Vietnamese

 

There is one official language (and pronunciation) in Viet Nam; however, in each of the 58 provinces, pronunciation of consonants and vowels can be different. Most people simplify the conceptualization of pronunciation of Vietnamese to the following three regions:

a) the northern dialect associated with the region surrounding Ha Noi,

b) the central dialect related to Hue, and

c) the southern, Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) or Saigon dialect.

 

Vietnamese has approximately 24 consonants.

The initial consonants of HCMH include:

• plosives /b, t(dental), t(dental/aspirated), d, t(retroflex), c, k/

• fricatives; /f, v, s, z, voiced and voiceless retroflex fricatives, voiced velar fricative, voiceless uvular fricative, h/

• nasals /m, n, palatal nasal, ng/
• liquid /l/

 

Final consonants are limited to either a voiceless deaspirated stop or a nasal: /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/, and /ng/

Not all dialects include the same phonemes. For example,

• Central dialect includes: /dZ,z/

• Northern dialect includes: /v, Z/

 

Vietnamese speakers produce 11 different single vowels. Different authors report different vowel inventories varying across the three major dialects. Vowels are influenced by other vowels in the word, and vowels are also influenced by semi-vowels following another vowel.

 

Vietnamese is a syllabic language that allows consonants in the initial or final position with multiple vowel combinations. Other languages have phonotactic constraints for consonant clusters but the Vietnamese linguistic constraint for consonant clusters is that there are none except for combinations with the semi-vowel /w/. There may be other constraints not yet documented that involve consonant-vowel and multiple vowel combinations.

 

Vietnamese consists of 24 consonants and 11 vowels that can be combined in any of the following possible ways:
/V/, /VV/

/CV/, /CVV/, /CVC/, /CVVC/

/VC/, /VVC/
/wV/, /wVV/, /wVC/, /wVVC/
/CwV/, /CwVV/, /CwVC/, /CwVVC/, where /w/ is a semi-vowel

 

Vietnamese does not have consonant clusters

 

Vietnamese is a tonal language. Differences in the reported number of tones for Vietnamese can be explained by dialectal differences. Most often six tones are identified being represented graphically by markings over or under the vowel of a syllable (Hwa-Froelich, 2007)
There are two words for tones in Vietnamese

DaÂuÙ= writing Thanh = oral tone
There are 6 tones, plus 2 derivative tones relating to plosives.

1. No tone
2. Thanh huyền
3. Thanh Ngã
4. Thanh Hỏi
5. Thanh Sắc
6. Thanh Nặng

+ 2 derivative tones with plosives -p, -t, -k
5’. Thanh Sắc
6’. Thanh Nặng


Tone 3 is rarely used in HCMC, and is difficult for children to pronounce. It is replaced by tone 4.

 

Hello is "Xin chào", and thank you is "Cảm ơn".

 

Sources:

• Dr Ly Kha, Ham Ngoc Thach University, Ho Chi Minh City
• Hwa-Froelich, D. A. (2007). Vietnamese speech acquisition In S. McLeod (Ed.), The international guide to speech acquisition (pp. 580-591). Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning.
• Tang, G., & Barlow, J. (2006). Characteristics of the sound systems of monolingual Vietnamese-speaking children with phonological impairment. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 20(6), 423-445.