Talk:Vietnamese phonology

message: A lot of work has gone into it. Good on you. I did change one fact - that about "v"s not being pronounced in HCMC. That's not exactly true. It's a Mekong Delta thing to pronounce their "v"s as "j"s- the city siders generally pronounce their "v"s quite well. 
There's one problem - which will need some work to address. The U with a hook (ư) is pronounced as /ɯ/, not /ɨ/. Basically, you take your /u/, and flatten the lips. The /ɨ/ sound occurs in Russian (which I tried to learn some years back), and that sound does not occur in Vietnamese. 
(I live in HCMC, and have been learning the language.) 
It's a tough thing to work out the IPA for a, â, ă and ơ. There's no standard trascription for these letters. Having an "Endnotes" for this "controversy" is a good idea, but maybe it belongs on another page.)
Anyway... well done! Tphcm
===re /v/===
hi.  thanks for your comments. although i dont doubt your observations, perhaps "generally pronounc[ing] their 'v's quite well" is a bit more complex.  i note that your observation is contrary to the some works i have read (e.g. Thompson 1965, Nguyễn 1997).  i list some relevant bits:
:: Thompson (1965:85):
:: "Bas-Annam. The general characteristics of Đà-nẵng speech apply for the most part to the balance of the territory of south central Viet Nam.... Somewhere not far north of the Saigon region [v] disappears; it is replaced by [j], which everywhere from Huế south resembles English y in you, yes. An early picture of this area is presented in Cadière 1911. The correspondence of Cochinchinese [j] to [v] of other dialects is discussed historically in Maspero 1912 (pp. 41-42, 70-74)."
:: Thompson (1965:89):
:: "The lenis oral consonants in Saigon [v, th, r, l, g, h] are very noticeably more relaxed than their Hanoi counterparts. In addition there are a few other differences. Saigon [v] appears only before the semivowel [j] (4.22) and is itself palatalized in anticipation... 
::: "vợ [vjợư̯] HN [vợư̯] wife
:: "The initial cluster [vj] corresponds to Hanoi initial [v]. Actually, this is a spelling pronunciation on the part of educated speakers in Saigon: the majority of the Saigonese (including many educated people) pronounce simply [j] in these forms. Some, then, add a [v] before the [j], knowing that the form is spelled with v. There are a few who pronounce a [b] sound before [j] in the same form; this sound is also lenis (quite unlike the sound heard in bài lesson)."
:: Thompson (1965:93):
:: "The clusters [vj, kw] seem obviously secondary introductions into the system based on knowledge of the spelling of the words involved; less educated speakers have simply [j, w] in these forms, and educated speakers, too, often use them in less careful speech.
::: "vừa [(v)jừâ̯] HN [vừâ̯] to fit, suit"
:: Thompson (1965:97):
:: "Although initial [w] is not distinguished from [v] by being preglottalized, the fact that [v] occurs only before [j], where [w] does not appear, places them together in a /w/ phoneme, as in Hanoi speech. (For those speakers who have a lenis stop before [j] this [b] clearly belongs to the /w/ phoneme, in place of the [v] just discussed). The semivowel [j] is seen to fill the empty position in the laminal column...."
:: Thompson (1965:98), in a chart of dialectal correspondences:
:: "ORTHOGRAPHY v; HANOI v; VINH v; HUE v; DA-NANG v; SAIGON (v)j; TRA-VINH j; "
:: Thompson (1959:459):
:: "/w/ Lenis labial oral nonsyllabics [sic].
:: Initial before /j/ : [v] palatalized.
::: /wjɑ`/ ‘and’
:: Before /y/, and after /i y u ʌ/ : nonsyllabic [u].
::: /wyŋ/ ‘Huân [family or given name]’, /twyŋ`/ ‘week’; /ˀiw/ ‘cherish’, /kyw`/ ‘sheep’, /ɑuw˜/ ‘sleep’, /ˀtʌw/ ‘unspecified location’,  /ˀʌwŋ/ ‘gentleman’
:: Before syllabics other than /y/, and after /e a/ : nonsyllabic [ᴜ].
::: /kwen/ ‘forget’, /kwɑ/ ‘to pass’, /ɑwɑj`/ ‘outside’; /new´/ ‘if’, /ˀawŋ/ ‘bee’
:: After /ɛ ɑ/ : nonsyllabic [o].
::: /hɛw/ ‘pig’, /ˀtɑw/ ‘sick’ "
:: Thompson (1959:466):
:: "Note that aside from /ˀp ˀt wj/ all clusters have /w/ as second element.... The clusters /wj kw/ tend to disappear in less careful speech; the resulting forms are the same as the corresponding popular forms. Since these clusters are distinguished in the official orthography but are not present in the popular speech of the dialect area, it is reasonable to suggest that in the educated dialect of Saigon they represent artificial restorations under the influence of the written language.
::: /wj/ is replaced by /j/   /ja`/ ‘and’ "
So, basically what Thompson is saying is that generally southern-ish varieties dont have a contrast between [v](/[b]) and [j] unlike the northern and central varieties and in Ho Chi Minh City there is a situation of literacy affecting pronunciation and perhaps somewhat marginally the sound system.  Thompson further analyzes this marginal [v]/[b] as an allophone of /w/ occuring before /j/.
Thompson's fieldwork was done during the 1950s. Several have noted that in big cities, such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, there has been a certain amount of mixing of varieties.  So I would speculate that you may be observing (1) stronger influence of literacy (assuming, of course, that more Ho Chi Minh speakers have become literate since the Vietnam War) and (2) more influence of northern/central varieties on the Ho Chi Minh variety.  Anyway, just a guess!  It would be interesting to note if all speakers that you observe having [v] are literate and/or of the same socioeconomic background. I would also be interested in knowing if [v] is still as palatalized as Thompson describes.
There have been several phonological works written in Vietnamese which I havent seen (and probably will not be reading).  There are a few PhD dissertations on Vietnamese phonology scattered here & there.  These are all more recent than Thompson.  They may have something on this.  Also, Thompson's grammar explicitly does not claim to be a comprehensive study of Vietnamese language variation: he very pointedly states that there is little work in this area (as of 1965).  (if you dont have this grammar, i could provide a biblio with references in Vietnamese). peace — ishwar  (SPEAK) 09:41, 2005 May 15 (UTC)
===re /ư/===
ok, my short answer: i dont know. traditional description is following Thompson (who is generally very accurate). what i remember from Han's studies in the 60s (i dont have a copy, just looked at them) is that she indicates that this vowel is central, not back. her evidence is the average frequency of the 2nd formant as measured with a spectrograph. but, i dont remember how she calculated F2. maybe she just reported it without any weighting of F3. (if you arent familiar with acoustic phonetics, the value of F2, i.e. the second formant, is generally a rough indication of horizontal tongue position. a high F2 indicates an advanced tongue & a low F2 indicates a retracted tongue.) there are a few researchers now that transcribe or otherwise indicate this vowel as central (i'm speaking of Brunelle & Pham). but, as i have mentioned before, i am not a Vietnamese linguist so i havent read all that much. i personally want some more data. anyway, i will read more & report back here. peace – ishwar  (speak) 06:27, 2005 July 31 (UTC)
:I can only give a piece of anecdotal evidence here (native Hanoian Viet, speak English decently, currently learning Japanese). The Vietnamese Ư is unlikely to be a back vowel, since there is a clear distinction between it and Japanese う (/ɯ/ when not preceded by a consonant). I tried to replicate Vietnamese Ư and Japanese う in a few times, and I believe it is correct to transcript Ư as a central vowel. My friend (another native Hanoian Viet, speak English and Chinese fluently) noticed that when she heard the Japanese う for the first time, it sounded like a mix between Vietnamese U and Ư (probably because う is unrounded back, while U is rounded back and Ư is unrounded central). Pokokichi2 (talk) 17:07, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope, this is the vowel <o> with ngã tone. Both are covered in the article. MuDavid (talk) 00:59, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  On Phomenes 

