Vietnamese language

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Vietnamese Tiếng Việt
Pronunciation:	tiɜŋ₃₅ vḭɜt₃₁ (Northern) tiɜŋ₃₅ jḭɜk₃₁ (Southern)
Spoken in:	Vietnam, USA, Cambodia, France, Australia, Canada, and others
Region:	Southeast Asia
Total speakers:	70–73 million native 80 million+ total
Ranking:	13–17 (native); in a near tie with Korean, Telugu, Marathi and Tamil
Language family:	Austro-Asiatic[1]  Mon-Khmer[1]   Viet-Muong    Vietnamese
Writing system:	Latin alphabet (quốc ngữ)
Official status
Official language in:	Vietnam
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	vi
ISO 639-2:	vie
ISO 639-3:	vie
Image:TiengViet.PNG Major Vietnamese-speaking communities
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ^[2]), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (người Việt or người Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese, most of whom live in the United States. It is also spoken as a second language by some ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together). Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, and it was originally written using the Chinese writing system. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.

Contents 1 Classification 2 History 3 Geographic distribution 3.1 Official status 3.2 Dialects 4 Vocabulary 5 Word play 6 Sounds 6.1 Vowels 6.2 Tones 6.3 Consonants 6.3.1 Simplified pronunciation guide 7 Grammar 7.1 Morphology 7.1.1 Reduplication 7.1.1.1 Function and semantics 7.1.1.2 Form 7.1.2 Compounding 7.1.3 Affixation 7.1.4 Ablaut 7.2 Syntax 7.2.1 Nouns and noun phrases 7.2.1.1 Demonstrative determiners 7.2.1.2 Quantifiers 7.2.1.2.1 Plural 7.2.1.3 Classifiers 7.2.2 Demonstratives 7.2.3 Numerals 7.2.3.1 Cardinal 7.2.3.2 Ordinal 7.2.4 Pronouns 7.2.5 Kinship terms 7.2.5.1 Pronominal function 7.2.5.2 Classifier function 7.2.6 Verbs and verb phrases 7.2.6.1 Stative verbs 7.2.6.2 Functive verbs 7.2.7 Tense 7.2.8 Topic-comment structure 8 Writing system 8.1 Computer support 9 Examples 9.1 Original Chữ Nôm version 9.2 English translation 10 See also 11 Notes 12 Bibliography 12.1 General 12.2 Sound system 12.3 Grammar 12.4 Historical/Comparative 12.5 Orthography 12.6 Pedagogical 13 External links 13.1 Dictionaries 13.2 Software resources 13.3 Tutorials 13.4 Other resources

[edit] Classification

Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago^[3] to be part of the Viet-Muong (or Vietic) grouping of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family, a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda languages, spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China. Even though this is supported by etymological comparison ^[4], some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.

[edit] History

It seems likely that in the distant past Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund—with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia—for example, Thai (one of the Tai-Kadai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.^{[citation needed]} The Vietnamese language has similarities with Cantonese in regard to the specific intonations and unreleased plosive consonant endings, a legacy of archaic Chinese.

The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.E.

With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Việt (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tự, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").

As contact with the West grew, the Quốc Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as đầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sơ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.

[edit] Geographic distribution

As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California^[5]). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.

According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Senegal, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Vanuatu.

[edit] Official status

While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes. Written Vietnamese in the form of chữ nôm was used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.

[edit] Dialects

There are various mutually intelligible spoken dialects, the main four being:

Main dialect	Locality dialect	Names under French colonization
Northern Vietnamese	Hanoi dialect, Other Northern dialects: Haiphong, and various provincial forms	Tonkinese
North-central (or Area IV) Vietnamese	Nghệ An dialect	High Annamese
Central Vietnamese	Huế dialect, Quang Nam dialect	High Annamese
Southern Vietnamese	Saigon dialect, Mekong (Far West) dialect	Cochinchinese

These dialects differ slightly in tone, pronunciation, and sometimes vocabulary, although the Huế dialect is more markedly different from the others due to its local vocabulary. The hỏi and ngã tones are distinct in the north but have merged in the south. The ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in the Southern and Central dialect but are merged in the Northern dialect. Grammatical differences are negligible.

[edit] Vocabulary

• Note: mention the two layers of Chinese borrowings at different time periods
• mention other languages (with examples)

As a result of a thousand years of Chinese domination, much of Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics are derived from Chinese. As much as 70% of the vocabulary have Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with the Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language. Recently many words are borrowed from English, for example TV (pronounced tivi), phông for font. Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese (phần mềm for software, lit. soft part).

[edit] Word play

• Language games involving switching of word order, syllable onsets and rimes, and tones (cf. pig latin)

[edit] Sounds

Main article: Vietnamese phonology

[edit] Vowels

Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel chart of the Hanoi variety (i.e., other regions of Vietnam may have different vowel inventories).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i [i]	ư [ɨ]	u [u]
Upper Mid	ê [e]	â [ə] / ơ [əː]	ô [o]
Lower Mid	e [ɛ]		o [ɔ]
Low	ă [a] / a [aː]

Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, ư, â, ơ, ă, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and ă are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, ơ and â are basically pronounced the same except that ơ [əː]^[6] is long while â [ə] is short — the same applies to the low vowels long a [aː] and short ă [a].^[7]

In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs^[8] and triphthongs. The diphthongs consists of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to either a high front position [ɪ], a high back position [ʊ], or a central position [ə].

