Vietnamese Characters

This lesson will teach you all about the Vietnamese characters in the alphabet! One advantage in learning Vietnamese is that the letters are almost identical to the Latin alphabet, and they also have similar pronunciation, with just a few extra letters. So this lesson will be a cinch to learn if you are already familiar with the English alphabet!

Background Info

The modern Vietnamese alphabet consists of 29 Latin letters in the alphabet, which is known as quoc ngu. These letters are the same as the English alphabet except for the following letters: f, j, w, and z. However, there are 7 altered letters using diacritics: đ, ă, â, ê, ô, ơ, and ư.

What is a diacritic?

A diacritic is a mark, point, or sign attached to a letter to differentiate it from another of similar form, to indicate stress, to give it a particular phonetic value, etc.

The letter đ (not strictly speaking a diacritic) represents an ingressive ‘d’ sound, which means that the breath is not exploded outwards, it is held inwards, so to speak. (The Vietnamese /b/ sound is also ingressive, which gives it a peculiar auditory impression quite different from English /b/).

ơ, and ư are the unrounded versions of o and u respectively. These unrounded vowel sounds are not found in most European languages.

For short vowels, ă represents short a while â represents short ơ.

The letters e and ê represent the distinction between [ɛ] and [e] in IPA symbols (mid-open and mid-close front unrounded vowels respectively). Similarly, o and ô represent the difference between [ɔ] and [o] (mid-open and mid-close back rounded vowels respectively).

Since European languages do not have tones, diacritics were introduced to represent these (a, à, á, ả, ã, ạ). [1]

vietnamese alphabet

Upper case	Lower case	Sample word	Sounds like
A	a	anh	a in California
Ă	ă	ăn	a in hat
Â	â	ấn	u in under
B	b	ba	b in box
C	c	con	c in candle
D	d	dê	y in yoga
Đ	đ	đo	d in dip
E	e	em	e in bend
Ê	ê	êm	a in aim
G	g	ga	g in gone
H	h	hoa	h in hot
I	i	in	e in key
K	k	kịch	k in kiss
L	l	lo	l in loop
M	m	ma	m in miss
N	n	nam	n in not
O	o	ong	o in hot
Ô	ô	ông	o in rope
Ơ	ơ	ơn	u in uh
P	p	pao	p in pot
Q	q	qua	q in quilt
R	r	ra	r in rat
S	s	sao	s in sit
T	t	tan	t in tea, but softer and unaspirated
U	u	u	oo in tool
Ư	ư	ưng	oo in soot but with unrounded lips
V	v	vui	v in vacuum
X	x	xe	s in sit
Y	y	yến	e in me