message: ok, my short answer: i dont know. traditional description is following Thompson (who is generally very accurate). what i remember from Han's studies in the 60s (i dont have a copy, just looked at them) is that she indicates that this vowel is central, not back. her evidence is the average frequency of the 2nd formant as measured with a spectrograph. but, i dont remember how she calculated F2. maybe she just reported it without any weighting of F3. (if you arent familiar with acoustic phonetics, the value of F2, i.e. the second formant, is generally a rough indication of horizontal tongue position. a high F2 indicates an advanced tongue & a low F2 indicates a retracted tongue.) there are a few researchers now that transcribe or otherwise indicate this vowel as central (i'm speaking of Brunelle & Pham). but, as i have mentioned before, i am not a Vietnamese linguist so i havent read all that much. i personally want some more data. anyway, i will read more & report back here. peace – ishwar  (speak) 06:27, 2005 July 31 (UTC)
:I can only give a piece of anecdotal evidence here (native Hanoian Viet, speak English decently, currently learning Japanese). The Vietnamese Ư is unlikely to be a back vowel, since there is a clear distinction between it and Japanese う (/ɯ/ when not preceded by a consonant). I tried to replicate Vietnamese Ư and Japanese う in a few times, and I believe it is correct to transcript Ư as a central vowel. My friend (another native Hanoian Viet, speak English and Chinese fluently) noticed that when she heard the Japanese う for the first time, it sounded like a mix between Vietnamese U and Ư (probably because う is unrounded back, while U is rounded back and Ư is unrounded central). Pokokichi2 (talk) 17:07, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: re /&#x01B0;/