Vowel nucleus	Front offglide	Back offglide	Centering offglide
i	–	iu~yu [iʊ]	ia~iê~yê~ya [iə]
ê	–	êu [eʊ]	–
e	–	eo [ɛʊ]	–
ư	ưi [ɨɪ]	ưu [ɨʊ]	ưa~ươ [ɨə]
â	ây [əɪ]	âu [əʊ]	–
ơ	ơi [əːɪ]	–	–
ă	ay [aɪ]	au [aʊ]	–
a	ai [aːɪ]	ao [aːʊ]	–
u	ui [uɪ]	–	ua~uô [uə]
ô	ôi [oɪ]	–	–
o	oi [ɔɪ]	–	–

The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant.

The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide [ɪ] is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs [aːɪ] and [aɪ] the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = ă + [ɪ], ai = a + [ɪ]). Thus, tay "hand" is [taɪ] while tai "ear" is [taːɪ]. Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = ă + [ʊ], ao = a + [ʊ].

The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs:

Centering diphthong	Front offglide	Back offglide
ia ~ iê	–	iêu [iəʊ]
ưa ~ ươ	ươi [ɨəɪ]	ươu [ɨəʊ]
ua ~ uô	uôi [uəɪ]	–

[edit] Tones

Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone (thanh or thanh điệu). Tones differ in:

• pitch
• length
• contour melody
• intensity
• glottality (with or without accompanying constricted vocal cords)

Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel).^[9] The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:

Name	Description	Diacritic	Example	Sample vowel
ngang   'level'	high level	(no mark)	ma  'ghost'	a (help·info)
huyền   'hanging'	low falling	` (grave accent)	mà  'but'	à (help·info)
sắc   'sharp'	high rising	´ (acute accent)	má  'cheek, mother (southern)'	á (help·info)
hỏi   'asking'	dipping-rising	̉ (hook)	mả  'tomb, grave'	ả (help·info)
ngã   'tumbling'	breaking-rising	˜ (tilde)	mã  'horse (Sino-Vietnamese), code'	ã (help·info)
nặng   'heavy'	constricted	̣ (dot below)	mạ  'rice seedling'	ạ (help·info)

In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:

Tone group	Tones within tone group
bằng "level, flat"	ngang and huyền
trắc "oblique, sharp"	sắc, hỏi, ngã, and nặng

Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.

[edit] Consonants

The consonants (phụ âm) of the Hanoi variety are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography, except for the bilabial approximant which is written here as "w" (in the writing system it is written the same as the vowels "o" and "u").

Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").

Northern Vietnamese (Hanoi)

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiceless	p [p]	t [t]	ch/tr [tɕ]	c/k [k]
	aspirated		th [tʰ]
	voiced	b [ɓ]	đ [ɗ]
Fricative	voiceless	ph [f]	x/s [s]		kh [x]	h [h]
	voiced	v [v]	d [z]		g [ɣ]
Nasal		m [m]	n [n]	nh [ɲ]	ng [ŋ]
Approximant	central	w/u [w]		y [j]
	lateral		l [l]

The consonants of Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) variety are slightly different from Hanoi (and other northern regions). For instance, "tr" and "ch" represent the same sound in Hanoi (and northern regions), but in Ho Chi Minh city or in central regions "tr" and "ch" represent different consonant sounds.

Southern Vietnamese (Ho Chi Minh city)

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiceless	p [p]	t [t]	tr [ʈʂ]	ch [tɕ]	c/k [k]
	aspirated		th [tʰ]
	voiced	b [ɓ]	đ [ɗ]
Fricative	voiceless	ph [f]	x [s]	s [ʂ]		kh [x]	h [h]
	voiced			r [ʐ]		g [ɣ]
Nasal		m [m]	n [n]		nh [ɲ]	ng [ŋ]
Approximant	central	w/u [w]			d, y [j]
	lateral		l [l]

[edit] Simplified pronunciation guide

At the beginning of syllables, sounds are pronounced as in English except for the following:

• "ph" is like English "f" but using both lips^{[citation needed]}.
• rural^{[citation needed]} Southern "v" is like English "y". (Hanoi and standard^{[citation needed]} Southern "v" is the same as English "v".)
• Hanoi "d" is like English "z". Saigon "d" is like English "y".
• "đ" is like French or Spanish "d" (except with the air being sucked inwards).
• "t" is like French or Spanish "t" or like Mandarin "d" (or like English "t" after "s" or English "d" at the beginning of words).
• "th" is like Hindi "th" (थ) or like English "t" at the beginning of words.
• "x" is like English "s".
• "ch" is like Mandarin "zh", similar to the "j" in English "jar". (but never aspirated, as in "chair")
• "nh" is like Portuguese "nh", Spanish "ñ", or French "gn".
• "c" is like English "k" (and never like English "c" in "cede" or "s" in "seed" but "c" in "code").
• "kh" is like German or Scottish "ch" or Arabic or Persian "kh".
• "g" is like Dutch "g" or modern Greek "gh" (Γ).
  • However, Vietnamese "gi" is like English "z" in Hanoi (the North) and like English "y" in Saigon (the South).
• "ng" is like Korean "ng" (ㅇ) or English "ng" (without a "g" sound at the end)
• Saigon "tr" is like Hindi "ṭ+ṣ" (ट+ष) or like English "tr" with the tongue tip curled backwards.
• Saigon "s" is like English "sh". (Hanoi "s" is the same as English "s").
• Saigon "qu" is like English "w". (Hanoi "qu" is the same as English "qu" (or "kw")).
• Hanoi "r" is the same as English "z"
• Saigon "r" is variously like
  • a) English "r" (most common)^{[citation needed]} or
  • b) French "g", in provincial south, or
  • c) Spanish "r", or
  • d) Spanish "rr".

