Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyễn Tài Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern Nghệ An Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.

These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent, while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.

It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and, to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954

Geneva Conference (1954)

The Geneva Conference was a conference which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, whose purpose was to attempt to find a way to unify Korea and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina...

 that called for the temporary division of the country

Partition of Vietnam

The Partition of Vietnam was the establishment of the 17th parallel as the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone in 1954, splitting Vietnam into halves after the First Indochina War.The Geneva Conference was held at the conclusion of the First Indochina War...

, almost a million northerners (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved south (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas) as part of Operation Passage to Freedom

Operation Passage to Freedom

Operation Passage to Freedom was the term used by the United States Navy to describe its transportation in 1954–55 of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam...

. About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.

Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975–76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system has resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but, more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.

Regional variation in grammatical words

Northern	Central	Southern	English gloss
này	ni or nì	nầy	"this"
thế này	ri	vầy	"thus, this way"
ấy	nớ, tê	đó	"that"
thế, thế ấy	rứa, rứa tê	vậy đó	"thus, so, that way"
kia	tê	đó	"that yonder"
kìa	tề	đó	"that yonder (far away)"
đâu	mô	đâu	"where"
nào	mô	nào	"which"
sao, thế nào	răng	sao	"how, why"
tôi	tui	tui	"I, me (polite)"
tao	tau	tao, qua	"I, me (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng tôi	bầy tui	tụi tui	"we, us (but not you, polite)"
chúng tao	bầy choa	tụi tao	"we, us (but not you, arrogant, familiar)"
mày	mi	mầy	"you (thou Thou The word thou is a second person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in almost all contexts by you. It is used in parts of Northern England and by Scots. Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee , and the possessive is thy or thine... ) (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng mày	bây, bọn bây	tụi mầy	"you guys, y'all (arrogant, familiar)"
nó	hắn, nghỉ	nó	"he/him, she/her, it (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng nó	bọn hắn	tụi nó	"they/them (arrogant, familiar)"
ông ấy	ông nớ	ổng	"he/him, that gentleman, sir"
bà ấy	mệ nớ, mụ nớ, bà nớ	bả	"she/her, that lady, madam"
cô ấy	o nớ	cổ	"she/her, that unmarried young lady"
chị ấy	ả nớ	chỉ	"she/her, that young lady"
anh ấy	eng nớ	ảnh	"he/him, that young man (of equal status)"

The 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...

-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.

Regional consonant correspondences

Syllable position	Orthography	Northern	North-central	Central	Southern
syllable-initial	x	[s]	[s]	[s]	[s]
	s		[ʂ]	[ʂ]	[ʂ]
	ch	[tɕ]	[tɕ]	[tɕ]	[tɕ]
	tr		[tʂ]	[tʂ]	[tʂ]
	r	[z]	[ɹ]	[ɹ]	[ɹ]
	d		[ɟ]	[j]	[j]
	gi		[z]
	v	[v]	[v]
syllable-final	c	[k]	[k]	[k]	[k]
	t	[t]	[t]
	t after e			[k, t]
	t after ê			[t]	[k, t]
	t after i				[t]
	ch	[c]	[c]
	ng	[ŋ]	[ŋ]	[ŋ]	[ŋ]
	n	[n]	[n]
	n after i, ê			[n]	[n]
	nh	[ɲ]	[ɲ]

In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:

l, n variation

Orthography	"Mainstream" varieties	Rural varieties
n	[n]	[n]
l	[l]

Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as năm by itself and in compound numerals like năm mươi "fifty" but appears as lăm in mười lăm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mươi nhăm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mươi lăm.

The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blời with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province

Ninh Bình Province

-Festivals:* Thai Vi festival * Truong Yen Festival* Yen Cu Festival* Non Khe Festival-Transportation:...

) but trời in Southern Vietnamese and giời in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants /ʈᶳ, z/, respectively).

