越南语音标

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Description

The Vietnamese alphabet, called Chữ Quốc Ngữ (script of the national language), usually shortened to Quốc Ngữ (national language), is the current writing system for the Vietnamese language. It is based on the Latin alphabet (more specifically the Portuguese version of it) with some digraphs and the addition of nine accent marks or diacritics — four of them to create additional sounds, and the other five to indicate the tone of each word. The many diacritics, often two on the same letter, make written Vietnamese easily recognizable.

[edit] Letter names and pronunciation

Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See Help:IPA for a pronunciation key.

Vietnamese alphabet

Letter	Name	IPA
A a	a	aː
Ă ă	á	a
 â	ớ	ə, ɜ
B b	bê, bờ	ɓ, ʔb
C c	xê, cờ	k
D d	dê, dờ	northern pronunciation: z, southern pronunciation : j
Đ đ	đê, đờ	ɗ, ʔd
E e	e	ɛ
Ê ê	ê	e
(F) (f)	ép
G g	giê, gờ	ɣ ʒ（before i, ê, and e）
H h	hát, hờ	h
I i	i ngắn	i
(J) (j)	gi
K k	ca, kờ	k
L l	e-lờ, lờ	l
M m	em-mờ, mờ	m
N n	en-nờ, nờ	n
O o	o	ɔ
Ô ô	ô	o
Ơ ơ	ơ	əː, ɜː
P p	pê, pờ	p
Q q	cu, quy, quờ	k
R r	e-rờ, rờ	northern pronunciation: z, southern pronunciation : ʐ, ɹ
S s	ét-sì, sờ	s, southern pronunciation : ʂ
T t	tê, tờ	t
U u	u	u
Ư ư	ư	ɯ
V v	vê, vờ	v, southern pronunciation : j
(W) (w)	vê kép, vê-đúp
X x	ích-xì, xờ	s
Y y	i dài, i-cờ-rét	i
(Z) (z)	giét

[edit] Consonants

Most of the consonants are pronounced approximately as in the International Phonetic Alphabet, with the following clarifications:

• Both D and GI are pronounced either [z] in the northern dialects (including Hanoi), or [j] (similar to English y) in the central and Saigon dialects.
• Đ is similar to a [d] sound in many languages. Vietnamese đ, however, is additionally pronounced with a glottal stop immediately preceding or simultaneous with it.
• S is pronounced like the English sh for the southern dialect and some central dialects; however, it is pronounced like English s among the northern dialects.
• V is pronounced [v] in the northern dialects, or [j] and [bj] in the southern dialects.
• X is pronounced like English s (at the beginning of a word, e.g. "sing").
• CH is a voiceless palatal stop (IPA: [c], similar to English c in "cute") or affricate (IPA: [ʧ], similar to English ch in "chip").
• KH is a voiceless velar fricative (IPA: [x]). It is similar to the German or Scottish ch, Russian x, Mandarin h, Spanish j, or Arabic and Persian "خ" (kh). It is never pronounced like English k or Hindi "ख" (kh).
• NG is a velar nasal (IPA: [ŋ]). It is similar to both occurrences of ng in English "singing". It is never pronounced like English n, or n plus g.
• NH is a palatal nasal (IPA: [ɲ]), similar to Polish ń, Spanish ñ, Portuguese nh, or French and Italian gn.
• PH is pronounced [f], as in English "Philip". It is never pronounced like English p or Hindi "फ" (ph).
• TH is an aspirated t (IPA: [tʰ]). It is similar to the "थ" (th) sound in Hindi or the t sound in English when pronounced at the beginning of a word. It is never pronounced like the English th or French/Spanish t.
• TR is a retroflex t (in the southern regions) and pronounced like the Vietnamese ch in the northern dialects. Its only other equivalent is the Mandarin Chinese retroflex ch. Mandarin Chinese words that start with ch or zh usually correspond to Sino-Vietnamese words that start with tr.

The digraph GH and the trigraph NGH are basically variants of g and ng used before i, in order to avoid confusion with the digraph GI. For historical reasons, they are also used before e or ê.

[edit] Vowels

[edit] Pronunciation

The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is somewhat complicated. In some cases, the same letter may represent several different sounds, and different letters may represent the same sound. This may be due to the fact that the orthography was designed centuries ago and the spoken language has changed, or to an attempt by the inventors to spell the sounds of several dialects at once. (Similarly, standard English spelling includes for historical reasons both the letters h and r, and yet there are many dialects of English pronunciation which drop one or the other.)

The letters y and i are mostly equivalent, and there is no rule that says when to use one or the other. There have been attempts since the early 20th century to standardize the orthography by replacing all the vowel uses of y with i, the latest being a decision from the Vietnamese Ministry of Education in 1984. These efforts seem to have had limited effect, in part because some people bristled at the thought of names such as Nguyễn becoming Nguiễn and Thúy (a common female name) becoming Thúi (stinky), even though the standardization does not apply to diphthongs and triphthongs and allowed exceptions to proper names. Currently, the spelling that uses i exclusively is found only in scientific publications and textbooks. Most people and the popular media continue to use the spelling that they are most accustomed to.

Spelling	Sound	Spelling	Sound
a	/ɐː/, /ɐ/, /ɜ/	o	/ɔ/, /ɐw/, /w/
ă	/ɐ/	ô	/o/, /ɜw/, /ɜ/
â	/ɜ/	ơ	/əː/, /ɜ/
e	/ɛ/	u	/u/, /w/
ê	/e/, /ɜ/	ư	/ɨ/
i	/i/, /j/	y	/i/, /j/

[edit] Spelling

[edit] Monophthongs

The table below matches Vietnamese vowels (written in the IPA) and their respective orthographic symbols used in the writing system.

Sound	Spelling	Sound	Spelling
/i/	i, y	/e/	ê
/ɛ/	e	/ɨ/	ư
/əː/	ơ	/ɜ/	â
/ɐː/	a	/ɐ/	ă
/u/	u	/o/	ô
/ɔ/	o

Notes:

The vowel /i/ is:

• usually written i: /si/ = sĩ (A suffix indicating profession, similar to the English suffix -er).
• sometimes written y: /mi/ = Mỹ 'America'.
  • It is always written y when:

1. preceded by an orthographic vowel: /xwiɜn/ = khuyên 'to advise';
2. at the beginning of a word derived from Chinese (written as i otherwise): /iɜw/ = yêu 'to love'.

Note that i and y are also used to write the approximant consonant /j/.

