Vietnamese language

Vietnamese(tiếng Việt) is anAustroasiatic languagespoken primarily inVietnamwhere it is theofficial language. It belongs to theVietic subgroupof the Austroasiaticlanguage family.Vietnamese is spoken natively by around 85 million people,several times as many as the rest of the Austroasiatic family combined.It is thenative languageofethnic Vietnamese(Kinh), as well as thesecondorfirstlanguage forother ethnicities of Vietnam, and used byVietnamese diasporain the world.
Like many languages inSoutheast AsiaandEast Asia, Vietnamese is highlyanalyticand istonal. It hashead-initialdirectionality, withsubject–verb–objectorder and modifiers following the words they modify. It also uses nounclassifiers. Its vocabulary has had significant influence fromMiddle Chineseand very few loanwords fromFrench.Although most of its phonological words are monosyllabic, Vietnamese has systems of compounding and reduplication which leads to the majority of Vietnamese vocabulary being disyllabic and trisyllabic words.
Vietnamese is written using theVietnamese alphabet(chữ Quốc ngữ). The alphabet is based on theLatin scriptand was officially adopted in the early 20th century duringFrench rule of Vietnam. It usesdigraphsanddiacriticsto marktonesand somephonemes. Vietnamese was historically written usingchữ Nôm, alogographicscript usingChinese characters(chữ Hán) to representSino-Vietnamese vocabularyand some native Vietnamese words, together with many locally invented characters representing other words.
Earlylinguistic workin the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Logan1852,Forbes1881,Müller1888,Kuhn1889,Schmidt1905,Przyluski1924, andBenedict1942)classified Vietnamese as belonging to theMon–Khmerbranch of theAustroasiatic language family(which also includes theKhmerlanguage spoken inCambodia, as well as various smaller and/orregional languages, such as theMundaandKhasilanguages spoken in eastern India, and others inLaos, southern China and parts of Thailand). In 1850, British lawyerJames Richardson Logandetected striking similarities between theKorku languageinCentral Indiaand Vietnamese. He suggested thatKorku,Mon, and Vietnamese were part of what he termed "Mon–Annam languages" in a paper published in 1856. Later, in 1920, French-Polish linguistJean Przyluskifound thatMườngis more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon–Khmer languages, and a Viet–Muong subgrouping was established, also includingThavung,Chut,Cuoi, etc.The term "Vietic" was proposed by Hayes (1992),who proposed to redefine Viet–Muong as referring to a subbranch of Vietic containing only Vietnamese andMường. The term "Vietic" is used, among others, byGérard Diffloth, with a slightly different proposal on subclassification, within which the term "Viet–Muong" refers to a lower subgrouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, Mường dialects, andNguồn(ofQuảng Bình Province).
Austroasiatic is believed to have dispersed around 2000 BC.The arrival of the agriculturalPhùng Nguyên culturein theRed River Deltaat that time may correspond to the Vietic branch.
This ancestral Vietic was typologically very different from later Vietnamese.
As well as monosyllabic roots, it hadsesquisyllabicroots consisting of a reduced syllable followed by a full syllable, and featured many consonant clusters.
Both of these features are found elsewhere in Austroasiatic and in modern conservative Vietic languages south of the Red River area.The language was non-tonal, but featured glottal stop and voiceless fricative codas.
Borrowed vocabulary indicates early contact with speakers ofTai languagesin the last millennium BC, which is consistent with genetic evidence fromDong Son culturesites.Extensive contact withChinesebegan from theHan dynasty(2nd century BC).At this time, Vietic groups began to expand south from the Red River Delta and into the adjacent uplands, possibly to escape Chinese encroachment.The oldest layer of loans from Chinese into northern Vietic (which would become the Viet–Muong subbranch) date from this period.
The northern Vietic varieties thus became part of theMainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, in which languages from genetically unrelated families converged toward characteristics such asisolating morphologyand similar syllable structure.Many languages in this area, including Viet–Muong, underwent a process oftonogenesis, in which distinctions formerly expressed by final consonants became phonemictonal distinctionswhen those consonants disappeared. These characteristics have become part of many of the genetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example,Tsat(a member of theMalayo-Polynesiangroup withinAustronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature.
After the split from Muong around the end of the first millennium AD, the following stages of Vietnamese are commonly identified:
After expelling the Chinese at the beginning of the 10th century, theNgô dynastyadoptedClassical Chineseas the formal medium of government, scholarship and literature. With the dominance of Chinese came wholesale importation of Chinese vocabulary. The resultingSino-Vietnamese vocabularymakes up about a third of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms, and may account for as much as 60% of the vocabulary used in formal texts.