Note that the guide above does not apply to Vietnamese consonants at the end of syllables, especially for the more southern varieties of Vietnamese. (See Vietnamese phonology: Regional consonant variation for further elaboration.)

[edit] Grammar

Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia and Chinese, is an analytic (or isolating) language. As such its grammar highly relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions.

Vietnamese syntax conforms to the Subject Verb Object word order.

[edit] Morphology

Vietnamese is often erroneously considered to be a "monosyllabic" language. Vietnamese words may consist of one or more syllables. There is a tendency for words have two syllables (disyllabic) with perhaps 80% of the lexicon being disyllabic. Some words have three or four syllables — many polysyllabic words are formed by reduplicative derivation.

Additionally, a Vietnamese word may consist of a single morpheme or more than one morpheme. Polymorphemic words are either compound words or words consisting of stems plus affixes or reduplicants^[10].

Most Vietnamese morphemes consist of only one syllable.^[11] Polysyllabic morphemes tend to be borrowings from other languages. Examples follow:

Vietnamese word	English gloss	Phonological form	Morphological form
cơm	"cooked rice"	monosyllabic	monomorphemic
cù lao [12]	"island"	disyllabic	monomorphemic
dưa chuột [13]	"cucumber"	disyllabic	dimorphemic
vội vội vàng vàng [14]	"hurry-skurry"	polysyllabic	polymorphemic (reduplicative)

Most words are created by either compounding or reduplicative derivation. Affixation is a relatively minor derivational process.

Older styles of Vietnamese writing wrote polysyllabic words with hyphens separating the syllables, as in cào-cào "grasshopper", sinh-vật-học "biology", or cà-phê "coffee". Spelling reform proposals have suggested writing these words without spaces (for example, the above would be càocào, sinhvậthọc, càphê). However, the prevailing practice (although considered careless to some) is to omit hyphens and write all polysyllabic words with a space between each syllable.

[edit] Reduplication

Reduplication^[15], the process of creating a new word by repeating either a whole word or part of a word, is very productive in Vietnamese (as in other Austro-Asiatic languages).

[edit] Function and semantics

Its effect is to sometimes either increase or decrease the intensity of the adjective, and is often used as a literary device (like alliteration) in poetry and other compositions, as well as in everyday speech.

Examples of reduplication increasing intensity:

• đau → đau điếng: hurt → hurt horribly
• mạnh → mạnh mẽ: strong → very strong
• rực → rực rỡ: flaring → blazing

Examples of reduplication decreasing intensity:

• nhẹ → nhè nhẹ: soft → soft (less)
• xinh → xinh xinh: pretty → cute
• đỏ → đo đỏ: red → somewhat red
• xanh → xanh xanh: blue/green → somewhat blue/green

[edit] Form

A type of assimilation known as tonal harmony is involved in Vietnamese reduplication^[16]. The six tones are categorized into two registers^[17]:

Register	Tones
Upper	ngang, sắc, and hỏi
Lower	huyền, nặng, and ngã

The tones of all reduplicated words are always within the same tonal register (either upper or lower). For example, nhỏ "small" with the hỏi tone when reduplicated appears as nho nhỏ "smallish" with a ngang-toned reduplicant — both syllables are in the upper tonal register.

Vietnamese has several different types of reduplicative patterns including both total, partial, initial, final, rhyming, and alliterative patterns involving only reduplicated material or both reduplicated material and affixation.

Reduplicant position. The resulting reduplicants can be either initial (preceding the base) or final (following the base).

Initial reduplication:

• bự "be big" > bứ bự "be very big" (base: bự, initial reduplicant: bứ-)
• khẳn "fetid" > khăn khẳn "smelly" (base: khẳn, initial reduplicant/affix: khăn-)

Final reduplication:

• mập "be fat" > mập mạp "be chubby" (base: mập, final reduplicant/affix: -mạp)
• khóc "to weep" > khóc lóc "to whimper" (base: khóc, final reduplicant/affix: -lóc)

Total reduplication involves copying the entire word base:

• vàng " yellow" > vàng vàng "yellowish"
• vui "be joyful" > vui vui "jovial, fun"
• nói "to talk" > nói nói "to keep talking and talking"

Partial reduplication involves copying only certain segments^[18] of the word base. Partial reduplication typically involves the affixation of non-reduplicated segments.^[19]

[edit] Compounding

[edit] Affixation

Vietnamese has very limited affixation. Only prefixation and suffixation are attested.^[20] A few affixes are used along with reduplication. Many affixes come from the Sino-Vietnamese and learned part of the lexicon. Some examples (not an exhaustive list) follow.

