Vietnamese language

Vietnamese
Tiếng Việt
Pronunciation [tĭəŋ vìəˀt] (Northern)
[tǐəŋ jìək] (Southern)
Native to Vietnam, Guangxi Province (China)
Native speakers
 75 million  (2007)[1]
Austroasiatic
Latin (Vietnamese alphabet)
Vietnamese Braille
Chữ nôm
Official status
Official language in
  Vietnam[2]
Recognised minority
language in
Language codes
ISO 639-1 vi
ISO 639-2 vie
ISO 639-3 vie
Glottolog viet1252[4]
Linguasphere 46-EBA

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Natively Vietnamese-speaking (non-minority) areas of Vietnam and China[5]
Percentage of Vietnamese people, by province[6]
  <20%
  20%–40%
  40%–60%
  60%–80%
  80%–95%
  >95%

Vietnamese i/ˌviɛtnəˈmiːz/ (tiếng Việt) is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the native language of the Vietnamese (Kinh) people, as well as a first or second language for many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. As the result of Vietnamese immigration and cultural influence, Vietnamese speakers are found throughout the world, notably in East and Southeast Asia, North America, Australia and Western Europe.

It is part of the Austroasiatic language family of which it has by far the most speakers (several times as many as the other Austroasiatic languages combined).[7] Vietnamese vocabulary has borrowings from Chinese, and it formerly used a modified set of Chinese characters called chữ nôm given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ) in use today is a Latin alphabet with additional diacritics for tones, and certain letters.

Geographic distribution

As the national language, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by ethnic Vietnamese and by Vietnam's many minorities. A few thousand native speakers live just across the border in China. It also is spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities. In the United States, Vietnamese is the sixth most spoken language, with over one million speakers, who are concentrated in a handful of states. It is the third most spoken language in Texas, fourth in Arkansas and Louisiana, and fifth in California.[8] Vietnamese is the seventh most spoken language in Australia.[9] In France, it is the most spoken Asian language and the eighth most spoken immigrant language at home.[10]

Official status

Vietnamese is the sole official and national language of Vietnam. It is the first language of the majority of the Vietnamese population, as well as a first or second language for country's ethnic minority groups.

In the Czech Republic, Vietnamese has been recognized as one of 14 minority languages, on the basis of communities that have either traditionally or on a long-term basis resided in the country.[11] This status grants the usage of Vietnamese in public signage, election information, cultural institutions and access to legal information and assistance in municipalities where at least 10% of the population is of the minority group.

As a foreign language

Since the 1980s, Vietnamese language schools (trường Việt ngữ) have been established for youth in many Vietnamese American communities.[12][13] Additionally, historic and stronger trade and diplomatic relations with Vietnam and a growing interest among the French Vietnamese population (one of France's most established non-European ethnic groups) of their ancestral culture have also led to an increasing number of institutions in France, including universities, to offer formal courses in the language.[14]

Vietnamese is increasingly being taught in schools and institutions outside of Vietnam, including countries with strongly established overseas communities such as the United States, France, Australia and Canada, as well as nearby countries with close economic ties with Vietnam such as Thailand and South Korea.[15][16]

Linguistic classification

Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago[17] as part 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 and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, Mường was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon–Khmer languages, and a Việt-Mường sub-grouping was established, also including Thavưng, Chứt, Hung, etc.[18] The term Vietic was proposed by Hayes (1992),[19] who proposed to redefine Việt–Mường as referring to a subbranch of Vietic containing only Vietnamese and Mường. The term Vietic is used, among others, by Gérard Diffloth, with a slightly different proposal on subclassification, within which the term Việt-Mường refers to a lower subgrouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, Mường dialects, and Nguồn (of Quảng Bình Province).[20]

Lexicon

The words in orange belong to the Vietnamese native lexical stock whereas the ones in green belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.

As a result of 1000 years of Chinese rule, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese — see Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. Some 30% to 60% of the lexical stock has naturalized word borrowings from China, although many compound words are composed of native Vietnamese words combined with naturalized word borrowings (i.e. having Vietnamese pronunciation). As a result of French occupation, Vietnamese has since had many words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon due to heavy Western cultural influence; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese (for example, software is calqued into phần mềm, which literally means "soft part").

Phonology

Main article: Vietnamese phonology

Vowels

Like other Southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.