[edit] Diphthongs and triphthongs

Sound	Spelling	Sound	Spelling
Diphthongs
/uj/	ui	/iw/	iu
/oj/	ôi	/ew/	êu
/ɔj/	oi	/ɛw/	eo
/əːj/	ơi	/əːw/	ơu
/ɜj/	ây, ê	/ɜw/	âu, ô
/ɐːj/	ai	/ɐːw/	ao
/ɐj/	ay, a	/ɐw/	au, o
/ɨj/	ưi	/ɨw/	ưu
/iɜ/	ia, ya, iê, yê	/uɜ/	ua, uô
/ɨɜ/	ưa, ươ	/uw/	uy
Triphthongs
/iɜw/	iêu, yêu	/uɜj/	uôi
/ɨɜj/	ươi	/ɨɜw/	ươu

Notes:

The diphthong /iɜ/ is written:

1. ia in open syllables: /miɜ/ = mía 'sugar cane' (note: open syllables end with a vowel; closed syllables end with a consonant);
2. iê before a consonant: /miɜŋ/ = miếng 'piece';

The i changes to y at the beginning of words or after an orthographic vowel:

• ya: /xwiɜ/ = khuya 'late at night'
• yê: /xwiɜn/ = khuyên 'to advise'; /iɜn/ = yên 'calm'.

The diphthong /uɜ/ is written:

1. ua in open syllables: /muɜ/ = mua 'to buy';
2. uô before a consonant: /muɜn/ = muôn 'ten thousand'.

The diphthong /ɨɜ/ is written:

1. ưa in open syllables: /mɨɜ/ = mưa 'to rain';
2. ươ before consonants: /mɨɜŋ/ = mương 'irrigation canal'.

[edit] Tone marks

Vietnamese is a tonal language, i.e. the meaning of each word depends on the "tone" (basically a specific tone and glottalization pattern) in which it is pronounced. There are six distinct tones in the standard, Northern, dialect (Southern dialects have only five). The first one ("level tone") is not marked, and the other five are indicated by diacritics applied to the vowel part of the syllable.

Name	Contour	Diacritic	Accented Vowels
Ngang	mid level, ˧	unmarked	A/a, Ă/ă, Â/â, E/e, Ê/ê, I/i, O/o, Ô/ô, Ơ/ơ, U/u, Ư/ư, Y/y
Huyền	low falling, ˨˩	grave accent	À/à, Ằ/ằ, Ầ/ầ, È/è, Ề/ề, Ì/ì, Ò/ò, Ồ/ồ, Ờ/ờ, Ù/ù, Ừ/ừ, Ỳ/ỳ
Sắc	high rising, ˧˥	acute accent	Á/á, Ắ/ắ, Ấ/ấ, É/é, Ế/ế, Í/í, Ó/ó, Ố/ố, Ớ/ớ, Ú/ú, Ứ/ứ, Ý/ý
Hỏi	dipping, ˧˩˧	hook	Ả/ả, Ẳ/ẳ, Ẩ/ẩ, Ẻ/ẻ, Ể/ể, Ỉ/ỉ, Ỏ/ỏ, Ổ/ổ, Ở/ở, Ủ/ủ, Ử/ử, Ỷ/ỷ
Ngã	glottalized rising, ˧ˀ˥	tilde	Ã/ã, Ẵ/ẵ, Ẫ/ẫ, Ẽ/ẽ, Ễ/ễ, Ĩ/ĩ, Õ/õ, Ỗ/ỗ, Ỡ/ỡ, Ũ/ũ, Ữ/ữ, Ỹ/ỹ
Nặng	glottalized falling, ˧ˀ˨	dot below	Ạ/ạ, Ặ/ặ, Ậ/ậ, Ẹ/ẹ, Ệ/ệ, Ị/ị, Ọ/ọ, Ộ/ộ, Ợ/ợ, Ụ/ụ, Ự/ự, Ỵ/ỵ

• Unmarked vowels are pronounced with a level voice, in the middle of the speaking range.
• The grave accent indicates that the speaker should start somewhat low and drop slightly in tone.
• The acute accent indicates that the speaker should start high and rise sharply in tone.
• The hook indicates that the speaker should start somewhat low, and fall, then rise, as in a question.
• A tilde indicates that the speaker should start high, then dip and rise like a question in tone.
• The dot signifies that the speaker should start low and fall lower in tone.

In syllables where the vowel part consists of more than one vowel (such as diphthongs and triphthongs), the placement of the tone is still a matter of debate. Generally, there are two methodologies, an "old style" and a "new style". While the "old style" emphasizes aesthetics by placing the tone mark as close as possible to the center of the word (by placing the tone mark on the last vowel if an ending consonant part exists and on the next-to-last vowel if the ending consonant doesn't exist, as in hóa), the "new style" emphasizes linguistic principles and tries to apply the tone mark on the main vowel (as in hoá). In both styles, when one vowel already has a quality diacritic on it, the tone mark must be applied to it as well, regardless of where it appears in the syllable (thus thuế is acceptable while thúê is not). In the case of the ươ diphthong, the mark is placed on the ơ. The u in qu is considered part of the consonant. Currently, the new style is usually used in new documents, while some people still prefer the old style.

The lowercase letter i should retain its dot even when accented. (However, this detail is often lost in computers and on the Internet, due to the obscurity of Vietnamese specialty fonts and limitations of encoding systems.)

In lexical ordering, differences in letters are treated as primary, differences in tone markings as secondary, and differences in case as tertiary differences. Ordering according to primary and secondary differences proceeds syllable by syllable. According to this principle, a dictionary lists tuân thủ before tuần chay because the secondary difference in the first syllable takes precedence over the primary difference in the second.

[edit] Structure

Due to influence from the Chinese writing system, each syllable in Vietnamese is written separately as if it were a word. In the past, syllables in multisyllabic words were concatenated with hyphens, but this practice had died out, and hyphenation is now reserved for foreign borrowings. A written syllable consists of at most three parts, in the following order from left to right:

1. An optional beginning consonant part
2. A required vowel syllable nucleus and the tone mark, if needed, applied above or below it
3. An optional ending consonant part, can only be one of the following: c, ch, m, n, ng, nh, p, t, or nothing.

[edit] History

Further information: Hán Tự, Chữ Nôm

A page from Alexandre de Rhodes' 1651 dictionary

The Vietnamese language was first written down, from the 13th century onwards, using variant Chinese characters (chữ nôm 字喃), each of them representing one word. The system was based on the script used for writing classical Chinese (chữ nho), but it was supplemented with characters developed in Vietnam (chữ thuần nôm, proper Nom characters) to represent native Vietnamese words.