Prefixes

Prefix	Gloss	Examples
bán-	"half"	bán nguyệt "semicircular, semi-monthly" (bán- + -nguyệt "moon"), bán đảo "peninsula" (bán- + đảo "island")
khả-	"ability"	khả kính "respectable" (khả- + kính "to respect"), khả quan "satisfactory" (khả- + quan "to behold")
lão-	familiar (added to surnames)	lão Thinh "ol’ Thinh, good old Thinh" (lão- + Thinh surname)
phản-	"counter to, against"	phản cách mạng "counter-revolutionary" (phản- + cách mạng "revolution"), phản chiến "anti-war" (phản- + -chiến "to fight")
phi-	"not"	phi nghĩa "unethical" (phi- + nghĩa "righteousness"), phi chính phủ "non-governmental" (phi- + chính phủ "government")
siêu-	"above, better"	siêu thị "supermarket" (siêu- + thị "market"), siêu đẳng "outstanding" (siêu- + đẳng "level")
tăng-	"over, high"	tăng a xit "hyperacidity" (tăng- + a xit "acid"), tăng can xi "hypercalcernia" (tăng- + can xi "calcium")
thứ-	ordinal (added to numerals)	thứ mười "tenth" (thứ- + mười "ten"), thứ bốn mươi ba "forty-third" (thứ- + bốn mươi ba "forty-three")

Suffixes

Suffix	Gloss	Examples
-gia	"profession"	chính trị gia "politician" (chính trị "politics" + -gia), khoa học gia "scientist" (khoa học "science" + -gia)
-giả	agentive	tác giả "author" (tác "to create" + -giả), học giả "scholar" (học "to learn" + -giả)
-hóa	forms causative verb	a xít hóa "to acidify" (a xit "acid" + -hóa), mỹ hóa "to americanize" (Mỹ "USA" + -hóa)
-học	"field of study"	ngôn ngữ học "linguistics" (ngôn ngữ "language" + -học), động vật học "zoology" (động vật "animal" + -học)
-kế	"measuring device"	nhiệt kế "thermometer" (nhiệt- "warm" + -kế), áp kế "manometer" (áp "get close, approach" + -kế)
-khoa	"field of study"	nha khoa "dentistry" (nha- "tooth" + -khoa), dươc khoa "pharmacy" (dươc- "drug" + -khoa)
-sĩ	"expert"	hoạ sĩ "artist" (hoạ "to teach" + -sĩ), văn sĩ "writer" (văn "literature" + -sĩ)
-sư	"master"	giáo sư "professor" (giáo "to teach" + -sư), luật sư "lawyer" (luật "law" + -sư)
-viên	agentive	quan sát viên "observer" (quan sát "to observe" + -viên), phối trí viên "coordinator" (phối trí "to coordinate" + -viên)

[edit] Ablaut

Vietnamese has the following tonal alternations (or tonal ablaut) which are used grammatically:

		tone alternation
đây "here"	đấy "there"	(ngang tone-sắc tone)
bây giờ "now"	bấy giờ "then"	(ngang tone-sắc tone)
kia "the other"	kìa "yonder"	(ngang tone-huyền tone)

(Nguyễn 1997:42-44)

Vietnamese also has other instances of alternations, such as consonant mutations and vowel ablaut. Different regional varieties of Vietnamese may have different types of alternations.

[edit] Syntax

[edit] Nouns and noun phrases

Words belonging to the noun (or substantive) lexical category (or part of speech) can be distinguished from verbs syntactically in that the copula là "to be" is required to precede nouns in predications whereas the copula is not required before verbs.

Mai là sinh viên.

"Mai is (a) student."

In the sentence above, the noun sinh viên "student" must co-occur with the copula. Omitting the copula, as in *Mai sinh viên results in an ungrammatical sentence. In contrast, verbs do not co-occur with the copula.

Mai cao.

"Mai is tall."

The verb cao (as in the sentence above) does not require a preceding copula, and thus the sentence *Mai là cao is ill-formed.

The category noun can be further subdivided into different noun classes according to semantic and syntactic criteria. Some of the subclasses identified in Nguyễn (1997) include:

• proper noun
• common noun
  • item noun
  • collective noun
  • unit noun
  • mass noun
  • time noun
  • abstract noun
• classifier
• locative

Nouns can be modified with other words resulting in complex noun phrases. These modifiers include demonstratives, quantifiers, classifiers, prepositional phrases, and other attributive lexical words, such as other nouns and verbs. These modifiers co-occur with the modified noun (known as the head noun or noun phrase head), but there are restrictions on what kind of modifiers are allowed depending upon the subclass of noun. The noun phrase has the following structure:

TOTALITY	+	QUANTIFIER	+	CLASSIFIER	+	HEAD NOUN	+	ATTRIBUTIVE MODIFIER(S)	+	DEMONSTRATIVE DETERMINER	+	PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE (possessive)

[edit] Demonstrative determiners

[edit] Quantifiers

Quantifiers (also known as numerators) are words that can occur within a noun phrase before a head noun (with or without a classifier). Quantifiers include cardinal numerals, pluralizers, and other words which indicate some quantify. Cardinal numerals (which also have other functions) are described in the numeral section.