Tones

Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The hỏi and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contour

Pitch contour

In linguistics, speech synthesis, and music, the pitch contour of a sound is a function or curve that tracks the perceived pitch of the sound over time....

s) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà Tĩnh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the hỏi tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of hỏi, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation

Phonation

Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...

 type) in the tones among dialects.

Regional tone correspondences

Tone	Northern	North-central			Central	Southern
		Vinh	Thanh Chương	Hà Tĩnh
ngang	˧ 33	˧˥ 35	˧˥ 35 |˧˥ 35, ˧˥˧ 353 |˧˥ 35 |˧ 33
huyền |˨˩̤ 21̤ |˧ 33 |˧ 33 |˧ 33 |˧ 33 |˨˩ 21
sắc |˧˥ 35 |˩ 11 |˩ 11, ˩˧̰ 13̰	˩˧̰ 13̰	˩˧̰ 13̰	˧˥ 35
hỏi	˧˩˧̰ 31̰3 |˧˩ 31	˧˩ 31	˧˩̰ʔ 31̰ʔ	rowspan="2" |˧˩˨ 312	rowspan="2" |˨˩˦ 214
ngã |˧ʔ˥ 3ʔ5 |˩˧̰ 13̰	rowspan="2" |˨̰ 22̰
nặng	˨˩̰ʔ 21̰ʔ |˨ 22 |˨̰ 22̰	˨̰ 22̰ |˨˩˨ 212

The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization

Glottalization

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

 (creaky

Creaky voice

In linguistics, creaky voice , is a special kind of phonation in which the arytenoid cartilages in the larynx are drawn together; as a result, the vocal folds are compressed rather tightly, becoming relatively slack and compact...

, stiff

Stiff voice

The term stiff voice describes the pronunciation of consonants or vowels with a glottal opening narrower, and the vocal cords stiffer, than what occurs in modal voice. Although there is no specific IPA diacritic for stiff voice, the voicing diacritic may be used in conjunction with the symbol for...

, harsh

Harsh voice

Harsh voice, also called ventricular voice or pressed voice, is the production of speech sounds with a constricted laryngeal cavity, which generally involves epiglottal co-articulation...

) is indicated with the ⟨◌̰⟩ symbol; breathy voice

Breathy voice

Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a larger volume of air escapes between them. This produces an audible noise...

 with ⟨◌̤⟩; 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 using a preservative pronunciation of...

 with ⟨ʔ⟩; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)

Grammar

Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

 marking of case

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...

, gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

, number

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

 or tense

Grammatical tense

A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...

 (and, as a result, has no finite

Finite verb

A finite verb is a verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs. Finite verbs can form independent clauses, which can stand on their own as complete sentences....

/nonfinite

Non-finite verb

In linguistics, a non-finite verb is a verb form that is not limited by a subject and, more generally, is not fully inflected by categories that are marked inflectionally in language, such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender, and person...

 distinction). Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to subject–verb–object word order

Word order

In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...

, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier

Grammatical modifier

In grammar, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure; the removal of the modifier typically doesn't affect the grammaticality of the sentence....

 ordering), and has a noun classifier

Classifier (linguistics)

A classifier, in linguistics, sometimes called a measure word, is a word or morpheme used in some languages to classify the referent of a countable noun according to its meaning. In languages that have classifiers, they are often used when the noun is being counted or specified...

 system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.

Some Vietnamese sentences with English word gloss

Gloss

A gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different....

es and translations are provided below.

Mai	là	sinh viên.
Mai	be	student
"Mai is a student." (College student)

Giáp	rất	cao.
Giap	very	tall
"Giap is very tall."

Người	đó	là	anh	nó.
person	that	be	brother	he
"That person is his brother."

Con	chó	này	chẳng	bao giờ	sủa	cả.
classifier	dog	this	not	ever	bark	at.all
"This dog never barks at all."

Nó	chỉ	ăn	cơm	Việt Nam	thôi.
he	only	eat	rice.colloquial	Vietnam	only
"He only eats Vietnamese food."

