Home > Vietnamese alphabet

1 The letters

The Vietnamese alphabet has the following 37 letters (29 single and 8 digraphs), in collating order:

A/a, A/a, Â/â, B/b, C/c, Ch/ch, D/d, D/d,
E/e, Ê/ê, G/g, Gi/gi, H/h, I/i, K/k, Kh/kh,
L/l, M/m, N/n, Ng/ng, Nh/nh, O/o, Ô/ô,
Ơ/ơ, P/p, Ph/ph, Q/q, R/r, S/s, T/t, Th/th,
Tr/tr, U/u, Ư/ư, V/v, X/x, Y/y

In order to avoid confusion with the "gi" digraph, the letter "g" and the digraph "ng" are written "gh" and "ngh", respectively, when they appear before "i"; and also (for historical reasons) before "e" or "ê". The letters J, W and Z are also used in foreign loan words. The lowercase letter "i" retains its dot even when accented.

2 Tone markings

Vietnamese is a tonal language, i.e. the meaning of each word depends on the "tone" (basically a specific pitch and glottalization pattern) in which it is pronounced.

There are six distinct tones; the first one ("level tone") is not marked, and the other five are indicated by diacritics applied to the main vowel of the syllable (note that i should retain its dot even when accented):

3 History

The Vietnamese language was first written down, from the 13th century onwards, using varient Chinese characters ( ch nôm 字喃), each of them representing one word. The system was similar to the script used for writing Chinese ( ch nho), but using characters developed in Vietnam.

As early as 1527, PortugueseRepublica Portuguesa ( In Detail) National motto: None Official language Portuguese 3 Capital Lisbon President Jorge Sampaio Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes Area Total % water World ranking: 109th 92,391 km²0. 5 % Population Total ( 2004) Density World ChristianChristian is: a follower of the faith of Christianity a popular first name and surname, especially in Northern Europe According to the New Testament, those who followed Jesus as his disciples were first called Christians by those who did not share their f missionariesA missionary is a propagator of religion, often an evangelist or other representative of a religious community who works among those outside of that community. The English word "missionary" is derived from Latin, the equivalent of the Greek-derived word, in Vietnam began using the Latin alphabet to transcribe the Vietnamese language for teaching and evangelization purposes. These informal efforts led eventually to the development of the present Vietnamese alphabet, largely by the work of FrenchThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. Jesuit Alexandre de RhodesAlexandre de Rhodes ( March 15, 1591 November 5, 1660) was a French Jesuit missionary. Born in Avignon, France. He entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Rome on April 24, 1612. Quc Ng, an alphabet based on the Roman character set, which is used, who worked in the country between 1624 and 1644. Building on previous Portuguese-Vietnamese dictionaries by Gaspar D'Amaral and Duarte da Costa , Rhodes wrote a Vietnamese-Portuguese- Latin dictionary, which was printed in Rome in 1651, using his spelling system.

In spite of this development, chữ nôm and chữ nho remained in use until the early 20th century, when the French colonial administration made Rhodes's alphabet official. By the late 20th century, quốc ngữ had almost entirely replaced the older ideographic systems.