Tone marks in Vietnamese
The tone mark in Vietnamese is called dấu. Tone marks are the second most important Vietnamese lesson after the Vietnamese alphabet. Vietnamese is phonetic so mastering the Vietnamese alphabet and the tone marks can help you pronounce the word correctly just by seeing it, even if you’ve never learned it before.
If you’re learning Vietnamese step by step, check out our guide.
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 tone 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 tone 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 tone marks so you may see that some websites mention there are 6 tone 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 tone marks in Vietnamese.
Where to put the tone 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 tone marks on vowels only and we will learn the rules as we see them in later lessons.
This lesson covers one small but important part of Vietnamese.
To learn more about Vietnamese language, visit our Learn Vietnamese: The Complete Guide (From Beginner to Advanced).