Cái	thằng	chồng	em	nó	chẳng	ra	gì.
focus	classifier	husband	I (as wife)	he	not	turn.out	what
"That husband of mine, he is good for nothing."

Tôi	thích	con	ngựa	đen.
I (generic)	like	classifier	horse	black
"I like the black horse."

Tôi	thích	cái	con	ngựa	đen.
I (generic)	like	focus	classifier	horse	black
"I like that black horse."

Writing system

Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet

Vietnamese alphabet

The Vietnamese alphabet, called Chữ Quốc Ngữ , usually shortened to Quốc Ngữ , is the modern writing system for the Vietnamese language...

 (quốc ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

. Originally a Romanization

Romanization

In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...

 of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit

Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

 missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591–1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.

Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quốc ngữ.

Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954–1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyễn 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography

English orthography

English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. English orthography, like other alphabetic orthographies, uses a set of habits to represent speech sounds in writing. In most other languages, these habits are regular enough so that they may be called rules...

 is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change

Great Vowel Shift

The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in England between 1350 and 1500.The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen , a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term....

.)

Before adopting Roman script under French rule, Vietnamese used two ideographic writing systems:

• Literary Chinese chữ nho characters (scholar's characters, 𡨸儒): were used by the educated elite and in official documents until Vietnam gained independence from China in 939 CE.
• Vernacular chữ nôm characters 𡨸喃) look like Chinese characters to the untrained eye. In fact, many characters were borrowed and many more modified and invented to represent native Vietnamese words. For the next 1000 years—from the 10th century and into the 20th—much of Vietnamese literature, philosophy, history, law, medicine, religion, and government policy was written in Nôm script.

Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

, and only a few scholars and some extremely elderly people are able to read chữ nôm today. In China, members of the Jing Minority still write in Chữ Nôm.

Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnam

North Vietnam

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...

ese and late French Indochinese

French Indochina

French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....

 banknotes issued after World War II but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.

Computer support

The Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code page

Code page

Code page is another term for character encoding. It consists of a table of values that describes the character set for a particular language. The term code page originated from IBM's EBCDIC-based mainframe systems, but many vendors use this term including Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle Corporation...

s are available such as 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...

 or CP1258. Where 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...

 must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR

Vietnamese Quoted-Readable

Vietnamese Quoted-Readable , also known as Vietnet, is a convention for writing Vietnamese using ASCII characters...

 convention, though this is largely unnecessary with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.

Introduction

It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austro-Asiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

 and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of Proto-Austro-Asiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai

Thai language

Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...

 (one of the Tai–Kadai languages), Tsat

Tsat language

Tsat is a language spoken near Sanya, Hainan, China by the Utsuls. Tsat is a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within the Austronesian language family, and is related to the Cham languages, originally from the coast of present-day Vietnam...

 (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian

Malayo-Polynesian languages

The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. These are widely dispersed throughout the island nations of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia...

 group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature.

The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River

Red River (Vietnam)

The Red River , also known as the Sông Cái - Mother River , or Yuan River , is a river that flows from southwest China through northern Vietnam to the Gulf of Tonkin...

 in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa

Champa

The kingdom of Champa was an Indianized kingdom that controlled what is now southern and central Vietnam from approximately the 7th century through to 1832.The Cham people are remnants...

 and the Khmer people

Khmer people

Khmer people are the predominant ethnic group in Cambodia, accounting for approximately 90% of the 14.8 million people in the country. They speak the Khmer language, which is part of the larger Mon–Khmer language family found throughout Southeast Asia...

 of the Mekong Delta

Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta is the region in southwestern Vietnam where the Mekong River approaches and empties into the sea through a network of distributaries. The Mekong delta region encompasses a large portion of southwestern Vietnam of . The size of the area covered by water depends on the season.The...

 in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City , formerly named Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam...

 (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.

Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

 was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Việt (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese character

Chinese character

Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...

s (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tự, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji

Kanji

Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

), Korea (hanja

Hanja

Hanja is the Korean name for the Chinese characters hanzi. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation...

