The Vietnamese alphabet
Vietnamese is written with Latin letters, and that is exactly what makes it treacherous: every letter looks familiar, and half of them do not sound like you expect.
What quốc ngữ is
The script — quốc ngữ, "national language" — was built by missionaries in the 17th century and became official in the 20th. It replaced a Chinese-derived writing system, and it is the reason Vietnamese is the easiest East Asian language to start reading.
There is no f, j, w or z. There are seven letters that English does not have:
ă â đ ê ô ơ ư.
The two kinds of mark — and the confusion that costs months
A mark on a Vietnamese letter is one of two completely different things, and they stack:
A letter mark makes a different letter. ơ is not o with
something on it — it is its own vowel, with its own sound. Same for ă â ê ô ư đ.
A tone mark — à á ả ã ạ — does not change the vowel at all. It changes the
melody of your voice over it.
So ộ is the letter ô carrying the nặng tone: two marks, two
unrelated jobs, one syllable. Beginners who read them as "o with decorations" never get the tones
to sit right, because they are looking at the wrong layer.
The vowels
This is where a course should start — not with greetings. English speakers glide most vowels without noticing (go ends on a w, gate on a y), and a gliding vowel makes any tone on top of it unreadable.
| Letter | The sound |
|---|---|
| a | the a of father |
| ă | the same a, but cut short |
| â | the u of but, short |
| e | the e of bed |
| ê | close to the a of gate — but no glide |
| i | the ee of see, shorter |
| y | exactly the same sound as i |
| o | the aw of law |
| ô | close to the o of go — but no glide |
| ơ | the ur of hurt, with no r |
| u | the oo of boot, shorter |
| ư | say boot, then flatten your lips into a smile |
Typing it
Nobody types Vietnamese with a special keyboard. The standard method is telex: you type
the letter, then a key that adds the mark. aa gives â, aw
gives ă, dd gives đ, and s f r x j add the
five tone marks. It is learned once, in about ten minutes.
More: the six tones · north or south