  Front Central Back
Close i [i] ư [ɨ] u [u]
Close-mid ê [e] ơ [əː] ô [o]
Open-mid e [ɛ] â [ə] o [ɔ]
Open 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 [ə] and ă [a] are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, ơ and â are basically pronounced the same except that ơ [əː] is of normal length while â [ə] is short – the same applies to the vowels long a [aː] and short ă [a].[21]

In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs[22] and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position [ɪ̯], a high back position [ʊ̯], or a central position [ə̯].[23]

Vowel nucleus Diphthong with front offglide Diphthong with back offglide Diphthong with centering offglide Triphthong with front offglide Triphthong with back offglide
i – iu [iʊ̯] ia~iê~yê [iə̯] – iêu [iə̯ʊ̯]
ê – êu [eʊ̯] – – –
e – eo [ɛʊ̯] – – –
ư ưi [ɨɪ̯] ưu [ɨʊ̯] ưa~ươ [ɨə̯] ươi [ɨə̯ɪ̯] ươu [ɨə̯ʊ̯]
â ây [əɪ̯] âu [əʊ̯] – – –
ơ ơi [əːɪ̯] – – – –
ă ay [aɪ̯] au [aʊ̯] – – –
a ai [aːɪ̯] ao [aːʊ̯] – – –
u ui [uɪ̯] – ua~uô [uə̯] uôi [uə̯ɪ̯] –
ô ôi [oɪ̯] – – – –
o oi [ɔɪ̯] – – – –

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. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus.[24]

The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide [ɪ̯] is usually written as i; however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs [aɪ̯] and [aːɪ̯] the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = ă + [ɪ̯], ai = a + [ɪ̯]. Thus, tay "hand" is [taɪ̯] while tai "ear" is [taːɪ̯]. Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = ă + [ʊ̯], ao = a + [ʊ̯]. Thus, thau "brass" is [tʰaʊ̯] while thao "raw silk" is [tʰaːʊ̯].

The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.

From the front and back offglides [ɪ̯], [ʊ̯], many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides /j/, /w/. Thus, a word such as đâu "where", phonetically [ɗəʊ̯], would be analyzed phonemically as /ɗəw/.

Consonants

The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.

Labial Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m [m] n [n] nh [ɲ] ng/ngh [ŋ]
Stop voiceless p [p] t [t] tr [ʈʂ~ʈ] ch [c~tɕ] c/k/q [k~q]
voiced b [ɓ] đ [ɗ]
aspirated th [tʰ] kh [x~kʰ]
Fricative voiceless ph [f] x [s] s [ʂ] h [h]
voiced v [v] d [z~j] r [ʐ~ɹ] gi [z~j] g/gh [ɣ]
Approximant u/o [w] l [l] y/i [j]

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"). The velar stop /k/ may be pronounced as a uvular stop /q/ by some speakers next to back vowels, but this is not reflected in the spelling.

Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.

The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes /c/, /ɲ/ contrasting with syllable-final t, c /t/, /k/ and n, ng /n/, /ŋ/ and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch /c/. The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes /k/ and /ŋ/ that occur after the upper front vowels i /i/ and ê /e/. (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)

Tones

Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as spoken by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyễn & Edmondson (1998).

Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone.[25] (More formally, diacritics indicate the tone of the entire word, centered on the main vowel or group of vowels, whereas accents qualify the vowel(s).) Tones differ in:

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).[26] The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi), with their self-referential Vietnamese names, are:

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

Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.

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 a particular tone group must occur in certain positions within the poetic verse.

Vietnamese Catholics practice a distinctive style of prayer recitation called đọc kinh, in which each tone is assigned a specific note or sequence of notes.

Language variation

There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main five being:[27]

Dialect region Localities Names under French colonization
Northern Vietnamese Hanoi, Haiphong, Red River Delta, Tây Bắc and Đông Bắc Tonkinese
North-central (or Area IV) Vietnamese Thanh Hoá, Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh Annamese
Mid-Central Vietnamese Quảng Bình, Quảng Trị, Huế, Thừa Thiên Annamese
South-Central Vietnamese (or Area V) Đà Nẵng, Quảng Nam, Quảng Ngãi, Bình Định, Phú Yên, Nha Trang Annamese
Southern Vietnamese Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu, Saigon, Lâm Đồng, Mekong Delta Cochinchinese

Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Ferlus and Nguyễn Tài Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern Nghệ An Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.

These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar.[28] The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative; its pronunciation has diverged less from Vietnamese orthography than the other varieties, which tend to merge certain sounds. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent, while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.