As early as 1527, Portuguese Christian missionaries in Vietnam began using the Latin alphabet to transcribe the Vietnamese language for teaching and evangelization purposes. These informal efforts led eventually to the development of the present Vietnamese alphabet, largely by the work of French Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes, who worked in the country between 1624 and 1644. Building on previous Portuguese-Vietnamese dictionaries by Gaspar d'Amaral and Duarte da Costa, Rhodes wrote a Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary, which was printed in Rome in 1651, using his spelling system.

In spite of this development, chữ nôm and chữ nho remained in use until the early 20th century, when the French colonial administration made Rhodes's alphabet official. Nationalists embraced the script as a weapon to fight the French administration and heavily promoted its use, setting up schools such as the Tonkin Free School and publishing periodicals utilizing this script. By the late 20th century, quốc ngữ was universally used to write Vietnamese, such that literacy in the previous Chinese character-based writing systems for Vietnamese is now limited to a small number of scholars and specialists.

Because the period of education necessary to gain initial literacy is considerably less for the largely phonetic Latin-based script compared to the several years necessary to master the full range of Chinese characters, the adoption of the Vietnamese alphabet also facilitated widespread literacy among Vietnamese speakers—whereas a majority of Vietnamese in Vietnam could not read or write prior to the 20th century, the population is now almost universally literate.

[edit] Sino-Vietnamese and quốc ngữ

Further information: Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary

Writing Sino-Vietnamese words with quốc ngữ caused some confusion about the origins of some terms, due to the large number of homophones in Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese. For example, both 明 (bright) and 冥 (dark) are read as minh, which therefore has two opposite meanings (although the meaning of "dark" is now esoteric and is used in only a few compound words). Perhaps for this reason, the Vietnamese name for Pluto is not Minh Vương Tinh (冥王星 - lit. underworld king star) as in other East Asian languages, but is Diêm Vương Tinh (閻王星), named after the Buddhist deity Yama. During the Ho Dynasty, Vietnam was officially known as Đại Ngu (大虞 - Great Yu). Unfortunately, most modern Vietnamese know ngu as "stupid" (愚); consequently, some misinterpret it as "Big Idiot". However, the homograph/homophone problem is not as serious as it may seem, because although many Sino-Vietnamese words have multiple meanings when written with quốc ngữ, usually only one has widespread usage, while the others are relegated to obscurity. Furthermore, Sino-Vietnamese words are usually not used alone, but in compound words; thus, the meaning of the compound word is preserved even if individually each has multiple meanings. Most importantly, since quốc ngữ is an exact phonemic transcription of the spoken language, its understandability is as high or higher than a normal conversation.

[edit] Computer support

The universal character set Unicode has full support for the Vietnamese writing system, although it does not have a separate segment for it; the required characters are scattered throughout the Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional segments. An ASCII-based writing convention, Vietnamese Quoted Readable, and several byte-based encodings including TCVN3, VNI, and VISCII were widely used before Unicode became popular. Most new documents now exclusively use the Unicode format UTF-8.

Unicode allows the user to choose between precomposed characters and combining characters in inputting Vietnamese. Due to the nonstandard way combining characters are implemented in various operating systems, most people use precomposed characters when composing Vietnamese-language documents.

Most keyboards used by Vietnamese-language users do not support direct input of diacritics by default. Various free utilities that act as keyboard drivers exist. They support the most popular input methods, including Telex, VIQR and its variants, and VNI.

[edit] See also

• Ă, Â, Đ, Ê, Ô, Ơ, Ư
• Chữ Nôm
• Dot (diacritic)
• Hán tự
• Hook (diacritic)
• Horn (diacritic)
• Portuguese alphabet
• Vietnamese language
• Vietnamese phonology
• VIQR, a standard 7-bit writing convention of the Vietnamese alphabet.
• VISCII, a standard 8-bit encoding of the Vietnamese alphabet.

[edit] Bibliography

• Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Published version of the author's MA thesis, University of Washington). (Reprinted 1981, Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics).
• 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 0-87022-462-X
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1955). Quốc-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1992). Vietnamese phonology and graphemic borrowings from Chinese: The Book of 3,000 Characters revisited. Mon-Khmer Studies, 20, 163-182.
• 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.
• Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2003). Vietnamese tone: A new analysis. Outstanding dissertations in linguistics. New York: Routledge. (Published version of author's 2001 PhD dissertation, University of Florida: Hoa, Pham. Vietnamese tone: Tone is not pitch). ISBN 0-415-96762-7.
• 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).

[edit] Further reading

• Nguyen, A. M. (2006). Let's learn the Vietnamese alphabet. Las Vegas: Viet Baby. ISBN 0977648206
• Shih, Virginia Jing-yi. Quoc Ngu Revolution: A Weapon of Nationalism in Vietnam. 1991.

[edit] External links

• Scanned version of Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary
• Vietnamese Writing System
• Essay comparing the orthography variants
• Vietnamese Unicode FAQs
• Doctoral dissertation comparing learning efficiency between quoc ngu and Chinese characters
• Chữ viết (in Vietnamese)
• The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
• The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_alphabet"

Categories: Latin-derived alphabets | Vietnamese writing systems | Language orthographies | Spelling reform

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Sounds

Main article: Vietnamese phonology

[edit] Vowels

Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel chart of Hanoi Vietnamese.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i [i]	ư [ɨ]	u [u]
Upper Mid	ê [e]	â [ə] / ơ [əː]	ô [o]
Lower Mid	e [ɛ]		o [ɔ]
Low	ă [a] / a [aː]

Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, ư, â, ơ, ă, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â [ə] and ă [a] are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, ơ and â are basically pronounced the same except that ơ [əː]^[12] is long while â [ə] is short — the same applies to the low vowels long a [aː] and short ă [a].^[13]

In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs^[14] and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position [ɪ], a high back position [ʊ], or a central position [ə].^[15]

Vowel nucleus	Diphthong with front offglide	Diphthong with back offglide	Diphthong with centering offglide	Triphthong with front offglide	Triphthong with back offglide
i	–	iu~yu [iʊ̯]	ia~iê~yê~ya [iə̯]	–	iêu [iə̯ʊ̯]
ê	–	êu [eʊ̯]	–	–	–
e	–	eo [ɛʊ̯]	–	–	–
ư	ưi [ɨɪ̯]	ưu [ɨʊ̯]	ưa~ươ [ɨə̯]	ươi [ɨə̯ɪ̯]	ươu [ɨə̯ʊ̯]
â	ây [əɪ̯]	âu [əʊ̯]	–	–	–
ơ	ơi [əːɪ̯]	–	–	–	–
ă	ay [aɪ̯]	au [aʊ̯]	–	–	–
a	ai [aːɪ̯]	ao [aːʊ̯]	–	–	–
u	ui [uɪ̯]	–	ua~uô [uə̯]	uôi [uə̯ɪ̯]	–
ô	ôi [oɪ̯]	–	–	–	–
o	oi [ɔɪ̯]	–	–	–	–

The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus^[16].