Vietic languages were confined to the northern third of modern Vietnam until the "southward advance" (Nam tiến) from the late 15th century.The conquest of the ancient nation ofChampaand the conquest of theMekong Deltaled to an expansion of the Vietnamese people and language, with distinctive local variations emerging.
After France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Literary Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such asđầm('dame', frommadame),ga('train station', fromgare),sơ mi('shirt', fromchemise), andbúp bê('doll', frompoupée), resulting in a language that was Austroasiatic but with major Sino-influences and some minor French influences from the French colonial era.
The following diagram shows the consonants of Proto-Vietic, along with the outcomes in the modern language:
The aspirated stops are infrequent and result from clusters of stops and */h/.The proto-phoneme */tʃ/is also infrequent, and has reflexes only in Viet-Muong. However, it occurs in some important words and is cognate withKhmu/c/.Ferlus 1992 also had additionalphonemes*/dʒ/and */ɕ/.
Proto-Vietic had monosyllables CV(C) and sesquisyllables C-CV(C).The following initial clusters occurred, with outcomes indicated:
As noted above, Proto-Vietic hadsesquisyllabicwords with an initialminor syllable(in addition to, and independent of, initial clusters in the main syllable). When a minor syllable occurred, the main syllable's initial consonant wasintervocalicand as a result sufferedlenition, becoming a voiced fricative.These fricatives were not present in Proto-Viet–Muong, as indicated by their absence inMường, but were present in Vietnamese until the 15th or 16th centuries.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:
Proto-Vietic did not have tones. Tones developed later in some of the daughter languages from distinctions in the initial and final consonants. Vietnamese tones developed as follows:
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, atone splitoccurred, as in many othermainland Southeast Asian languages. Essentially, anallophonicdistinction developed in the tones, whereby the tones in syllables with voiced initials were pronounced differently from those with voiceless initials. (Approximately speaking, the voicedallotoneswere pronounced with additionalbreathy voiceorcreaky voiceand with lowered pitch. The quality difference predominates in today's northern varieties, e.g. inHanoi, while in the southern varieties the pitch difference predominates, as inHo Chi Minh City.) Subsequent to this, the plain-voiced stops became voiceless and the allotones became new phonemic tones.
The implosive stops (ɓ,ɗandʄ) were unaffected, and in fact developed tonally as if they were unvoiced.(This behavior is common to all East Asian languages with implosive stops.)
These stops merged with the corresponding nasals (m,nandɲ) before the Old Vietnamese period.
As noted above, consonants following minor syllables became voiced fricatives. 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-Vietic 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.)
A large number of words were borrowed fromMiddle Chinese, forming part of theSino-Vietnamese vocabulary. These caused the original introduction of the retroflex sounds/ʂ/and/ʈ/(moderns,tr) into the language.
Old (or Ancient) Vietnamese separated from Muong around the 9th century. The sources for the reconstruction of Old Vietnamese areNomtexts, such as the 12th-century/1486 Buddhist scripturePhật thuyết Đại báo phụ mẫu ân trọng kinh("Sūtra explained by the Buddha on the Great Repayment of the Heavy Debt to Parents"),old inscriptions, and a late 13th-century (possibly 1293)Annan Jishiglossary by Chinese diplomatChen Fu(c. 1259 – 1309).
TheĐại báoused Chinese characters phonetically where each word, monosyllabic in Modern Vietnamese, is written with two Chinese characters or in a composite character made of two different characters.This conveys the transformation of the Vietnamese lexicon from sesquisyllabic to fullymonosyllabicunder the pressure of Chinese linguistic influence, characterized by linguistic phenomena such as the reduction of minor syllables; loss of affixal morphology drifting towards analytical grammar; simplification of major syllable segments, and the change of suprasegment instruments.For example, the modern Vietnamese wordtrời'heaven' was*plờiin Old Vietnamese andblờiin Middle Vietnamese.
Subsequent changes to initial consonants included:
The writing system used for Vietnamese is based closely on the system developed byAlexandre de Rhodesfor his 1651Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum. It reflects the pronunciation of the Vietnamese of Hanoi at that time, a stage commonly termedMiddle Vietnamese(tiếng Việt trung đại). 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:
^1[p]occurs only at the end of a syllable.^2This letter,⟨ꞗ⟩, is no longer used.^3[j]does not occur at the beginning of a syllable, but can occur at the end of a syllable, where it is notatediory(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 notatedĕ. Thisĕ, and the/j/it notated, have disappeared from the modern language.
Note thatb[ɓ]andp[p]never contrast in any position, suggesting that they are allophones.
