Introduction
Vietnamese language is written in Latin script, compiled by the French missionary Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 - 1660) based on earlier works of other Portuguese missionary. The Latin script system became the official Vietnamese writing system in the 20th century, replacing the earlier script in Chinese-like characters. The Vietnamese alphabet resembles that of English with a few letter variations.
Unlike English, Vietnamese is a tonal language. Thus, letters in the alphabet alone are not sufficient to accurately denote the Vietnamese sounds. Additional marks are added to indicate the tones, referred to as "tone marks" in this course. Written words are then simply combinations of letters and tone marks. Thus, to build words, we must start with learning the letters and the tone marks used in Vietnamese.
Pronunciation and Different Accents
While there is only one writing system, the spoken language varies in different regions and across times. The three main regional accents are Northern, Southern, and Central, with many other accents in between. Within the same region, the accent also changes across the generations.
With so many accent variations, reading texts is much easier than the reverse, which is the dictation of speech. The sound clips in this course uses mostly the Northern accent, as it is the least ambiguous. Notherners pronounce all six of the Vietnamese tones distinctively, and there are fewer instances where different spellings are pronounced the same. In the events when native Northerners pronounce certain spellings the same, in the sound clips we will try to distinguish them using a different accent for the purpose of learning to read. Thus, our sound clips are not entirely any accent. If you wish to stay true to a certain accent while taking this course, you can disregard the sound clips and follow the accent of your own or of your tutor.
Inconsistent Rules
Vietnamese is a living language. As we are riding on the waves of potential language reform, we encounter inconsistent information regarding the Vietnamese writing system from different sources. New millennium vocabularies and expressions aside, there are also new rules. The rules that are proposed or forced but not followed by the public cause the most confusion, because they co-exist instead of replacing old rules. In this course, we present the rules most commonly accepted by the public.
