Nguyễn Đình Hồ
Phan Văn Giưỡng
TUTTLE PUBLISHING
Tokyo • Rutland, Vermont • Singapore
Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.,with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, VT 05759, and 61 Tai Seng Avenue #02-12 Singapore 534167.
© 2006 by Tuttle Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
LCC Card No. 2006926047
ISBN-13: 978-0-8048-3742-2
ISBN-10: 0-8048-3742-2
ISBN: 978-1-4629-1780-8 (ebook)
First published 2006
This title was first published by Tuttle Publishing in 1983 as Essential English-Vietnamese Dictionary (ISBN 0-8048-1661-1).
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CONTENTS
Introduction
Vietnamese Pronunciation
Preface
How To Use This Dictionary
Grammar Notes
English–Vietnamese Dictionary
Introduction
Vietnamese, the national language of Vietnam, is spoken by over 80 million people in Vietnam and by about three million Vietnamese living in other parts of the world, notably Europe, North America, Britain, Australia and Japan.
The language belongs to the Mon-Khmer language in the Austro-Asiatic family of languages. Vietnamese has three main dialects: northern, central and southern, which correspond to the three main regions of Vietnam. Some differences in pronunciation and vocabulary exist among the dialectal groups. However Vietnamese do understand each other despite the dialectal differences.
The current vocabulary writing system reflects elements of Chinese, Thai and French influences. In the early centuries China exerted dominion over Vietnam and hence many loanwords from Chinese still exist in current Vietnamese, especially for cultural and economic terms. Buddhist literature and classical scholarly works were written in Classical Chinese with the Han characters in use. The later part of the 11th century saw an attempt by the Vietnamese to create a script of their own with the Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation. The French Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century further developed the language with the introduction of a Roman script to facilitate their efforts to evangelize the Vietnamese to Catholicism. Hence the current script has much of Sino-Vietnamese words (influence from Chinese), Thai and Khmer words (influence from the neighboring countries) and French/Latin/Portuguese (influence from the Jesuit missionaries). Further refinement of the language in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as