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Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, or even less normally Việt ngữ), at one time called Annamite (understand Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. These are a mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngư�i Việt or ngư�i Kinh), world health organization be between 88% & 90% of Vietnam's population and of about three million overseas Vietnamese, including more than the million individuals of Vietnamese heritage in the United States. These are as well spoken as a 2nd language by occasionally ethnic minorities of Vietnam. These are section of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has a virtually all speakers by the important margin (3 to 4 days the total of speakers of Khmer, the 2nd virtually all spoken Austroasiatic language). But, it contains good deal vocabulary borrowed from either Chinese and was originally written using the Chinese writing system. A predominant Vietnamese writing system in use today is an altered version of the Latin alphabet, though the Chu Nom system, based on Chinese characters, was too erst listed.

Classification

Vietnamese is usually said to become a share of the Viet-Muong (or Vietic) grouping of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family, a personal that besides includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, when well as various tribal & regional languages, such as a Munda languages, spoken in northeastern India, and others within southern China. More linguists think that Viet-Muong occurs as language isolate.

History
It seems belike that in the distant past Vietnamese shared more characteristics green to other languages in the Austroasiatic personal, like an inflectional morphology and a richer placed of consonant clusters, which have afterwards disappeared from either a language. Even so, Vietnamese appears to own been heavy influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian Sprachbund—with the effect that it has acquired or even converged toward characteristics like isolating morphology & tonogenesis. These characteristics, which can or even might not use at times been a portion of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless stand get a share of numerous of the philologically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia—e.g., Thai (one of the Tai-Kadai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), & Vietnamese apiece developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective hereditary languages were non originally tonal.

A Vietnamese language has similarities by using Cantonese inside regards to the specific intonations and unreleased plosive consonant endings, the bequest of archaic Chinese that can besides exist as obtained in Korean.

A ascendant of a Vietnamese language was originally depending around a Red Flow of any stream within what is okay, northern Vietnam, & when you took the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language & humans into what is okay, central & southern Vietnam (across conquest of the ancient united states of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong delta in the vicinity of present-contemporary Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Indic and Malayo-Polynesian languages ab initio, until Chinese come to predominate politically toward a middle of the 1st millennium C.E.

Sustaining a rise of Chinese political dominance come radical importation of Chinese vocabulary & grammatical influence. When Chinese wwhen, for a prolonged time, a just medium of literature & government, also as a primary language of the ruling class inside Vietnam, tremendously of the Vietnamese lexicon all told realms consists of Hán Việt (Sino-Vietnamese) words. when a matter of fact, as a vernacular language of Vietnam bit by bit grew within prestigiousness toward a beginning of a 2nd millennium, the Vietnamese language was written utilizing Chinese characters (see Chu Nom) adapted to write Vietnamese, around the similar pattern every bit utilized in Japan (look at kanji), Korea and more countries in the Chinese ethnic sphere. A Nôm writing reached its zenith within the 18th century whenever several Vietnamese writers & poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, virtually all notably Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").

When email by owning a West grew, a Quốc Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. While France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as a official language inside education & government. Vietnamese adopted numerous French terms, like đầm (dame, from either madame), ga (railroad terminal, from either gare), & va-li (valise). Additionally, numerous Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for American ideas imported through the French. Notwithstanding, a Romanized script did non are to predominate until a beginning of the 20th century, after education became far flung & a simpler orthography was observed other expedient for teaching & communication by using the general people.

Geographic distribution
When a national language of the majority ethnic class action, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam per Vietnamese people as well as by ethnic minorities. These are too spoken within overseas Vietnamese communities, virtually all notably in the United States, in which it has other than 1 million speakers & is the seventh virtually all-spoken language.

Based on data from a Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken around Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Senegal, Thailand, United Kingdom, and Vanuatu.

Official status
Patch spoken for millenia, Vietnamese did non officially turn into a official language of Vietnam until a 20th century. For virtually all of its history, a able currently called Vietnam utilized Chinese for administration. Vietnamese in a form of chữ nôm was utilized for administrative purposes when you took the brief Tay Son Dynasty. within the period of French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It wasn't until independence from either France that Vietnamese was utilized officially. These are a language of instruction inside schools & universities & is the language for official businesses.

