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{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="right" width="300"
! colspan="2" bgcolor="#DDDDDD" style="font-size:120%"|Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt)
|-
| valign="top"|Spoken in:
|Vietnam
|-
| valign="top"|Total speakers:
|70 Million
|-
| valign="top"|Ranking:
|14th
|-
| valign="top"|Genetic
classification:
|Austro-Asiatic
Mon-Khmer
Viet-Muong
Vietnamese
|-
! colspan="2" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"|Official status
|-
| valign="top"|Official language of:
| valign="top"|Vietnam
|-
| valign="top"|Regulated by:
| valign="top"|-
|-
! colspan="2" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"|Language codes
|-
|ISO 639-1||vi
|-
|ISO 639-2||vie
|-
|SIL||VIE
|}
| Table of contents |
|
2 Classification 3 Geographic distribution 4 Sounds 5 Grammar 6 Vocabulary 7 Writing system 8 Examples 9 External links |
{| border=1
! Modern name !! Locality name !! Old name
|------------------------------------------------
| Northern Vietnamese || Hanoi dialect|| Tonkinese
|------------------------------------------------
| Central Vietnamese || Hué dialect || High Annamese
|------------------------------------------------
| Southern Vietnamese ||Saigon dialect|| Cochinchinese
|}
These dialects differ slightly in tone, although the Hué dialect is somewhat more different than others. The current standard pronunciation and spellings are based on the dialect of an educated Hanoi speaker.
History
Classification
Vietnamese is part of the Viet-Muong grouping of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austro-Asiatic language family, a family that also includes the Khmer language, spoken in Cambodia. Geographic distribution
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken in Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, United Kingdom, USA, and Vanuatu.Official status
Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam.Dialects
There are various mutually intelligible dialects (as intelligible as the dialects of English found in the United States), the main three being: Sounds
Vowels
Rounding is contrastive for non-low back vowels.
| i | M, u | |
| e | 7, o | |
| E |
| O |
| a | A |
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
| Stops | p/b | t/d, [th]* | t | [ty] | k | |
| Fricatives | f/v | s/z | s/z | Z | x/[Y] | h |
| Nasals | m | n | ñ | N | ||
| Liquids | l |
Prior to French occupation, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
The six tones in Vietnamese are:
Grammar
Vocabulary
Writing system
Presently, the written language uses a Roman character set called quốc ngữ (national language). It was introduced in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591-1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries. With the occupation of the French in the 19th century, it became popular and by the late 20th century virtually all writings were done in quốc ngữ.
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and chữ nôm is near-extinct.
| ASCII Symbol | ASCII Name | Unicode Name | Description | Sample Unicode Vowel (e) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ngang | Ngang | no tone (flat) | e | |
| / | Sa('c | Sắc | rising | é |
| ` | Huye^`n | Huyền | falling | è |
| ? | Ho?i | Hỏi | dipping | ẻ |
| ~ | Nga~ | Ngã | dipping (but not as low) | ẽ |
| . | Na(.ng | Nặng | low, glottal | ẹ |
Tone markers are written above the vowel they affect, with the exception of Nặng, where the dot goes below the vowel. For example, the common family name Nguyễn begins with SAMPA /N/ (this sound is difficult for native English speakers to place at the beginning of a word), and is followed by something approximated by the English word "win". The ~ indicates a dipping tone; start somewhat low, go down in pitch, then rise to the end of the word.
Like English and many other languages on earth, Vietnamese, originally a monosyllabic language, as demonstrated by its rich tonal system and syllabic diphthongs and triphthongs meant to differentiate one-syllable words, has long become a polysyllabic language, as clearly evidenced with the presence of more than half of its multi-syllabic and compound words in its overall bountiful vocabulary stock.
Examples
This text is from the first six lines of Kim Vân Kiều, an epic poem by the celebrated poet Nguyễn Du (1765-1820). It was originally written in Nôm (titled 金雲翹), and is widely taught in Vietnam today.English translation
External links