[edit] Plural

Although it is not usually required, the plural may be indicated by particles like những and các for nouns, and chúng and occasionally các for personal pronouns.

[edit] Classifiers

Vietnamese uses an extensive system of classifiers to indicate word classes of nouns. This may be superficially compared to English partitive constructions like one head of cattle ("head", always singular regardless of number, indicates large livestock), two sticks of dynamite ("stick" indicates something relatively rigid, long and comparatively thin), three strands of hair ("strand" indicates something flexible, long and quite thin), or four bars of gold (a "bar" being similar to a "stick", but comparatively less "thin"). Vietnamese's system and usage of classifiers are similar to Chinese and are more variable than English. Among the most common classifiers are:

• cái : used for most inanimate objects
• chiếc: almost similar to cái, usually more connotative (e.g. when referring to a cute object, chiếc might be more suitable than cái)
• con: usually for animals and children, but can be used to describe some inanimate objects (con dao = knife, con đường = street, con vít = screw)
• bài: used for compositions like songs, drawings, poems, essays, etc.
• câu: sentential constructs (verses, lyrics, statements, quotes, etc.)
• cây: used for stick-like objects (plants, guns, canes, etc.)
• tòa: buildings of authority: courts, halls, "ivory towers".
• quả/trái: used for globular objects (the Earth, fruits)
• quyển/cuốn: used for book-like objects (books, journals, etc.)
• tờ: sheets and other thin objects made of paper (newspapers, papers, calendars, etc.)
• lá: smaller sheets of paper (letters, playing cards)
• việc: an event or an ongoing process
• chuyện: a general topic, matter, or business

The classifier cái has a special role in that it can extend all other classifiers, e.g. cái con, cái chiếc.

[edit] Demonstratives

Vietnamese demonstratives (markers of deixis) all have the function of identifying a referent with respect to another contextual point or position^[21].^[22] For example, the demonstrative này "this" as in the noun phrase người này "this person" indicates that the person referred to is relatively close to the speaker (in a context where this noun phrase is uttered by a speaker to an addressee) while the demonstrative đó "that" as in the noun phrase người đó "that person" indicates that the person referred to is further from the speaker.

The demonstratives have a basic three-term deictic system — proximal (close - "this, here"), medial (far - "that, there"), distal (very far - "yonder, over there") — plus an indefinite (or interrogative) term ("which, where"). In addition to their deictic function, different Vietnamese demonstratives can function variously as determiners (modifying nouns), as noun phrases (i.e., a (pro-)nominal function), or as adverbials.

Function	Proximal	Medial	Distal	Indefinite
Nominal	đây "here"	đấy "there"	–	đâu "where"
Nominal/Determiner	–	đó "there, that"	kia/kìa "over there, yonder" (bidirectional)	–
Determiner	này/nầy/nay/ni "this"	nấy/ấy "that"	nọ "yonder" (unidirectional)	nào "which"
Proportion	bây "to this extent"	bấy "to that (such an) extent"		bao "to what extent"
Manner	vầy "this way, thus"	vậy "that way, so"		sao "how"

The form này tends to be used in northern Vietnamese while nầy is the southern form and ni is the central form. In central Vietnamese, the form nớ is used instead of nọ and mô instead of nào. Other forms mentioned in Thompson (1965) are nay "this", nây "this (temporal)", nãy or nẫy "that (just past)", and nao "which".

The basic formal pattern of the demonstratives is that the initial consonant and ending vowel nucleus indicate their function and position in the deictic system. Some linguists have analyzed demonstratives as consisting of two (sub-syllabic) morphemes. Following this, the initial đ- indicates a nominal, n- a determiner, b- proportion, v-~s- manner, and the vowels -ây~-ay proximal/medial, -âu~-ao indefinite, and -o medial/distal.^[23] However, the form kia is analyzed as consisting of only one morpheme. Overlaid on these elements are tones, which indicate contrastive distances increasingly further from the contextual position: ngang tone (closest), huyền tone (further), sắc or nặng tone (even further). Thus, đấy is more remote than đây, kìa more remote than kia, vậy more remote than vầy. There is an expression where demonstratives with an even increasing distance modify the noun ngày "day(time)":

ngày kia, ngày kìa, ngày kía, ngày kịa, ngày kĩa "on and on into the future"

Syntactically, the demonstratives đó and kia may function as either nouns or as determiners:

người	đó	là	anh	nó
person	that	be	brother	3rd.sing.pronoun
subj noun phrase		verb	obj noun phrase
"That person is his brother."

đó	là	anh	nó
that	be	brother	3rd.sing.pronoun
subj noun phrase	verb	obj noun phrase
"That is his brother."

The nominals đây, đấy, and đâu are only used as nouns typically denoting a space or time and cannot function as determiners. Although they usually refer to position situated in time/space, the nominal deictics can be used to metaphorically refer to people, as in:

đây	đi	chợ,	đấy	có	đi	không?
this	go	market,	that	affirmative	go	negative
"I'm going to the market, what about you?"

In the sentence above (which would more literally be "This is going to the market, that is going or not?"), proximal đây is used to refer (metaphorically) to the speaker (as "I") while medial đấy is used to refer to the addressee (as "you"). The determiner demonstratives này, (n)ấy, nọ, and nào can only modify nouns and cannot stand alone as nouns.

