Vietnamese language

Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, less commonly tiếng Việt Nam or Việt ngữ), formerly known as Annamite, is the national and official language of Vietnam (Việt Nam). It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (người Việt or người Kinh), who constitute about 87% of Vietnam's population and of about two million Vietnamese emigrants, including a significant number of Vietnamese Americans. It is also spoken as a second language by Vietnam's minority population. Although it contains many vocabulary borrowings from Chinese and was originally written using Chinese characters, it is considered by linguists to be one of the Austroasiatic languages, of which it has the most speakers (it has 10 times the number of speakers as the next most-spoken language, the Khmer language). Vietnamese currently uses the Latin alphabet (with many modifications) for writing.

Classification

Vietnamese is part of the Viet-Muong grouping of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family, a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda languages, spoken in northeastern India, and others in southern China.

More broadly, as part of the Austroasiatic language family, Vietnamese is also considered part of the Austric superfamily (which also includes the Austronesian languages such as Malay, Cham, Malagasy, Maori and Hawai'ian), although the Austric superfamily grouping itself is disputed.

History

It seems likely that in the distant past Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund—with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the philologically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia—for example, Thai (one of the Tai-Kadai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.

The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong delta in the vicinity of present-day Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Indic and Malayo-Polynesian languages at first, until Chinese came to predominate politically toward the middle of the first millenium C.E.

With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Việt (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millenium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (see Chu nom) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (see kanji), Korea and other countries in the Chinese cultural sphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in chữ nôm, most notably Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").

As contact with the West grew, the quốc ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as đầm (dame), ga (train station), and va-li (valise). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.

Geographic distribution

According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken in Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, United Kingdom, USA, and Vanuatu.

Official status

Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam.

Dialects

There are various mutually intelligible dialects (as intelligible as the dialects of English found in the United States), the main three being:

These dialects differ slightly in tone, although the Hué dialect is more markedly different from the others. The hỏi and ngã tones are more distinct in the northern than in the southern dialect. As the capital is in Hanoi, the standard spelling of words is based on the Hanoi dialect.

Sounds

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

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).

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

The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is rather complicated. For example, the vowel i is also often written as y.

In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs (âm đôi). Three diphthongs consist of a vowel plus â. These are iâ (spelled ia or iê), uâ (spelled ua or uô), and ưâ (spelled ưa or ươ). 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, ưâ ) resulting in triphthongs.

Tones

Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone (thanh or thanh điệu). Tones differ in

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 nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:

Consonants

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

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).

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.

Grammar

Vietnamese, like many languages in southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. This leads to Vietnamese having very little morphology (i.e. it does not have very many things found in well-known European languages like prefixes and suffixes or verb conjugation), although it does have morphological processes like reduplication and compound-formation. As a result, Vietnamese uses many syntactic constructions to indicate things that European languages indicate through morphology.

Vietnamese is often erroneously considered to be a "monosyllabic" language. It is true that Vietnamese has many words that consist of only one syllable; however, most words are indeed multi-syllabic.

Vietnamese conforms to the Subject Verb Object sentence order.

Inflection

Vietnamese does not employ inflection, as it is mostly an analytic language (although reduplication is abundantly found). Past tense is indicated by adding the word đã, while plurals are indicated with những and các.

Classifiers

Vietnamese extensively uses a system of classifiers to indicate word classes of nouns. They are as common as articless used in European languages. Among the most common classifiers are:

cái : used for most inanimate objects;

con: usually for animals, but can be used to described some inanimate objects that have animal characteristics (con dao = knife)

bài: used for compositions like songs, drawings, poems, essays, etc.

bộ: set

cây: used for stick-like objects (plants, guns, canes, etc.)

chiếc: objects that contain people (chairs, cars, ships, shirts, NOT buildings)

tòa: buildings

quả/trái: used for globular objects (the Earth, fruits)

quyển/cuốn: used for book-like objects (books, journals, etc.)

tờ: sheets and other thin objects made of paper (newspaper, paper, calendar etc.)

việc: an event or an ongoing process

Pronouns

Vietnamese pronouns are more accurately forms of address. Its concept is different than in European languages, so its forms of address don't neatly fall into the grammatical person classifications created by European linguists. For example, the same word can be used as a first-, second-, or third-person pronoun, depending on the speaker and the audience. The sentence:

: Ông đi về nhà.
: Grandfather go return home.

can be translated as:

I (your grandfather) go home.

You (old man/my grandfather) go home.

He (the old man) goes home.