message: Great article. I have two observations. This one is about the lax/tense vowels. The main difference between the short vowels and ǎ & â and the long vowels a & ơ is in their phonation. The long vowels are tense (using modal phonation), while the short vowels are lax (lax/slack phonation.) IPA uses a small circle under a phoneme to mark lax phonation. Vietphone (talk) 03:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: re ǎ & â

message: This seems to be a vowel in Vietnamese, as in the name of the singer Võ Hạ Trâm.  Shouldn't this article treat it? The Wikipedia article on Õ does discuss its Vietnamese use briefly.Peter Brown (talk) 17:18, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope, this is the vowel <o> with ngã tone. Both are covered in the article. MuDavid (talk) 00:59, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: re õ

message: I am pretty sure th consonant is glottalized (glottalic egressive), regardless of southern/northern dialect. I think what you have pointed out as glottalized consonants: b, đ, plus th and maybe even kh, would become "pharyngealized" in emphasized speech, (whether they are ingressive or egressive seems to correlate directly with whether they are voiced or voiceless.) I mean, in emphasized speech, sometimes I can hear a pause or a RTR schwa between these consonants and the vowels that follow. (RTR = retracted tongue root.) By "pharyngealized" I mean the airway is not just closed at the glottis, but closed with tongue root closing the pharynx. For instance, the Vietnamese word thi sounds different from English word tea, not just in consonant... in emphasized speech, even the vowel sounds a bit different because of the tongue-root retraction. Anyway, too technical. I wish there is another place where people could talk more about Vietnamese phonetics in detail. Thanks for your hard work. The points I am raising may be too technical to be included. Vietphone (talk) 03:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: re th

message: Imiraven 16:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: hi. i believe that is what the article explains (i.e. that it is low central). can you point out where it says otherwise (because i cant seem to find it). peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment: Imiraven

message: There is a lot of good stuff here. All of it is pretty much relevant. However, I'd try to make it more consise. My ideas:
(a) Put the phototactics first. That would make a lot of the subsequent article make sense.
(b) Then make one table (not two) encompassing the consonants of Hanoi and HCMC. Add footnotes for which sounds only occur in one of the cities (e.g., "z"). 
(c) Then make two tables - one for initial consonants, and then one for coda consonants. A lot of the information is spread around the place. It would be nice to have it in one place.
(d) Then vowels.
(e) Finally tone.
(f) Finally, the rough appendix - showing the various symbols used by various authors for the same phoneme. Again, a little cleanup here would be good.
All honor and praise to "Ish ishwar", whose work made it possible.
--Tphcm 05:13, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup needed 

message: Say what the correspondence between Vietnamese tones for Chinese
loanwords vs. the Old Chinese tones is, if any. Jidanni (talk) 01:15, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese-Vietnamese tone correspondence 

