Vietnamese Language - Definition and Overview

Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, tiếng Việt Nam, or Việt ngữ), a tonal language, is the national and official language of Vietnam (Việt Nam). It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (người Việt or người kinh), who constitute about 87% of Vietnam's population and of about two million Vietnamese emigrants, including a significant number of Vietnamese Americans. It is also spoken as a second language by Vietnam's minority population. Although it contains many vocabulary borrowings from Chinese and was originally written using Chinese characters, it is considered by linguists to be one of the Austroasiatic languages, of which it has the most speakers (it has 10 times the number of speakers as the next most-spoken language, the Khmer language). Vietnamese currently uses the Latin alphabet (with many additions) for writing.

Classification

Vietnamese is part of the Viet-Muong 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 northeastern India, and others in southern China.

More broadly, as part of the Austroasiatic language family, Vietnamese is also considered part of the Austric superfamily (which also includes the Austronesian languages such as Malay, Cham, Malagasy, Maori and Hawai'ian), although the Austric superfamily grouping itself is disputed.

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 philologically 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.

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 Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Indic and Malayo-Polynesian languages at first, until Chinese came to predominate politically toward the middle of the first millenium 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 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 millenium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (see Chu nom) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (see kanji), Korea and other countries in the Chinese cultural sphere. 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 quoc ngu 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), ga (train station), and va-li (valise). 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.

Geographic distribution

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

Official status

Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam.

Dialects

There are various mutually intelligible dialects (as intelligible as the dialects of English found in the United States), the main three being:

These dialects differ slightly in tone, although the Hué dialect is more markedly different from the others. The hỏi and ng&atilde tones are more distinct in the northern than in the southern dialect. As the capital is in Hanoi, the standard spelling of words is based on the Hanoi dialect.

Sounds

Vowels

Monophthongs

The IPA vowel chart of monophthongs (i.e., simple vowels) below is a composite of the phonetic descriptions of Nguyễn (1997), Thompson (1965), and Han (1966). (See the endnotes for their respective descriptions.) ¹ This is a vowel description of Hanoi Vietnamese (i.e., other regions of Viet Nam may have different inventories).

All vowels are unrounded except for three back vowels: /u/, /o/, and /ɔ/. /ɜ/ and /ɐ/ are pronounced very short, shorter than the other vowels. Short /ɐ/ and long /ɐː/ are different phonemic vowels. (The [ː] symbol indicates length.) There seems to be a question of whether /əː/ and /ɜ/ differ in quality and length or in length only. This description takes the stance that there is also difference in quality (following Thompson (1965)).

The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is rather complicated, where a single letter either represents two different monophthongs or both a monophthong and a diphthong, or where the same monophthong is represented by more than one letter:

Words that appear to start with a vowel actually start with a glottal stop [ʔ]. This is not represented in the orthography.

Diphthongs & Triphthongs

In addition to monophthongs, Vietnamese has many diphthongs and triphthongs. Most of these consist of a vowel followed by /j/ or /w/. (Phonologically speaking, it is best to consider these as a sequence of a vowel and a consonant.) Below is a chart (Nguyễn 1997) listing the diphthongs & triphthongs of the Hanoi dialect along with the corresponding orthographic symbol(s).

Something to note:
/j/ never follows front vowels (which are /i/, /e/, /ɛ/). /w/ never follows rounded vowels (which are /u/, /o/, /ɔ/).

Some notes about dialectal variation:
Thompson (1965) says that in Hanoi words spelled with ưu and ươu are pronounced as /iw/ and /iɜw/, respectively, whereas other dialects in the Tonkin delta pronounce them as /ɯw/ and /ɯɜw/. Hanoi speakers that do pronounce these words with /ɯw/ and /ɯɜw/ are using a spelling pronunciation. Nguyễn (1997) does not mention this.

Thompson also notes that in Hanoi the diphthongs, iê /iɜ/, ươ /ɯɜ/, uô /uɜ/, may be pronounced as /ie/, /ɯəː/, and /uo/, respectively (as the spelling suggests), but before /k/ and /ŋ/ these are always pronounced /iɜ/, /ɯɜ/, /uɜ/. Nguyễn just says that they are always pronounced: /iɜ/, /ɯɜ/, /uɜ/.

Tones

The six tones in Vietnamese are:

Tone markers are written above the vowel they affect, with the exception of Nặng, where the dot goes below the vowel. For example, the common family name Nguyễn begins with SAMPA /N/ (this sound is difficult for native English speakers to place at the beginning of a word), and is followed by something approximated by the English word win. The ~ indicates a dipping tone; start somewhat low, go down in pitch, then rise to the end of the word.

Consonants

Hanoi consonants:

* /t^h/ is an unvoiced, aspirated alveolar stop

Grammar

Vietnamese, having developed an isolating morphology characteristic of monosyllabic languages, as evidenced by its rich tonal system and syllabic diphthongs and triphthongs meant to differentiate one-syllable words, nonetheless retains many features of a polysyllabic language, as evidenced by the fact that more than half of its vocabulary consists of multi-syllabic and compound words.

Vocabulary

As a result of a thousand years of Chinese domination, much of Vietnamese vocabulary relating to science and politics are derived from Chinese. As many as 70% of the vocabulary have Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composing of native Vietnamese words combined with the Chinese borrowings. Reduplication is a regular part of the language that usually denote intensity. As a result of French colonization, a part of the vocabulary is derived from French. However, it still retains a basic vocabulary more closely resembling other languages in its language family.