Ordered by: Hanoi Institute of Social Sciences (pending)

Dialects
There are various reciprocally perceivable accent (when perceivable when a accent of English discovered in a United States), the independent triplet existence:

! align="center" | Modern name ! align="center" | Neighborhood name ! align="center" | Old name |- | Northern Vietnamese | Hanoi dialect | Tonkinese |- | Central Vietnamese | Huế dialect | High Annamese |- | Southern Vietnamese | Saigon dialect | Cochinchinese |}

These accent differ slightly within tone & pronunciation, although a Huế accent is extra markedly different from either a others due to its local vocabulary. A h�i & ngã tones come distinct to the north however stand merged to the south.

Sounds

Vowels

Such as more sou'-east Asian languages, Vietnamese has the relatively heavy total of vowels (nguyên âm) (English also has the big vowel inventory). In the image below occurs as vowel chart of the Hanowe kind (i.e., more regions of Viet Nam might keep around different vowel inventories).

|- !   ! align="center" | Front ! align="center" | Central ! align="center" | Back |- ! align="left" | High | align="center" | i | align="center" | ư | align="center" | u

|- ! align="left" | Mid-High | align="center" | ê |   | align="center" | ô |- ! align="left" | Mid-Low | align="center" | e | align="center" | Æ¡ / â | align="center" | o |- ! align="left" | Low |   | align="center" | the / ă |   |}

100% vowels come unrounded except for u, ô, & o. Vowels â & ă come pronounced super short, good deal shorter than a more vowels. So, Æ¡ & â come au fond pronounced a equivalent except that Æ¡ is yearn when â is short â€” the equivalent applies to the moo vowels a (hanker) & ă (short).

Outside Hanoi, u, ô, o can be back fat .

A correspondence between a writing system & pronunciation is like complicated. E.g., a vowel i personally is likewise typically written when y; two can represent [j], where pack the difference is in the quality of the retiring vowel. For example, tai "ear" is .

Additionally to individual vowels (or even monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs (âm đôi). 3 diphthongs consist of the vowel + â. Which are actually iâ (spelled iowa or even iê), uâ (spelled ua or even uô), & ưâ (spelled ưa or even ươ). the more diphthongs consist of a vowel + glide. There are deuce one semivowels: y and w. Vietnamese has several diphthongs of this nature and severity. What is more, these glide could likewise watch a 1st 3 diphthongs (iâ, uâ, ưâ ) following inside triphthongs.

Tones

Vietnamese vowels come everthing pronounced by having an inherent tone (thanh or thanh điệu). Tones differ inside:

pitch length contour melody intensity glottality (by owning or even while forgoing accompanying constricted vocal cords)

Tone is indicated by diacritical mark written above or even beneath a vowel (virtually all of a tone diacritical mark come out above a vowel, still, the nặng tone dot diacritical mark goes in a image below the vowel). A sise tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) come:

|- ! align="center" | Name ! align="center" | Description ! align="center" | Diacritic ! align="center" | Example ! align="center" | ASCII notation |- | ngang   'level' | high level | align="center" | (there is no mark) | ma  'ghost' | align="center" |   |- | huyá»?n   'hanging' | moo falling | align="center" | ` | mà  'however' | align="center" | ` |- | sắc   'sharp' | high rising | align="center" | ´ | má  'cheek, mother (southern)' | align="center" | / |- | ngã   'tumbling' | creaking-rising | align="center" | Ëœ | mã  'horse (Sino-Vietnamese), code' | align="center" | ~ |- | há»?i   'request' | dipping-rising | align="center" |  Ì› | mả  'grave, grave' | align="center" | ? |- | nặng   'large' | constricted | align="center" |  Ì£ | mạ  'rice seedling' | align="center" | . |}

Consonants

A consonants (phụ âm) of the Hanoi kind come utilized inside the image below in writing system.

