Vietnamese language

Sounds

: For a more detailed description of the Vietnamese sound system (including IPA phonetic notation), see Vietnamese phonology.

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Vowels

Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels (nguyên âm) (English also has a large vowel inventory). Below is a vowel chart of the Hanoi variety (i.e., other regions of Viet Nam may have different vowel inventories).

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All vowels are unrounded except for u, ô, and o. Vowels â and ? are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Therefore, ? and â are basically pronounced the same except that ? is long while â is short ? the same applies to the low vowels a (long) and ? (short).

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Outside Hanoi, u, ô, o may be back rounded {{IPA|}}, while ?, ?, â, a are back unrounded {{IPA|}}, and i, ê, e, ? are front unrounded {{IPA|}}.

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The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is rather complicated. For example, the vowel i is also often written as y; both may represent , in which case the difference is in the quality of the preceding vowel. For instance, tai "ear" is {{IPA|}}, while tay "hand/arm" is {{IPA|}}.

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In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs (âm ?ôi). Three diphthongs consist of a vowel plus â. These are iâ (spelled ia or iê), uâ (spelled ua or uô), and ?â (spelled ?a or ??). The other diphthongs consist of a vowel plus semivowel. There are two of these semivowels: y and w. Vietnamese has many diphthongs of this type. Furthermore, these semivowels may also follow the first three diphthongs (iâ, uâ, ?â ) resulting in triphthongs.

Related Topics:
Monophthong - Diphthong - Semivowel - Triphthong

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Tones

Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone (thanh or thanh ?i?u). Tones differ in:

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

Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel, however, the n?ng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:

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Consonants

The consonants (ph? âm) of the Hanoi variety are listed below in orthography.

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Note that some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like the voiceless bilabial stop - p), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like the aspirated alveolar stop - th), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (like the palatal stop - ch or tr).

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The consonants of the Ho Chi Minh City variety are slightly different from Hanoi (and other northern regions). For instance, tr and ch represent the same sound in the Hanoi variety, but in Ho Chi Minh City (and other central and southern regions) tr and ch represent different consonant sounds.

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