How to pronounce Vietnamese words
This post will show you how to pronounce Vietnamese words. Once you know how to pronounce the way that Vietnamese people pronounce words, you can pronounce any Vietnamese word even though you may not know what it means.
Don’t remember how to pronounce Vietnamese letters? Review here.
Table of Contents
- Words that have one vowel
- Words that have more than one vowel
- Words ending with consonant
- Some tricky yet common combinations
Words that have one vowel
When I was in elementary school, we learned to pronounce the vowel(s) first, the consonant then the combination and the combination with accent marks.
For example, we pronounce the word “bà” as follows:
a (vowel)
b (consonant)
ba
huyền (accent marks)
bà
Bà means grandmother or old woman.
Words that have more than one vowel
You still pronounce the vowels first. Start with the first vowel from the left all the way to the last vowel then consonant, combination and combination with accent marks.
For example: “bưu”
ư
u
ưu
b
bưu
Words ending with consonant
If a word ends with a consonant, you still start with the first vowel, work toward the last vowel then pronounce the ending consonant, combination vowel + ending consonant, the first consonant, the combination and combination with accent marks.
There are only few consonants that can stay at the end of a word. They are: c, m, n, p, t, y and ng.
For example: “điện”
i
ê
n
iên
đ
điên
nặng (accent marks)
điện
Bưu điện means post office.
Let’s try another example: “ông”
ô
ng
ông
Ông means grandfather or old man.
Some tricky yet common combinations
You may see some tricky yet common combinations like: – iêt, – uyêt or uyt
You will pronounce according to the order that you learned above. However, even when I was little, I wasn’t able to come up with the sound when I combined the letters. When I asked an adult, I was told to just memorize the sound as there wasn’t many tricky combinations.
“biết”
i
ê
t
iêt
biêt
biết
Biết means know.
“Tuyết”
u
y
ê
t
uyêt
t
tuyết
Tuyết means snow.
“Buýt”
u
y
t
uyt
b
buýt
Xe buýt means bus.
Now I hope you will be able to pronounce all Vietnamese words using the order you learned.
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