Accent marks in Vietnamese

The accent mark in Vietnamese is called dấu. Not every word has a “dấu.” There are 5 dấu. They are:

             

Name:        Sắc          Huyền        Hỏi         Ngã           Nặng

Example:   cá          cà chua       cả ngày      cãi             cạ

Listen:   

Meaning:   fish         tomato       all day       argue        to rub against

Interesting fact
One interesting fact is that the names of the marks do have meanings in Vietnamese. For example:

sắc = sharp, iron

(đen) huyền = jet (black)

hỏi = to ask

ngã = to fall

nặng = heavy

That is why in order to indicate that we are talking about accent marks, we use the word “dấu” before those words. For example, we say “dấu sắc,” “dấu huyền,” “dấu hỏi,” “dấu ngã,” and “dấu nặng.”

Side note:

When a word doesn’t have accent mark, we say it has “dấu thanh,” which basically means it is pronounced without intonation. “Dấu thanh” is also known as “không dấu,” which literally means “no mark” (không = no, dấu = mark). “Dấu thanh” is often represented by a horizontal line and counted in the set of Vietnamese accent marks so you may see that some websites mention there are 6 accent marks instead of 5. It’s good to know about the existence of “dấu thanh” but you don’t need to remember it, since there is no “dấu” on the word anyway. Just remember, there are only 5 actual accent marks in Vietnamese.

Where to put the accent marks

On Vowels!

It gets more complicated when it’s complex vowel though. I don’t want to confuse you right now so let’s just know that we place accent marks on vowels only and we will learn the rules as we see them in later lessons.