Vietnamese language facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Vietnamese
Tiếng Việt
Pronunciation	(Hà Nội) (Huế) ~ (Sài Gòn)
Native to	Vietnam
Ethnicity	Viet (Kinh), Gin
Native speakers	L1: 86 million (2019–2023)  (date missing) L2: 11 million (2024) Total: 97 million (2019–2024)
Language family	Austro-Asiatic Vietic Viet–Mường Vietnamese
Early forms:	Old Vietnamese Middle Vietnamese Vietnamese
Writing system	Latin (Vietnamese alphabet) Vietnamese Braille Chữ Nôm (historical)
Official status
Official language in	Vietnam
Recognised minority language in	Czech Republic Slovakia
Linguasphere	46-EBA
Areas within Vietnam with majority Vietnamese speakers, mirroring the ethnic landscape of Vietnam with ethnic Vietnamese dominating around the lowland pale of the country.
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Vietnamese (tiếng Việt) is a language mainly spoken in Vietnam, where it is the official language. It belongs to the Austroasiatic language family. About 86 million people speak Vietnamese as their first language. Another 11 million people speak it as a second language. This makes it the most spoken language in its family.

Vietnamese is the native language of the Viet people. It is also used by many other groups in Vietnam. You can find Vietnamese speakers all over the world, especially in communities of Vietnamese people living abroad.

Like many languages in Southeast Asia and East Asia, Vietnamese is an isolating language. This means words don't change much to show things like past tense or plural. It is also a tonal language. This means the meaning of a word can change depending on the pitch of your voice.

In Vietnamese, words are usually put together in a specific order, like "Subject-Verb-Object" (SVO), similar to English. It also uses classifiers with nouns. For example, you might say "one *piece* of paper" instead of just "one paper."

Many Vietnamese words have only one syllable. However, some words have more than one syllable, often made by combining shorter words. This helps make everyday communication very efficient. A big part of Vietnamese vocabulary comes from Middle Chinese, called Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. The language has also borrowed words from French.

Today, Vietnamese is written using a Latin-based alphabet called chữ Quốc ngữ. This alphabet was created in the 17th century by Portuguese missionaries. It became the official writing system in the early 1900s. It uses special marks called diacritics to show different tones and sounds. In the past, Vietnamese was written using chữ Nôm. This was a logographic script that mixed Chinese characters with new characters made in Vietnam.

Discovering the Vietnamese Language Family

A 1906 map showing Austroasiatic languages, where Vietnamese is called Annamese.

Experts who study languages have found that Vietnamese belongs to the Austroasiatic language family. This family also includes languages like Khmer (spoken in Cambodia) and Munda (spoken in India).

In the 1850s, a British lawyer named James Richardson Logan noticed how similar Vietnamese was to the Korku language in India. He suggested they were part of a group he called "Mon–Annam languages." Later, in the 1920s, a linguist named Jean Przyluski found that the Mường language is very closely related to Vietnamese. This led to the idea of a "Viet–Muong" group, which is now often called "Vietic."

A Journey Through Vietnamese History

The Austroasiatic language family likely spread around 2000 BC. The arrival of early farming groups in the Red River Delta around that time might be linked to the beginnings of the Vietic languages.

Early forms of Vietnamese were quite different from today's language. For example, they didn't have tones like modern Vietnamese does.

Vietnamese had early contact with Tai languages over 2,000 years ago. This is supported by words borrowed between the languages and archaeological findings.

A lot of contact with Chinese began during the Han dynasty (around 200 BC). During this time, Vietic groups started moving south from the Red River Delta. They might have been trying to avoid Chinese influence. The oldest Chinese words borrowed into northern Vietic languages come from this period.

Over time, languages in Southeast Asia, including Vietnamese, started to share similar features. One big change was the development of tones. What used to be different ending sounds in words slowly turned into the pitch changes we hear today.

This old book, An Nam quốc dịch ngữ, shows how 15th-century Vietnamese words were pronounced. For example, the word for "sky" (天) was pronounced /luei/, which is like blời in Middle Vietnamese and trời in modern Vietnamese.

