Vietnamese is a unique and exciting language spoken in many parts of the world. It is the official language of Vietnam, where approximately 90 million people use it.
Vietnamese is part of the Austro-Asiatic language family, and its closest relatives are Khmer, Mon, and Munda languages. It also has influences from the Chinese due to centuries of Chinese occupation.
Vietnamese is a tonal language with six tones: Ngang, Sắc, Huyền, Hỏi, Nặng, and Ngã. It means that the pronunciation of a word can change depending on the tone used.
Vietnamese does not use gendered pronouns, instead using formal and informal versions of “you” to differentiate between someone you’re familiar with and people you don’t know well.
Vietnamese has been a writing system for centuries, using the Latin-based chữ Quốc ngữ alphabet in the late 16th century.
While the Vietnamese alphabet contains only 29 letters, many diacritics create new words.
Vietnamese has a single word, “đồng,” which means both “east” and “west,” and this indicates that something is in harmony or balance with what’s happening in the rest of the world.
Although Vietnamese is mainly monosyllabic, it also uses compound words created by combining two or fewer words.
Vietnamese words are often specific to regional dialects, so someone outside a particular region may need to understand some terms.
Because it comes from an agrarian society, many Vietnamese words are associated with the plants and animals in the local environment.
Written Vietnamese is heavily phonetic, meaning it often uses several letters to represent a single sound.
