Everything about Vietnamese Language totally explained
Vietnamese (
tiếng Việt, or less commonly
Việt ngữ), formerly known under French colonization as
Annamese (
see Annam), is the
national and
official language of
Vietnam. It is the
mother tongue of the
Vietnamese people (
người Việt or
người Kinh), who constitute 86% of
Vietnam's population, and of about three million
overseas Vietnamese, most of whom live in the
United States. It is also spoken as a second language by some
ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the
Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together). Much vocabulary has been borrowed from
Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was originally written using the
Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was pronounced in the Vietnamese way. The
Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the
Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
Geographic distribution
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the
Vietnamese people as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in
Texas, 4th in
Arkansas and
Louisiana, and 5th in
California). In
Australia, it's the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the
Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in
Australia,
Cambodia,
Canada,
China,
Côte d'Ivoire,
Finland,
France,
Germany,
Laos,
Martinique, the
Netherlands,
New Caledonia,
Norway, the
Philippines,
Poland,
Russia,
Denmark,
Sweden,
Senegal,
Thailand, the
United Kingdom, the
United States,
Japan,
Korea and
Vanuatu.
Genealogical classification
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be 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 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. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages was acquired, other minority languages (such as Thavưng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Việt-Mường characteristics, and the
Việt-Mường term was renamed to
Vietic. The older term
Việt-Mường now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, Mường dialects, and
Nguồn (of
Quảng Bình Province).
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese didn't become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, while written Vietnamese in the form of
Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief
Ho and
Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It wasn't until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
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 phylogenetically 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 Vietnamese language has strong similarities with
Cantonese with regard to the specific intonations and unreleased plosive consonant endings.
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
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.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 written 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 millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using
Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called
Hán tự, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called
Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (
kanji), Korea (
hanja), and other countries in the
Sinosphere. 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
Quốc Ngữ 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, 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. However, the Romanized script didn't 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.
Language variation
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or
dialects), the main four being:
»
Writing system
Vietnamese alphabet (
quốc ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), 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 António de Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, 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 end of first half 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 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.
Before
French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
the standard 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 nearly extinct.
Computer support
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that don't 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 nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards such as WinVNKey
, Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
Examples
The following text is 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.
» 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.
Original Chữ Nôm version
These are the images for those who don't have the required fonts.
𤾓𢆥𥪝𡎝𠊛嗟
𡦂才𡦂命窖羅恄饒
𣦆戈沒局𣷭橷
仍調𥉩𧡊罵忉疸𢚸
邏之彼嗇私豐
𡗶青慣退𦟐紅打慳
English translation
Hundreds of years of human existence,
Prodigy and fate intertwined in conflicts,
Mulberry fields turned into open sea,
Enough's been seen to melt the heart.
Little wonder that beauty begets misery,
For Blue Heaven's jealous of exquisite glamour!
Further Information
Get more info on 'Vietnamese Language'.
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