), and other countries in the Sinosphere

Sinosphere

In areal linguistics, Sinosphere refers to a grouping of countries and regions that are currently inhabited with a majority of Chinese population or were historically under Chinese cultural influence...

. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").

As contact with the West grew, the Quốc Ngữ

Vietnamese alphabet

The Vietnamese alphabet, called Chữ Quốc Ngữ , usually shortened to Quốc Ngữ , is the modern writing system for the Vietnamese language...

 system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as đầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sơ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.

A Vietnamese Catholic Nguyen Truong To sent petitions to the Court which suggested a Chinese character based syllabary which would be used for Vietnamese sounds, however, his petition failed. The French colonial administration sought to eliminate the Chinese writing system, confucianism, and other Chinese influences from Vietnam by getting rid of Chữ Nôm.

Periods of Vietnamese

Henri Maspero

Henri Maspero

Henri Maspero was a French sinologist, today particularly remembered for his pioneering works on Taoism.-Biography:...

 described six periods of the Vietnamese language:

1. Pre-Vietnamese, also known as Proto-Viet–Muong or Proto-Vietnamuong, the ancestor of Vietnamese and the related Muong language
   Muong language
   The Mường language is spoken by the Mường people of Vietnam. It is in the Austroasiatic language family and closely related to Vietnamese. It is a tonal language with five tones....
   
   .
2. Proto-Vietnamese, the oldest reconstructable version of Vietnamese, dated to just before the entry of massive amounts of Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary into the language, c. 7th to 9th century AD? At this state, the language had three tones.
3. Archaic Vietnamese, the state of the language upon adoption of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, c. 10th century AD.
4. Ancient Vietnamese, the language represented by chu nom characters (c. 15th century) and the Chinese–Vietnamese glossary Hua-yi Yi-yu (c. 16th century). By this point a tone split had happened in the language, leading to six tones but a loss of contrastive voicing among consonants.
5. Middle Vietnamese, the language of the Vietnamese–Portuguese–Latin dictionary
   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,...
   
    of the Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes (c. 17th century).
6. Modern Vietnamese, from the 19th century.

Middle Vietnamese

The writing system used for Vietnamese is based closely on the system developed by Alexandre de Rhodes for his Vietnamese–Portuguese–Latin dictionary

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,...

, published in 1651. It reflects the pronunciation of the Vietnamese of Hanoi at that time, a stage commonly termed Middle Vietnamese. The pronunciation of the "rime" of the syllable, i.e. all parts other than the initial consonant (optional /w/ glide, vowel nucleus, tone and final consonant), appears nearly identical between Middle Vietnamese and modern Hanoi pronunciation. On the other hand, the Middle Vietnamese pronunciation of the initial consonant differs greatly from all modern dialects, and in fact is significantly closer to the modern Saigon dialect than the modern Hanoi dialect.

The following diagram shows the orthography and pronunciation of Middle Vietnamese:

		Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	Dental/Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	voiceless	p [p]	t [t]	tr [ʈ]	ch [c]	c/k [k]
	aspirated	ph [pʰ]	th [tʰ]			kh [kʰ]
	voiced glottalized	b [ɓ]	đ [ɗ]
Fricative	voiceless			s [ʂ]	x [ɕ]		h [h]
	voiced	ȸ [β]	d [ð]		gi [ʝ]	g/gh [ɣ]
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...		m [m]	n [n]		nh [ɲ]	ng/ngh [ŋ]
Approximant		v/u/o [w]	l [l]	r [ɹ]	y/i/ĕ [j]

[p] occurs only at the end of a syllable.

Not the actual symbol used. The actual symbol, which is not present in Unicode, has a rounded hook that starts halfway up the left side (where the top of the curved part of the b meets the vertical, straight part) and curves about 180 degrees counterclockwise, ending below the bottom-left corner.

[j] does not occur at the beginning of a syllable, but can occur at the end of a syllable, where it is notated i or y (with the difference between the two often indicating differences in the quality or length of the preceding vowel), and after /ð/ and /β/, where it is notated ĕ. This ĕ, and the /j/ it notated, have disappeared from the modern language.