The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide [ɪ̯] is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs [aɪ̯] and [aːɪ̯] the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = ă + [ɪ̯], ai = a + [ɪ̯]. Thus, tay "hand" is [taɪ̯] while tai "ear" is [taːɪ̯]. Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = ă + [ʊ̯], ao = a + [ʊ̯]. Thus, thau "brass" is [taʊ̯] while thao "raw silk" is [taːʊ̯].

The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.

With regards to the front and back offglides [ɪ̯, ʊ̯], many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides /j, w/. Thus, a word such as đâu "where", phonetically [ɗəʊ̯], would be phonemicized as /ɗəw/.

[edit] Tones

Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones (but not Hanoi) as uttered by a male speaker. Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyễn & Edmondson (1998).

Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone^[17]. Tones differ in:

• pitch height
• length (duration)
• pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
• phonation

Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel).^[18] The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:

Name	Description	Diacritic	Example	Sample vowel
ngang   'level'	mid level	(no mark)	ma  'ghost'	a (help·info)
huyền   'hanging'	low falling (often breathy)	` (grave accent)	mà  'but'	à (help·info)
sắc   'sharp'	high rising	´ (acute accent)	má  'cheek, mother (southern)'	á (help·info)
hỏi   'asking'	mid dipping-rising	̉ (hook)	mả  'tomb, grave'	ả (help·info)
ngã   'tumbling'	high breaking-rising	˜ (tilde)	mã  'horse (Sino-Vietnamese), code'	ã (help·info)
nặng   'heavy'	low falling constricted (short length)	̣ (dot below)	mạ  'rice seedling'	ạ (help·info)

Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section above for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.

In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:

Tone group	Tones within tone group
bằng "level, flat"	ngang and huyền
trắc "oblique, sharp"	sắc, hỏi, ngã, and nặng

Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.

[edit] Consonants

The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiceless	p [p]	t [t]	tr [ʈʂ~ʈ]	ch [c~tɕ]	c/k [k]
	aspirated		th [tʰ]
	voiced	b [ɓ]	đ [ɗ]		d [ɟ]
Fricative	voiceless	ph [f]	x [s]	s [ʂ]		kh [x]	h [h]
	voiced	v [v]	gi [z]	r [ʐ~ɹ]		g/gh [ɣ]
Nasal		m [m]	n [n]		nh [ɲ]	ng/ngh [ŋ]
Approximant		u/o [w]	l [l]		y/i [j]

Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").

Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section above for further elaboration.

The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes /c, ɲ/ contrasting with syllable-final t, c /t, k/ and n, ng /n, ŋ/ and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch /c/. The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes /k/ and /ŋ/ that occur before upper front vowels i /i/ and ê /e/. (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)

1. 
   
2. ^ In southern dialects, v is reported to have a spelling pronunciation (i.e., the spelling influences pronunciation) of [vj] or [bj] among educated speakers. However, educated speakers revert to usual [j] in more relaxed speech. Less educated speakers have [j] more consistently throughout their speech. See: Thompson (1959), Thompson (1965: 85, 89, 93, 97-98).
3. ^ Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
4. ^ The symbol ː represents long vowel length.
5. ^ There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):

   	Front	Central	Back
   			un­rounded	rounded
   High	i [i]		ư [ɯ]	u [u]
   Upper Mid	ê [e]		ơ [ɤ]	ô [o]
   Lower Mid	e [ɛ]		â [ʌ]	o [ɔ]
   Low	a [a]	ă [ɐ]

   This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of ă [ɐ] and â [ʌ] would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel ă [ɐ] as being slightly higher (upper low) than a [aː].
6. ^ In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm đôi.
7. ^ The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:

   Thompson's diphthongs Vowel nucleus Front offglide Back offglide Centering offglide i – iu~yu [iʊ̯] ia~iê [iə̯] ê – êu [eʊ̯] – e – eo [ɛʊ̯] – ư ưi [ɯɪ̯] ưu [ɯʊ̯] ưa~ươ [ɯə̯] â ây [ʌɪ̯] âu [ʌʊ̯] – ơ ơi [ɤɪ̯] – – ă ay [ɐɪ̯] au [ɐʊ̯] – a ai [aɪ̯] ao [aʊ̯] – u ui [uɪ̯] – ua~uô [uə̯] ô ôi [oɪ̯] – – o oi [ɔɪ̯] – –

   Thompson's triphthongs Centering diphthong Front offglide Back offglide ia ~ iê – iêu [iə̯ʊ̯] ưa ~ ươ ươi [ɯ̯əɪ̯] ươu [ɯə̯ʊ̯] ua ~ uô uôi [uə̯ɪ̯] –

8. ^ The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., [əːʊ̯]) is an apparent gap.
9. ^ Called thanh điệu in Vietnamese
10. ^ Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel.

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Vietnamese phonology

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This article is a technical description the sound system of the Vietnamese language, including phonetics and phonology.

Contents [hide] 1 Consonants 1.1 Hanoi 1.1.1 Analysis of final ch, nh 1.1.2 Phonological processes 1.2 Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) 1.2.1 Phonetics 1.3 Regional consonant variation 2 Vowels 2.1 Monophthongs 2.2 Diphthongs and triphthongs 2.3 Regional vowel variation 3 Tone 3.1 Six-tone analysis 3.1.1 Northern varieties 3.1.2 Southern varieties 3.1.3 North-central and Central varieties 3.2 Eight-tone analysis 4 Syllables and phonotactics 5 Notes 6 See also 7 References 8 Bibliography 9 External links

[edit] Consonants

Two main varieties of Vietnamese, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, are described below.

[edit] Hanoi

The 21 consonants of the Hanoi variety:

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Dental/ Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m		n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	unaspirated	p		t	c	k	(ʔ)[1]
	aspirated			tʰ
	glottalized	ɓ		ɗ
Fricative			f  v	s̪  z̪		x  ɣ	h
Approximant				l	j	w

¹ Thompson^[1] posits a glottal stop phoneme in a more abstract analysis of Hanoi Vietnamese that would eliminate the phonemes /ɓ, ɗ, v/ by involving sequences of glottal stop + consonant (ʔC). Specifically, he proposes:

• /p/ → [p]
• /ʔp/ → [ʔɓ]
• /t/ → [t]
• /ʔt/ → [ʔɗ]
• /w/ → [v]
• /ʔw/ → [ʔw]

This analysis also simplifies the syllable description so that all syllables have obligatory onsets.

