The dialectal differences of Vietnamese chiefly concern the pronunciation and vocabulary. There is very little difference in grammatical construction. This dictionary introduces the Hanoi dialect. In some cases, however, it provides both the Hanoi and the Saigon vocabulary, since the Saigon dialect is spoken in the largest and economically most important city of the country, and many words and phrases of this dialect are broadly used in the other dialects as well. In such cases, the words of the two dialects are separated by a semi-colon (;)—with the Hanoi word given before and the Saigon word after the semi-colon (;).
For example, “spoon” in Vietnamese is presented as thìa; muỗng.
The Hanoi word is thìa and muỗng is the Saigon word.
The Vietnamese writing system
The Romanized writing system for Vietnamese was created by Portuguese Catholic missionaries with the assistance of Vietnamese followers in the early 17th century and has been the official writing system of Vietnam since the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to the letters found in English, it contains some letters and diacritic marks specific to Vietnamese:
Syllables and tones
A Vietnamese syllable consists of two mandatory components: a tone and a vowel. Three other components, an initial consonant, labialization (rounding of the lips when pronouncing a syllable) and a final consonant or semi-vowel, are all optional.
Vietnamese is a tonal language. Each syllable, which in most cases is the same as a word, carries a particular tone. A change in the tone creates a change in the meaning (see below).
Vowel markings
ă short vowel [a]1
â less open short vowel [ə]2
ê less open vowel [e]2
ô less open vowel [o]2 ơ unrounded vowel [ə]3 ư unrounded vowel [ɯ]3 đ the consonant [d]
Tone markings
` a low-falling tone
´ a high-rising tone
ˀ a low-falling-rising tone
˜ a high-rising broken tone
a low-falling broken tone
Examples
mà
má
mả
mã
mạ
1 The mark “ ˘ ” is placed over a vowel to indicate a short vowel; that is, ă is shorter than a.
2 The mark “ ˄ ” placed over a vowel refers to a vowel which is less open compared to the same vowel without this mark; that is, ô is less open than o.
3 The mark “ ˀ ” added to a vowel refers to a vowel which is unrounded compared to the vowel without this mark; that is, ư is unrounded, u is rounded.
4
Vietnamese has six tones. The mid-level tone is not indicated by any diacritic mark. The other five tones are denoted by the specific diacritics marks (see the previous page).
1. The mid-level tone is produced at a pitch that is the midpoint of the normal speaking voice range of a person. It is essential to maintain the pitch of the mid-level tone throughout the word and throughout a sentence which may contain several words carrying the mid-level tone.
2. The low-falling tone begins a little bit lower than the mid-level tone and moderately goes downward
3. The high-rising tone begins at a little bit higher pitch than the mid-level tone, then in the middle of the syllable the voice sharply goes upward.
4. The low-falling-rising tone begins at the pitch which is the beginning point of the low-falling tone, and drops abruptly, then the voice goes upward at the end of the syllable.
5. The high-rising broken tone begins at a bit higher pitch than the high-rising tone and then abruptly goes upward and at the end of the syllable is accompanied by a glottal stop.
6. The low-falling broken tone begins at a bit lower pitch than the low-falling tone and then abruptly goes downward and at the end of the syllable is accompanied by a glottal stop.
These tones may be represented graphically as shown in the following chart.
Examples of words using the six main tones in Vietnamese are:
1. ma “ghost” (mid-level tone)
2. mà ( ˋ ) “but” (low-falling tone)
3. má ( ˊ ) “mother” (high-rising tone)
4. mả ( ˀ ) “grave” w(low-falling-rising tone)
5. mã ( ˜ ) “horse” (high-rising broken tone)
6. mạ ( ˌ ) “rice seedling” (low-falling broken tone)
Vietnamese consonants
Vietnamese has twenty-two initial consonants. Please listen to the audio recordings to hear examples of each one.
Examples
Examples
Examples
b [b]
ph [f]
v [v]
m [m]
t [t]
đ [d]
th [th]
boy
phone
van in the North;
yes in the South
man
dog
dove
Texas (aspirated)
x [s]
d, gi [z]
n [n]
l [l]
r4 [r] tr5 [tr] s6 [s] r7 [r]
save
zipper
no
love
run
train
shave
run
ch [j]
nh [ny]
c, k, qu [k]
kh [kh]
g, gh [gh]
ng, ngh [ng]
h [h]
chase
onion
gas
kiss
golf
sing, singy
house
Note that the Vietnamese character d denotes a [z] sound whereas the [d] sound is written as đ. Both s and x are pronounced as the [s] sound in the Hanoi dialect. The Vietnamese character x should not be confused with the English x that represents a [z] sound as in Xerox or xylophone.
Many Vietnamese initial consonants are similar to their English counterparts. However the following consonants sound very different from the English ones or do not exist in English at all.
The consonants t and th
The consonant t is unaspirated which means it is pronounced without releasing