When referring to time, the distal demonstratives kia and nọ differ in the directionality. Kia specifies a point remote either in the past or the future while nọ specifies only a remote point in the past:

• ngày kia "some day to come, the other day"
• ngày nọ "the other day"

[edit] Numerals

Numerals (or numbers) consist of two types: cardinal numerals and ordinal numerals. When occurring in noun phrases, cardinal and ordinal numerals occur in different syntactic positions with respect to the head noun.

[edit] Cardinal

Vietnamese numerals are a decimal system. "Zero" lacks a dedicated numeral with số không^[24] "empty number" (< số "number", không "empty") being used.

• một "one"
• hai "two"
• ba "three"
• bốn "four"
• năm "five"
• sáu "six"
• bảy or bẩy "seven"^[25]
• tám "eight"
• chín "nine"
• mười "ten"

Numbers above ten are constructed as such:

• mười một "eleven" ("ten one")
• mười hai "twelve" ("ten two")
• mười ba "thirteen" ("ten three")
• mười bốn "fourteen" ("ten four")

However, some numerals undergo tonal or consonantal change when forming larger numbers:

• mười lǎm "fifteen" ("ten five" with consonantal change năm → lǎm)
• hai mươi "twenty" ("two tens" with tonal change mười → mươi)
• hai mươi mốt "twenty-one" ("two tens one" with tonal changes mười → mươi, một → mốt)
• hai mươi lǎm "twenty-five" ("two tens five" with transformations into mươi and lǎm as before)

[edit] Ordinal

Ordinal numerals are formed by adding the thứ- ordinal prefix to cardinal numerals: thứ- + mười "ten" = thứ mười "tenth".^[26] Other examples include: thứ nhất "first", thứ hai (or thứ nhì) "second", thứ ba "third", and thứ bốn (or thứ tư) "fourth".

[edit] Pronouns

Main article: Vietnamese pronouns

Vietnamese pronouns^[27] can act as substitutions for noun phrases. (Note that the pronominal system as a whole also includes kinship terms (see kinship terms below), which can also have a pronominal function.) The pronouns are categoried into two classes depending on whether they can be preceded by the plural marker chúng. Like other Asian pronominal systems, Vietnamese pronouns indicate the social status between speakers and other persons in the discourse in addition to grammatical person and number. The table below shows the first class of pronouns that can be preceded by pluralizer.

	Singular	Plural
First person	tôi (inferior to superior)[28]	–
	ta (emphatic, superior to inferior)	ta (emphatic, superior to inferior)
	tao [29] (superior to inferior, familiar)	–
	mình (intimate)	mình (intimate)
Second Person	mày[30] or mi or bay (superior to inferior, familiar)	bay [31] (superior to inferior, familiar)
Third Person	nó (superior to inferior, familiar)	–

The first person tôi is the only pronoun that can be used in polite speech. The second person ta is often used when talking to oneself as in a soliloquy, but also indicates a higher status of the speaker (such as that of a high official, etc.). The other superior-to-inferior forms in the first and second persons (tao, mày, mi, bay) are commonly used in familiar social contexts, such as among family members (e.g. older sister to younger sister, etc.); these forms are otherwise considered impolite^[32]. The third person form nó (used to refer to inanimates, animals, children, and scorned adults, such as criminals) is considerably less arrogant than the second person forms tao, mày, mi, bay. The pronoun mình is used only in intimate relationships, such as between husband and wife.

The pronominal forms in the table above can be modified with plural chúng as in chúng mày "you (guys)", chúng nó "them". There is an exclusive/inclusive plural distinction in the first person: chúng tôi and chúng tao are exclusive (i.e., me and them but not you), chúng ta and chúng mình are inclusive (i.e., you and me). Some of the forms (ta, mình, bay) can be used to refer to a plural referent, resulting in pairs with overlapping reference (e.g., both ta and chúng ta can mean "inclusive we", both bay and chúng bay can mean "you guys").

The other class of pronouns are known as "absolute" pronouns (Thompson 1965). These cannot be modified with the pluralizer chúng. Many of these forms are literary and archaic, particularly in the first and second person.

	Singular	Plural
First person	min (familiar, literary)	choa (literary)
	qua (male to female, literary)
	thiếp (female to male, literary)
	Trẫm (king to subject, archaic)
	thần (subject to king, archaic) [33]
Second Person	bậu (female to male, literary)	–
	chàng (female to male, literary)
	ngài (subject to king, archaic)
Third Person	y (familiar)	người ta (generic)
	hắn (familiar)
	va [34] (familiar)
	người ta (generic)

Unlike third person pronouns of the first type, these absolute third person forms (y, hắn, va) refer only to animate referents (typically people). The form y can be preceded by the pluralizer in southern dialects in which case it is more respectful than nó. The absolute pronoun người ta has a wider range of reference as "they, people in general, (generic) one, we, someone".^[35]

As a result of language contact, some linguists have noted that some Vietnamese speech communities (especially among young college students and bilingual speakers) have borrowed French and English pronouns moi, toi, I, and you in order to avoid the deference and status implications present in the Vietnamese pronominal system (which lacks any truly neutral terms).^[36][37]

[edit] Kinship terms

Kinship terms in Vietnamese have become grammaticalized to a large extent and thus have developed grammatical functions similar to pronouns^[38] and other classifiers. In these cases, they are used as honorifics or pejoratives. Kinship terms may also, of course, be used with a lexical meaning like other nouns.

