Vietnamese alphabet

Compared to English, there are 29 "letters" in the Vietnamese alphabet. There are six tones, each with a separate diacritic, which are marked in the IPA as suprasegmentals following the phonemic value. It uses all 22 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet plus 6 additional "letters" where 4 letters are with the other 3 diacritics: Ă/ă, Â/â, Ê/ê, Ô/ô, Ơ/ơ, Ư/ư and the letter Đ/đ except for F/f, J/j, W/w and Z/z. The aforementioned 4 letters are only used to write loanwords, languages of other ethnic groups in the country based on Vietnamese phonetics to differentiate the meanings or even Vietnamese dialects, for example: dz or z for Northern Vietnamese pronunciation of gi in standard Vietnamese or to distinguish the English D from the Vietnamese D.

Handwritten Vietnamese Alphabet

Note:

• Pronouncing b as bê or bò and p as pê or pờ is to avoid confusion in some contexts, the same for s sờ mạnh (nặng - heavy) and x as xờ (nhẹ-light), i as i (ngắn-short) and y as y (dài-long).
• Q, q is always followed by u in every word and phrase in Vietnamese, e.g. quần (trousers), quyến rũ (to attract), etc.
• The name i-cờ-rét for y is from the French name for the letter: i grec (Greek I),[8] referring to the letter's origin from the Greek letter upsilon. The other obsolete French pronunciations include e /ə:˧/ and u /wi˧/.

The alphabet is largely derived from the Portuguese, although the usage of gh and gi was borrowed from Italian (compare ghetto, Giuseppe) and that for c/k/qu from Greek and Latin (compare canis, kinesis, quō vādis), mirroring the English usage of these letters (compare cat, kite, queen).

Consonants

Grapheme	Word-Initial (IPA)		Word-Final		Notes
	Northern	Southern	Northern	Southern
B b	/ɓ/
C c	/k/		/k̚/		⟨k⟩ is used instead when preceding ⟨i y e ê⟩. K is also used before U in the Vietnamese city Pleiku. ⟨qu⟩ is used instead of ⟨co cu⟩ if a /w/ on-glide exists. Realized as [k] in word-final position following rounded vowels ⟨u ô o⟩.
Ch ch	/tɕ/	/c/	/ʲk/	/t̚/	Multiple phonemic analyses of final ⟨ch⟩ have been proposed (main article).
D d	/z/	/j/	In Middle Vietnamese, ⟨d⟩ represented /ð/. ⟨d⟩ was used to write native Vietnamese words and ⟨gi⟩ was used to write words of Chinese origin.
Đ đ	/ɗ/
G g	/ɣ/
Gh gh					Spelling used ⟨gh⟩ instead of ⟨g⟩ before ⟨i e ê⟩, seemingly to follow the Italian convention. ⟨g⟩ is not allowed in these environments.
Gi gi	/z/	/j/			In Middle Vietnamese, ⟨gi⟩ represented /ʝ/. The distinction between ⟨d⟩ and ⟨gi⟩ is now purely etymological (and is the only one) in most modern dialects. Realized as [ʒ] in Northern spelling pronunciation. Spelled ⟨g⟩ before another ⟨i⟩.[lower-alpha 1]
H h	/h/
K k	/k/				Spelling used instead of ⟨c⟩ before ⟨i y e ê⟩ to follow the European tradition. ⟨c⟩ is not allowed in these environments.
Kh kh	/x/				In Middle Vietnamese, ⟨kh⟩ was pronounced [kʰ]
L l	/l/
M m	/m/		/m/
N n	/n/		/n/	/ŋ/	In Southern Vietnamese, word-final ⟨n⟩ is realized as [ŋ] if not following ⟨i ê⟩.
Ng ng	/ŋ/		/ŋ/		Realized as [ŋ͡m] in word-final position following rounded vowels ⟨u ô o⟩.
Ngh ngh					Spelling used instead of ⟨ng⟩ before ⟨i e ê⟩ in accordance with ⟨gh⟩.
Nh nh	/ɲ/		/ʲŋ/	/n/	Multiple phonemic analyses of final ⟨nh⟩ have been proposed (main article).
P p			/p/		Only occurs initially in loanwords. Some Vietnamese pronounce it as a "b" sound instead (as in Arabic).
Ph ph	/f/				In Middle Vietnamese, ⟨ph⟩ was pronounced [pʰ]
Qu qu	/kʷ/				Spelling used in place of ⟨co cu⟩ if a /w/ on-glide exists.
R r	/z/	/r/			Variably pronounced as a fricative [ʐ], approximant [ɹ], flap [ɾ] or trill [r] in Southern speech.
S s	/s/	/ʂ/			Realized as [ʃ] in Northern spelling pronunciation.
T t	/t/		/t̚/	/k/	In Southern Vietnamese, word-final ⟨t⟩ is realized as [k] if not following ⟨i ê⟩.
Th th	/tʰ/
Tr tr	/tɕ/	/ʈ/			Realized as [tʃ] in Northern spelling pronunciation.
V v	/v/				In Middle Vietnamese, it was represented by a b with flourish ⟨⟩ and was pronounced [β]. Can be realized as [v] in Southern speech through spelling pronunciation and in loanwords.
X x	/s/				In Middle Vietnamese, ⟨x⟩ was pronounced [ɕ].