The language also has three clusters at the beginning of syllables, which have since disappeared:
Most of the unusual correspondences between spelling and modern pronunciation are explained by Middle Vietnamese. Note in particular:
De Rhodes's orthography also made use of anapexdiacritic ono᷃andu᷃to indicate a finallabial-velar nasal/ŋ͡m/, an allophone of/ŋ/that is peculiar to the Hanoi dialect to the present day. An example isxao᷃/ɕawŋ͡m/, which later becamexong. This diacritic is often mistaken for a tilde in modern reproductions of early Vietnamese writing.
Following the defeat of Southern Vietnam in 1975 by Northern Vietnam in the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese language within Vietnam has gradually shifted towards the Northern dialect.Hanoi, the largest city in Northern Vietnam was made the capital of Vietnam in 1976. A study stated that "The gap in vocabulary use between speakers in North and South Vietnam is now much narrower than before. There is little to distinguish between how the generations that were born and grew up in the South after 1975 now speak, compared to their peers in the North. This gap is almost non-existent in newspapers, on radio and television, and in websites."However, this convergence does not apply to immigrants, in which the study states represent "culture freeze," a phenomenon that describes when culture among immigrants is frozen in time and does not evolve with culture in their home country once they move to a new country. Here, culture freeze describes that the use of the language of immigrants from Vietnam has been "frozen" in both vocabulary and pronunciation, and as languages gradually evolve over time, has become a little different than the present Vietnamese language in Vietnam. Additionally, as immigration to the United States following the Vietnam war was primarily driven due to political reasons, the Southern Vietnamese dialect was initially strongly linked to social identity. During and after the Vietnam War, thousands of Southern Vietnamese immigrated to the United States with the partnership between Saigon and the US.In contrast, during and following the Vietnam War, thousands of Northern Vietnamese moved to the Czech Republic due to Hanoi's partnership with the now obsoleteCzechoslovak Socialist Republic. As a result, today, the Vietnamese language is generally taught through the Northern dialect in the Czech Republic in contrast with the Southern dialect in the United States.
As a result ofemigration, Vietnamese speakers are also found in other parts ofSoutheast Asia,East Asia,North America,Europe, andAustralia. Vietnamese has also been officially recognized as a minority language in theCzech Republic.
As the national language, Vietnamese is thelingua francain Vietnam. It is also spoken by theJing peopletraditionally residing on three islands (now joined to the mainland) offDongxingin southernGuangxi Province,China.A large number of Vietnamese speakers also reside in neighboring countries ofCambodiaandLaos.
In the United States, Vietnamese is thesixth most spoken language, with over 1.5 million speakers, who are concentrated in a handful of states. It is the third-most spoken language in Texas and Washington; fourth-most in Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia; and fifth-most in Arkansas and California.Vietnamese is the third most spoken language in Australia other than English, after Mandarin and Arabic.In France, it is the most spoken Asian language and the eighth most spoken immigrant language at home.
Vietnamese is the sole official and national language of Vietnam. It is the first language of the majority of the Vietnamese population, as well as a first or second language for the country'sethnic minority groups.
In theCzech Republic, Vietnamese has been recognized as one of 14 minority languages, on the basis of communities that have resided in the country either traditionally or on a long-term basis. This status grants theVietnamese community in the countrya representative on the Government Council for Nationalities, an advisory body of the Czech Government for matters of policy towards national minorities and their members. It also grants the community the right to use Vietnamese with public authorities and in courts anywhere in the country.
Vietnamese is taught in schools and institutions outside of Vietnam, a large part contributed by itsdiaspora. In countries with Vietnamese-speaking communities Vietnamese language education largely serves as a role to link descendants of Vietnamese immigrants to their ancestral culture. In neighboring countries and vicinities near Vietnam such as Southern China, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, Vietnamese as a foreign language is largely due to trade, as well as recovery and growth of the Vietnamese economy.
Since the 1980s, Vietnamese language schools (trường Việt ngữ/ trường ngôn ngữ Tiếng Việt) have been established for youth in many Vietnamese-speaking communities around the world such asin the United States,GermanyandFrance.
Vietnamese has a large number ofvowels. Below is avowel diagramof Vietnamese from Hanoi (includingcentering diphthongs):
Front and central vowels (i, ê, e, ư, â, ơ, ă, a) areunrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â[ə]and ă[a]are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, ơ and â are basically pronounced the same except that ơ[əː]is of normal length while â[ə]is short – the same applies to the vowels long a[aː]and short ă[a].
The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u). They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant.
