Vietnamese Alphabet
Just like English, Vietnamese also has its alphabet (or bảng chữ cái). All Vietnamese words consists of letters from bảng chữ cái and sometimes with tone marks (known simply as dấu = mark).
Vietnamese alphabet is the most important and basic lesson but is often skipped by many beginner language learners. If you’re learning Vietnamese step by step, check out our Learn Vietnamese: The Complete Guide (From Beginner to Advanced).
It is not difficult to memorize bảng chữ cái if you already know English alphabet. Now let’s take a look at the Vietnamese alphabet.
Most letters are similar to English letters except the seven colored letters: ă, â, đ, ê, ô, ơ, ư. But they aren’t totally unrelated to the rest. Ă, Â are derivatives of A; Đ is derivative of D; Ô, Ơ are derivatives of O and Ư is derivative of U.
Pronunciation:
ă as in hat
â as in cut
c as in can but without blowing air out of your mouth. Hold a paper in front of your mouth as you speak. The paper should stand still as you pronounce the c (/k/) sound.
d as in you
đ as in the
e as in pen
ê as in hey
g as in get (“gh” is pronounced the same way as “g” but when you use “g” or “gh” followed by vowels, “gh” is used in front of “e”, “ê” and “i”, while “g” is used in front of other vowels)
h as in home
i as in tea
k is pronounced similar to c. However, combinations such as ch and kh are pronounced differently. It will be discussed below.
l as in lend
m as in mother
n as in no
o as in saw
ô as in coat
ơ as in fur
p as in map
q as in queen. However, q never stands alone. It always stands with u to form qu combination, which is pronounced similar to win.
r as in rain
s as in sheep
t as in tea without blowing air out of your mouth. Once again, hold a paper in front of your mouth as you speak. The paper should stay still.
u as in who
ư as in loom
v as in van
x as in sun
y is pronounced similar to i. To differentiate, i is called the “short i” (“i ngắn“) and y is called the “long i” (“i dài“).
Some common combined consonant forms are:
gi, qu, gh, th, ph, ch, kh, ng, ngh, nh, tr
gi is pronounced like “z” in English.
qu, gh are discussed above.
th as in think without blowing air out of your mouth. Once again, hold a paper in front of your mouth as you speak. The paper should stay still.
ph as in fun
ch as in chain without blowing air out of your mouth. Once again, hold a paper in front of your mouth as you speak. The paper should stay still.
kh
ng (“ngh” is pronounced the same way as “ng”. The only difference is that when you use “ng” or “ngh” followed by vowels, you use “ngh” in front of “e”, “ê” and “i” vowels and use “ng” in front of other vowels. For example: It’s “nghe” and not “nge”, and it’s “ngà” and not “nghà”)
nh
tr
When pronouncing the letter by itself, if it’s a consonant, you add “ờ” after the letter to pronounce the letter, except for k you pronounce as “ca“‘ to distinguish with “cờ” (c). For example: b, c, d are pronounced as bờ, cờ, dờ.
Now let’s hear how they sound:
Alphabet only
Combined consonants (in the above order from th to tr)
It may be a lot to remember now, but once you have memorized it, it will save you a lot of time as you advance in your Vietnamese learning journey.
Vietnamese Keyboard – How to type Vietnamese
You will need Vietnamese keyboard. I’ve been using Unikey and it still works just fine. You can download it for free at https://www.unikey.org/download.html. After you install and run it, you will see this
VNI
You will want to change the options if they are not already Unicode and VNI. After that, click on Đóng (Close) to close the window.
Now that you have the keyboard, how do you type? Simply follow these rules:
Telex
Another popular typing style is Telex. To use Telex, from the above window, at Kiểu gõ, instead of VNI, choose Telex. Here are the rules for Telex:
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).
