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Lesson Transcript

Vietnamese Teachers Answer Your Questions - Lesson #4 - What Alphabet Does Vietnamese Use?

Intro

Michael: What alphabet does Vietnamese use?
Nguyet: And has it changed over time?
Michael: At VietnamesePod101.com, we hear these questions often. In the following situation Bao Bui, a kindergarten student, is studying the alphabet with her mum, Lan Le. She sees an unfamiliar letter and asks,
"What letter is that?"
Bảo Bùi: Đó là chữ gì?
Dialogue
Bảo Bùi: Đó là chữ gì?
Lan Lê: Chữ ô.
Michael: Once more with the English translation.
Bảo Bùi: Đó là chữ gì?
Michael: "What letter is that?"
Lan Lê: Chữ ô.
Michael: "It's ô."

Lesson focus

Michael: The Vietnamese language uses the Latin script and consists of twenty-nine letters. In Vietnamese, their alphabet is called
Nguyet: Quốc ngữ
Michael: which literally means "National Language" or "National Script." Seventeen of the letters in this alphabet are consonants, while the rest are vowels. Out of these twenty-nine letters, seven are modified letters, and out of these seven, only one is used as a consonant, which is the letter
Nguyet: đ
Michael: The one used in the dialogue is the letter
Nguyet: ô
Michael: which is one of the seven modified letters. Keep in mind that, while the Vietnamese alphabet is based on the Roman alphabet, it does not make use of the letters "f, j, w," and "z." Going back to the modified letters, in the Vietnamese alphabet, each of these seven special letters with sound marks—or diacritical marks—come after their equivalent letters that do not have the mark. For instance, the letters
Nguyet: ă
Michael: and
Nguyet: â
Michael: both come after the regular letter
Nguyet: A.
Michael: The same is true with the rest of the special characters. There's an interesting story behind how the Vietnamese alphabet as we now know it came to be, but we'll talk about it later.
[Summary]
Michael: So, for now, you have learned that the Vietnamese alphabet consists of 29 letters, of which 7 were created only for the use of the Vietnamese language.
Expansion
Michael: This time, let's talk about how the marking system in the Vietnamese alphabet works. Vietnamese is a tonal language and has a total of six tones. In writing, tones are represented by tone marks. The first one, which is
Nguyet: Ngang,
Michael: is an unmarked tone. Words with this tone are spoken with no accent, with the pitch ranging from mid to high-mid. Obviously, you don't use any marks or diacritics when writing a word carrying this tone. The next tone is called
Nguyet: sắc
Michael: This is a high-rising tone, which means words carrying it are spoken with a high-rising pitch. This tone uses the acute accent, a forward-slash placed above a vowel. The next one is the
Nguyet: huyền
Michael: This one is a falling tone and uses the grave accent, a backward-slash placed above a vowel. Next, we have
Nguyet: ngã
Michael: This is a high-rising tone, but is also called a broken rising tone. It is represented by a tilde placed above a vowel. The next tone is
Nguyet: hỏi
Michael: This tone denotes a mid-low dropping or dipping pitch. The diacritic used for this tone resembles a question mark without the dot and appears like a hook above the vowels it is placed on. Finally, we have the
Nguyet: nặng
Michael: Unlike the five other tones, the diacritic representing this tone—which is a dot—is placed under the vowel. This tone denotes a heavy falling pitch.
Cultural Insight
Michael: Did you know that the Vietnamese once used two scripts for writing? They used both Chinese characters and another script which was referred to as
Nguyet: Chữ Nôm
Michael: or "Southern characters." This was during the time when Vietnam was still ruled by the Chinese dynasties. The latter writing system was used between the 15th and the 19th centuries, mostly by cultured elites and for popular works only, such as folk songs and popular literature. Vietnamese literature was initially Chinese in terms of structure and vocabulary. A Vietnamese style of writing was developed later, although it was still sprinkled with many Chinese loan words, such as
Nguyet: học trò
Michael: or "student." There were glimpses of an official Vietnamese language finally taking form when the Southern Characters were used for official purposes under the
Nguyet: Hồ
Michael: and
Nguyet: Tây Sơn
Michael: dynasties, but it was only for a brief period.
Finally, during the 17th century, Jesuit missionaries introduced a Latin-based alphabet that would become Vietnam's official script, or, as mentioned earlier,
Nguyet: Quốc ngữ
Michael: The two writing scripts would be used side by side for three centuries. In 1920, the official script currently used in Vietnam would ultimately displace its predecessor.

Outro

Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them!
Nguyet: Tạm biệt!
Michael: See you soon!

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