message: As part of an effort to have consistent IPA transcriptions in various languages, I'd like to develop a Vietnamese IPA key and corresponding  template, and would appreciate the input of people here. The idea is that we would make all the distinctions relevant for Hanoi and Saigon, and hopefully for Vinh, Hue, etc. as well, so we would transcribe e.g. v, d, r and the 6 (8) tones with distinct IPA values in the transcription, and leave it to the key to note that certain ones of these are not distinct in Hanoi, and others are not distinct in Saigon. This isn't meant for detailed treatments like this article, but rather for articles that include one or two Vietnamese terms, for which we need to give basic pronunciation information for readers who are not familiar with Vietnamese orthography, often alongside Chinese, Khmer, or other languages. It would be similar to WP:IPA for English, which glosses over the differences between the US and the UK; or WP:IPA for Spanish, which is moving in the direction of having the Castillian transcription as the default, since Latin American pronunciations are predictable once you know the Castillian. I think it would be best to use fairly common symbols as long as that does not cause a loss of information (say [a] for ă rather than , and [ə] for â rather than ), since many of our readers struggle with the IPA. It would also be nice if we could agree on tone diacritics along the lines of Thai, such as I've proposed in the key, rather than tone letters, which might lead to arguments over the exact phonetic realizations of the tones. 
If you think it is worthwhile, we might even develop a template like  (for Hungarian), which would automatically convert an input of Vietnamese orthography to IPA. That way if we later decided to change our IPA conventions, we could do it at the template rather than going through every article. kwami (talk) 22:20, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vietnamese IPA key 

message: /ɔ/ is often pronounced /ɒ/. Fête  —Preceding undated comment added 12:14, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I noticed you put that in the article.  Do you have a source? — Æµ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 15:23, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  /ɔ/ 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Vietnamese phonology. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20100301115223/http://www.vietesl.com:80/ to http://www.vietesl.com
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:57, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: In the table of common vietnamese rhymes the row /ʷo/ is wrong, it should be deleted. Such sounds don't exist in Vietnamese. In a word like muối the u is not a labiovelar glide, instead uố is the same vowel nucleus as in mua and i is an off-glide. Qtng (talk) 09:24, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error in common Vietnamese rhymes 

message: A Vietnamese friend told me that there actually is a Vietnamese which is pronounced as written, i.e. every distinction made in spelling is made in speech, and that this was the language they spoke at school. Yet the article makes it sound like there simply is no such thing. Can someone clear up that situation for me? Korn (talk) 10:32, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I am a Hanoian, and I may clarify it for you. No Vietnamese dialect actually speaks as it is written. You can hear a Hanoian Vietnamese anchorman speaking in the official TV channel here: https://vtv.vn/video/nguy-co-chay-rung-tu-viec-dot-rung-lam-ray-30849.htm. No Hanoian differentiates R (/r/) and D (/z/), albeit we do differentiate TR and CH in some very specific situations. The same with other dialects. Pokokichi2 (talk) 17:25, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutral form? 

message: In the South, the /i/ is really pronounced , Ba Vì  (), it sounds like "ba vay". 138.229.19.202 (talk) 16:00, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  /i/ 

message: The Saigon Finals section as it stands is so bad as to be totally useless. I have PhD in Linguistics and I could not understand what it was trying to communicate. Besides the terrible quality of English, the "Merger of finals" is way too compressed and self-contradictory, and it is utterly unclear what the "table of rimes ending in /n, t, ŋ, k, ŋ͡m, k͡p/ in the Saigon dialect:" is trying to communicate: what is the vertical axis – a claim about what the underlying coda phoneme is? Why does each cell contain 2 forms? If this is supposed to illustrate pronunciations, why is all the content of the cells orthographic forms, no phonetic transcription? Why are some cells empty? Why do some cells have "–" as the second form? It says "Combinations that have changed their pronunciation due to merger are bolded" – but if *every* cell that isn't empty has a bold-faced string as the first of the 2 strings in it, what is the bold-facing representing?
In contrast, the Language Variation > Consonants section of the Vietnamese Language article is crystal clear. The "Regional consonant correspondences" table there is crystal clear too: the vertical axis is labeled with the orthography, sometimes with qualifications like "after i, ê", and the Saigon column has the phonetic transcription of the coda consonant. I suggest that Vietnamese Phonology > Saigon Finals be scrapped entirely and essentially replaced by the relevant section of Vietnamese Language > Language Variation > Consonants section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:189:C480:DF40:8C85:EB01:4A72:225D (talk) 13:06, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Saigon Finals section rework

