Vietnamese language
Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt), a tonal language, is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 87% of Vietnam's population, in addition to about two million Vietnamese emigrants, including a significant number of Vietnamese Americans. Although it contains many vocabulary borrowings from Chinese and was originally written using Chinese characters, it is considered by linguists to be one of the Austroasiatic languages, of which it has the most speakers (it has 10 times the number of speakers as the next most-spoken language, the Khmer language).
| Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Vietnam, United States>USA, and various others |
| Total speakers: | 70 Million |
| Ranking: | 14th |
| Genetic classification: | Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer Viet-Muong Vietnamese |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Vietnam |
| Regulated by: | valign="top" |
| 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 Computer support 9 Examples 10 External links |
History
Classification
Vietnamese is part of the Viet-Muong grouping of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic 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.
| 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 hỏi and ngã tones are more distinct in the northern than in the southern dialect. The current standard pronunciation and spellings are based on the dialect of an educated Hanoi speaker.
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
Most of Vietnamese vocabularies came from Chinese. In fact, Vietnamese was written in Chinese characters for thousands of years utill 1945. About a thousand years ago Vietnam was actually a part of China.Writing system
Presently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ or "national script"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, 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.
Unicode contains all characters that are necessary to write Vietnamese.
There are also a number of codepages designed for representing Vietnamese texts, such as VISCII or CP1258.
Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese is often typed using the VIQR convention.
Computer support
Examples
This text is from the first six lines of Kim Vân Kiều, an epic poem by the celebrated poet Nguyễn Du, 阮攸 (1765-1820). It was originally written in Nôm (titled 金雲翹), and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
Full text (in Vietnamese)
English translation
External links