In addition to single vowels (ormonophthongs) and centering diphthongs, Vietnamese has closingdiphthongsandtriphthongs. The closing diphthongs and triphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivoweloffglide/j/or/w/.There are restrictions on the high offglides:/j/cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and/w/cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus.
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide/j/is usually written asi; however, it may also be represented withy. In addition, in the diphthongs[āj]and[āːj]the lettersyandialso indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = ă +/j/, ai = a +/j/. Thus,tay"hand" is[tāj]whiletai"ear" is[tāːj]. Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = ă +/w/, ao = a +/w/. Thus,thau"brass" is[tʰāw]whilethao"raw silk" is[tʰāːw].
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in theVietnamese orthographywith the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with adigraph(like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q"). In some cases, they are based on their Middle Vietnamese pronunciation; since that period,phandkh(but notth) have evolved from aspirated stops into fricatives (like Greekphiandchi), whiledandgihave collapsed and converged together (into /z/ in the north and /j/ in the south).
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See thelanguage variation sectionfor further elaboration.
Syllable-final orthographicchandnhin Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has finalch,nhas beingphonemes/c/,/ɲ/contrasting with syllable-finalt,c/t/,/k/andn,ng/n/,/ŋ/and identifies finalchwith the syllable-initialch/c/. The other analysis has finalchandnhas predictableallophonicvariants of the velarphonemes/k/and/ŋ/that occur after the upper front vowelsi/i/andê/e/; although they also occur aftera, but in such cases are believed to have resulted from an earliere/ɛ/which diphthongized toai(cf.achfromaic,anhfromaing). (SeeVietnamese phonology: Analysis of finalch,nhfor further details.)
Each Vietnamese syllable is pronounced with one of six inherenttones,centered on the main vowel or group of vowels. Tones differ in:
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; except thenặngtone dot diacritic goes below the vowel).The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi), with their self-referential Vietnamese names, are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese may have fewer tones (typically only five).
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups: (tone pattern)
Words with tones belonging to a particular tone group must occur in certain positions within the poetic verse.
Vietnamese Catholicspractice a distinctive style of prayer recitation calledđọc kinh, in which each tone is assigned a specific note or sequence of notes.
Before Vietnamese switched from a Chinese-based script to a Latin-based script, Vietnamese had used the traditional Chinese system of classifying tones. Using this system, Vietnamese has 8 tones, but modern linguists only count 6 phonemic tones.
Vietnamese tones were classified into two main groups,bằng(平; 'level tones') andtrắc(仄; 'sharp tones'). Tones such asngangbelong to thebằnggroup, while other tones such asngãbelong to thetrắcgroup. Then, these tones were further divided in several other categorizes:bình(平; 'even'),thượng(上; 'rising'),khứ(去; 'departing'), andnhập(入; 'entering').
Sắcandnặngare counted twice in the system, once inkhứ(去; 'departing') and again innhập(入; 'entering'). The reason for the extra two tones is that syllables ending in the stops /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/ are treated as having entering tones, but phonetically they are exactly the same.
The tones in the old classification were calledÂm bình陰平 (ngang),Dương bình陽平 (huyền),Âm thượng陰上 (hỏi),Dương thượng陽上 (ngã),Âm khứ陰去 (sắc; for words that do not end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/),Dương khứ陽去 (nặng; for words that do not end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/),Âm nhập陰入 (sắc; for words that do end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/), andDương nhập陽入 (nặng; for words that do end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/).
Vietnamese, like Thai and many languages in Southeast Asia, is ananalytic language. Vietnamese does not usemorphologicalmarking ofcase,gender,numberortense(and, as a result, has nofinite/nonfinitedistinction).Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms tosubject–verb–objectword order, ishead-initial(displaying modified-modifierordering), and has a nounclassifiersystem. Additionally, it ispro-drop,wh-in-situ, and allowsverb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English wordglossesand translations are provided below.
Many early studies hypothesized Vietnamese language-origins to have been eitherKra-Dai,Sino-Tibetan, orAustroasiatic. Austroasiatic origins are so far the most tenable to date, with some of the oldest words in Vietnamese beingAustroasiaticin origin.
Although Vietnamese roots are classified as Austroasiatic, Vietic, and Viet-Muong,language contactwith Chinese heavily influenced the Vietnamese language, causing it to diverge fromViet-Muongaround the 10th to 11th century and become the Vietnamese we know today. For instance, the Vietnamese wordquản lý,meaning "management" (noun) or "manage" (verb), likely descended from the same word asguǎnlǐ(管理) in Chinese (alsokanri(管理,かんり) in Japanese andgwalli(gwan+ri;Korean:관리;Hanja:管理) in Korean). Instances of Chinese contact include the historicalNam Việt(akaNanyue) as well as other periods of influence. Besides English and French, which have made some contributions to the Vietnamese language, Japanese loanwords into Vietnamese are also a more recently studied phenomenon.