The large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a sizeable number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and, to a greater extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the temporary division of the country, about a million northerners (mainly from Hanoi, Haiphong and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved south (mainly to Saigon and heavily to Biên Hòa and Vũng Tàu, and the surrounding areas) as part of Operation Passage to Freedom. About 3% (~30,000) of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.

Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975–76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh and Quảng Bình have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities, beginning with the Hanoi government's "New Economic Zones program" which lasted from 1975–85.[29] The first half of the program (1975–80), resulted in 1.3 million people sent to the New Economic Zones (NEZs), majority of which were relocated in the southern half of the country in previously uninhabited areas, of which 550,000 were Northerners.[29] The second half (1981–85) saw almost 1 million Northerners relocated to the NEZs.[29] As well, government and military personnel, many from Northern and north-central Vietnam, are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system has resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects, but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. Most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.

Regional variation in grammatical words[30]
Northern Central Southern English gloss
này ni, nì nầy "this"
thế này ri vầy "thus, this way"
ấy nớ, tê đó "that"
thế, thế ấy rứa, rứa tê vậy đó "thus, so, that way"
kia tê đó "that yonder"
kìa tề đó "that yonder (far away)"
đâu mô đâu "where"
nào mồ nào "which"
sao, thế nào răng sao "how, why"
tôi tui tui "I, me (polite)"
tao tau tao "I, me (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng tôi bọn tui tụi tui "we, us (excluding people you talk to, polite)"
chúng mình, chúng ta bọn mình tụi mình "we, us (including people you talk to, polite)"
chúng tao choa, bọn choa tụi tao "we, us (but not you, arrogant, familiar)"
mày mi mầy "you (thou) (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng mày bây, bọn bây tụi mầy "you guys, y'all (arrogant, familiar)"
nó hắn nó "he/him, she/her, it (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng nó bọn hắn tụi nó "they/them (arrogant, familiar)"
ông ấy ông nớ ổng "he/him, that gentleman, sir"
bà ấy bà nớ bả "she/her, that lady, madam"
cô ấy dì nớ cổ "she/her, that unmarried young lady"
chị ấy chị nớ chỉ "she/her, that young lady"
anh ấy anh nớ ảnh "he/him, that young man (of equal status)"

The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.

Regional consonant correspondences
Syllable position Orthography Northern North-central Central Southern
syllable-initial x [s] [s]
s [ʂ] [ʂ, s]
ch [c, tɕ] [c]
tr [tʂ] [tʂ, c]
r [z] [ɹ, ʐ]
d [z] [j]
gi [ɟ]
v[31] [v] [j, v]
syllable-final c [k] [k] [k]
t [t]
t
after e		 [k, t]
t
after ê		 [t]
t
after i
ch [k] [t, k]
ng [ŋ] [ŋ]
n [n]
n
after i, ê		 [n]
nh [ŋ]

In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:

l, n variation
Orthography "Mainstream" varieties Rural varieties
n [n] [n]
l [l]

Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as năm by itself and in compound numerals like năm mươi "fifty" but appears as lăm in mười lăm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mươi nhăm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mươi lăm.[32]

The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blời with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Bình Province) but trời in Southern Vietnamese and giời in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants /ʈᶳ/, /z/, respectively).

Tones

Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The hỏi and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà Tĩnh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the hỏi tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of hỏi, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.

Regional tone correspondences
Tone Northern North-central Central Southern
 Vinh  Thanh
Chương 		Hà Tĩnh
ngang ˧ 33 ˧˥ 35 ˧˥ 35 ˧˥ 35, ˧˥˧ 353 ˧˥ 35 ˧ 33
huyền ˨˩̤ 21̤ ˧ 33 ˧ 33 ˧ 33 ˧ 33 ˨˩ 21
sắc ˧˥ 35 ˩ 11 ˩ 11, ˩˧̰ 13̰ ˩˧̰ 13̰ ˩˧̰ 13̰ ˧˥ 35
hỏi ˧˩˧̰ 31̰3 ˧˩ 31 ˧˩ 31 ˧˩̰ʔ 31̰ʔ ˧˩˨ 312 ˨˩˦ 214
ngã ˧ʔ˥ 3ʔ5 ˩˧̰ 13̰ ˨̰ 22̰
nặng ˨˩̰ʔ 21̰ʔ ˨ 22 ˨̰ 22̰ ˨̰ 22̰ ˨˩˨ 212

The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the ⟨◌̰⟩ symbol; breathy voice with ⟨◌̤⟩; glottal stop with ⟨ʔ⟩; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)

Grammar

Main articles: Vietnamese syntax and Vietnamese morphology

Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).[33] Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to subject–verb–object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.

Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.

Minh là giáo viên.
Minh be teacher
"Minh is a teacher"
Trí 13 tuổi
Trí 13 age
"Trí is 13 years old."
Tài đang nói.
Tài -ing talk.
"Tài is talking."
Mai có vẻ là sinh viên hoặc học sinh
Mai have the look be student (college) or student (under-college)
"Mai looks like a college or high school student."
Giáp rất cao.
Giáp very tall
"Giáp is very tall."
Người đó là anh của nó.
person that be brother of he
"That person is his brother."
Con chó này chẳng bao giờ sủa cả.
classifier dog this not ever bark at.all
"This dog never barks at all."
Nó chỉ ăn cơm Việt Nam thôi.
he only eat rice (colloquial) Vietnam only
"He only eats Vietnamese rice."

"He only eats Vietnamese food." (especially spoken by the elders)

Cái thằng chồng em nó chẳng ra gì.
focus classifier husband I (as wife) he not turn out what
"That husband of mine, he is good for nothing."
Tôi thích con ngựa đen.
I (generic) like classifier horse black
"I like the black horse."
Tôi thích cái con ngựa đen đó.
I (generic) like focus classifier horse black that.
"I like that black horse."

Writing systems

Main articles: History of writing in Vietnam, Vietnamese alphabet, Chữ nôm and Vietnamese braille
In the bilingual dictionary Nhật dụng thường đàm (1851), Chinese characters (chữ nho) are explained in chữ Nôm.
Jean-Louis Taberd's dictionary Dictionarium anamitico-latinum (1838) represents Vietnamese (then Annamese) words in the Latin alphabet and chữ Nôm.
A sign at the Hỏa Lò Prison museum in Hanoi lists rules for visitors in both Vietnamese and English.

Up to the late 19th century, two writing systems based on Chinese characters were used in Vietnam.[34] All formal writing, including government business, scholarship and formal literature, was done in Literary Chinese (chữ nho 𡨸儒 "scholar's characters"). Folk literature in Vietnamese was recorded using the Chữ Nôm script, in which many Chinese characters were borrowed and many more modified and invented to represent native Vietnamese words. Created in the 13th century or earlier, the Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Nôm, most notably Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry"). However it was only used for official purposes during the brief Hồ and Tây Sơn dynasties.

A Vietnamese Catholic, Nguyen Truong To, sent petitions to the Court which suggested a Chinese character-based syllabary which would be used for Vietnamese sounds; however, his petition failed. The French colonial administration sought to eliminate the Chinese writing system, Confucianism, and other Chinese influences from Vietnam by getting rid of Nôm.[35]

A romanization of Vietnamese was codified in the 17th century by the French Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes (1591–1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa. This Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ or "national script", literally "national language") was gradually expanded from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public. 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. Under French colonial rule, French superseded Chinese in administration. Vietnamese written with the alphabet became required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the middle of the 20th century virtually all writing was done in quốc ngữ, which became the official script on independence. Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after World War II[36] but fell out of official use shortly thereafter. Only a few scholars and some extremely elderly people are able to read chữ nôm today. In China, members of the Jing minority still write in Chữ Nôm.

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. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)

Computer support

The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the 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 with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.

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 phonemically distinctive tones, through processes of tonogenesis. These characteristics have become part of many of the genetically 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.

The ancestor of the Vietnamese language is usually believed to have been originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam. However, Chamberlain argues that the Red River Delta region was originally Tai-speaking and became Vietnamese-speaking only between the seventh and ninth centuries AD, as a result of immigration from the south, i. e., modern central Vietnam, where the highly distinctive and conservative North-Central Vietnamese dialects are spoken today. Therefore, the region of origin of Vietnamese (and the earlier Viet–Muong) was well south of the Red River.[37]

Like the ethnonym Lao, the name Yue/Việt originally referred to Tai–Kadai-speaking groups. In northern Vietnam, these later adopted Viet–Muong and further north Chinese varieties, where the designation Yue Chinese preserves the ethnonym. (Both in Vietnam and southern China, however, many Tai–Kadai languages remain in use.) This explains the fact that the same ethnonym Yue ~ Việt is associated with groups that speak Tai–Kadai, Austroasiatic and Chinese languages, which are typologically similar and share significant amounts of lexicon, but have different origins.