Vietnamese is a tonal language, i.e. the meaning of each word depends on the pitch (basically a specific tone and glottalization pattern) in which it is pronounced. There are six distinct tones in the standard northern dialect. In the south, there is a merging of the hỏi and ngã tones, in effect leaving five basic tones. The first one ("level tone") is not marked and the other five are indicated by diacritics applied to the vowel part of the syllable. The tone names are chosen such that the name of each tone is spoken in the tone it identifies.

• Unmarked vowels are pronounced with a level voice, in the middle of the speaking range.
• The grave accent indicates that the speaker should start somewhat low and drop slightly in tone, with the voice becoming increasingly breathy.
• The hook indicates in Northern Vietnamese that the speaker should start in the middle range and fall, but in Southern Vietnamese that the speaker should start somewhat low and fall, then rise (as when asking a question in English).
• In the North, a tilde indicates that the speaker should start mid, break off (with a glottal stop), then start again and rise like a question in tone. In the South, it is realized identically to the Hỏi tone.
• The acute accent indicates that the speaker should start mid and rise sharply in tone.
• The dot signifies in Northern Vietnamese that the speaker starts low and fall lower in tone, with the voice becoming increasingly creaky and ending in a glottal stop

In syllables where the vowel part consists of more than one vowel (such as diphthongs and triphthongs), the placement of the tone is still a matter of debate. Generally, there are two methodologies, an "old style" and a "new style". While the "old style" emphasizes aesthetics by placing the tone mark as close as possible to the center of the word (by placing the tone mark on the last vowel if an ending consonant part exists and on the next-to-last vowel if the ending consonant doesn't exist, as in hóa, hủy), the "new style" emphasizes linguistic principles and tries to apply the tone mark on the main vowel (as in hoá, huỷ). In both styles, when one vowel already has a quality diacritic on it, the tone mark must be applied to it as well, regardless of where it appears in the syllable (thus thuế is acceptable while thúê is not). In the case of the ươ diphthong, the mark is placed on the ơ. The u in qu is considered part of the consonant. Currently, the new style is usually used in textbooks published by Nhà Xuất bản Giáo dục, while most people still prefer the old style in casual uses. Among Overseas Vietnamese communities, the old style is predominant for all purposes.

In lexical ordering, differences in letters are treated as primary, differences in tone markings as secondary and differences in case as tertiary differences. (Letters include for instance A and Ă but not Ẳ. Older dictionaries also treated digraphs and trigraphs like CH and NGH as base letters.[9]) Ordering according to primary and secondary differences proceeds syllable by syllable. According to this principle, a dictionary lists tuân thủ before tuần chay because the secondary difference in the first syllable takes precedence over the primary difference in the second syllable.