Modern linguists describe modern Vietnamese having lost manyProto-Austroasiaticphonological and morphological features that original Vietnamese had.The Chinese influence on Vietnamese corresponds to various periods when Vietnam was underChinese ruleand subsequent influence after Vietnam became independent. Early linguists thought that this meant the Vietnamese lexicon had only two influxes of Chinese words, one stemming from the period under actual Chinese rule and a second from afterwards. These words are grouped together asSino-Vietnamese vocabulary.
However, according to linguist John Phan, “Annamese Middle Chinese” was already used and spoken in theRed RiverValley by the 1st century CE, and its vocabulary significantly fused with the co-existing Proto-Viet-Muong language, the immediate ancestor of Vietnamese. He lists three major classes of Sino-Vietnamese borrowings:EarlySino-Vietnamese(Han dynastyca. 1st century CE andJin dynastyca. 4th century CE), Late Sino-Vietnamese (Tang dynasty), and Recent Sino-Vietnamese (Ming dynastyand afterwards)
Vietnam became a French protectorate/colonial territory in 1883 (until theGeneva Accordsof 1954), which resulted in significant influence fromFrenchinto the Indochina region (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam). Examples include:
"Cà phê"in Vietnamese was derived from the Frenchcafé(coffee). Yogurt in Vietnamese is"sữa chua"(lit. "sour milk"), but it is also calqued from French (yaourt) into Vietnamese (da ua -/j/a ua)."Phô mai"(cheese) is from the Frenchfromage.Musical notewas borrowed into Vietnamese as"nốt"or"nốt nhạc", from the Frenchnote de musique. The Vietnamese term forsteering wheelis"vô lăng", a partial derivation from the Frenchvolant directionnel. Anecktie(cravatein French) is rendered into Vietnamese as"cà vạt".
In addition, modern Vietnamese pronunciations of French names correspond directly to the original French pronunciations ("Pa-ri"forParis,"Mác-xây"forMarseille,"Boóc-đô"forBordeaux, etc.), whereas pronunciations of other foreign names (Chineseexcluded) are generally derived from English.
Some English words were incorporated into Vietnamese asloan words- such as "TV", borrowed as "tivi" or just TV, but still officially calledtruyền hình. Some other borrowings arecalques, translated into Vietnamese. For example, 'software' is translated into "phần mềm" (literally meaning "soft part"). Some scientific terms, such as "biological cell", were derived from chữ Hán. For example, the wordtế bàois細胞in chữ Hán, whilst other scientific names such as "acetylcholine" are unaltered. Words like "peptide" may be seen aspeptit.
Japanese loanwords are a more recently studied phenomenon, with a paper by Nguyễn & Lê (2020) classifying three waves of Japanese influence - with the first two waves being the principal influxes and the third wave coming from the Vietnamese who studied Japanese.The first wave consisted of Kanji words created by Japanese to represent Western concepts that were not readily available in Chinese or Japanese, where by the end of the 19th century they were imported to other Asian languages.This first influx is called Sino-Vietnamese words of Japanese origins. For example, the Vietnamese term for "association club",câu lạc bộ,which was borrowed from Chinese (俱乐部,pinyin:jùlèbù,jyutping:keoi1 lok6 bou6), and then in turn from Japanese (kanji:倶楽部,katakana:クラブ,rōmaji:kurabu) which came from the English "club", resulting in indirect borrowing from Japanese.
The second wave was during the brief Japanese occupation of Vietnam from 1940 until 1945. However, Japanese cultural influence in Vietnam started significantly from the 1980s. This newer second wave of Japanese-origin loanwords is distinctive from the Sino-Vietnamese words of Japanese origin in that they were borrowed directly from Japanese. This vocabulary includes words representative of Japanese culture, such askimono,sumo,samurai, andbonsaifrom modifiedHepburnromanisation. These loanwords are coined as "new Japanese loanwords". A significant number of new Japanese loanwords were also of Chinese origin. Sometimes the same concept can be described using both Sino-Vietnamese words of Japanese origin (first wave) and new Japanese loanwords (second wave). For example, judo can be referred to as bothjudoandnhu đạo, the Vietnamese reading of 柔道.
