamese that the speaker starts low and fall lower in tone, with the voice becoming increasingly creaky and ending in a glottal stop, but in Southern Vietnamese speakers starts low and rise mid 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, h?y), the "new style" emphasizes linguistic principles and tries to apply the tone mark on the main vowel (as in hoá, hu?). 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 thu? is acceptable while thúê is not). In the case of the diphthong, the mark is placed on the ?. The u in qu is considered part of the consonant. Currently, the new style is usually used in textbooks published by Nhà Xu?t b?n Giáo d?c, while most people still prefer the old style in casual uses. Among Overseas Vietnamese communities, the old style is predominant for all purposes.

In lexical ordering, differences in letters are treated as primary, differences in tone markings as secondary, and differences in case as tertiary differences. (Letters include for instance A and ? but not ?. Older dictionaries also treated digraphs and trigraphs like CH and NGH as base letters.^[7]) Ordering according to primary and secondary differences proceeds syllable by syllable. According to this principle, a dictionary lists tuân th? before tu?n 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 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 has 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 ending consonant part, can only be one of the following: c, ch, m, n, ng, nh, p, t, or nothing.

History

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Since at least 111 BC, Vietnamese literature, government papers, scholarly works, and religious scripture were all written in classical Chinese (ch? Han).

A page from Alexandre de Rhodes' 1651 dictionary

Since at least the 8th century, Vietnamese was written using variant Chinese characters (ch? Nôm ), each of them representing one word. The system was based off chu Han, but was also supplemented with Vietnamese-invented characters (ch? thu?n nôm, proper Nom characters) to represent native Vietnamese words.

Invention of Quoc-ngu

As early as 1520, Portuguese and Italian Jesuit missionaries in Vietnam began using Latin script to transcribe the Vietnamese language as an assistance for learning the language. These efforts led eventually to the development of the present Vietnamese alphabet, started by Portuguese missionary Francisco de Pina.^[1] His work was continued by the Avignon missionary Alexandre de Rhodes, who worked in the country between 1624 and 1644. Building on previous dictionaries by Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa, Rhodes wrote the Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum, a Vietnamese–Portuguese–Latin dictionary, which was later printed in Rome in 1651, using their spelling system.^[1]

Quoc-ngu and French colonization

In 1910, French colonial administration forcibly made ch? Qu?c ng? (the modern Vietnamese alphabet) mandatory.^[8]

It was originally used in Christian communities in Vietnam. Some missionaries saw the Confucian literati as the main obstacle to Catholic conversion in Vietnam (and French control over Vietnam). The Latin alphabet also became a means to publish Vietnamese popular literature, disparaged as vulgar by the Chinese-educated imperial elites^[9].

Historian Pamela A. Pears asserted that by instituting the latin alphabet in Vietnam, the French cut the Vietnamese from their traditional literature, making them unable to read it.^[10] Some French originally planned to replace Vietnamese entirely with the French language, but this never was a serious project, given the small number of French settlers compared with the native population. By 1910 they accepted the use of ch? Qu?c ng? to write Vietnamese, as it still achieved their goals of romanizing the language and wiping out Han Nom.^[11]

Mass education

Between 1907-1908 the short-lived Tonkin Free School promulgated quoc ngu and taught French to the general population.

By 1917, the French suppressed Vietnam's Confucian examination system, viewed as an aristocratic system linked with the "ancien regime", thereby forcing Vietnamese elites to educate their offspring in the French language education system. Emperor Kh?i nh declared the traditional writing system abolished in 1918.^[12] While the most traditional nationalists favoured the Confucian examination system and the use of ideograms, Vietnamese revolutionaries and progressive nationalists as well as pro-French elites viewed the French education system as a means to get rid of all remnants of the old Chinese domination, to democratize education and to open the Vietnamese to the modern world and the ideals identified with the French republic.