After separating from the Muong language around 1000 AD, Vietnamese went through several stages:

• Ancient (or Old) Vietnamese: This was the language up to about 1500. It was different from earlier forms, with some sounds changing and tones starting to develop.
• Middle Vietnamese: This stage lasted from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The famous dictionary by Alexandre de Rhodes in 1651 helps us understand this period.
• Modern Vietnamese: This is the language from the 19th century until today.

After Vietnam gained independence from Chinese rule in the 10th century, Classical Chinese was used for government and writing. This led to many Chinese words being borrowed into Vietnamese. These "Sino-Vietnamese" words make up about one-third of the Vietnamese vocabulary. They are especially common in formal texts.

The Vietnamese language mostly stayed in the northern part of modern Vietnam until the "southward advance" (called Nam tiến) began in the late 1400s. As Vietnamese people moved south and took over new lands, the language spread, and different local ways of speaking started to appear.

When France took control of Vietnam in the late 1800s, French slowly replaced Chinese as the main language in schools and government. Vietnamese then borrowed many French words. For example, cà phê (coffee) comes from the French word café.

How Tones Developed

Early Vietnamese did not have tones. Tones developed later from differences in the beginning and ending sounds of words. This change happened over a long time.

At one point, the way tones were pronounced changed depending on whether the first sound of a word was voiced (like 'b' or 'd') or voiceless (like 'p' or 't'). Later, these differences became new, distinct tones.

Language in the Modern Era

During the time of French Indochina, many new words came into Vietnamese. Some of these were Japanese words that described Western ideas, which were then pronounced in a Sino-Vietnamese way.

After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the Vietnamese language in Vietnam slowly started to sound more like the Northern dialect. Hanoi, the capital city, played a big role in this. Today, the differences in vocabulary between North and South Vietnam are much smaller than before. Newspapers, radio, TV, and websites use a very similar language across the country.

However, this change is different for Vietnamese people who moved to other countries. Their language often stays "frozen" in time, meaning it doesn't change as much as the language in Vietnam. For example, many Southern Vietnamese people who moved to the United States after the war kept their Southern dialect. In contrast, many Northern Vietnamese who moved to the Czech Republic often teach the Northern dialect.

Where Vietnamese is Spoken

Global distribution of Vietnamese speakers.

Because many Vietnamese people have moved to other countries, you can find Vietnamese speakers in many parts of the world. These include other countries in Southeast Asia, East Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia.

Vietnamese is even officially recognized as a minority language in the Czech Republic.

In Vietnam, Vietnamese is the main language used by everyone, acting as a common language (or lingua franca). It is also spoken by the Jing people in southern China and by many people in neighboring Cambodia and Laos.

In the United States, Vietnamese is the sixth most spoken language, with over 1.5 million speakers. It is very common in states like Texas, Washington, California, Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia. In Australia, it is the third most spoken language after English, Mandarin, and Arabic. In France, it is the most spoken Asian language.

Official Recognition of Vietnamese

Vietnamese is the only official language of Vietnam. It is the first language for most Vietnamese people. It is also a first or second language for the country's many ethnic minority groups.

In the Czech Republic, Vietnamese is one of 14 recognized minority languages. This means the Vietnamese community there has a voice in government decisions about national minorities. They also have the right to use Vietnamese with public services and in courts. In 2023, Vietnamese was also recognized as a national minority language in Slovakia.

In San Francisco, a city in the U.S., city services started to be offered in Vietnamese in 2024.

Learning Vietnamese as a Foreign Language

Vietnamese is taught in schools and other places outside of Vietnam. This is often because Vietnamese communities abroad want to help their children connect with their heritage. In countries near Vietnam, like Southern China, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, people learn Vietnamese for trade and business. This helps with Vietnam's growing economy.

Since the 1980s, many Vietnamese language schools (trường Việt ngữ) have opened for young people in Vietnamese communities around the world. You can find these schools in places like the United States, Germany, and France.

Sounds of Vietnamese

Vowel Sounds

Vietnamese has many different vowel sounds. Some vowels are short, and some are long. It also has diphthongs, which are like two vowel sounds blended together in one syllable. For example, the sound in "boy" is a diphthong in English.

Consonant Sounds

Vietnamese has many consonant sounds. Some are written with a single letter, like 'p'. Others are written with two letters, called a digraph, like 'ph'. Sometimes, a sound can be written in different ways, like 'c', 'k', or 'q' for a similar sound.

