Vietnamese language

Vietnamese, or tiếng Việt, is the official language of Vietnam. It belongs to the Vietic subgroup of the Austroasiatic language family. Many people speak Vietnamese, both as their first language and as a second language.

Like many languages in Southeast Asia and East Asia, Vietnamese is a tonal and isolating language. This means it uses sound tones to change meaning and has a simple structure. It follows a strict subject–verb–object order.

Vietnamese words are often one syllable, but many everyday words combine syllables. The language includes many words borrowed from Middle Chinese, called Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, and has also been influenced by French.

Today, Vietnamese is written using a Latin-based alphabet called chữ Quốc ngữ. This writing system was adopted in the early 20th century during French rule of Vietnam. It uses special symbols to show tones and sounds. Before this, Vietnamese was written using chữ Nôm, a special script that mixed Chinese characters with locally created symbols.

Classification

Early studies showed that Vietnamese is part of the Mon–Khmer group in the Austroasiatic language family. This family includes the Khmer language from Cambodia and other languages in Laos, southern China, and parts of Thailand. Later studies found that Vietnamese is very close to the Mường language. Experts now call this group of languages "Vietic".

History

The Austroasiatic language family is thought to have spread around 2000 BC. The Phùng Nguyên culture arrived in the Red River Delta around that time.

This early language looked different from Vietnamese today. It had special features like sesquisyllabic roots and many consonant clusters. It did not use tones.

Later, Vietnamese borrowed words from Tai languages and then from Chinese, especially after contact with the Han dynasty. Over time, Vietnamese became part of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, where languages developed similar features.

After separating from the Muong language, Vietnamese went through several stages. Ancient Vietnamese showed changes like the loss of sound distinctions. Middle Vietnamese is known from old dictionaries. Modern Vietnamese began in the 19th century and was influenced by Chinese and French.

Geographic distribution

Many people from Vietnam moved to other places, so Vietnamese is spoken in many parts of the world. You can hear it in Southeast Asia, East Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. It is also an official minority language in the Czech Republic.

Vietnamese is the main language of Vietnam. It is also spoken by people living on three islands near Dongxing in China. Many Vietnamese speakers live in nearby countries like Cambodia and Laos.

See also: Vietnamese language in the United States

In the United States, Vietnamese is one of the most commonly spoken languages. In Australia, it is the third most spoken language after English. In France, it is the most spoken Asian language among people at home.

Official status

Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam. It is the first language for most people there and also used by many different groups.

In the Czech Republic, Vietnamese is recognized as a minority language. This means the Vietnamese community there has a representative to help with policies for different groups. They can also use Vietnamese when dealing with public services and courts. Vietnamese also became a recognized minority language in Slovakia in 2023.

In San Francisco in the United States, Vietnamese services started in 2024.

As a foreign language

Vietnamese is taught in schools outside of Vietnam, especially where Vietnamese communities live. This helps connect younger generations to their heritage. In places near Vietnam, like parts of China, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, learning Vietnamese is often for trade and business reasons.

Since the 1980s, Vietnamese language schools have opened in many countries, including the United States, Germany, and France.

Phonology

Main article: Vietnamese phonology

Vietnamese has many different sounds called vowels that we use in words. Some vowels are said with rounded lips, and some are not. Some vowels sound very short.

Vietnamese words can also have different tones. These tones change how a word sounds and what it means. The tones are shown with special marks above or below the vowels.

Grammar

Main articles: Vietnamese grammar and Vietnamese morphology

Vietnamese is a simple language. It does not use special word endings to show time or ownership. Sentences in Vietnamese usually follow the order of "who" then "what" then "doing," such as "I see the dog."

Here are a few examples of Vietnamese sentences and what they mean:

• "Minh is a teacher."
• "Trí is 13 years old."
• "Mai seems to be a college or high school student."
• "Tài is talking."
• "Giáp is very tall."
• "That person is his/her brother."
• "This dog never barks at all."
• "He/she/it only eats Vietnamese rice (or food)."
• "I like the black horse."
• "I like that black horse."
• "Please stay here for a few minutes until I return."

Lexicon

Austroasiatic origins

Many early studies tried to learn where the Vietnamese language came from. Some thought it might be related to Kra-Dai, Sino-Tibetan, or Austroasiatic languages. Today, it seems most likely that Vietnamese comes from Austroasiatic origins. Vietnamese shares many words with the Mường languages, which are closely related.