Note that b [ɓ] and p [p] never contrast in any position, suggesting that they are allophones; likewise for gi [ʝ] and y/i/ĕ [j].

The language also has three clusters at the beginning of syllables, which have since disappeared:

• tl /tl/ > modern tr
• bl /ɓl/ > modern gi (Northern), tr (Southern)
• ml /ml/ > mnh /mɲ/ > modern nh

Most of the unusual correspondences between spelling and modern pronunciation are explained by Middle Vietnamese. Note in particular:

• de Rhodes' system has two different b letters, a regular b and a "hooked" b in which the upper section of the curved part of the b extends leftward past the vertical bar and curls down again in a semicircle. This apparently represented a voiced bilabial fricative
  Voiced bilabial fricative
  -See also:* List of phonetics topics...
  
   /β/. Within a century or so, both /β/ and /w/ had merged as /v/, spelled as v.
• de Rhodes' system has a second medial glide /j/ that is written ĕ and appears in some words with initial d and hooked b. These later disappear.
• đ /ɗ/ was (and still is) alveolar
  Alveolar consonant
  Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
  
  , whereas d /ð/ was dental. The choice of symbols was based on the dental rather than alveolar nature of /d/ and its allophone
  Allophone
  In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
  
   [ð] in Spanish
  Spanish language
  Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
  
   and other Romance languages. The inconsistency with the symbols assigned to /ɓ/ vs. /β/ was based on the lack of any such place distinction between the two, with the result that the stop consonant
  Stop consonant
  In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
  
   /ɓ/ appeared more "normal" than the fricative /β/. In both cases, the implosive
  Implosive consonant
  Implosive consonants are stops with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can...
  
   nature of the stops does not appear to have had any role in the choice of symbol.
• x was alveolopalatal /ɕ/ rather than dental /s/, as in the modern language. In 17th-century Portuguese
  Portuguese language
  Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
  
  , the common language of the Jesuits, s was an apicoalveolar sibilant /s̺/ (as still in much of Spain and some parts of Portugal), while x was a palatoalveolar /ʃ/. The similarity of apicoalveolar /s̺/ to the Vietnamese retroflex
  Retroflex consonant
  A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...
  
   /ʂ/ led to the assignment of s and x as above.

Proto-Viet–Muong

The following diagram shows the phonology of Proto-Viet–Muong (the nearest ancestor of Vietnamese and the closely related Muong language

Muong language

The Mường language is spoken by the Mường people of Vietnam. It is in the Austroasiatic language family and closely related to Vietnamese. It is a tonal language with five tones....

), along with the outcomes in the modern language:

		Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	Interdental Interdental consonant Interdental consonants are produced by placing the blade of the tongue against the upper incisors...	Dental/Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Palatoalveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... / Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...	voiceless	p > b		t > đ		tʃ > x	c > ch	k > k/c/q	ʔ > #
	voiced	b > b		d > đ			ɟ > ch	g > k/c/q
	aspirated	pʰ > ph		tʰ > th				kʰ > kh
	voiced glottalized	ɓ > m		ɗ > n			ʄ > nh
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...		m > m		n > n			ɲ > nh	ŋ > ng/ngh
Fricative	voiceless			s > t	ɕ > th				h > h
	voiced	(β) > v	(ð) > d			(ς) > r	(ʝ) > gi	(ɣ) > g/gh
Approximant		w > v		l > l		r > r	j > d

According to Ferlus, /tʃ/ and /ʄ/ are not accepted by all researchers. Ferlus 1992 had an additional sound /dʒ/, and had the preglottalized consonant /ʔj/ in place of the implosive consonant

Implosive consonant

Implosive consonants are stops with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can...

 /ʄ/. Note that the latter two sounds are not all that different, as both are voiced palatal

Palatal consonant

Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...

 sounds, and both are types of glottalic consonant

Glottalic consonant

A glottalic consonant is a consonant produced with some important contribution of the glottis ....

s.