[edit] Pronominal function

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When used with a pronomial function, kinship terms primarily indicate the social status between referents in a discourse, such as between the speaker and the hearer, between speaker and another referent, etc. Included within the notion of social status are classifications of age, sex, relative social position, and the speaker's attitude.

For example, to say I love you in Vietnamese, one can use one of many translations:

• Anh yêu em. (male to female lover)
• Em yêu anh. (female to male lover)
• Mẹ yêu con. (mother to child)
• Con yêu mẹ. (child to mother)
• ...

The most common terms of reference are kinship terms, which might differ slightly in different regions.

When addressing an audience, the speaker must carefully assess the social relationship between him/her and the audience, difference in age, and sex of the audience to choose an appropriate form of address. The following are some kinship terms of address that can be used in the second-person sense (you). They all can also be used in the first-person sense (I), but if they're not marked by (S) the usage is limited to the literal meaning:

• Ông: grandfather, used as a term of respect for a man senior to the speaker and who is late middle age or older
• Bà: grandmother, used as a term of respect for a (usually married) woman senior to the speaker and who is late middle age or older
• Bác: parent's older brother or sister, used to address a man/woman slightly older than one's parents or husband of father's older sister or husband of mother's older sister.
• Cô: father's sister, used to address a younger woman or a woman as old as one's father; also used to address a female teacher regardless of relative age
• Cậu: mother's brother, used to address a younger man or a man as old as one's mother
• Dì: mother's sister, used to address a younger woman or a woman as old as one's mother; also used to address one's stepmother
• Chú: father's younger brother, used to address a man slightly younger than one's father or husband of father's younger sister.
• Thím: wife of father's younger brother.
• Mợ: wife of mother's younger brother.
• Dượng: husband of mother's sister; also used to address one's stepfather
• Anh: older brother, for a slightly older man, or for the man in a romantic relationship. (S)
• Chị: older sister, for a slightly older woman. (S)
• Em: younger sibling, for a slightly younger person, or for the woman in a romantic relationship. (S)
• Bố/Ba/Cha: father
• Mẹ/Má/Mợ: mother
• Con: child; also used in some regions to address a person as old as one's child
• Cháu: nephew/niece, grandson/granddaughter; used to address a young person of around such relative age

Using a person's name to refer to oneself or to address another is considered more personal and informal than using pronouns. It can be found among close friends or children.

[edit] Classifier function

[edit] Verbs and verb phrases

As mentioned in the noun section above, verbs can be distinguished from nouns by their ability to function as predicators by themselves without a preceding copula là. Additionally, verbs may be categorized into two main subtypes, stative and functive, according to syntactic criteria.

[edit] Stative verbs

Stative verbs (also known as verbs of quality, extended state verbs, adjectival verbs or adjectives) can be distinguished from functive verbs by two syntactic tests:

1. stative verbs can be preceded by a degree modifier such as rất "very"
2. stative verbs cannot be preceded by the exhortative hãy

Giáp rất cao.

"Giap (is) very tall."

*Hãy trắng! (ungrammatical)

"Be white!"

[edit] Functive verbs

Functive verbs (also known as "real" verbs, verbs of action, "doing" words, or momentary action verbs) differ from stative verbs by the same syntactic tests:

1. functive verbs cannot be preceded by a degree modifier such as rất "very"
2. functive verbs can be preceded by the exhortative hãy "let's (do)" (indicates commands, requests, etc.)

*Giáp rất ăn. (ungrammatical)

"Giap very eat."

Anh hãy ăn đi!

"Go ahead and eat!"

[edit] Tense

Although it is not usually required, past tense is indicated by adding the particle đã, present progressive tense by the particle đang, and future tense is indicated by the particle sẽ. Of course, "đã" and "đang" or "đang" and "sẽ" can be used together.

[edit] Topic-comment structure

The topic-comment structure is an important sentence type in Vietnamese. Therefore Vietnamese has often been claimed to be a topic-prominent language (Thompson 1991). As an example the sentence "Tôi đọc sách này rồi." ("I've already read this book.") can be transformed into the following topic prominent equivalent.

Sách này thì tôi đọc rồi.

This book (TOPICMARKER) I read already

[edit] Writing system

Main article: Vietnamese alphabet

Presently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591–1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar de Amaral and António de Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.

Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quốc ngữ.

Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954–1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyễn 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present.

Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:

• the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 字儒): used to write Literary Chinese
• a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 字喃) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese

The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and chữ nôm is nearly extinct.

[edit] Computer support

The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards such as WinVNKey, Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.

[edit] Examples

The following text is an extract of the first six lines of Truyện Kiều, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyễn Du, 阮攸 ), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Đoạn Trường Tân Thanh 斷腸新聲), and is widely taught in Vietnam today.

Trăm năm trong cõi người ta,

Chữ tài chữ mệnh khéo là ghét nhau.

Trải qua một cuộc bể dâu,

Những điều trông thấy mà đau đớn lòng.

Lạ gì bỉ sắc tư phong,

Trời xanh quen thói má hồng đánh ghen.