The way some consonants are pronounced can be different depending on where you are in Vietnam. For example, the sounds for 'd' and 'gi' might be pronounced differently in the North compared to the South.

Tones in Vietnamese

The pitch changes of the six Northern Vietnamese tones.

Every syllable in Vietnamese has one of six special tones. These tones are like musical notes for each word. They change the meaning of a word, even if the sounds are otherwise the same. Tones differ in:

• How long the sound lasts
• The way the pitch goes up or down
• How high or low the pitch is
• The quality of the voice (e.g., breathy or creaky)

Tones are shown by special marks called diacritics, which are placed above or below the vowel in a word. Here are the six tones found in Northern Vietnamese:

Other parts of Vietnam might have slightly different ways of pronouncing these tones, or even fewer tones.

In Vietnamese poetry, tones are grouped into two categories:

These groups help decide where words can be placed in a poem.

Old Ways of Classifying Tones

An old diagram from 1858 showing the traditional Chinese system of classifying tones, which was once used for Vietnamese.

Before the Latin alphabet was used, Vietnamese tones were classified using an old Chinese system. This system had eight categories, even though modern linguists count six main tones.

Tones were put into two main groups: bằng (level tones) and trắc (sharp tones). These groups were then divided further into categories like bình (even), thượng (rising), khứ (departing), and nhập (entering).

The tones sắc and nặng were counted twice in this old system. This was because syllables ending in certain sounds (like 'p', 't', 'c', and 'k') were treated differently.

How Vietnamese Grammar Works

Vietnamese is an analytic language. This means words don't change their endings to show things like case, gender, number (singular or plural), or tense (past, present, future). Instead, Vietnamese uses other words or word order to show these meanings.

Like many languages in Southeast Asia, Vietnamese usually follows a subject–verb–object (SVO) word order. This is similar to English. It also uses classifiers with nouns. For example, you might say "two *animals* dogs" instead of "two dogs."

Here are some examples of Vietnamese sentences with their English meanings:

Vietnamese Words and Their Origins

Ethnolinguistic groups in Mainland Southeast Asia.

A comparison of Sino-Vietnamese words (left) with native Vietnamese words (right).

Roots in Austroasiatic

Many studies have looked into where the Vietnamese language came from. Most experts now agree that Vietnamese has its deepest roots in the Austroasiatic family. Some of the oldest words in Vietnamese come from this ancient language group.

Vietnamese shares many words with the Mường languages, which are its closest relatives.

Chinese Influence on Vocabulary

An old Nôm character for the noodle soup "phở." The left part (米) means "rice," and the right part (頗) shows the sound.

Even though Vietnamese comes from the Austroasiatic family, contact with Chinese greatly changed it. This influence caused Vietnamese to become different from its close relative, Viet-Muong, around the 10th and 11th centuries.

For example, the Vietnamese word quản lý (meaning "management" or "to manage") comes from a similar word in Chinese, guǎnlǐ (管理). This shows how much Chinese has shaped Vietnamese.

Chinese influence happened during different times when Vietnam was under Chinese rule and even after Vietnam became independent. Experts have found that Chinese words entered Vietnamese in several waves, forming what is known as Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.

French Words in Vietnamese

Vietnam was a French territory from 1883 until 1954. During this time, the French language had a big impact on Vietnamese. Many French words were borrowed, especially for new ideas or items.

Here are some examples:

• Cà phê (coffee) comes from the French word café.
• Phô mai (cheese) comes from the French word fromage.
• Vô lăng (steering wheel) comes from the French word volant.
• Cà vạt (necktie) comes from the French word cravate.

Vietnamese pronunciations of French city names, like Pa-ri for Paris, often sound very similar to the original French.

English Words in Vietnamese

Some English words have also been borrowed into Vietnamese. For instance, "TV" is often called tivi or just "TV," though the official Vietnamese term is truyền hình.

Sometimes, English words are translated directly into Vietnamese. For example, "software" becomes phần mềm, which literally means "soft part." Many scientific terms also come from Chinese characters or are kept in their original English form.

Japanese Words in Vietnamese

Japanese words have also influenced Vietnamese, especially in recent times. There have been a few waves of this influence.

The first wave involved Japanese words that were created to describe Western ideas. These words then spread to other Asian languages, including Vietnamese. For example, the Vietnamese word câu lạc bộ (association club) came from Chinese, which in turn borrowed it from Japanese, which got it from the English word "club."