The fricatives indicated above in parentheses developed as allophones of stop consonants occurring between vowels (i.e. when a minor syllable

Minor syllable

Minor syllable is a term used primarily in the description of Mon-Khmer languages, where a word typically consists of a reduced syllable followed by a full tonic or stressed syllable...

 occurred). These fricatives were not present in Proto-Viet–Muong, as indicated by their absence in Muong, but were evidently present in the later Proto-Vietnamese stage. Subsequent loss of the minor-syllable prefixes phonemicized the fricatives. Ferlus 1992 proposes that originally there were both voiced and voiceless fricatives, corresponding to original voiced or voiceless stops, but Ferlus 2009 appears to have abandoned that hypothesis, suggesting that stops were softened and voiced at approximately the same time, according to the following pattern: > /β/ > /ð/ > /ɣ/ > /ς/ and /tʃ/ > /ʝ/

In Middle Vietnamese, the outcome of these sounds was written with a hooked b, representing a /β/ that was still distinct from v (then pronounced /w/). See above.

It is unclear what this sound was. According to Ferlus 1992, in the Archaic Vietnamese period (c. 10th century AD, when Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary was borrowed) it was /ɽ/, distinct at that time from /r/.

The following initial clusters occurred, with outcomes indicated:

• pr, br, tr, dr, kr, gr > /kʰr/ > /ks/ > s
• pl, bl > MV bl > Northern gi, Southern tr
• kl, gl > MV tl > tr
• ml > MV ml > mnh > nh
• kj > gi

Note also that a large number of words were borrowed from Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...

, forming part of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. These caused the original introduction of the retroflex sounds /ʂ/ and /ʈ/ (modern s, tr) into the language.

Origin of the tones

Proto-Viet–Muong had no tones to speak of. The tones later developed in some of the daughter languages from distinctions in the initial and final consonants. Vietnamese tones developed as follows:

Register Register (phonology) In linguistics, a register language, also known as a pitch-register language, is a language which combines tone and vowel phonation into a single phonological system. Burmese and the Chinese dialect Shanghainese are examples...	Initial consonant	Smooth ending	Glottal ending	Fricative ending
High (first) register	Voiceless	A1 ngang "level"	B1 sắc "sharp"	C1 hỏi "asking"
Low (second) register	Voiced	A2 huyền "hanging"	B2 nặng "heavy"	C2 ngã "tumbling"

Glottal-ending syllables ended with a glottal stop /ʔ/, while fricative-ending syllables ended with /s/ or /h/. Both types of syllables could co-occur with a resonant (e.g. /m/ or /n/).

At some point, a tone split occurred, as in many other East Asian languages

East Asian languages

East Asian languages describe two notional groupings of languages in East and Southeast Asia:* Languages which have been greatly influenced by Classical Chinese and the Chinese writing system, in particular Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese .* The larger grouping of languages includes the...

. Essentially, an allophonic distinction developed in the tones, whereby the tones in syllables with voiced initials were pronounced differently from those with voiceless initials. (Approximately speaking, the voiced allotones were pronounced with additional breathy voice

Breathy voice

Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a larger volume of air escapes between them. This produces an audible noise...

 or creaky voice

Creaky voice

In linguistics, creaky voice , is a special kind of phonation in which the arytenoid cartilages in the larynx are drawn together; as a result, the vocal folds are compressed rather tightly, becoming relatively slack and compact...

 and with lowered pitch. The quality difference predominates in today's northern varieties, e.g. in Hanoi

Hanoi

Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...

, while in the southern varieties the pitch difference predominates, as in Saigon.) Subsequent to this, the plain-voiced stops became voiceless and the allotones became new phonemic tones. Note that the implosive stops were unaffected, and in fact developed tonally as if they were unvoiced. (This behavior is common to all East Asian languages with implosive stops.)

As noted above, Proto-Viet–Muong had sesquisyllabic words with an initial minor syllable

Minor syllable

Minor syllable is a term used primarily in the description of Mon-Khmer languages, where a word typically consists of a reduced syllable followed by a full tonic or stressed syllable...