The French colonial regime then set up another educational system for natives, teaching Vietnamese as first language using quoc ngu in primary school, but then French as a second language (taught in quoc ngu). Hundreds of thousands of textbooks for primary education began to be published in quoc ngu, with the unintentional result of turning the script into the popular medium for the expression of Vietnamese culture. By the late 1930s, approximately 10% of the population was literate, a huge increase over several decades before.^[13]

Late 20th century to present

Prior to the advent of 21st-century computer-assisted typesetting methods, the act of typesetting and printing Vietnamese had been described as a "nightmare" due to the number of accents and diacritics.^[14][15][16]

Contemporary Vietnamese texts sometimes include words which have not been adapted to Vietnamese orthography. A pronunciation guide may be provided in small print above the words, a system akin to "ruby characters" elsewhere in Asia.

Typing Vietnamese (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 that other languages use are scattered throughout the Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, and Latin Extended-B blocks; those that remain (such as the letters with more than one diacritic) are placed in the Latin Extended Additional block. An ASCII-based writing convention, Vietnamese Quoted Readable, and several byte-based encodings including VSCII (TCVN), VNI, VISCII and Windows-1258 were widely used before Unicode became popular. Most new documents now exclusively use the Unicode format UTF-8.

Unicode allows the user to choose between precomposed characters and combining characters in inputting Vietnamese. Because in the past some fonts implemented combining characters in a nonstandard way (see Verdana font), most people use precomposed characters when composing Vietnamese-language documents (except on Windows where Windows-1258 used combining characters).

Most keyboards used by Vietnamese-language users do not support direct input of diacritics by default.^[] Various free software such as Unikey that act as keyboard drivers exist. They support the most popular input methods, including Telex, VNI, VIQR and its variants.

See also

• ?, Â, ?, Ê, Ô, ?, ?
• Ch? Nôm, formerly the script used to write the Vietnamese language.
• Chu Han, first and oldest form of written Vietnamese, in Classical Chinese
• Dot (diacritic)
• Hook above
• Horn (diacritic)
• VIQR, a standard 7-bit writing convention of the Vietnamese alphabet.
• VISCII, a standard 8-bit encoding of the Vietnamese alphabet.
• Vietnamese Braille
• Vietnamese calligraphy
• Vietnamese phonology

Bibliography

• Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Published version of the author's MA thesis, University of Washington). (Reprinted 1981, Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics).
• Haudricourt, André-Georges (1949). "Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien (English translation as: The origin of the peculiarities of the Vietnamese alphabet)" (PDF). Dân Vi?t-Nam. 3: 61-68.
• Healy, Dana.(2003). Teach Yourself Vietnamese, Hodder Education, London.
• Nguyen, ?ang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-87022-462-X
• Nguy?n, ?ình-Hoà. (1955). Qu?c-ng?: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
• Nguy?n, ?ình-Hoà (1992). "Vietnamese phonology and graphemic borrowings from Chinese: The Book of 3,000 Characters revisited". Mon-Khmer Studies. 20: 163-182.
• Nguy?n, ?ình-Hoà. (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0.
• Nguy?n, ?ình-Hoà. (1997). Vietnamese: Ti?ng Vi?t không son ph?n. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 1-55619-733-0.
• Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2003). Vietnamese tone: A new analysis. Outstanding dissertations in linguistics. New York: Routledge. (Published version of author's 2001 PhD dissertation, University of Florida: Hoa, Pham. Vietnamese tone: Tone is not pitch). ISBN 0-415-96762-7.
• Sassoon, Rosemary (1995). The Acquisition of a Second Writing System (illustrated, reprint ed.). Intellect Books. ISBN 1871516439. Retrieved 2014.
• Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1117-8. (Original work published 1965).
• Wellisch, Hans H. (1978). The conversion of scripts, its nature, history, and utilization. Information sciences series (illustrated ed.). Wiley. ISBN 0471016209. Retrieved 2014.
• Language Monthly, Issues 40-57. Praetorius. 1987. Retrieved 2014.

Further reading

• Nguyen, A. M. (2006). Let's learn the Vietnamese alphabet. Las Vegas: Viet Baby. ISBN 0-9776482-0-6
• Shih, Virginia Jing-yi. Quoc Ngu Revolution: A Weapon of Nationalism in Vietnam. 1991.

References

External links

• Media related to Vietnamese writing at Wikimedia Commons
• Vietnamese Unicode FAQs