• /w/ is labial-velar and always preceded by a consonant or glottal stop (/ʔ/) (though [ʔ] does not occur before [w] in the southern varieties)
• /p/ occurs word-initially only in borrowed vocabulary derived from French. /p/ in Native Vietnamese words occurs only word-finally.
• The glottalized stops are preglottalized and voiced: [ʔɓ, ʔɗ] (i.e., the glottis is always closed before the oral closure). This glottal closure is often not released before the release of the oral closure, resulting in the characteristic implosive pronunciation. However, sometimes the glottal closure is released prior to the oral release in which case the stops are pronounced as [ʔb, ʔd]. Therefore, the primary characteristic is preglottalization with implosion being secondary.
• Among the coronals:
  • /tʰ, s, z, l/ are dental: [t̪ʰ, s̪, z̪, l̪].
  • /t, ɗ, n/ are alveolar: [t͇, ɗ͇, n͇].
  • /tʰ, l, t, ɗ, n/ are apical [t̺ʰ, l̺, t̺, ɗ̺, n̺] (i.e. with the tongue tip).
  • /s, z, c, ɲ/ are laminal [s̻, z̻, c̻, ɲ̻] (i.e. with the tongue blade).
  • HCMC /j/ is not present
• /c, ɲ/ are phonetically palatoalveolar [ṯ, ṉ] (i.e. the blade of the tongue makes contact behind the alveolar ridge).
• /c/ is often slightly affricated [ṯʃ], although much less than English [tʃʰ]. (Note that the English affricate is also aspirated and usually apical, unlike Vietnamese). This affrication, however, is not obligatory.

[edit] Analysis of final ch, nh

The analysis of syllable-final ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis, that of Thompson (1965) has them as being phonemes /c, ɲ/, where /c/ contrasts with both syllable-final t /t/ and c /k/ and /ɲ/ contrasts with syllable-final n /n/ and ng /ŋ/. Final /c, ɲ/ is, then, identified with syllable-initial /c, ɲ/.

Another analysis has final ch and nh as representing predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes /k/ and /ŋ/ that occur after upper front vowels /i/ (orthographic i) and /e/ (orthographic ê).

Arguments for the second analysis include the limited distribution of final [c] and [ɲ], the gap in the distribution of [k] and [ŋ], which do not occur after and [e], and the patterning of [k]/[c] and [ŋ]/[ɲ] in certain reduplicated words. Additionally, final [c] is not usually articulated as far forward as the initial [c]: [c] and [ɲ] are pre-velar [k̟, ŋ̟]. The preceding upper front vowels are co-articulated as well, resulting in centralized variants:

/ik/	→	ich	[ïk̟]
/iŋ/	→	inh	[ïŋ̟]
/ek/	→	êch	[ëk̟] or [əɪk̟]
/eŋ/	→	ênh	[ëŋ̟] or [əɪŋ̟]

Finally, this analysis interprets orthographic ach and anh as having a vowel nucleus with a front component. One interpretation considers the orthographic a in these sequences as underlyingly a diphthong /aj/ with a high front off-glide (thus equating it with orthographic ay) — in other words, [ac] is /ajk/ and [aɲ] is /ajŋ/. Another interpretation of the orthographic a is that it is underlyingly the vowel /ɛ/, which becomes phonetically centralized and diphthongized: /ɛk/ → [aɪk̟], [/ɛŋ/ → [aɪŋ̟].^[2]

The first analysis closely follows the surface pronunciation of a slightly different Hanoi dialect than the second. In this dialect, the [a] in [ac] and [aɲ] is not diphthongized but is actually articulated more forward, approaching a front vowel [æ]. This results in a three-way contrast between the rimes ăn [æ̈n] vs. anh [æ̈ŋ̟] vs. ăng [æ̈ŋ]. For this reason, a separate phonemic /ɲ/ is posited.

[edit] Phonological processes

• A glottal stop [ʔ] is inserted before words that begin with a vowel or the glide /w/:^[1]

ăn	'to eat'	/an/	→	[ʔan]
uỷ	'to delegate'	/wi/	→	[ʔwij]

• When stops /p, t, k/ occur at the end of words, they are unreleased and with accompanying glottal closure [ʔp̚, ʔt̚, ʔk̚]:

đáp	'to reply'	/ɗaːp/	→	[ʔɗaːʔp̚]
mát	'cool'	/maːt/	→	[maːʔt̚]
khác	'different'	/xaːk/	→	[xaːʔk̚]

• When the velar consonants /k, ŋ/ follow /u, w/, they are articulated with a simultaneous bilabial closure [k͡p, ŋ͡m] (i.e. doubly-articulated) or are strongly labialized [kʷ, ŋʷ].

đục	'muddy'	/ɗuk/	→	[ʔɗuʔk͡p̚]
độc	'poison'	/ɗɜwk/	→	[ʔɗɜwʔk͡p̚]
ung	'cancer'	/uŋ/	→	[ʔuŋ͡m]
ong	'bee'	/awŋ/	→	[ʔawŋ͡m]

[edit] Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

The 22 consonants of the Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) variety (a.k.a. Saigon variety):

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Dental/ Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m		n		ɲ	ŋ
Plosive and Affricate	unaspirated	p		t	ʈʂ	c	k	(ʔ)
	aspirated			t̺ʰ
	glottalized	ɓ		ɗ
Fricative			f (vʲ)	s	ʂ r		x ɣ	h
Approximant				l		j	w

[edit] Phonetics

The HCMC Vietnamese variety is essentially the same as the Hanoi with the following exceptions:

• /v/ is generally not present in HCMC. When it is pronounced, it is often a spelling pronunciation in which case it always occurs palatalized with a [j] following it: [vʲj]. In addition to this [vj], there is [bj, βj] that is present among other speakers. These pronunciations are remnants of a merger and sound change involving /v, z/ in southern speech (/v/ is generally still present in the northern and central regions).
• Hanoi /z/ is not present in HCMC.
• HCMC /l/ is generally slightly more palatalized than the Hanoi variety: [lʲ].
• In southern speech, the phoneme /r/ has a number of variant pronunciations that depend on the speaker. More than one pronunciation may even be found within a single speaker. It may occur as a retroflex fricative [ʐ], a postalveolar fricative [ʒ], a flap [ɾ], a trill [r], or a fricative flap/trill [ɾ̝, r̝]. This sound is generally represented in Vietnamese linguistics by the symbol < r >.
• Among the coronals:
  • /tʰ/ is dental: [t̪ʰ].
  • /t, ɗ, s, n, l/ are alveolar: [t͇, ɗ͇, s͇, n͇, l͇].
  • /t, tʰ, ɗ, s, n/ are apical: [t̺, t̺ʰ, ɗ̺, s̺, n̺] .
  • /l, c, ɲ/ are laminal: [l̻ʲ, c̻, ɲ̻].
• Unlike Hanoi, the glide /w/ in HCMC when at the beginning of a syllable is not preceded by a glottal stop.