 (in addition to, and independent of, initial clusters in the main syllable). When a minor syllable occurred, the main syllable's initial consonant was intervocalic and as a result suffered lenition

Lenition

In linguistics, lenition is a kind of sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word lenition itself means "softening" or "weakening" . Lenition can happen both synchronically and diachronically...

, becoming a voiced fricative. The minor syllables were eventually lost, but not until the tone split had occurred. As a result, words in modern Vietnamese with voiced fricatives occur in all six tones, and the tonal register reflects the voicing of the minor-syllable prefix and not the voicing of the main-syllable stop in Proto-Viet–Muong that produced the fricative. For similar reasons, words beginning with /l/ and /ŋ/ occur in both registers. (Thompson 1976 reconstructed voiceless resonants to account for outcomes where resonants occur with a first-register tone, but this is no longer considered necessary, at least by Ferlus.)

Word play

A language game

Language game

A language game is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to the untrained ear. Language games are used primarily by groups attempting to conceal their conversations from others...

 known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers. Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime

Syllable rime

In the study of phonology in linguistics, the rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda. It is the part of the syllable used in poetic rhyme, and the part that is lengthened or stressed when a person elongates or stresses a word in speech.The rime is usually the...

 of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:

Original phrase		Phrase after nói lái transformation	Structural change
đái dầm "(child) wet their pants"	→	dấm đài (nonsense words)	word order and tone switch
chửa hoang "pregnancy out of wedlock"	→	hoảng chưa "scared yet?"	word order and tone switch
bầy tôi "all the king's subjects"	→	bồi tây "French waiter"	initial consonant, rime, and tone switch
bí mật "secrets"	→	bật mí "revealing secrets"	initial consonant and rime switch

The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm đài and hoảng chưa (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bồi tây. Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect.

Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin

Pig Latin

Pig Latin is a language game of alterations played in English. To form the Pig Latin form of an English word the first consonant is moved to the end of the word and an ay is affixed . The object is to conceal the meaning of the words from others not familiar with the rules...

 is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.

Nonsense syllable	Target word		Intermediate form with prefixed syllable		Resulting "secret" word
la	phở "beef or chicken noodle soup"	→	la phở	→	lơ phả
la	ăn "to eat"	→	la ăn	→	lăn a
la	hoàn cảnh "situation"	→	la hoàn la cảnh	→	loan hà lanh cả
chim	hoàn cảnh "situation"	→	chim hoàn chim cảnh	→	choan hìm chanh kỉm

This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.

Examples

See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyện Kiều, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyễn Du, 阮攸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature

Vietnamese literature

Vietnamese literature is literature, both oral and written, created largely by Vietnamese-speaking people, although Francophone Vietnamese and English-speaking Vietnamese authors in Australia and the United States are counted by many critics as part of the national tradition...

. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Đoạn Trường Tân Thanh 斷腸新聲) and is widely taught in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

 today.

See also

• Austroasiatic languages
• Chữ nho
• Chữ nôm
• Sino-Tibetan languages
  Sino-Tibetan languages
  The Sino-Tibetan languages are a language family comprising, at least, the Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of East Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia. They are second only to the Indo-European languages in terms of the number of native speakers...
  
  
• Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
• Vietic languages
  Vietic languages
  The Vietic languages are a branch of the Austro-Asiatic language family. The branch was once referred to by the terms Việt–Mường, Annam–Muong, and Vietnamuong, but today these are understood as referring to a sub-branch of Vietic containing only the Vietnamese and Mường languages.-Origins:Based on...
  
  
• Vietnamese alphabet
  Vietnamese alphabet
  The Vietnamese alphabet, called Chữ Quốc Ngữ , usually shortened to Quốc Ngữ , is the modern writing system for the Vietnamese language...
  