In the past, syllables in multisyllabic words were concatenated with hyphens, but this practice has died out and hyphenation is now reserved for word-borrowings from other languages. A written syllable consists of at most three parts, in the following order from left to right:

1. An optional beginning consonant part
2. A required vowel syllable nucleus and the tone mark, if needed, applied above or below it
3. An ending consonant part, can only be one of the following: c, ch, m, n, ng, nh, p, t, or nothing.[10]

A page from Alexandre de Rhodes' 1651 dictionary

Since the Triệu dynasty in the 2nd century BC, Vietnamese literature, government papers, scholarly works and religious scripture were all written in classical Chinese (chữ Hán). Since the 12th century, several Vietnamese words started to be written in chữ Nôm, using variant Chinese characters, each of them representing one word. The system was based on chữ Hán, but was also supplemented with Vietnamese-invented characters (chữ thuần nôm, proper Nôm characters) to represent native Vietnamese words.

The universal character set Unicode has full support for the Latin Vietnamese writing system, although it does not have a separate segment for it. The required characters that other languages use are scattered throughout the Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A and Latin Extended-B blocks; those that remain (such as the letters with more than one diacritic) are placed in the Latin Extended Additional block. An ASCII-based writing convention, Vietnamese Quoted Readable and several byte-based encodings including VSCII (TCVN), VNI, VISCII and Windows-1258 were widely used before Unicode became popular. Most new documents now exclusively use the Unicode format UTF-8.

Unicode allows the user to choose between precomposed characters and combining characters in inputting Vietnamese. Because in the past some fonts implemented combining characters in a nonstandard way (see Verdana font), most people use precomposed characters when composing Vietnamese-language documents (except on Windows where Windows-1258 used combining characters).

Most keyboards used by Vietnamese-language users do not support direct input of diacritics by default. Various free software such as Unikey that act as keyboard drivers exist. They support the most popular input methods, including Telex, VNI, VIQR and its variants.

• Ă, Â, Đ, Ê, Ô, Ơ, Ư
• "Chữ Hán", classical Chinese written in Vietnam (Han characters)
• "Chữ Nôm", former script used to write Vietnamese using Han and Nom (invented characters) words
• Dot (diacritic)
• Hook above
• Horn (diacritic)
• Telex, the oldest standard input method for the Vietnamese alphabet on electronic devices.
• VNI, another input and encoding convention for Vietnamese alphabet.
• VIQR, another standard 7-bit input method for Vietnamese alphabet.
• VISCII, another standard 8-bit encoding for Vietnamese alphabet.
• Unicode, character encoding standard for most of the world's writing systems
• Vietnamese Braille
• Vietnamese calligraphy
• Vietnamese phonology

• Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135–193. (Published version of the author's MA thesis, University of Washington). (Reprinted 1981, Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics).
• Haudricourt, André-Georges (1949). "Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien (English translation as: The origin of the peculiarities of the Vietnamese alphabet)" (PDF). Dân Việt-Nam. 3: 61–68.
• Healy, Dana.(2003). Teach Yourself Vietnamese, Hodder Education, London.
• Nguyen, Đang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-87022-462-X
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1955). Quốc-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà (1992). "Vietnamese phonology and graphemic borrowings from Chinese: The Book of 3,000 Characters revisited". Mon-Khmer Studies. 20: 163–182.
• 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 0-19-507993-0.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Việt không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 1-55619-733-0.
• Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2003). Vietnamese tone: A new analysis. Outstanding dissertations in linguistics. New York: Routledge. (Published version of author's 2001 PhD dissertation, University of Florida: Hoa, Pham. Vietnamese tone: Tone is not pitch). ISBN 0-415-96762-7.
• Sassoon, Rosemary (1995). The Acquisition of a Second Writing System (illustrated, reprint ed.). Intellect Books. ISBN 1871516439. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1117-8. (Original work published 1965).
• Wellisch, Hans H. (1978). The conversion of scripts, its nature, history and utilization. Information sciences series (illustrated ed.). Wiley. ISBN 0471016209. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
• Language Monthly, Issues 40–57. Praetorius. 1987. Retrieved 24 April 2014.

• Nguyen, A. M. (2006). Let's learn the Vietnamese alphabet. Las Vegas: Viet Baby. ISBN 0-9776482-0-6
• Shih, Virginia Jing-yi. Quoc Ngu Revolution: A Weapon of Nationalism in Vietnam. 1991.

• Media related to Vietnamese writing at Wikimedia Commons
• Vietnamese Unicode FAQs