[edit] Regional consonant variation

At the beginning of syllables, Hanoi /v, z/ appear as HCMC /j/. HCMC /r/ appears as Hanoi /z/, HCMC /c, ʈʂ/ appear as Hanoi /c/, and HCMC /s, ʂ/ appear as Hanoi /s/. The table below summarizes these sound correspondences:

Syllable onsets
Hanoi	HCMC	Example
		word	Hanoi	HCMC
/v/	/j/	vợ   "wife"	/vəː/	/(v)jəː/
/z/		da   "skin"	/zaː/	/jaː/
	/r/	ra   "to go out"	/zaː/	/raː/
/c/	/c/	chi   "what/why/how"	/ci/	/cɪ/
	/ʈʂ/	trắng   "white"	/caŋ/	/ʈʂaŋ/
/s/	/s/	xa   "far"	/saː/	/saː/
	/ʂ/	số   "number"	/so/	/ʂo/

There are also sound mergers involving syllable-final consonants among the different regional varieties. These correspondences differ from the initial consonant correspondences discussed above. Coronals /t, n/ in Hanoi appear as velars /k, ŋ/ in HCMC, except when the coronals occur after the higher front vocalics /i, e, j/, in which case HCMC /t, n/ remain the same as Hanoi /t, n/. Additionally, Hanoi /k, ŋ/ appear as HCMC /t, n/ when they occur after /i, e, j/ (otherwise they are /k, ŋ/):

Syllable codas
Hanoi	HCMC	Example
		word	Hanoi	HCMC
/t/	/k/	hát   "to sing"	/haːt/	/haːk/
/k/		thác   "waterfall"	/tʰaːk/	/tʰaːk/
/n/	/ŋ/	xuân   "spring"	/swɜn/	/swɨŋ/
/ŋ/		vâng   "to obey"	/vɜŋ/	/(v)jɜŋ/
/t/ after /i, e, j/	/t/	ít   "few, small in quantity"	/it/	/ɪt/
/k/ after /i, e, j/		ếch   "frog"	/ɜjk/	/ɜt/
/n/ after /i, e, j/	/n/	đến   "to arrive"	/ɗen/	/ɗɜn/
/ŋ/ after /i, e, j/		lính   "soldier"	/liŋ/	/lɨn/

As can be seen above, vowels also vary among different regions.

[edit] Vowels

[edit] 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).^[2] This is a vowel description of Hanoi Vietnamese (i.e., other regions of Vietnam may have different inventories).

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Close-mid	e	əː	o
Open-mid	ɛ	ɜ	ɔ
Open		a   aː

• All vowels are unrounded except for the three back rounded vowels: /u, o, ɔ/.
• /ɜ/ and /a/ are pronounced short — shorter than the other vowels.
  • /a/ vs. /aː/: Short /a/ (orthographic ă) and long /aː/ (orthographic a) are different phonemic vowels, differing in length only (and not quality). (The [ː] symbol indicates a long vowel.)
  • /ɜ/ vs. /əː/: Han (1966) suggests that short /ɜ/ and long /əː/ differ in both height and length, but that the difference in length is probably the primary distinction. Thompson (1965) seems to suggest that the distinction is due to height (as he does for all Vietnamese vowels), although he also notes the length difference.
• /ɨ/ is close central unrounded and backed and lowered: [ɨ̞̠]. Many descriptions, such as Thompson,^[3] Nguyễn (1970), Nguyễn (1997), consider this vowel to be close back unrounded: [ɯ]. However, Han's^[4] instrumental analysis indicates that it is more central than back. Brunelle (2003) and Pham (2003) also transcribe this vowel as central.
• The high and upper-mid vowels /i, ɨ, u, e, əː, o/ have phonetic offglides: [ɪj, ɨɰ, ʊw, ej, əːɰ, ow], particularly in open syllables:

chị	'elder sister'	/ci/	→	[cɪj]		quê	'countryside'	/kwe/	→	[kwej]
tư	'fourth'	/tɨ/	→	[tɨɰ]		mơ	'to dream'	/məː/	→	[məːɰ]
thu	'autumn'	/tʰu/	→	[tʰʊw]		cô	'paternal aunt'	/ko/	→	[kow]

[edit] Diphthongs and triphthongs

In addition to monophthongs, Vietnamese has many diphthongs and triphthongs. Most of these consist of a vowel followed by /j/ or /w/. Below is a chart^[5] listing the diphthongs & triphthongs of general northern speech.

/ɜ/ Diphthongs	/j/ Diphthongs/ Triphthongs	/w/ Diphthongs/ Triphthongs
/iɜ/	/əːj/	/iw/
/ɨɜ/	/ɜj/	/ew/
/uɜ/	/aːj/	/ɛw/
	/aj/	/əːw/
	/ɨj/	/ɜw/
	/uj/	/aːw/
	/oj/	/aw/
	/ɔj/	/ɨw/
	/ɨɜj/	/iɜw/
	/uɜj/	/ɨɜw/

• /j/ never follows front vowels /i, e, ɛ/.
• /w/ never follows rounded vowels /u, o, ɔ/.

[edit] Regional vowel variation

Thompson (1965) says that in Hanoi, words spelled with ưu and ươu are pronounced as /iw, iɜw/, respectively, whereas other dialects in the Tonkin delta pronounce them as /ɨw/ and /ɨɜw/. Hanoi speakers that do pronounce these words with /ɨw/ and /ɨɜw/ are using a spelling pronunciation.

Thompson (1965) also notes that in Hanoi the diphthongs, iê /iɜ/, ươ /ɨɜ/, uô /uɜ/, may be pronounced as /ie, ɨəː, uo/, respectively (as the spelling suggests), but before /k, ŋ/ and in open syllables these are always pronounced /iɜ, ɨɜ, uɜ/.

[edit] Tone

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (May 2008)

Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Tones differ in

• pitch
• length
• contour melody
• intensity
• phonation (with or without accompanying constricted vocal cords)

Unlike many Native American, African, and Chinese languages, Vietnamese tones do not rely solely on pitch contour. Vietnamese often uses instead a register complex (which is a combination of phonation type, pitch, length, vowel quality, etc.). So perhaps a better description would be that Vietnamese is a register language and not a "pure" tonal language.^[6]

In Vietnamese orthography, tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel.