  
• Vietnamese literature
  Vietnamese literature
  Vietnamese literature is literature, both oral and written, created largely by Vietnamese-speaking people, although Francophone Vietnamese and English-speaking Vietnamese authors in Australia and the United States are counted by many critics as part of the national tradition...
  
  
• Vietnamese morphology
  Vietnamese morphology
  Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic language. Vietnamese lacks morphological marking of case, gender, number, and tense .-Overview:...
  
  
• Vietnamese phonology
  Vietnamese phonology
  This article is a technical description of the sound system of the Vietnamese language, including phonetics and phonology.-Consonants:Two main varieties of Vietnamese, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, are described below.-Hanoi:...
  
  
• Vietnamese studies
  Vietnamese studies
  Vietnamese studies in general is the study of Vietnam and things related to Vietnam. It refers, especially, to the study of modern Vietnamese and literature, history, ethnology, and the philological approach, respectively....
  
  
• Vietnamese syntax
  Vietnamese syntax
  Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic language. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to subject–verb–object word order, is head-initial , and has a noun classifier system...
  
  

General

• Dương, Quảng-Hàm. (1941). Việt-nam văn-học sử-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bộ Quốc gia Giáo dục.
• Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
• Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1995). NTC's Vietnamese–English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, Illinois: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Việt không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ điển Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoàng, & Q. C. Đỗ, Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa học Xã hội. (Original work published 1651).
• Thompson, Laurence C. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
• Uỷ ban Khoa học Xã hội Việt Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Việt [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa học Xã hội.

Sound system

• Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
• Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
• Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119–146. Preprint version
• Nguyễn, Văn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon–Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
• Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.

Pragmatics/Language variation

• Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: http://www.geocities.com/malves98/Alves_Vietnamese_Northcentral.pdf.
• Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyễn, Duy Hương. (2007). Notes on Thanh-Chương Vietnamese in Nghệ-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1–9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: http://pacling.anu.edu.au/catalogue/SEALSVIII_final.pdf.
• Hoàng, Thị Châu. (1989). Tiếng Việt trên các miền đất nước: Phương ngữ học [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Nội: Khoa học xã hội.
• Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454–459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: http://www.assta.org/sst/2006/sst2006-119.pdf.
• Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
• Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183–459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: http://r1.chass.utoronto.ca/twpl/pdfs/twpl24/Pham_TWPL24.pdf.
• Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon–Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
• Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon–Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
• Vũ, Thang Phương. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55–75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
• Vương, Hữu Lễ. (1981). Vài nhận xét về đặc diểm của vần trong thổ âm Quảng Nam ở Hội An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Một Số Vấn Ðề Ngôn Ngữ Học Việt Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311–320). Hà Nội: Nhà Xuất Bản Ðại Học và Trung Học Chuyên Nghiệp.

Historical/Comparative

• Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
• Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
• Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon–Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
• Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.

Orthography

• Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Việt-Nam, 3, 61-68.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1955). Quốc-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61, 383-432.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691–699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.

Pedagogical

• Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
• Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
• Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
• Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, Vermont: C.E. Tuttle.
• Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
• Nguyễn, Đang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X

External links

Online Lessons

• Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
  Northern Illinois University
  Northern Illinois University is a state university and research institution located in DeKalb, Illinois, with satellite centers in Hoffman Estates, Naperville, Rockford, and Oregon. It was originally founded as Northern Illinois State Normal School on May 22, 1895 by Illinois Governor John P...
  
  
• Learn Vietnamese Your Way learn Vietnamese fast from English
• Vietnamese Online Web Application with 40 Interactive Free Lessons
• An introduction to Vietnamese language from Vietnam Online
• USA Foreign Service Institute Vietnamese basic course

Vocabulary

• Vietnamese Phrasebook at Wiktravel
• Vietnamese Vocabulary List (from the World Loanword Database)
• Swadesh list of Vietnamese basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
• Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
• List of Japanese-Vietnamese Kanjis by Jubinell

Language Tools

• Vietnamese Online Keyboard This virtual keyboard permits you to type in Vietnamese with all the accents.
• The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
• The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
• Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
• VietReader A free reader program with instant word translation.