The second wave happened during and after the brief Japanese occupation of Vietnam (1940-1945). More Japanese cultural influence began in the 1980s. This wave brought words directly from Japanese, often related to Japanese culture, like kimono, sumo, and bonsai. Sometimes, the same idea can be expressed with both an older Sino-Vietnamese word of Japanese origin and a newer, direct Japanese loanword.

Modern Chinese Influence

Some words in Vietnamese, like lạp xưởng (Chinese sausage), are pronounced more like their Cantonese origins. This is because southern Chinese migrants brought these words. Other new words borrowed from Chinese today are often based on Mandarin pronunciation.

Vietnamese Slang and Wordplay

Understanding Vietnamese Slang

Vietnamese slang (tiếng lóng) changes over time. It includes both pure Vietnamese words and words borrowed from other languages like Chinese or European languages. Slang from European languages is quite common today.

Here are some examples of slang:

With the rise of the internet, new slang words are created and spread quickly through social media. This modern slang is very popular among young people in Vietnam. Many of these words are homonyms (words that sound the same but have different meanings) or involve other types of wordplay.

Here are some examples of newer and older slang from different Vietnamese regions:

The use of modern slang by young people can sometimes make it hard for older generations to understand them. Some people worry that too much slang might affect how formally young people speak. Others believe that slang is a natural part of language change. They think it's important for young people to know when it's appropriate to use slang and when it's not.

Fun with Vietnamese Wordplay

Vietnamese speakers enjoy different kinds of word play. One common game involves linking words where the last syllable of one word becomes the first syllable of the next. For example:

Another game is called nói lái. This involves switching sounds or tones in a pair of words to create a new, often humorous, phrase.

Nói lái can be used to talk about sensitive topics in a softer way or to make jokes.

Children also play a "secret" language game. They add a nonsense syllable (like "la") to a word, then switch parts of the sounds around. This makes the word sound very different and hard for adults to understand!

How Vietnamese is Written

The first two lines of The Tale of Kieu in both the old Nôm script and the modern Vietnamese alphabet.

In this 1851 dictionary, Chinese characters (chữ Nho) are explained using chữ Nôm.

Jean-Louis Taberd's 1838 dictionary shows Vietnamese words in both the Latin alphabet and chữ Nôm.

A sign at the Hỏa Lò Prison museum in Hanoi, written in Vietnamese and English.

After Vietnam became independent from Chinese rule in 939 AD, the government used Literary Chinese (called chữ Hán) for official documents, studies, and literature. This continued until the late 1800s. Even though the main writing system is now the Latin-based chữ Quốc ngữ, Chinese characters and chữ Nôm are still used in Vietnamese calligraphy.

Chữ Nôm: The Old Vietnamese Script

Around the 13th century, Vietnamese scholars created the chữ Nôm script. This script was used to write down Vietnamese folk stories and poems. It used Chinese characters to represent both borrowed Chinese words and native Vietnamese words that sounded or meant something similar. Scholars also created thousands of new characters by combining existing Chinese characters.

For example, in the famous poem The Tale of Kiều:

• The Sino-Vietnamese word mệnh ('destiny') was written with its original Chinese character (命).
• The native Vietnamese word ta ('our') was written with a Chinese character (些) that sounded similar.
• The native Vietnamese word năm ('year') was written with a new character (𢆥) made by combining two Chinese characters.

The oldest known example of chữ Nôm is from the early 1200s. This script became very popular in the 18th century, with many famous writers using it. However, it was only used for official government business for short periods.

The Modern Vietnamese Alphabet

The Latin-based alphabet for Vietnamese was put together in the 17th century by a Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes. He built on the work of earlier Portuguese missionaries. This alphabet shows how Vietnamese was pronounced in Hanoi in the 1600s.

The Vietnamese alphabet (chữ Quốc ngữ) has 29 letters. It uses the basic Latin alphabet but adds a special consonant letter (đ) and six extra vowel letters (ă, â, ê, ô, ơ, ư) with diacritics. Letters like 'f', 'j', 'w', and 'z' are not used. The script also uses digraphs (two letters for one sound, like 'ch' or 'ph') and one trigraph (three letters, 'ngh').