Other words, like nước non (meaning "country" or "nation"), seem to be purely Vietnamese. These words were once written in special characters called chữ Nôm but are now written using the Vietnamese alphabet.

Chinese contact

Even though Vietnamese roots are Austroasiatic, contact with Chinese greatly shaped the language. This happened around the 10th to 11th century and helped form Modern Vietnamese. For example, the Vietnamese word quản lý (meaning "management" or "manage") likely comes from a Chinese word. Chinese influence happened during times like the Nam Việt period and other periods of influence. Besides English and French, Japanese also added some words to Vietnamese.

Modern Vietnamese has lost many old features because of Chinese influence. This happened during times when Vietnam was under Chinese rule and after it became independent. Early thinkers thought there were only two waves of Chinese words entering Vietnamese, but newer studies show there were three major groups of Chinese borrowings.

French era

Vietnam became a French colony in 1883. This brought many French words into Vietnamese. For example, cà phê (coffee) comes from the French café. Yogurt is sữa chua, and cheese is phô mai, both from French words. Other examples include nốt nhạc (musical note) from French note de musique, vô lăng (steering wheel) from French volant directionnel, and cà vạt (necktie) from French cravate.

English

Some English words have been borrowed into Vietnamese, like "TV" becoming "tivi" or just TV, though it is officially called truyền hình. Some words are translated, such as "software" becoming phần mềm (meaning "soft part"). Some scientific terms come from old Chinese characters, while others stay the same.

Japanese

Japanese loanwords are a newer area of study, with three waves of influence. The first wave included words created in Japanese to represent Western ideas not found in Chinese or Japanese, which later entered Vietnamese. The second wave happened during Japan's brief occupation of Vietnam from 1940 to 1945, but Japanese influence grew more in the 1980s. This newer wave included words like kimono, sumo, samurai, and bonsai. Sometimes, the same idea can be expressed using words from both the first and second waves, like judo and nhu đạo.

Modern Chinese influence

Some words, like lạp xưởng (Chinese sausage), keep Cantonese pronunciations and were brought by southern Chinese migrants. New terms from Chinese are usually based on Mandarin pronunciation. In southern Vietnam, the term xí ngầu can refer to dice, possibly from a Cantonese or Teochew idiom.

Slang

Vietnamese slang (tiếng lóng) has changed over time. It includes words from Vietnamese and words borrowed from other languages like Mandarin or Indo-European languages.

With the growth of the Internet, new slang has emerged and spread through social media. This modern slang is mostly used by younger people in Vietnam and is often based on wordplay or words that sound the same.

Older generations sometimes struggle to understand the slang used by today’s teens. Some people worry that using too much teen slang might make young people’s regular speech less formal. Others think the real issue is how people communicate quickly online. They believe it’s important to teach young people when it’s okay to use slang and when it’s not appropriate.

Writing systems

Main articles: History of writing in Vietnam and Vietnamese Braille

After Vietnam ended rule by China in the year 939, the Vietnamese used a writing system called Literary Chinese for important documents. Until the late 1800s, almost all official writing used Chinese characters. Today, Vietnam mainly uses the chữ Quốc ngữ script, which is based on the Latin alphabet. Some older writing styles, like chữ Hán and chữ Nôm, are still seen in special activities.

Chữ Nôm

Main article: Chữ Nôm

Around the 1200s, Vietnamese writers created a special script called chữ Nôm to write their own stories and poems. They used Chinese characters in new ways and made up new symbols for Vietnamese words. This script was used by famous poets like Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương in the 1700s and 1800s. It was rarely used for official work.

Vietnamese alphabet

Main article: Vietnamese alphabet

In the 1600s, a priest named Alexandre de Rhodes created a way to write Vietnamese using the Latin alphabet, with some extra letters and marks. This became known as chữ Quốc ngữ. At first, it was used mostly in religious writing, but it became more popular over time. By the early 1900s, it was used in schools and government work. Today, it is the main way Vietnamese is written.

Computer support

Modern computers can show all Vietnamese letters using Unicode. On older systems, special codes like VSCII or Windows-1258 were used. Today, most computers and phones support Vietnamese well, and there are tools to help type Vietnamese easily.

