Quoc Ngu
The Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ or "national script") is the official writing system for the national language of Vietnam. It is based on the Latin alphabet, with some digraphs and the addition of nine special marks or diacritics — four of them to create additional sounds, and the other five to indicate the tone of each word. The many diacritics, often two on the same letter, makes written Vietnamese easily recognizable.
The letters
The Vietnamese alphabet has the following 37 letters (29 single and 8 digraphs), in collating order:
- A/a, Ă/ă, Â/â, B/b, C/c, Ch/ch, D/d, Đ/đ,
E/e, Ê/ê, G/g, Gi/gi, H/h, I/i, K/k, Kh/kh,
L/l, M/m, N/n, Ng/ng, Nh/nh, O/o, Ô/ô,
Ơ/ơ, P/p, Ph/ph, Q/q, R/r, S/s, T/t, Th/th,
Tr/tr, U/u, Ư/ư, V/v, X/x, Y/y
In order to avoid confusion with the "gi" digraph, the letter "g" and the digraph "ng" are written "gh" and "ngh", respectively, when they appear before "i"; and also (for historical reasons) before "e" or "ê". The letters J, W and Z are also used in foreign loan words. The lowercase letter "i" retains its dot even when accented.
Tone markings
Vietnamese is a tonal language, i.e. the meaning of each word depends on the "tone" (basically a specific pitch and 13th century onwards, using Chinese characters (chữ nôm or "southern script"), each of them representing one word. The system was similar to the script used for writing Chinese (chữ nho), but using characters developed in Vietnam.
As early as 1527, Portuguese Christian missionaries in Vietnam began using the Latin alphabet to transcribe the Vietnamese language for teaching and evangelization purposes. These informal efforts led eventually to the development of the present Vietnamese alphabet, largely by the work of French Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes, who worked in the country between 1624 and 1644. Building on previous Portuguese-Vietnamese dictionaries by Gaspar D'Amaral and Duarte da Costa, Rhodes wrote a Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary, which was printed in Rome in 1651, using his spelling system.
In spite of this development, chữ nôm and chữ nho remained in use until the early 20th century, when the French colonial administration made Rhodes's alphabet official. By the late 20th century, quốc ngữ had almost entirely replaced the older ideographic systems.
See also