Distinctive tonal variations emerged 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, also known as Saigon.

Vietnamese was primarily influenced by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century BC. After Vietnam achieved independence in the 10th century, the ruling class adopted Literary Chinese as the medium of government, scholarship and literature. With the dominance of Chinese came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. Much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Sino-Vietnamese words.

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.

Henri Maspero described six periods of the Vietnamese language:[38]

  1. Pre-Vietnamese, also known as Proto-Viet–Muong or Proto-Vietnamuong, the ancestor of Vietnamese and the related Muong language.
  2. Proto-Vietnamese, the oldest reconstructable version of Vietnamese, dated to just before the entry of massive amounts of Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary into the language, c. 7th to 9th century AD? At this state, the language had three tones.
  3. Archaic Vietnamese, the state of the language upon adoption of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, c. 10th century AD.
  4. Ancient Vietnamese, the language represented by chu nom characters (c. 15th century) and the Chinese–Vietnamese glossary Hua-yi Yi-yu (c. 16th century). By this point a tone split had happened in the language, leading to six tones but a loss of contrastive voicing among consonants.
  5. Middle Vietnamese, the language of the Vietnamese–Portuguese–Latin dictionary of the Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes (c. 17th century).
  6. Modern Vietnamese, from the 19th century.

Proto-Viet–Muong

The following diagram shows the phonology of Proto-Viet–Muong (the nearest ancestor of Vietnamese and the closely related Muong language), along with the outcomes in the modern language:[39][40][41]

Labial Interdental Dental/Alveolar Palatoalveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Stop/
Affricate		 voiceless *p > b *t > đ *tʃ > x 1 *c > ch *k > k/c/q *ʔ > #
voiced *b > b *d > đ *ɟ > ch *ɡ > k/c/q
aspirated *pʰ > ph *tʰ > th *kʰ > kh
voiced glottalized *ɓ > m *ɗ > n *ʄ > nh 1
Nasal *m > m *n > n *ɲ > nh *ŋ > ng/ngh
Fricative voiceless *s > t *ɕ > th *h > h
voiced 2 *(β) > v 3 *(ð) > d *(ς) > r 4 *(ʝ) > gi *(ɣ) > g/gh
Approximant *w > v *l > l *r > r *j > d

^1 According to Ferlus, */tʃ/ and */ʄ/ are not accepted by all researchers. Ferlus 1992[39] had an additional phoneme */dʒ/, and had the preglottalized consonant */ʔj/ in place of the implosive consonant */ʄ/. Note that the latter two sounds are not all that different, both being voiced palatals and glottalic.

^2 The fricatives indicated above in parentheses developed as allophones of stop consonants occurring between vowels (i.e. when a minor syllable occurred). These fricatives were not present in Proto-Viet–Muong, as indicated by their absence in Muong, but were evidently present in the later Proto-Vietnamese stage. Subsequent loss of the minor-syllable prefixes phonemicized the fricatives. Ferlus 1992[39] proposes that originally there were both voiced and voiceless fricatives, corresponding to original voiced or voiceless stops, but Ferlus 2009[40] appears to have abandoned that hypothesis, suggesting that stops were softened and voiced at approximately the same time, according to the following pattern:

^3 In Middle Vietnamese, the outcome of these sounds was written with a hooked b (ȸ), representing a /β/ that was still distinct from v (then pronounced /w/). See above.

^4 It is unclear what this sound was. According to Ferlus 1992,[39] in the Archaic Vietnamese period (c. 10th century AD, when Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary was borrowed) it was *ɽ, distinct at that time from *r.

The following initial clusters occurred, with outcomes indicated:

Note also that a large number of words were borrowed from Middle Chinese, forming part of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. These caused the original introduction of the retroflex sounds /ʂ/ and /ʈ/ (modern s, tr) into the language.

Origin of the tones

Proto-Viet–Muong had no tones to speak of. The tones later developed in some of the daughter languages from distinctions in the initial and final consonants. Vietnamese tones developed as follows:

Register Initial consonant Smooth ending Glottal ending Fricative ending
High (first) register Voiceless A1 ngang "level" B1 sắc "sharp" C1 hỏi "asking"
Low (second) register Voiced A2 huyền "hanging" B2 nặng "heavy" C2 ngã "tumbling"

Glottal-ending syllables ended with a glottal stop /ʔ/, while fricative-ending syllables ended with /s/ or /h/. Both types of syllables could co-occur with a resonant (e.g. /m/ or /n/).