Note that a bit of consonant sounds come written sustaining sole 1 letter (such as a voiceless bilabial prevent - p), more consonant sounds come written by having a 2-letter digram (rather the aspirated alveolar prevent - th), & others come written sustaining other than of these letter or even digram (prefer a palatine prevent - ch or even tr).

|- | colspan="2"|   ! align="center"| Bilabial
(labio-velar)  ! align="center"| Labiodental ! align="center"| Alveolar ! align="center"|   Palatal   ! align="center"|   Velar   ! align="center"|   Glottal   |- |align="center" rowspan="3"| Stop | align="left"| Voiceless unaspirated | align="center"| p |   | align="center"| t | align="center"| ch/tr | align="center"| c/k/q |   |- | align="left"| Voiceless aspirated |   |   | align="center"| th |   |   |   |- | align="left"| Sonant implosive | align="center"| b |   | align="center"| Ä‘ |   |   |   |- | align="center"| Nasal |   | align="center"| m |   | align="center"| n | align="center"| nh | align="center"| ng |   |- | align="center" rowspan="2"| Fricative | align="left"| Voiceless |   | align="center"| ph | align="center"| x/s |   | align="center"| kh | align="center"| h |- | align="left"| Voiced |   | align="center"| v | align="center"| d/r |   | align="center"| g |   |- | align="center" rowspan="2"| Approximant | align="left"| Central | align="center"| u/w |   |   | align="center"| i/y |   |   |- | align="left"| Lateral |   |   | align="center"| l |   |   |   |}

A consonants of the Ho Chi Minh City kind come slightly different from either Hanoi (& more northern regions). E.g., tr & ch represent a equivalent healthy around the Hanoi kind, however in Ho Chi Minh City (& more central & southern regions) tr & ch represent different consonant sounds.

|- | colspan="2"|   ! align="center"| Bilabial
(labio-velar)  ! align="center"| Labiodental ! align="center"| Alveolar ! align="center"| Retroflex ! align="center"|   Palatal   ! align="center"|   Velar   ! align="center"|   Glottal   |- |align="center" rowspan="3"| Stop | align="left"| Voiceless unaspirated | align="center"| p |   | align="center"| t | align="center"| tr | align="center"| ch | align="center"| c/k/q |   |- | align="left"| Voiceless aspirated |   |   | align="center"| th |   |   |   |   |- | align="left"| Soft implosive | align="center"| b |   | align="center"| Ä‘ |   |   |   |   |- | align="center"| Nasal |   | align="center"| m |   | align="center"| n |   | align="center"| nh | align="center"| ng |   |- | align="center" rowspan="2"| Fricative | align="left"| Voiceless |   | align="center"| ph | align="center"| x | align="center"| s |   | align="center"| kh | align="center"| h |- | align="left"| Voiced |   |   |   | align="center"| r |   | align="center"| g |   |- | align="center" rowspan="2"| Approximant | align="left"| Central | align="center"| u/w |   |   |   | align="center"| i/y |   |   |- | align="left"| Lateral |   |   | align="center"| l |   |   |   |   |}

Grammar

Vietnamese, such as several languages within Southeast Asia & Chinese, is an analytic (or isolating) language. In and of itself its grammar extremely relies in word order and sentence structure like than morphology (word changes through inflection). When virtually all European languages would apply morphology to express tense Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions.

Vietnamese is typically mistakenly considered to become the "monosyllabic" language. These come admittedly that Vietnamese has several words that consist of l1 one syllable; notwithstanding, virtually all words are indeed bi-syllabic. This is largely because of the numbers of reduplication words that appear inside domestic vocabulary, or even adjectives.

Vietnamese syntax conforms to the Subject Verb Object word order.

Tense

Past tense is indicated by adding a particle đã, present progressive tense tense per particle đang, & first tense is indicated per particle sẽ.

Topic comment structure

A topic-comment structure is an crucial phrase nature and severity around Vietnamese. So Vietnamese has typically been claimed to become the topic-prominent language (Thompson 1991). For instance a phrase "tôi đ�c sách này rồi" may be transformed into a ensuing topic large same.

Plural
Although these are non commonly mandatory, a plural form can be indicated by particles prefer những, các, chúng.