The most common forms of address are kinship terms. Most of them were inherited from Chinese, but have acquired the additional grammatical function of being pronouns over the years. When addressing an audience, the speaker must carefully assess the social relationship between him/her and the audience, difference in age, and sex of the audience to choose an appropriate form of address. The following are some kinship terms of address that can be used in the second-person sense (you). They can also be used in the first-person sense (I), but the usage is limited to the literal meaning, unless marked by (S):

Ông: grandfather, used as a term of respect for an old man

Bà: grandmother, used as a term of respect for an old (usually married) woman

Cô: father's sister, used to address a younger woman or a woman as old as one's father.

Chú: father's younger brother, used to address a younger man or a man slightly younger than one's father.

Bác: father's older brother, used to address a man slightly older than one's father.

Anh: older brother, for a slightly older man, or for the man in a romantic relationship. (S)

Chị: older sister, for a slightly older woman. (S)

Em: younger sibling, for a slightly younger person, or for the woman in a romantic relationship. (S)

Other pronouns in use for the most part conform to the European idea of grammatical person. Some are even gender-neutral and relationship-neutral:

Tôi: literally servant, I

Hắn: pejorative he

Ông ta/Ông ấy: he (see above)

Bà ta/Bà ấy: she (see above)

Cô ta/Cô ấy: she (see above)

Anh ta/Anh ấy: he (see above)

Họ: they

Nó: it (also he or she, when referring to a subordinate)

Chúng ta: we (including audience)

Chúng tôi: formal I, we (excluding audience)

Chúng nó: they (pejorative)

Bả: colloquial, she

Mày: you singular (to subordinates)

Quý vị: you (formal)

Bạn: friend, you

Reduplication

Reduplication (từ láy) is found abundantly in Vietnamese. They are formed by repeating a part of a word to form new words, altering the meaning of the original word. Its effect is to sometimes either increase or decrease the intensity of the adjective, and is often used as a literary device (like alliteration) in poetry and other compositions, as well as in everyday speech.

Examples of reduplication increasing intensity:

đau → đau điếng: hurt → hurt like hell
mạnh → mạnh mẽ: strong → very strong
rực → rực rỡ: flaring → blazing
Examples of reduplication decreasing intensity:
nhẹ → nhè nhẹ: soft → soft (less)
xinh → xinh xinh: pretty → cute
đỏ → đo đỏ: red → somewhat red
xanh → xanh xanh: blue/green → somewhat blue/green

A type of assimilation known as tonal harmony is involved in Vietnamese reduplication.

Vocabulary

As a result of a thousand years of Chinese domination, much of Vietnamese vocabulary relating to science and politics are derived from Chinese. As much as 70% of the vocabulary have Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with the Chinese borrowings. Reduplication is a regular part of the language that usually denotes intensity. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese has many loan words borrowed from the French language.

Writing system

Presently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ or "national script"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a 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 earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar de Amaral and Antoine de Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the (non-Christian) public. Following the occupation of the French in the 19th century, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the late 20th century virtually all writings were done in quốc ngữ.

Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954-1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect which has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects. (Nguyễn 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present.

Prior to French occupation, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:

the standard ideographic Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 字儒): used to write Literary Chinese

a complicated variant form known 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

The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and chữ nôm is near-extinct.

Computer support

Unicode contains all characters that are necessary to write Vietnamese. There are also a number of codepages designed for representing Vietnamese texts, such as VISCII or CP1258.

Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese is often typed using the VIQR convention.

Examples

This text is from the first six lines of Truyện Kiều, an epic poem by the celebrated poet Nguyễn Du, 阮攸 (1765-1820). It was originally written in Nôm (titled 金雲翹), and is widely taught in Vietnam today.

Trăm năm trong cõi người ta,
:Chữ tài chữ mệnh khéo là ghét nhau.
:Trải qua một cuộc bể dâu,
:Những điều trông thấy mà đau đớn lòng.
:Lạ gì bỉ sắc tư phong,
:Trời xanh quen thói má hồng đánh ghen.

The 224 first verses (in Vietnamese) (to see the next verses: click on câu 225 - 416 etc.)

(Literal) English translation

:A hundred years – in this life span on earth
:talent and destiny are apt to feud.
:You must go through an event in which the sea becomes mulberry fields [bể-dâu]
:and watch such things as make you sick at heart.
:Is it strange that who is rich in this is poor in that?
:Blue Heaven’s wont to strike rosy cheeks from spite.