At some point, a tone split occurred, as in many other Southeast Asian languages. Essentially, an allophonic distinction developed in the tones, whereby the tones in syllables with voiced initials were pronounced differently from those with voiceless initials. (Approximately speaking, the voiced allotones were pronounced with additional breathy voice or creaky voice and with lowered pitch. The quality difference predominates in today's northern varieties, e.g. in Hanoi, while in the southern varieties the pitch difference predominates, as in Ho Chi Minh City.) Subsequent to this, the plain-voiced stops became voiceless and the allotones became new phonemic tones. Note that the implosive stops were unaffected, and in fact developed tonally as if they were unvoiced. (This behavior is common to all East Asian languages with implosive stops.)

As noted above, Proto-Viet–Muong had sesquisyllabic words with an initial minor syllable (in addition to, and independent of, initial clusters in the main syllable). When a minor syllable occurred, the main syllable's initial consonant was intervocalic and as a result suffered lenition, becoming a voiced fricative. The minor syllables were eventually lost, but not until the tone split had occurred. As a result, words in modern Vietnamese with voiced fricatives occur in all six tones, and the tonal register reflects the voicing of the minor-syllable prefix and not the voicing of the main-syllable stop in Proto-Viet–Muong that produced the fricative. For similar reasons, words beginning with /l/ and /ŋ/ occur in both registers. (Thompson 1976[41] reconstructed voiceless resonants to account for outcomes where resonants occur with a first-register tone, but this is no longer considered necessary, at least by Ferlus.)

Middle Vietnamese

The writing system used for Vietnamese is based closely on the system developed by Alexandre de Rhodes for his Vietnamese–Portuguese–Latin dictionary, published in 1651. It reflects the pronunciation of the Vietnamese of Hanoi at that time, a stage commonly termed Middle Vietnamese (tiếng Việt trung đại). The pronunciation of the "rime" of the syllable, i.e. all parts other than the initial consonant (optional /w/ glide, vowel nucleus, tone and final consonant), appears nearly identical between Middle Vietnamese and modern Hanoi pronunciation. On the other hand, the Middle Vietnamese pronunciation of the initial consonant differs greatly from all modern dialects, and in fact is significantly closer to the modern Saigon dialect than the modern Hanoi dialect.

The following diagram shows the orthography and pronunciation of Middle Vietnamese:

Labial Dental/Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Stop voiceless p [p]1 t [t] tr [ʈ] ch [c] c/k [k]
aspirated ph [pʰ] th [tʰ] kh [kʰ]
voiced glottalized b [ɓ] đ [ɗ]
Fricative voiceless s [ʂ] x [ɕ] h [h]
voiced ꞗ [β]2 d [ð] gi [ʝ] g/gh [ɣ]
Nasal m [m] n [n] nh [ɲ] ng/ngh [ŋ]
Approximant v/u/o [w] l [l] r [ɹ] y/i/ĕ [j]3
The first page of the ꞗ section in Alexandre de Rhodes's Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum (Vietnamese–Portuguese–Latin dictionary)

^1 [p] occurs only at the end of a syllable.

^2 This symbol, "Latin small letter B with flourish", looks like: ȸ. It has a rounded hook that starts halfway up the left side (where the top of the curved part of the b meets the vertical, straight part) and curves about 180 degrees counterclockwise, ending below the bottom-left corner.

^3 [j] does not occur at the beginning of a syllable, but can occur at the end of a syllable, where it is notated i or y (with the difference between the two often indicating differences in the quality or length of the preceding vowel), and after /ð/ and /β/, where it is notated ĕ. This ĕ, and the /j/ it notated, have disappeared from the modern language.

Note that b [ɓ] and p [p] never contrast in any position, suggesting that they are allophones; likewise for gi [ʝ] and y/i/ĕ [j].

The language also has three clusters at the beginning of syllables, which have since disappeared:

Most of the unusual correspondences between spelling and modern pronunciation are explained by Middle Vietnamese. Note in particular:

de Rhodes's entry for dĕóu᷄ shows distinct breves, acutes and apices.

de Rhodes's orthography also made use of an apex diacritic to indicate a final labial-velar nasal /ŋ͡m/, an allophone of /ŋ/ that is peculiar to the Hanoi dialect to the present day. This diacritic is often mistaken for a tilde in modern reproductions of early Vietnamese writing.