Some words, such aslạp xưởngfrom 臘腸 (Chinese sausage), primarily keep to theCantonesepronunciations, having been brought over by southern Chinese migrants, whereas in Hán-Việt, which has been described as being close toMiddle Chinesepronunciation, it is actually pronouncedlạp trường.However, the Cantonese term is the better-known name forChinese sausagein Vietnam. Meanwhile, any new terms calqued from Chinese would be based on theMandarinpronunciation. Additionally, in the southern provinces of Vietnam, the termxí ngầucan be used to refer todice, which may have derived from aCantoneseorTeochewidiom, "xập xí, xập ngầu" (十四, 十五,Sino-Vietnamese:thập tứ, thập ngũ), literally "fourteen, fifteen" to mean 'uncertain'.
Basic vocabulary in Vietnamese has Proto-Vietic origins. Vietnamese shares a large amount of vocabulary with the Mường languages, a close relative of the Vietnamese language.
Other compound words, such as nước non (chữ Nôm: 渃𡽫, "country/nation", lit. "water and mountains"), appear to be of purely Vietnamese origin and used to be inscribed in chữ Nôm characters (compounded, self-coined Chinese characters) but are now written in the Vietnamese alphabet.
Vietnameseslang(tiếng lóng) has changed over time. Vietnamese slang consists of pure Vietnamese words as well as words borrowed from other languages such asMandarinorIndo-European languages.It is estimated that Vietnamese slang originating from Mandarin accounts for a tiny proportion (4.6% of surveyed data in newspapers).On the other hand, slang originating from Indo-European languages accounts for a more significant proportion (12%) and is much more common in today's usage.Slang borrowed from these languages can be eithertransliteralorvernacular.Some examples:
With the rise of the Internet, new slang is generated and popularized throughsocial media. This modern slang is commonly used in the younger generation's teenspeak in Vietnam. This recent slang is mostly pure Vietnamese, and almost all the words arehomonymsor some form ofwordplay. Some slang words may includeprofanityswear words (derogatory) or just aplay on words.
Some examples with newer and older slang that originate from northern, central, or southern Vietnamese dialects include:
Whilst older slang has been used by previous generations, the prevalence of modern slang used by young people in Vietnam (as teenspeak) has made conversations more difficult for older generations to understand. This has become subject for debate. Some believe that incorporating teenspeak or internet slang in daily conversation among teenagers will affect the formality and cadence of their general speech.Others argue that it is not slang that is the problem, but rather the lack of communication techniques for the instant internet messaging era. They believe slang should not be dismissed, but instead, youth should be adequately informed to recognise when to use it and when it is inappropriate.
After ending a millennium ofChinese rulein 939, the Vietnamese state adoptedLiterary Chinese(calledvăn ngôn文言orHán văn漢文in Vietnamese) for official purposes.Up to the late 19th century (except for two brief interludes), all formal writing, including government business, scholarship and formal literature, was done in Literary Chinese, written withChinese characters(chữ Hán).Although the writing system is now mostly inchữQuốc ngữ(Latin script), Chinese script known as chữ Hán in Vietnamese as well as chữ Nôm (together, Hán-Nôm) is still present in such activities such asVietnamese calligraphy.
From around the 13th century, Vietnamese scholars used their knowledge of the Chinese script to develop thechữ Nôm(lit.'Southern characters') script to record folk literature in Vietnamese. The script used Chinese characters to represent both borrowedSino-Vietnamese vocabularyand native words with similar pronunciation or meaning. In addition, thousands of new compound characters were created to write Vietnamese words using a variety of methods, includingphono-semantic compounds.For example, in the opening lines of the classic poemThe Tale of Kiều,
The oldest example of an early form of theNômis found in a list of names in the Tháp Miếu Temple Inscription, dating from the early 13th century AD.Nômwriting reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works inNôm, most notablyNguyễn DuandHồ Xuân Hương(dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry"). However, it was only used for official purposes during the briefHồandTây Sơndynasties (1400–1406 and 1778–1802 respectively).
AVietnamese Catholic,Nguyễn Trường Tộ, unsuccessfully petitioned the Court suggesting the adoption of a script for Vietnamese based on Chinese characters.
Aromanisationof Vietnamese was codified in the 17th century by the AvignoneseJesuitmissionaryAlexandre de Rhodes(1591–1660), based on works of earlierPortuguese missionaries, particularlyFrancisco de Pina, Gaspar do Amaral and Antonio Barbosa.It reflects a "Middle Vietnamese" dialect close to the Hanoi variety as spoken in the 17th century. Its vowels and final consonants correspond most closely to northern dialects while its initial consonants are most similar to southern dialects. (This is not unlike howEnglish orthographyis based on the Chancery Standard ofLate Middle English, with many spellings retained even after theGreat Vowel Shift.)
