Primer on the Vietnamese language

A couple of friends have asked about the Vietnamese language (tiếng Việt), so I thought I’d write a little bit about it.

The easy part: since the French came to town, the Vietnamese language has been written in the Latin alphabet (esp. since the 20th cent.). Since Vietnamese came into its own from the Mon-Khmer languages in about the 15th Century, it had been written in Chinese characters. Though Vietnamese isn't based on Mandarin or Cantonese, apparently about 40% of the language (esp. technical terms) are the result of cross-pollination. The Latin alphabet makes learning the language a little easier, and it's easier to limp through situations because of it.

The hard part: The alphabet includes accented and unaccented characters (a, ă, â, b, c, d, đ, e, ê, g, h…), sometimes with other accents piled on top, which represent the 6 tones of the Vietnamese language (ă could become ằ, ẳ, ẵ, ắ, ặ ). Pretty intimidating! Moreover, there are North and South Vietnamese distinctions in pronunciation that I don’t always catch, and some consonant combinations make much different sounds (tr comes off more as a ch, i.e. for tea, Trà sounds more like Chà, but it's a little more complicated than that).

Below: Picture of the Vietnamese keyboard

Below: Picture of the Vietnamese keyboard when a vowel (in this case, ă) is pressed, triggering the tone-input layout.

It also sucks when you’re ordering food, and you know exactly what you’re saying, and everyone else at the table knows what you’re ordering, and the waiter looks at you completely blankly! So, my goal for the semester is just to be able to sound out words.

My conclusion is pretty much that the Vietnamese language is designed to confuse foreign invaders. Kind of like how the Japanese don’t have many street names.

If there’s an upside to learning this language, it’s that it encourages me (and other students) to put lots of effort into adopting a more local accent, and not unemphatic American tone that you hear in every language class back in Arizona. It is a little demoralizing, however, to be able to speak pretty good Japanese with my Vietnamese teacher (who taught in Japan) while I still can't carry out a conversation in Vietnamese!

Hẹn gặp lại! (See you later!)