Special diacritics are also used to show the tone of each syllable:

Sometimes, you might see multiple diacritics on one letter, like ể, which combines the letter 'e' with a circumflex and a hook for the tone.

Even after the Latin alphabet was created, chữ Nôm remained popular in Catholic writings for over 200 years. But starting in the late 1800s, the Vietnamese alphabet became more widely used.

The French colonial government wanted to remove Chinese influences from Vietnam. They made the Vietnamese alphabet mandatory for all public documents in 1910. Vietnamese reformers and nationalists also encouraged its use. By the mid-20th century, the Vietnamese alphabet became the official writing system when Vietnam gained independence.

Today, only a few scholars and very elderly people can read chữ Nôm.

Writing Dates and Numbers

In Vietnamese, dates are usually spoken and written in the order of "day, month, year." The names of the months are simply the ordinal number of the month after the word tháng (month). For example, January is Tháng một (Month one).

When writing dates in a short form, "DD/MM/YYYY" is preferred. For example, September 2, 2025, would be written as "2 September 2025" in short form.

For numbers, Vietnamese prefers using a comma as the decimal separator (like 1.5 in English would be 1,5). They use spaces or dots to group digits in large numbers (like 1 629,15 for 1,629.15).

Vietnamese Literature

The Tale of Kiều is a very famous epic poem by Nguyễn Du. Many people consider it the most important work in Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in chữ Nôm and is widely studied in Vietnam today using the modern alphabet.

How Vietnamese Varies Across Regions

The Vietnamese language has several regional differences, or dialects. These dialects are mostly understandable to each other.

Vietnamese is usually divided into three main dialect regions: North, Central, and South. Some experts also identify a separate North-Central dialect. The North-Central and Central dialects can sometimes be harder for Northern and Southern speakers to understand because they have more unique words.

The Southern region has fewer differences within its dialect because people settled there later. The North-Central region is quite traditional, and its pronunciation is often closer to how words are spelled.

Since the mid-20th century, many people have moved between North and South Vietnam. This has led to some mixing of dialects. It has also made it easier for people from different regions to understand each other. Today, when Southerners sing popular songs or speak publicly, they often use a more standardized accent, which is based on the Northern pronunciation.

Modern Standard Vietnamese is based on the Hanoi dialect. However, the main dialects are still strong in their own areas and continue to change. Historically, dialects were known for how they pronounced letters like 'd' and 'r'. The Central and Southern dialects have kept pronunciations closer to how Middle Vietnamese sounded.

Differences in Vocabulary

Here are some examples of how words can differ across regions:

Even with these differences, most of these words are understood across regions. Sometimes, people even combine words from different dialects, like dạ vâng.

Differences in Consonants

The way certain consonant sounds are pronounced can vary a lot between regions. For example, the sounds written as 'ch' and 'tr' are pronounced differently in the Central and Southern regions, but they sound the same in the North.

Many North-Central dialects have three distinct pronunciations for 'd', 'gi', and 'r'. However, Northern dialects merge these three sounds, while Central and Southern dialects merge 'd' and 'gi' but keep 'r' separate.

At the end of words, the sounds 'ch' and 'nh' have merged with 't' and 'n' in Central and Southern dialects.

Some rural areas in the North might also merge the sounds 'l' and 'n'. For example, the number "five" is usually năm, but in some areas, it might be pronounced with an 'nh' sound.

Differences in Tones

All Vietnamese dialects have six tones, but the way these tones are pronounced can be different. The pitch and voice quality of each tone can vary from one region to another.

Sample Text

Here is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Vietnamese:

Mọi con người sinh ra đều tự do và bình đẳng về nhân phẩm và quyền lợi. Họ được tạo hóa ban cho lý trí và lương tâm và phải đối xử với nhau với tinh thần huynh đệ.

And in English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Images for kids

• 

  A 1906 analysis map of Austroasiatic languages (previously known as Mon-Annam languages) by British linguists Walter William Skeat and Charles Otto Blagden. Vietnamese is shown as Annamese.

• 

  The first page of the ꞗ section in Alexandre de Rhodes's Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum (Vietnamese–Portuguese–Latin dictionary)

• 

  de Rhodes's entry for dĕóTemplate:Apex shows distinct breves, acutes and apices.

See also

In Spanish: Idioma vietnamita para niños