[edit] Original Chữ Nôm version

On the left is Unicode (using extended CJK), on the right is an image for those who don't have the required fonts.

𤾓𢆥𥪝𡎝𠊛嗟
𡦂才𡦂命窖羅恄饒
𣦆戈沒局𣷭橷
仍調𥉩𧡊罵忉疸𢚸
邏之彼嗇私豐
𡗶青慣退𦟐紅打慳

[edit] English translation

A hundred years of human existence,
Prodigy and fate intertwined in conflicts,
Mulberry fields turned into open sea,
Enough's been seen to melt the heart.
Little wonder that beauty begets misery,
For Blue Heaven's jealous of exquisite glamour!

[edit] See also

• Vietnamese alphabet
• Chữ nôm
• Chữ nho
• Sino-Vietnamese
• Vietnamese phonology
• Vietic languages
• Vietnamese literature

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] General

• Dương, Quảng-Hàm. (1941). Việt-nam văn-học sử-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bộ Quốc gia Giáo dục.
• Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
• Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN ; ISBN
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Việt không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ điển Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoàng, & Q. C. Đỗ, Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa học Xã hội. (Original work published 1651).
• Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965).
• Uỷ ban Khoa học Xã hội Việt Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Việt [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa học Xã hội.

[edit] Sound system

• Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
• Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.

[edit] Grammar

• Nguyễn, Phú Phong. (1992). Vietnamese demonstratives revisited. The Mon-Khmer Studies Journal, 20, 127-136.
• Pham, Hoa. (2002). Gender in addressing and self-reference in Vietnamese: Variation and change. In M. Hellinger & H. Bußmann (Eds.), Gender across languages: The linguistic representation of women and men (Vol. 2, pp. 281-312). IMPACT: Studies in language society (No. 10). John Benjamins.
• Thompson, Laurence E. (1965). Nuclear models in Vietnamese immediate-constituent analysis. Language, 41 (4), 610-618.

[edit] Historical/Comparative

• Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
• Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
• Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
• Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.

[edit] Orthography

• Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Việt-Nam, 3, 61-68.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1955). Quốc-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61, 383-432.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN .

[edit] Pedagogical

• Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
• Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
• Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN ; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
• Thomas, D. D. (1966). Papers on four Vietnamese languages. Aukland: Linguistic Society of New Zealand.
• Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics, (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
• Nguyễn, Đang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X

[edit] External links

• Translating Vietnamese poetry
• Versification of Vietnamese Riddles

[edit] Dictionaries

• VDict: Vietnamese online dictionaries
• VietDic
• The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
• Nom look-up
• Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
• OVDP: Open Vietnamese Dictionaries Project

[edit] Software resources

• A Comprehensive Unicode Browser Test Page for Vietnamese / Quốc Ngữ.
• A Comprehensive Unicode Font Test Page for Vietnamese / Quốc Ngữ.

[edit] Tutorials

• Vietnamese Teaching Group: Private Vietnamese Courses and online courses
• Vietnamese Online Tutors: Online Vietnamese Course by VTG
• Online Vietnamese courses: Free and paid online courses and dictionaries
• VIEX Forum: Vietnamese language exchange forum
• Online Vietnamese Reading Program (ASU)
• Introduction to Vietnamese: Introduction to Vietnamese language.
• 20 lessons
• Online Vietnamese Tutoring Service: Find a Vietnamese tutor and learn Vietnamese using IMs and web-based exercises
• VTG-Vietnamese Training Center: A good website for foreigners who want to learn Vietnamese with private tutors in Hanoi.

[edit] Other resources

• Ethnologue report for Vietnamese
• British Museum Exhibit: Exhibit of classical Vietnamese, including Kim Van Kieu.
• Nom Foundation: An organization dedicated to the preservation of the Nom writing.
• Vietnamese Writing System: An overview of the Vietnamese writing system.
• Online Keyboard for Vietnamese
• The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
• Wiktionary in Vietnamese
• Wikibooks in Vietnamese
• Wikisource in Vietnamese

bcl:Bietnamita

ar:لغة فيتنامية ast:Vietnamita zh-min-nan:Oa̍t-lâm-gí bg:Виетнамски език cs:Vietnamština da:Vietnamesisk (sprog) de:Vietnamesische Sprache es:Idioma vietnamita eo:Vjetnama lingvo eu:Vietnamera fr:Vietnamien ga:Vítneaimis gl:Lingua vietnamita zh-classical:越南語 ko:베트남어 hi:वियतनामी भाषा io:Vietnamana linguo id:Bahasa Vietnam is:Víetnamska it:Lingua vietnamita ka:ვიეტნამური ენა la:Lingua Vietnamica lt:Vietnamiečių kalba hu:Vietnami nyelv ms:Bahasa Vietnam nl:Vietnamees ja:ベトナム語 no:Vietnamesisk nn:Vietnamesisk pl:Język wietnamski pt:Língua vietnamita ro:Limba vietnameză ru:Вьетнамский язык sq:Gjuha vietnameze simple:Vietnamese language sr:Vijetnamski jezik fi:Vietnamin kieli sv:Vietnamesiska tl:Wikang Vietnamese th:ภาษาเวียดนาม vi:Tiếng Việt tg:Забони ветнамӣ tr:Vietnamca uk:В'єтнамська мова zh:越南语