Writing system

Presently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ or "national script"), 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 Antoine de Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the (non-Christian) public. Following the occupation of the French in the 19th century, 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 late 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 which has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects. (Nguyễn 1996).

Prior to French occupation, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:

• the standard ideographic 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 near-extinct.

Computer support

Unicode contains all characters that are necessary to write Vietnamese. There are also a number of codepages designed for representing Vietnamese texts, such as VISCII or CP1258.

Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese is often typed using the VIQR convention.

Examples

This text is from the first six lines of Truyện Kiều, an epic poem by the celebrated poet Nguyễn Du, 阮攸 (1765-1820). It was originally written in Nôm (titled 金雲翹), 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.

The 224 first verses (in Vietnamese) (http://www.vietthings.com/tho/thovanco/kieu1.htm) (to see the next verses: click on câu 225 - 416 etc.)

(Literal) English translation

A hundred years – in this life span on earth

talent and destiny are apt to feud.

You must go through an event in which the sea becomes mulberry fields [bể-dâu]

and watch such things as make you sick at heart.

Is it strange that who is rich in this is poor in that?

Blue Heaven’s wont to strike rosy cheeks from spite.

External links

Wikipedia articles written in this language are located at the

Vietnamese language Wikipedia

• Wiktionary in Vietnamese
• [[Wikibooks:vi:Trang Chính|Wikibooks in Vietnamese]
• Wikisource in Vietnamese
• VDict (http://vdict.com): Vietnamese online dictionaries
• Ethnologue report for Vietnamese (http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=VIE)
• British Museum Exhibit (http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/topicalvietnam.html): Exhibit of classical Vietnamese, including Kim Van Kieu (http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/images/or14844f3.jpg).
• Introduction to Vietnamese (http://www.de-han.org/vietnam/chuliau/lunsoat/sound/): Introduction to Vietnamese for Mandarin speakers.
• Nom Foundation (http://www.nomfoundation.org/): An organization dedicated to the preservation of the Nom writing.
  • Nom look-up (http://www.nomfoundation.org/nomdb/lookup.php)
• Vietnamese Writing System (http://www.cjvlang.com/Writing/writviet.html): An overview of the Vietnamese writing system.
• 20 lessons (http://www.seasite.niu.edu/vietnamese/VNLanguage/SupportNS/tableofcontent.htm)
• Vietnamese & other related languages (http://www.anu.edu.au/~u9907217/languages/AAlecture6.html)

Endnotes

1. Here are three linguists' different phonetic descriptions of Vietnamese vowels. Which one is correct? I don't know. You will have to make your own observations. One thing to keep in mind is that Thompson and Han are not native speakers of Vietnamese, but Nguyễn is a native speaker.

Thompson's (1965) vowels. Thompson says that the vowels [ʌ] (orthographic "â") and [ɐ] (orthographic "ă") are shorter than all of the other vowels, which I have tried to show by adding the half length mark [ˑ] to the other vowels. The vowels below are only the basic vowel phonemes. Thompson gives a very detailed description of each vowel's various allophonic realizations. (Note: one of the external links above has an incorrect vowel chart on this page http://www.de-han.org/vietnam/chuliau/lunsoat/sound/3.htm. The author of this page is following Thompson. Thompson describes one vowel as a "relatively low back unrounded vowel" which is realized as either "lower mid back" or "lower mid back, strongly centralized". The web page author incorrectly lists this vowel as lower low back unrounded /ɑ/.)

Han's (1966) vowels. Han uses acoustic analysis, including spectrograms and format measuring & plotting, to describe the vowels. She states that the primary difference between orthographic "ơ" & "â" and "a" & "ă" is a difference of length (a ratio of 2:1). "ơ" = /ɜː/, "â"= /ɜ/; "a" = /ɐː/, "ă"= /ɐ/. Her format plots also seem show that /ɜː/ may be slightly higher than /ɜ/ in some contexts (but this would be secondary to the main difference of length).

Nguyễn's (1997) vowels. I suspect Nguyễn may be simplifying his description & making it more symmetrical (which is good phonology). He says that this is not a "complete grammar" but it is a "descriptive introduction".

Reference & Suggested Reading

Pedagogical

• Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics, (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-0714-3432-1
• Hoang, Thihn; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trihn, Quynh-Tram; Nguyen, Xuan Thu. (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN 0-8644-2661-5
• Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
• Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-4150-9205-1; ISBN 0-4151-5537-1 (w/ CD); ISBN 0-4150-9207-8 (w/ cassettes);
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.

Reference & linguistics

• 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.
• Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193.
• Han, Mieko S. (1966). Vietnamese vowels. Studies in the phonology of Asian languages IV. Los Angeles: Acoustic Phonetics Research Laboratory, University of Southern California.
• Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
• Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Việt-Nam, 3, 61-68.
• Nguyen, Đang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8702-2462-X
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1955). Quốc-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
• 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. (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN 0-8442-8356-8; ISBN 0-8442-8357-6
• 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.
• 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 họ Xã hội. (Original work published 1651).
• Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
• 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).
• Thompson, Laurence E. (1965). Nuclear models in Vietnamese immediate-constituent analysis. Language, 41 (4), 610-618.
• Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
• Uỷ ban Khoa học Xã hội Việt Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Việt [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa học Xã hội.