Classifiers
Vietnamese extensively utilizes the technique of classifiers to indicate part of speech of nouns. English classifiers, e.g., can be (highlighted around bold) of these head of oxen or even ternary pieces of cheese. Vietnamese's rules & usage of classifiers come similar to Chinese and are supplementary variable than English. Among a usual classifiers come: cái : utilized for virtually all inanimate objects; con: ordinarily for animate being, however may be wont to describe a few inanimate objects (con dao = knife, con đư�ng = street, con vít = screw) bài: utilized for compositions rather songs, drawings, verse form, essays, etc. cây: utilized for stick-such as objects (plants, guns, canes, etc.) chiếc: objects that come worn or even moved by humans (chairs, cars, ear rings, ships, shirts, shoes) tòa: buildings of authority: courts, halls, "ivory towers". quả/trái: utilized for global objects (a Globe, fruits) quyển/cuốn: utilized for book-rather objects (books, journals, etc.) t�: sheets & more thinly objects manufactured of paper (newspaper, paper, calendar etc.) việc: an event or even an on-going process A classifier cái has the favorite role in this it may extend totally more classifiers, e.g. cái con, cái chiếc.

Pronouns
Vietnamese pronouns come additional accurately title. Its construct is different from either that inside European languages, therefore its title don't neatly fall into a grammatical person classifications created by European grammarians. For even instance, a equivalent word may be utilized as a number one-, 2nd-, or third-individual pronoun, based on a speaker & the audience. A phrase:

may be translated when: I (your computers gramps) last house. You (old man/my grandad) last residence. He (a husband) goes page.

A usual title come kinship terms, which can differ slightly inside different regions. Virtually all of a babies from either Chinese loan, however keep close at hand acquired a extra grammatical work of existence pronouns across the years.

Whilst addressing an audience, a speaker must carefully assess a social relationship between him/her & a audience, difference around age, & sex of the audience to select an appropriate title of respect. A below come occasionally kinship terms of location that may be utilized in the 2nd-individual feel (wise shoppers). It whole can besides exist as utilized in the 1st-individual feel (I), however in case it're non marked by (S) a usage is limited to the literal meaning:

Ông: grandpthe, utilized as a term of respect for even a human senior to the speaker & world health organization is late middle age or older Bà: gran, utilized as the term of respect for even a (unremarkably married) woman senior to the speaker & world health organization is late middle age or older Cô: father's sister, utilized to location the girl or even the woman when old when 1's father. Chú: father's immature brother, utilized to location the immature huhuman or even the man slightly immature than of these's father. Bác: father's older brother, utilized to location the human slightly older than a single's father. Anh: older brother, for even the slightly older huhuman, or for the man around the romanticistic relationship. (S) Chị: older sister, for the slightly older woman. (S) Em: immature sib, for even the slightly youth, or for the woman inside the romanticistic relationship. (S)

More pronouns inside apply largely conform to the European idea of grammatical individual. A few come potentially gender-neutral & relationship-neutral:

TôWe: I, (literally servant) Hắn: dyslogistic he Ông ta/Ông ấy: he (watch above) Bà ta/Bà ấy: she (view above) Cô ta/Cô ấy: she (look at above) Anh ta/Anh ấy: he (understand above) H�: they Nó: it (as well he or even she, while on to the subordinate; maybe as well dislogistic) Chúng ta: i personally (including audience) Chúng tôi personally: formal I, we (excluding audience) Chúng nó: it (dislogistic) Bả: conversational, she Mày: your family singular form (to subordinates) Quý vị: professional people (formal) Bạn: friend, you

Reduplication

Reduplication (từ láy) is found extravagantly within Vietnamese. It is formed by repeating a section of the word to form freshly words, altering the meaning of the original word. Its result is to every now & agawithwithin either increase or even decrease a intensity of the adjective, & is typically utilized when a literary device (rather initial rhyme) in poetry and more compositions, too as in everyday speech.

Examples of reduplication increasing intensity:

đau → đau điếng: pain → injured rather hell mạnh → mạnh mẽ: hard → super strong rực → rực rỡ: flaring → blazing

Examples of reduplication decreasing intensity:

nhẹ → nhè nhẹ: easy → easy (less) xinh → xinh xinh: jolly → cute đ� → đo đ�: red → somewhat red xanh → xanh xanh: blue/green → somewhat blue/green

Reduplication of this nature and severity, indicating wasted intensity, is too present inside Mandarin Chinese.