message: In this chapter I am wondering about following remarks, e.g.:
1) ... careful speech by some speakers.
2) ... especially in careful speech or when reading a text..
3) ... However, in many speakers ..
4) ... In informal speech ..
5) ... formal speech or when reading a text...
The way how south vietnamese people are pronouncing the above mentioned "mixture" of north- and south dialects has absolutely nothing to do with the form of the speech (careful, not careful, formal, not formal/informal).
This dialect mixture is rather used by south vietnamese people speaking in state-owned media, in "censored" socia media, regardless of the "form" of the speech.
In South Vietnam before 1975 south vietnamese leaders always spoke their own, pure dialect, regardless of they were born, from North, Central or from South Vietnam, regardless of where they have spoken, on media, with the audience, private or not private, "careful" or not "careful", "formal" or "not formal". They always keep their own dialect.
Example:
Ngô Đình Diệm born in Quảng Bình, central North Vietnam. He spoke north central dialect.
Dương Văn Minh born in Mỹ Tho, Mekong Delta, South Vietnam. He spoke south dialect.
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ born in Sơn Tây, North Vietnam. He spoke north dialect.
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu born in Phan Rang, central South Vietnam. He spoke this own south central dialect.
A mixture of pronunciation like mentioned above is unknown  for them.
The question is:
WHY THIS MIXTURE? WHERE DID IT BEGIN?
I guess, a south vietnamese leader of the current political system in Vietnam has triggered for the very first time this "mixture". This mixture is "promoted" by the massive resettlement of north vietnamese population to South Vietnam and especially to Saigon (aka HCM city), by the nearly complete presence of north vietnamese people in the media, in the administration.
In a nutshell: The presence of south dialect spoken vietnamese people is more or less "zero" in the spoken media!
The "north vietnamese" presence is so all over in main cities of South Vietnam, so that one should have the feeling, he is staying in North Vietnam, and not in South Vietnam.
Beautiful Bavaria (talk) 20:13, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chapter Saigon initials 

message: The article mainly draws on Thompson’s excellent A Vietnamese reference grammar (1965), but the description of what the author terms “Fortis stops” (2.2, p 22) is incorrect.
This is particularly true of what he calls the “preglottalized stops” b [ɓ] and đ [ɗ]. These stops are not “preglottalized”, that is, they do not start with a glottal stop, as the author claims, but are simply voiced implosives, whose mechanism is well described e.g. in Catford (1988) and Ladefoged (2001). Thompson does not even use the term “implosive” but only writes of possible “implosion”. Thompson apparently believed that a glottalic airstream – egressive or ingressive - can only be initiated with a completely closed glottis, which is not true. Implosives are initiated with the glottis slightly open and ready for voicing, but unlike in the case of ordinary [b] and [d], the egressive (upward) airstream necessary for the vocal chords to vibrate for [ɓ] and [ɗ] does not come from pulmonic pressure, but from a rapidly descending larynx increasing subglottal pressure and decreasing intraoral pressure at the same time, thus generating the pressure difference necessary to set the vocal chords vibrating. Thompson writes the “preglottalized” voiced stops are “much stronger articulated” than their English counterparts. What really creates this much stronger sound effect in implosives is not the strength of articulation, but an oral resonance chamber greatly enlarged by the downward movement of the larynx. This is why [b] and [d] sound muffled compared with their implosive counterparts.
Thompson’s “sharply released” voiceless unaspirated syllable-initial stops [t] and [k] are strictly speaking not just that. What Thompson describes as “sharply released” is in fact a kind of ejective where the glottis is not completely closed (as in an ordinary ejective) but slightly open and ready for voicing. This is why with the Vietnamese voiceless unaspirated stops you don’t hear a subsequent glottal stop, as is the case with ordinary ejectives. Thompson’s “sharp” release of the Vietnamese voiceless unaspirated stops is in reality the typical popping sound of ejectives. The aspiration of Vietnamese “th” is actually quite weak and can be almost completely absent. The acoustic difference between “t” and “th” for the native speaker mainly lies in the different initiating processes, glottalic (a pop) and pulmonic (absence of the pop).
Thus the three-way distinction among Vietnamese stops seems to be one of airstream initiation (pulmonic – ejective – implosive), rather than one of phonation (voiceless aspirated – voiceless unaspirated – voiced), with aspiration just a by-product of open-larynx pulmonic initiation.
The above also applies in large measure to the phonetics/phonologies of Thai and Khmer, which apparently form a sprachbund with Vietnamese.
Soundshift (talk) 15:45, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonetic nature of the so-called “preglottalized” and “unaspirated” voiceless stops in Vietnamese