Vietnamese is primarily spoken in Vietnam. It is a member of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austro-Asiatic language family. Other Mon-Khmer languages include Mon, which is spoken in Burma; Khmer, which is spoken in Cambodia; and Muong, which is also spoken in Vietnam. The language that developed into Vietnamese probably originated in the area of the Red River, which is in modern-day northern Vietnam.
Originally, Vietnamese used a character-based writing system that was similar to Chinese. However, in 1910, a romanized script that had been devised by Catholic missionaries in the 17th Century was adopted as the official Vietnamese alphabet. This writing system, called
Quốc Ngữ (national language), is still in use today.
The Vietnamese alphabet consists of 17 consonants and 12 vowels. Vietnamese is a tonal language, meaning that the tone or pitch used when a word is pronounced helps determine its meaning. There are six distinct tones in Vietnamese: the level tone, the high rising tone, the low falling tone, the low rising tone, the high rising broken tone, and the low broken tone.
The use of personal pronouns in Vietnamese is determined by the age, marital status, gender, and social standing of the person you are speaking to, as well as your relationship with that person. Also, in Vietnamese, these forms of address are often used in situations where they would be omitted in English.
Vietnamese grammar uses tends to use word order and sentence structure to convey grammatical meanings, rather than inflections within words. Many grammatical concepts which would be expressed by word changes in English and other languages are expressed with particles in Vietnamese. These particles are generally short words that cannot readily be translated into English. They fulfill a variety of functions in Vietnamese, from indicating tense to increasing the politeness of a sentence. Reduplication (repeating a word or part of word) is another noteworthy element of Vietnamese grammar.
Because the Chinese ruled Vietnam for hundreds of years, the Vietnamese language is full of Chinese words. More recently, Vietnamese has also borrowed words from French and English.
Many Vietnamese nouns and verbs are made up of individual segments of one of two syllables that work together. These individual segments may have no meaning, or an entirely different meaning when taken out of context. Sometimes two words with the same meaning are combined for emphasis. In Vietnamese, the flow and rhyme of the language are very important. All of the elements in a sentence work together to make a language which is often said to resemble poetry.
Regular practice is important to learn to speak Vietnamese well, which is why Transparent Language's
Vietnamese software programs are a great way to learn the language. These multimedia programs enable you to hear, read, and speak Vietnamese. We wish you good luck as you learn Vietnamese!