Dates and numbers writing formats

In Vietnamese, dates are written as "[day] [month] [year]". For example, September 2, 2025, is written as "Ngày hai Tháng chín Năm hai nghìn không trăm hai mươi lăm" in full, or "2 September 2025" in short form. Vietnamese people often use a comma instead of a dot for decimals, like writing "1 629,15" for one thousand six hundred twenty-nine point one five.

Literature

Main article: Vietnamese literature

The Tale of Kiều is a famous long poem by the poet Nguyễn Du. It is one of the most important works in Vietnamese literature. The poem was first written in an old style of writing called chữ Nôm. People still study it in schools today.

Language variation

The Nguồn language is seen by the Vietnamese government as a type of Vietnamese, but some think it is its own language or part of the Mường language. Vietnamese has several regional types that people can usually understand each other, even with small differences.

Vietnamese is often split into three main areas: North, Central, and South. These areas mainly differ in how sounds are made and in some words used. People from different areas sometimes find each other hard to understand because of word choices. The Southern area has less change because it was settled later. Mountain areas keep more differences than coastal areas.

Since the mid-20th century, many people have moved between North and South, mixing accents. This movement has helped people from different areas understand each other better. Most Southerners use the Northern accent when singing or speaking publicly.

Modern Standard Vietnamese is based on the Hanoi dialect, but each area keeps its own way of speaking. Historically, each area pronounces certain letters differently. The Central and Southern dialects keep sounds closer to old Vietnamese than the Northern dialect.

Vocabulary

Most words from different areas can be used together and understood, even if some are used more often than others. Some accents mix words in new ways.

Consonants

The sounds ch and tr are said differently in North-Central, Central, and Southern types but are said the same in Northern types. Many North-Central types keep three sounds for d, gi, and r, but Northern types mix them, and Central and Southern types mix d and gi but keep r separate. At the end of words, some sounds have mixed in Central and Southern types.

In some rural Northern types, the sounds l and n mix. For example, the number "five" is năm alone but lăm in mười lăm "fifteen".

There is also a mix of r and g in some rural Southern types.

Old consonant clusters from Middle Vietnamese have mostly disappeared, but some communities keep them. For example, "sky" is blời in Hảo Nho but trời in Southern Vietnamese and giời in Hanoi Vietnamese.

Tones

Vietnamese has six tones, with differences in how high or low the pitch is and other voice types between dialects.

The table shows the pitch of each tone using Chao tone number notation, where 1 is the lowest pitch and 5 the highest. It also shows special voice types, glottal stops, and sub-dialect differences. (See also the tone section below.)

Word play

In Vietnamese, there are fun games with words that people enjoy playing. One simple game uses two-syllable words. The last part of one word becomes the start of the next word. Two players take turns, and the goal is to keep the chain going until someone can’t think of the next word.

There is also a language game called nói lái. In this game, players change the sounds or tones of words, sometimes switching parts of the words. This can make the words sound funny or hide a secret message. Kids also play a game similar to pig latin, where they add a silly sound to a word and switch parts of it. This helps them talk in a “secret” way that adults might not understand.

Sample text

Here is the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights written in Vietnamese:

Mọi con người sinh ra đều tự do và bình đẳng về nhân phẩm và quyền lợi. Họ được tạo hóa ban cho lý trí và lương tâm và phải đối xử với nhau với tinh thần huynh đệ.

The same sentence is shown using a special way to write sounds called the International Phonetic Alphabet:

[moj˧˩ˀ kɔn˧ ŋɯə̯j˨˩ sɪŋ̟˧ za˧ ɗew˨˩ tɯ˧˩ˀ ɗɔ˧ va˨˩ ɓɪŋ̟˨˩ ɗɐŋ˧˩˧ ve˨˩ ɲʌn˧ fʌm˧˩˧ va˨˩ kwiə̯n˨˩ ləj˧˩ˀ ‖ hɔ˧˩ˀ ɗɯə̯k˧˩ˀ taw˧˩ˀ hwa˧˥ ɓan˧ t͡ɕɔ˧ li˧˥ t͡ɕi˧˥ va˨˩ lɯə̯ŋ˧ tʌm˧ va˨˩ faj˧˩˧ ɗoj˧ sɯ˧˩˧ vəj˧˥ ɲaw˧ vəj˧˥ tɪŋ̟˧ tʰan˨˩ hwɪŋ̟˧ ɗe˧˩ˀ]

In English, it means:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.