[edit] Six-tone analysis

There is much variation among speakers concerning how tone is realized phonetically. There are differences between varieties of Vietnamese spoken in the major geographic areas (i.e. northern, central, southern) and smaller differences within the major areas (e.g. Hanoi vs. other northern varieties). In addition, there seems to be variation among individuals. More research is needed to determine the remaining details of tone realization and the variation among speakers.

[edit] Northern varieties

The six tones in the Hanoi and other northern varieties are:

Name	Description	Chao Tone Contour	Diacritic	Example
ngang "level"	mid level	˧ (33)	(no mark)	ba 'three'
huyền "hanging"	low falling (breathy)	˨˩ (21) or (31)	`	bà 'lady'
hỏi "asking"	mid falling(-rising), harsh	˧˩˧ (313) or (323) or (31)	̉	bả 'poison'
ngã "tumbling"	mid rising, glottalized	˧ˀ˥ (3ˀ5) or (4ˀ5)	˜	bã 'residue'
sắc "sharp"	mid rising, tense	˧ˀ˥ (3ˀ5)	´	bá 'governor'
nặng "heavy"	mid falling, glottalized, short	˧ˀ˨ʔ (3ˀ2ʔ) or ˧ˀ˩ʔ (3ˀ1ʔ)	̣	bạ 'at random'

Northern Vietnamese (non-Hanoi) tones as uttered by a male speaker in isolation. From Nguyễn & Edmondson (1998)

Hanoi tones as uttered by a female speaker in isolation. From Nguyễn & Edmondson (1998)

Hanoi tones as uttered by a different female speaker in isolation. From Nguyễn & Edmondson (1998)

Ngang tone:

• The ngang tone is level at around the mid level (33) and is produced with modal voice phonation (i.e. with "normal" phonation). Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) describes this as "level"; Nguyễn (1997) describes it as "high (or mid) level".

Huyền tone:

• The huyền tone starts low-mid and falls (21). Some Hanoi speakers start at a somewhat higher point (31). It is sometimes accompanied by breathy voice (or lax) phonation in some speakers, but this is lacking in other speakers: bà = [ʔɓɐ̤ː˨˩] or [ʔɓaː˨˩].^[7] Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) describes this as "grave-lowering"; Nguyễn (1997) describes it as "low falling".

Hỏi tone:

• The hỏi tone starts a mid level and falls. It starts with modal voice phonation, which moves increasingly toward tense voice with accompanying harsh voice (although the harsh voice seems to vary according to speaker). In Hanoi, the tone is mid falling (31). In other northern speakers, the tone is mid falling and then rises back to the mid level (313 or 323). This characteristic gives this tone its traditional description as "dipping". However, the falling-rising contour is most obvious in citation forms or when syllable-final; in other positions and when in fast speech, the rising contour is negligible. The hỏi also is relatively short compared with the other tones, but not as short as the nặng tone. Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) describes this as "smooth-rising"; Nguyễn (1997) describes it as "dipping-rising".

Ngã tone:

• The ngã tone is mid rising (35). Many speakers begin the vowel with modal voice, followed by strong creaky voice starting toward the middle of the vowel, which is then lessening as the end of the syllable is approached. Some speakers with more dramatic glottalization have a glottal stop closure in the middle of the vowel (i.e. as [VʔV]). In Hanoi Vietnamese, the tone starts at a higher pitch (45) than other northern speakers. Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) describes this as "chesty-raised"; Nguyễn (1997) describes it as "creaking-rising".

Sắc tone:

• The sắc tone starts as mid and then rises (35) in much the same way as the ngã tone. It is accompanied by tense voice phonation throughout the duration of the vowel. In some Hanoi speakers, the ngã tone is noticeably higher than the sắc tone, for example: sắc = ˧˦ (34); ngã = ˦ˀ˥ (45). Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) describes this as "acute-angry"; Nguyễn (1997) describes it as "high (or mid) rising".

Nặng tone:

• The nặng tone starts mid or low-mid and rapidly falls in pitch (32 or 21). It starts with tense voice that becomes increasing tense until the vowel ends in a glottal stop closure. This tone is noticeably shorter than the other tones. Alexandre de Rhodes (1651) describes this as "chesty-heavy"; Nguyễn (1997) describes it as "constricted".

[edit] Southern varieties

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (May 2008)

[edit] North-central and Central varieties

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (May 2008)

North-central and Central Vietnamese varieties are fairly similar with respect to tone although within the North-central dialect region there is considerable internal variation.

[edit] Eight-tone analysis

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (May 2008)

• See Pham (2003)

[edit] Syllables and phonotactics

According to Hannas (1997), Quốc Ngữ can represent 6,200 syllables (tones included^[vague] ), but only about 4,500 to 4,800 are used depending on dialect (Quốc Ngữ is designed to accommodate different dialects).^[8]

The Vietnamese syllable structure follows the scheme:

(C₁)(w)V(C₂)+T

where

C1 = initial consonant onset w = bilabial glide /w/ V = vowel nucleus

C2 = final consonant coda T = tone.

In other words, a syllable can optionally have one onset consisting of single consonant or a consonant and the glide /w/ and an optional coda. The vowel nucleus may have an additional glide element.

More explicitly, the syllable types are as follows:

Syllable	Example	Syllable	Example
V		wV
VC		wVC
VC		wVC
CV		CwV
CVC		CwVC
CVC		CwVC

C₁:

Any consonant may occur in as an onset with the following exceptions:

• /p/ does not occur in native Vietnamese words
• /j/ does not occur in Hanoi, but it does occur in HCMC and other varieties (due to sound change)

w:

• /w/ does not occur after labial consonants /ɓ, f, v, m, w/
• /w/ does not occur after /n/ in native Vietnamese words (it occurs in uncommon Sino-Vietnamese borrowings)
• the sequences /hw, kw/ appears in HCMC as [w], excepting spelling pronunciations

V:

The vowel nucleus V may be any of the following 14 monophthongs or diphthongs: /i, ɨ, u, e, əː, o, ɛ, ɜ, ɔ, a, aː, iɜ, ɨɜ, uɜ/.

G:

C₂:

The optional coda C₂ is restricted to labial, coronal, & velar stops /p, t, k/ and nasals /m, n, ŋ/.

T:

Syllables are spoken with an inherent tone contour. All tone contours are possible for open syllables (syllables without consonant codas). If the syllable is closed only 2 contours are possible, that is the sắc and the nặng tone.