The nature and severity of assimilation known as tonal harmony is involved inside Vietnamese reduplication.

Vocabulary
Following of the thous& years of Chinese domination, tremendously of Vietnamese vocabulary on to science and politics come from either Chinese. Up to 70% of a vocabulary keep close at hand Chinese roots, although several compound words come Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words concerted using the Chinese borrowings. Reduplication is a regular part of the language that ordinarily denotes intensity. the single may ordinarily distinguish between the indigene Vietnamese word & a Chinese borrowing whenever it may be reduplicated or even its meaning doesn't vary once a tone is shifted. Following of French settlement, Vietnamese too has several loan borrowed from either a French language. Within several events, these loan come limited to the additional urbanised areas, like Ho Chi Minh City. Recently several words come borrowed from either English, for example TV (pronounced tivi), phông for font. Every now and again these borrowings come literally translated into Vietnamese (phần m�m for software program, lit. easy section).

Writing system

Presently, a written language utilizes a Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ or "national script," literally "national language," from either Chinese 國語 / guoyu), based on a Latin alphabet. Originally the 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 earliest Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar delaware Amaral and Antoine de Barbosa). A have of a script was step by step extended from either its initial domawithin in Christian writing to get other popular among the general public. Under French compound rule, the script became official & compulsory for completely public documents inside 1910 by issue of a order per French Résident Supérieur of the associated state of Tonkin. Per late 20th century most writings were knock off quốc ngữ.

Changes in the script were manufactured by French scholars & administrators, & by conferences held fallowing independence when you took 1954-1974. the script currently reflects a therefore-alleged Middle Vietnamese accent which has vowels & final consonants virtually all similar to northern accent & initial consonants virtually all similar to southern idiom. (Nguyá»…n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumptively roughly a Hanoi kind every bit spoken erstwhile fallowing 1600 however prior to a present.

Before French rule, the number one 2 Vietnamese orthography were according to Chinese script: a standard ideographic Chinese character placed known as chữ nho (scholar's characters, 字儒): used to write Literary Chinese the complicated variant form referred to 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

A authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was within other green usage, whereas chữ nôm was utilized by members of the enlightened elite group (1 needs to exist as a cappella to see chữ nho sequentially to page through chữ nôm). Each scripts stand fallen away from most common usage around modern Vietnam, and chữ nôm is touching-extinct.

Computer support
A Unicode character set contains totally Vietnamese characters & Vietnamese currency symbol. In systems that don't trend lines Unicode, numerous Eighter-bit Vietnamese codepages are available like VISCII or CP1258.

In which ASCII must be utilized, Vietnamese letters come typically typed using the VIQR convention.

There are several software program informatiin that facilitate nature and severity avowedly Vietnamese text in Usa keyboards like [http://winvnkey.sf.net WinVNKey] in Windows, [http://macvnkey.sf.net MacVNKey] on Macintosh, etc.

Examples
This text is from either a 1st six lines of Truyện Ki�u, a verse form per celebrated poet Nguyễn Du, 阮攸 (1765-1820), often considered a virtually all important act of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written inside Nôm (titled 金雲翹), & is widely taught inside Vietnam now.

Original Chu Nom version

Watch as well: [http://www.vietthings.com/tho/thovanco/kieu1.htm The first 224 lines (in Vietnamese)] (to understand a next lines: thrust in câu 225 - 416 etc.)

(Literal) English translation

VACETS
English-Vietnamese Technical Terms Dictionary Project.

KSVN English-Vietnamese Dictionary
Online translator for a single word.

English-Vietnamese Vocabulary of Dogmatic Theology
Online version of the book translated by The Vietnamese Priests and Seminarians in Taiwan.

Free English-Vietnamese-French Dictionary
English-Vietnamese, Vietnamese-English, French-Vietnamese and Vietnamese-French dictionaries, with English pronunciation dictionary.






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