The Vietnamese alphabet contains 29 letters, supplementing the Latin alphabet with an additional consonant letter (đ) and 6 additional vowel letters (ă,â/ê/ô,ơ,ư) formed withdiacritics. The Latin lettersf,j,wandzare not used.The script also represents additionalphonemesusing tendigraphs(ch,gh,gi,kh,ng,nh,ph,qu,th, andtr) and a singletrigraph(ngh).
Further diacritics are used to indicate thetoneof each syllable:
Thus, it is possible for diacritics to be stacked e.g. ể, combining letter with diacritic, ê, with diacritic for tone, ẻ, to make ể.
Despite the missionaries' creation of the alphabetic script,chữ Nômremained the dominant script inVietnamese Catholicliterature for more than 200 years.Starting from the late 19th century, the Vietnamese alphabet (chữ Quốc ngữor 'national language script') gradually expanded from its initial usage in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
The romanised script became predominant over the course of the early 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found to be more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population. TheFrench colonial administrationsought to eliminate Chinese writing, Confucianism, and other Chinese influences from Vietnam.French superseded Literary Chinese in administration. Vietnamese written with the alphabet became required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate ofTonkin. In turn, Vietnamese reformists and nationalists themselves encouraged and popularized the use ofchữ Quốc ngữ. By the middle of the 20th century, most writing was done inchữ Quốc ngữ, which became the official script on independence.
Nevertheless,chữ Hánwas still in use during the French colonial period and as late asWorld War IIwas still featured on banknotes,but fell out of official and mainstream use shortly thereafter. The education reform byNorth Vietnamin 1950 eliminated the use ofchữ Hánandchữ Nôm.Today, only a few scholars and some extremely elderly people are able to readchữ Nômor use it inVietnamese calligraphy. Priests of theJingminority in China (descendants of 16th-century migrants from Vietnam) use songbooks and scriptures written inchữ Nômin their ceremonies.
TheUnicodecharacter set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamesecode pagesare available such asVietnamese Standard Code for Information Interchange(VSCII) orWindows-1258. WhereASCIImust be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using theVIQRconvention, though this is largely unnecessary with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type Roman-script Vietnamese on English keyboards, such asWinVNKeyandUnikeyon Windows, orMacVNKeyon Macintosh, with popular methods ofencodingVietnamese using Telex, VNI or VIQR input methods all included.Telexinput method is often set as the default for many devices. Besides third-party software tools, operating systems such asWindowsormacOScan also be installed with Vietnamese and Vietnamese keyboard, e.g.Vietnamese Telexin Microsoft Windows.
Vietnamese speak date in the format "daymonthyear". Each month's name is just the ordinal of that month appended after the wordtháng, which means "month". Traditional Vietnamese, however, assigns other names to some months; these names are mostly used in thelunar calendarand in poetry.
When written in the short form, "DD/MM/YYYY" is preferred.
Example:
The Vietnamese prefer writing numbers with acommaas the decimal separator in lieu of dots, and either spaces or dots to group the digits. An example is 1 629,15 (one thousand six hundred twenty-nine point fifteen). Because a comma is used as the decimal separator, asemicolonis used to separate two numbers instead.
The Tale of Kiềuis an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poetNguyễn Du, (阮攸), which is often considered the most significant work ofVietnamese literature. It was originally written in chữ Nôm (titledĐoạn Trường Tân Thanh斷腸新聲) and is widely taught in Vietnam (inchữ Quốc ngữtransliteration).
Currently theNguồn languageis considered by the Vietnamese government to be a dialect of Vietnamese, however it is also considered a separate Việt-Mường language or the southernmost dialect of Mường language. The Vietnamese language also has severalmutually intelligibleregional varieties:
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North (45%), Central (10%), and South (45%).Michel Ferlusand Nguyễn Tài Cẩn found that there was a separate North-Central dialect for Vietnamese as well. The termHaut-Annamrefers to dialects spoken from the northern Nghệ An Province to the southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
The dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below) but also in vocabulary (including basic and non-basic vocabulary) and grammar.The North-Central and the Central regional varieties, which have a significant number of vocabulary differences, are generally lessmutually intelligibleto Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions because of its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese-speakers (around the end of the 15th century). The North-Central region is particularly conservative since its pronunciation has diverged less from Vietnamese orthography than the other varieties, which tend to merge certain sounds. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent, but more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As forsociolinguisticattitudes, the North-Central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects although their pronunciation fits the written language the most closely; that is typically because of various words in their vocabulary that are unfamiliar to other speakers (see the example vocabulary table below).