[edit] Notes

² 

Below is a table comparing four linguists' different transcriptions of Vietnamese vowels as well as the orthographic representation. Notice that this article is mostly following Han (1966).

comparison of orthography & vowel descriptions

Orthography	Wikipedia	Thompson[9]	Han[10]	Nguyễn[11]	Đoàn[12]
i	i	iː	i	i	i
ê	e	eː	e	e	e
e	ɛ	ɛː	ɛ	a	ɛ
ư	ɨ	ɯː	ɨ	ɯ	ɯ
u	u	uː	u	u	u
ô	o	oː	o	o	o
o	ɔ	ɔː	ɔ	ɔ	ɔ
ơ	əː	ɤː	ɜː	əː	ɤː
â	ɜ	ʌ	ɜ	ə	ɤ
a	aː	æː	ɐː	ɐː	aː
ǎ	a	ɐ	ɐ	ɐ	a

Thompson (1965) says that the vowels [ʌ] (orthographic â) and [ɐ] (orthographic ă) are shorter than all of the other vowels, which is shown here with the length mark [ː] added to the other vowels. His vowels above are only the basic vowel phonemes. Thompson gives a very detailed description of each vowel's various allophonic realizations.

Han (1966) 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).

Another thing to mention about Han's studies is that she uses a rather small number of participants and, additionally, although her participants are native speakers of the Hanoi variety, they all have lived outside of Hanoi for a significant period of their lives (i.e. in France or Ho Chi Minh City).

Nguyễn (1997) has a simpler, more symmetrical description. He says that his work is not a "complete grammar" but rather a "descriptive introduction." So, his chart above is more a phonological vowel chart rather than a phonetic one.

[edit] See also

• Vietnamese alphabet
• Vietnamese language
• List of phonetics topics

[edit] References

1. ^ Thompson (1959) and Thompson (1965)
2. ^ Although there are some words where c and ng occur after orthographic /ɛ/, these words are few and are mostly loanwords or onomatopoeia
3. ^ Thompson (1959) and Thompson (1965)
4. ^ Han (1966)
5. ^ From Nguyễn (1997)
6. ^ Pham (2003:?)
7. ^ For example, Nguyễn & Edmondson (1998) show a male speaker from Nam Định with lax voice and a female speaker from Hanoi with breathy voice for the huyền tone while another male speaker from Hanoi has modal voice for the huyền.
8. ^ Hannas (1997:88)
9. ^ Thompson (1965)
10. ^ Han (1966)
11. ^ Nguyễn (1997)
12. ^ Đoàn (1980)

[edit] Bibliography

• Brunelle, Marc (2003), "Coarticulation effects in northern Vietnamese tones.", Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of Phonetic Sciences 
• Đoàn, Thiện Thuật (1980), Ngữ âm tiếng Việt, Hà Nội: Đại học và Trung học Chuyên nghiệp 
• Đoàn, Thiện Thuật; Nguyễn, Khánh Hà, Phạm, Như Quỳnh. (2003). A Concise Vietnamese Grammar (For Non-Native Speakers). Hà Nội: Thế Giới Publishers, 2001.
• Earle, M. A. (1975). An acoustic study of northern Vietnamese tones. Santa Barbara: Speech Communications Research Laboratory, Inc.
• Ferlus, Michel. (1997). Problemes de la formation du systeme vocalique du vietnamien. Asie Orientale, 26 (1), .
• Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Published version of the author's MA thesis, University of Washington). (Reprinted 1981, Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics).
• Han, Mieko (1966), Vietnamese vowels, Studies in the phonology of Asian languages, 4, Los Angeles: Acoustic Phonetics Research Laboratory: University of Southern California 
• Han, Mieko S. (1968). Complex syllable nuclei in Vietnamese. Studies in the phonology of Asian languages (Vol. 6); U.S. Office of Naval Research. Los Angeles: University of Southern California.
• Han, Mieko S. (1969). Vietnamese tones. Studies in the phonology of Asian languages (Vol. 8). Los Angeles: Acoustic Phonetics Research Laboratory, University of Southern California.
• Han, Mieko S.; & Kim, Kong-On. (1972). Intertonal influences in two-syllable utterances of Vietnamese. Studies in the phonology of Asian languages (Vol. 10). Los Angeles: Acoustic Phonetics Research Laboratory, University of Southern California.
• Han, Mieko S.; & Kim, Kong-On. (1974). Phonetic variation of Vietnamese tones in disyllabic utterances. Journal of Phonetics, 2, 223-232.
• Hannas, William (1997), Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, University of Hawaii Press 
• Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Việt-Nam, 3, 61-68.
• Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1954). De l'origine des tons en vietnamien. Journal Asiatique, 142 (1).
• Haupers, Ralph. (1969). A note on Vietnamese kh and ph. Mon-Khmer Studies, 3, 76.
• Hoàng, Thị Châu. (1989). Tiếng Việt trên các miền đất nước: Phương ngữ học. Hà Nội: Khoa học xã hội.
• Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61(2-3) (2004) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
• Nguyễn, Đăng-Liêm (1970), Vietnamese pronunciation, PALI language texts: Southeast Asia., Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, ISBN 0-87022-462-X 
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1955). Quốc-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1959). Hòa's Vietnamese-English dictionary. Saigon. (Revised as Nguyễn 1966 & 1995).
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1966). Vietnamese-English dictionary. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle Co. (Revised version of Nguyễn 1959).
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1992). Vietnamese phonology and graphemic borrowings from Chinese: The Book of 3,000 Characters revisited. Mon-Khmer Studies, 20, 163-182.
• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (rev. ed.). Lincolnwood, IL.: NTC Pub. Group. (Revised & expanded version of Nguyễn 1966).
• 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 
• Nguyễn, Văn Lợi & Edmondson, Jerold A (1998), "Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies", Mon-Khmer Studies 28: 1-18 
• Pham, Hoa. (2001). A phonetic study of Vietnamese tones: Reconsideration of the register flip-flop rule in reduplication. In C. Féry, A. D. Green, & R. van de Vijver (Eds.), Proceedings of HILP5 (pp. 140-158). Linguistics in Potsdam (No. 12). Potsdam: Universität Potsdam (5th conference of the Holland Institute of Linguistics-Phonology. ISBN 3-935024-27-4.
• Thompson, Laurence (1959), "Saigon phonemics", Language 35(3): 454-476 
• Thompson, Laurence (1967), "The history of Vietnamese final palatals", Language 43(1): 362-371 
• Thompson, Laurence (1965), A Vietnamese reference grammar (1 ed.), Seattle: University of Washington Press. 
• Thurgood, Graham. (2002). Vietnamese and tonogenesis: Revising the model and the analysis. Diachronica, 19 (2), 333-363.

[edit] External links

• Ngữ âm học

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