Word play

A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers. Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:

Original phrase Phrase after nói lái transformation Structural change
đái dầm "(child) wet their pants" → dấm đài (nonsense words) word order and tone switch
chửa hoang "pregnancy out of wedlock" → hoảng chưa "scared yet?" word order and tone switch
bầy tôi "all the king's subjects" → bồi tây "French waiter" initial consonant, rime, and tone switch
bí mật "secrets" → bật mí "revealing secrets" initial consonant and rime switch

The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm đài and hoảng chưa (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bồi tây.[42] Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect.[43]

Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.

Nonsense syllable Target word Intermediate form with prefixed syllable Resulting "secret" word
la phở "beef or chicken noodle soup" → la phở → lơ phả
la ăn "to eat" → la ăn → lăn a
la hoàn cảnh "situation" → la hoàn la cảnh → loan hà lanh cả
chim hoàn cảnh "situation" → chim hoàn chim cảnh → choan hìm chanh kỉm

This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.

Examples

See "The Tale of Kieu" for 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.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Nationalencyklopedin "Världens 100 största språk 2007" The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007
  2. ↑ "CIA World Factbook". CIA. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
  3. ↑ Citizens belonging to minorities, which traditionally and on long-term basis live within the territory of the Czech Republic, enjoy the right to use their language in communication with authorities and in front of the courts of law (for the list of recognized minorities see National Minorities Policy of the Government of the Czech Republic, Belorussian and Vietnamese since 4 July 2013, see Česko má nové oficiální národnostní menšiny. Vietnamce a Bělorusy). The article 25 of the Czech Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedoms ensures right of the national and ethnic minorities for education and communication with authorities in their own language. Act No. 500/2004 Coll. (The Administrative Rule) in its paragraph 16 (4) (Procedural Language) ensures, that a citizen of the Czech Republic, who belongs to a national or an ethnic minority, which traditionally and on long-term basis lives within the territory of the Czech Republic, have right to address an administrative agency and proceed before it in the language of the minority. In the case that the administrative agency doesn't have an employee with knowledge of the language, the agency is bound to obtain a translator at the agency's own expense. According to Act No. 273/2001 (About The Rights of Members of Minorities) paragraph 9 (The right to use language of a national minority in dealing with authorities and in front of the courts of law) the same applies for the members of national minorities also in front of the courts of law.
  4. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Vietnamese". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  5. ↑ From Ethnologue (2009, 2013)
  6. ↑ "The 2009 Vietnam Population and Housing Census: Completed Results". General Statistics Office of Vietnam: Central Population and Housing Census Steering Committee. June 2010. Retrieved 26 November 2013.
  7. ↑ George van Driem (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook. Brill Publishers. p. 264. Of the approximately 90 millions speakers of Austroasiatic languages, over 70 million speak Vietnamese, nearly ten million speak Khmer and roughly five million speak Santali.
  8. ↑ "Table 53. Languages Spoken At Home by Language: 2009", The 2012 Statistical Abstract (U.S. Census Bureau), retrieved 2011-12-27
  9. ↑ CIA World factbook
  10. ↑ La dynamique des langues en France au fil du XXe siècle Insee, enquête Famille 1999. (in French)
  11. ↑ See Government Council for National Minorities, Belorussian and Vietnamese since 4 July 2013, see Česko má nové oficiální národnostní menšiny. Vietnamce a Bělorusy
  12. ↑ Nguyen, Angie; Dao, Lien, eds. (May 18, 2007). "Vietnamese in the United States" (PDF). California State Library. p. 82. Retrieved January 10, 2015.
  13. ↑ Lam, Ha (2008). "Vietnamese Immigration". In González, Josué M. Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications. pp. 884–887. ISBN 978-1-4129-3720-7.
  14. ↑ Blanc, Marie-Eve (2004), "Vietnamese in France", in Ember, Carol, Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World, Springer, p. 1162, ISBN 978-0-306-48321-9
  15. ↑ More Thai Students Interested in Learning ASEAN Languages. April 16, 2014. The Government Public Relations Department. Retrieved 2015-01-10.
  16. ↑ Why Vietnamese Language Most Popular among College Test Takers. December 5, 2014. Korea Bizwire in Culture & Society, Education, Top News. Retrieved 2015-01-06.
  17. ↑ "Mon–Khmer languages: The Vietic branch". SEAlang Projects. Retrieved November 8, 2006.
  18. ↑ Ferlus, Michel. 1996. Langues et peuples viet-muong. Mon-Khmer Studies 26. 7–28.
  19. ↑ Hayes, La Vaughn H. 1992. Vietic and Việt-Mường: a new subgrouping in Mon-Khmer. Mon-Khmer Studies 21. 211–228.
  20. ↑ Diffloth, Gérard. 1992. Vietnamese as a Mon-Khmer language. Papers from the First Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 125–128. Tempe, Arizona: Program for Southeast Asian Studies.
  21. ↑ There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
    Front Central Back
    unrounded rounded
    Close i [i] ư [ɯ] u [u]
    Close-mid ê [e] ơ [ɤ] ô [o]
    Open-mid e [ɛ] â [ʌ] o [ɔ]
    Open a [a] ă [ɐ]
    This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of ă and â would then be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel ă [ɐ] as being slightly higher (upper low) than a [a].
  22. ↑ In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm đôi.
  23. ↑ The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:

    Thompson's diphthongs
    Vowel nucleus Front offglide Back offglide Centering offglide
    i – iu [iʊ̯] ia~iê [iə̯]
    ê – êu [eʊ̯] –
    e – eo [ɛʊ̯] –
    ư ưi [ɯɪ̯] ưu [ɯʊ̯] ưa~ươ [ɯə̯]
    â ây [ʌɪ̯] âu [ʌʊ̯] –
    ơ ơi [ɤɪ̯] – –
    ă ay [ɐɪ̯] au [ɐʊ̯] –
    a ai [aɪ̯] ao [aʊ̯] –
    u ui [uɪ̯] – ua~uô [uə̯]
    ô ôi [oɪ̯] – –
    o oi [ɔɪ̯] – –
    Thompson's triphthongs
    Centering diphthong Front offglide Back offglide
    ia ~ iê – iêu [iə̯ʊ̯]
    ưa ~ ươ ươi [ɨə̯ɪ̯] ươu [ɨə̯ʊ̯]
    ua ~ uô uôi [uə̯ɪ̯] –

  24. ↑ The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., [əːʊ̯]) is an apparent gap.
  25. ↑ Called thanh điệu in Vietnamese
  26. ↑ Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel.
  27. ↑ Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyễn (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoàng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyễn, Đ.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), Vũ (1982), Vương (1981).
  28. ↑ Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 29.2 Desbarats, Jacqueline. "Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation". Indochina report ; no. 11. Executive Publications, Singapore 1987. Retrieved 28 November 2013.
  30. ↑ Table data from Hoàng (1989).
  31. ↑ In southern dialects, v is reported to have a spelling pronunciation (i.e., the spelling influences pronunciation) of [vj] or [bj] among educated speakers. However, educated speakers revert to usual [j] in more relaxed speech. Less educated speakers have [j] more consistently throughout their speech. See: Thompson (1959), Thompson (1965: 85, 89, 93, 97–98).
  32. ↑ Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
  33. ↑ Comparison note: As such its grammar 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.
  34. ↑ DeFrancis, John (1977). Colonialism and language policy in Viet Nam. Mouton. ISBN 978-90-279-7643-7.
  35. ↑ David G. Marr (1984). Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945. University of California Press. p. 145. ISBN 0-520-05081-9. Retrieved 2010-11-28.
  36. ↑
  37. ↑ Chamberlain, James R. (2000). "The origin of the Sek: implications for Tai and Vietnamese history". In Burusphat, Somsonge. Proceedings of the International Conference on Tai Studies, July 29–31, 1998 (PDF). Bangkok, Thailand: Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University. pp. 97–127. ISBN 974-85916-9-7. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
  38. ↑ Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà (2009), "Vietnamese", in Comrie, Bernard, The World's Major Languages (2nd ed.), Routledge, pp. 677–692, ISBN 978-0-415-35339-7.
  39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 39.2 39.3 Ferlus, Michael (1992), "Histoire abrégée de l'évolution des consonnes initiales du Vietnamien et du Sino-Vietnamien", Mon–Khmer Studies 20: 111–125.
  40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 Ferlus, Michael (2009), "A layer of Dongsonian vocabulary in Vietnamese" (PDF), Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1: 95–109.
  41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 Thompson, Laurence C., "Proto-Viet–Muong Phonology", Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications, Austroasiatic Studies Part II (University of Hawai'i Press) 13: 1113–1203, JSTOR 20019198.
  42. ↑ Nguyễn Đ.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning 'all the king's subjects'. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bồi tây meaning 'servant in a French household'.
  43. ↑ See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.

Bibliography

General

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Pragmatics and language variation

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Orthography

Pedagogical

External links

Vietnamese edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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