The large movements of people between North and South since the mid-20th century has resulted in a sizable number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and, to a greater extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. After theGeneva Accords of 1954, which called for thetemporary division of the country, about a million northerners (mainly from Hanoi,Haiphong, and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved south (mainly toSaigonand heavily toBiên HòaandVũng Tàuand the surrounding areas) as part ofOperation Passage to Freedom. About 180,000 moved in the reverse direction (Tập kết ra Bắc, literally "go to the North".)
After theFall of Saigonin 1975, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely-populated Red River Delta and the traditionally-poorer provinces of Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh, and Quảng Bình have continued to move south to look for better economic opportunities allowed by the new government's New Economic Zones, a program that lasted from 1975 to 1985.The first half of the program (1975–1980) resulted in 1.3 million people sent to the New Economic Zones (NEZs), most of which were relocated to the southern half of the country in previously uninhabited areas, and 550,000 of them were Northerners.The second half (1981–1985) saw almost 1 million Northerners relocated to the New Economic Zones.Government and military personnel from Northern and North-Central Vietnam are also posted to various locations throughout the country that were often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system has resulted in increased interregional movement and relations between distant parts of Vietnam through business and travel. The movements have also resulted in some blending of dialects and more significantly have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. Most Southerners, when singing modern/old popular Vietnamese songs or addressing the public, do so in the standardized accent if possible, which uses the Northern pronunciation. That is true in both Vietnam and overseas Vietnamese communities.
Modern Standard Vietnamese is based on the Hanoi dialect. Nevertheless, the major dialects are still predominant in their respective areas and have also evolved over time with influences from other areas. Historically, accents have been distinguished by how each region pronounces the lettersd([z] in the Northern dialect and [j] in the Central and Southern dialect) andr([z] in the Northern dialect and [r] in the Central and Southern dialects). Thus, the Central and the Southern dialects can be said to have retained a pronunciation closer to Vietnamese orthography and resemble how Middle Vietnamese sounded, in contrast to the modern Northern (Hanoi) dialect, which has since undergone pronunciation shifts.
Although regional variations developed over time, most of those words can be used interchangeably and be understood well, albeit with more or less frequency then others or with slightly different but often discernible word choices and pronunciations. Some accents may mix, with words suchdạ vângcombiningdạandvâng,being created.
Thesyllable-initialchandtrdigraphs are pronounced distinctly in the North-Central, Central, and Southern varieties but are merged in Northern varieties, which pronounce them the same way). Many North-Central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations ford,gi, andr, but the Northern varieties have a three-way merger, and the Central and the Southern varieties have a merger ofdandgibut keeprdistinct. At the end of syllables, the palatalschandnhhave merged with the alveolarstandn, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velarscandngin the Central and the Southern varieties.
In addition to the regional variation described above, there is a merger oflandnin certain rural varieties in the North:
Variation betweenlandncan be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears asnămby itself and in compound numerals likenăm mươi"fifty", but it appears aslăminmười lăm"fifteen" (seeVietnamese grammar#Cardinal). In some northern varieties, the numeral appears with an initialnhinstead ofl:hai mươi nhăm"twenty-five", instead of the mainstreamhai mươi lăm.
There is also a merger ofrandgin certain rural varieties in the South:
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (in the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties although they have been retained in other closely relatedVietic languages. However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" isblờiwith a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô,Ninh Bình Province) buttrờiin Southern Vietnamese andgiờiin Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants/ʈ/,/z/, respectively).
There are six tones in Vietnamese, with phonetic differences between dialects, mostly in the pitch contour andphonationtype.
The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone usingChao tone number notationin which 1 represents the lowest pitch, and 5 the highest;glottalization(creaky,stiff,harsh) is indicated with the ⟨◌̰⟩ symbol;murmured voicewith ⟨◌̤⟩;glottal stopwith ⟨ʔ⟩; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also thetone sectionbelow.)
A basic form ofword playin Vietnamese involves disyllabic words in which the last syllable forms the first syllable of the next word in the chain. This game involves two members versing each other until the opponent is unable to think of another word. For instance:
Anotherlanguage gameknown asnói láiis used by Vietnamese speakers.Nói láiinvolves switching, adding or removing the tones in a pair of words and may also involve switching the order of words or the first consonant and therimeof each word. Some examples:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair.Nói láican be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as withdấm đàiandhoảng chưa(above), or when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as withbồi tây.Naturally,nói láican be used for a humorous effect.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent ofpig latinis 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.
This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
Research projects and data resources