Talk:Vietnamese alphabet/Archive 1

Archive 1

Free trial

hey. i'm vietnamesse.but i do not know how 2 read vietnamesse.that is the main reason.so could u give me a free trial?????

Done. Your free trial of Wikipedia is active. We'll let you know when the free trial expires. Tempshill 16:04, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Reason for literacy rate

Because the period of education necessary to gain initial literacy is considerably less for the largely phonetic Latin-based script compared to the several years necessary to master the full range of Chinese characters, the adoption of the Vietnamese alphabet also facilitated widespread literacy among Vietnamese speakers—in fact, whereas a majority of Vietnamese in Vietnam could not read or write prior to the 20th century, the population is now almost universally literate.

This paragraph implies pretty strongly that the core reason for the current high literacy rate is the switch to the current alphabet. I assume that at some point Vietnam mandated education? Would be nice if someone knowing the history could add a couple of other reasons that the literacy rate is now high. Tempshill 16:04, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Vietnam, like other countries influenced by Confucianism, placed strong emphasis on education. DHN 19:42, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

And not only is Vietnam a Confucian society, it being ruled by a socialist-communist regime (who always have the highest literacy rates in the developing world, except for China) has also contributed to its high literacy rate of at the very least 95% (references in CIA WorldFactbook). User:Le Anh-Huy.

I disagree with this analysis. I think the improvement in literacy rate in Vietnam is not due to the adoption of the Latin alphabet. It is not logical to use the adoption of the Latin alphabet as an explanation for the fact that literacy in Vietnam improved, because it is not a "fair experiment". The only logical reason for one to attribute the increase in literacy to the adoption of the alphabet would be if another country with a similar socio-economical condition and political system also tried to improve literacy, but failed due to its use of logographic characters. However, in this case this is clearly false. Mainland China, with a literacy that was just as low as that of Vietnam, a similar economical level, and a similar political system (one-party communist state), also managed to improve its literacy dramatically in the last few decades despite the fact that it still used a logographic script. This is in fact proof that the increase in literacy in Vietnam is not due to the adoption of the Latin alphabet, but other political, cultural and socio-economical factors. In addition, if it is really the case that high literacy is correlated with the Latin alphabet and low literacy with the logographic script, then why is it that some of the most literate, advanced and wealthy countries in the world, such as Japan and Taiwan, actually use non-alphabetical scripts? - cyl

Have you read John DeFrancis' The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy? It depends on what you define "success". If you lower the requirement to a thousand characters, then everyone can be "literate". You can also read this doctoral thesis comparing learning efficiencies between Quoc ngu and Traditional Chinese [1]. In Japan, hardly anyone know more than 2000 Hanji characters (they learn about 1900 in school and forget all but about 500) and they had to use Hiragana and Katakana to show the pronunciation of many Hanji characters. Hiragana and Katakana are syllabaries and there are only 46 of each. [2]. DHN 00:05, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

"Success" is determined by many things, in this case let us just focus on the practical and empirical results. The fact remains that Japan and Taiwan which use a non-alphabetical script is much more literate, advanced and wealthy than India which uses an alphabetical script. It simply isn't factually true to correlate high literacy with alphabetical scripts, and low literacy with logographic and logophonetic scripts, neither in the present world nor historically. In ancient times, literacy was simply low everywhere, regardless of which type of script is used. Ancient nations which used logographic and logophonetic scripts such as Ancient China, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Sumer, Assyria and Babylon, Korea and Japan, certainly did not have lower rates of literacy than nations which used alphabetical scripts, such as Europe and India. On the contrary, nations that used logographic and logophonetic scripts, such as China, Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia, created some of the greatest and most splendid civilisations of the ancient world. Most of our modern-day cultural elements are still ultimately derived from nations and civilisations using logographic and logophonetic scripts. A statistically significant correlation simply does not exist in this case.

Philosophically speaking, remember that I have the "default" position. My position is not that the logographic or logophonetic scripts are intrinsically superior to alphabetical scripts, but that both are just as good as each other, and different scripts are probably suited for different languages. It is those who think the alphabetical scripts are intrinsically superior who need to prove that is really the case. I think there is insufficient justification for their claim. Neither from a practical/historical perspective nor from an a priori perspective can they say that the alphabetical script is superior. Why should logographic/logophonetic scripts, with both semantic and phonetic elements, be intrinsically inferior to alphabetical scripts with only phonetic elements? Many modern scholars no longer believe in the idea that alphabetical scripts are intrinsically superior, see for example:

"Furthermore, the concept of "evolved-ness" prevalent in the monogenesis theory is refuted in the modern view. No type of writing system is superior or inferior to another, as the type is often dependent on the language they represent. For example, the syllabary works perfectly fine in Japanese because it can reproduce all Japanese words, but it wouldn't work with English because the English language has a lot of consonant clusters that a syllabary will have trouble to spell out. The pretense that the alphabet is more "efficient" is also flawed. Yes, the number of letters is smaller, but when you read a sentence in English, do you really spell individual letters to form a word? The answer is no. You scan the entire word as if it is a logogram."

http://www.ancientscripts.com/ws_origins.html

Also, the claim that "since most nations in the modern world uses alphabetical scripts, therefore alphabetical scripts must be intrinsically superior" is illogical and unduly linguistically deterministic. Which type of script is most dominant is due to socio-economical and geo-political factors, not the intrinsic "inferiority" or "superiority" of the scripts themselves. Alphabetical scripts are most used simply because nations using alphabets have become politically, economically and culturally dominant. Suppose the Ancient Babylonian empire survived to the present-day and dominated the world, then we would all be typing in the Babylonian logophonetic cuneiform script now.

You might say "well surely the success of nations using alphabetical scripts is proof that alphabetical scripts are intrinsically superior? After all, most dominant nations in the world today uses alphabetical scripts?" However, such a simplistic and superficial linguistically determinist deduction is clearly illogical. In fact, logically speaking it is no better than racism, because a racist might similarly say "well surely the success of non-black peoples is proof that peoples with non-black skin colours are intrinsically superior? After all, most dominant nations in the world today are non-black?" Both smack of 19th century colonial imperialism.

My position, which is the most logical, is that it is simply a matter of pure chance that most dominant nations in the world today also happen to use alphabetical scripts, just as it is a matter of pure chance that most dominant nations in the world today are non-black.

By the way, according to modern statistics, to read on average about 89% of all standard modern Chinese texts one only need to know the 1000 most commonly used logographs. - cyl

The paragraph you removed did not assert that the Latin script is superior to Chinese characters. It simply implies that the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet is more suited for the Vietnamese language than the (rather clumsy) Chinese-character based writing system previously in use. The writing system did not follow Vietnamese syntax and did not have native Vietnamese words (the much less popular chu Nom system attempted to create new characters representing native words but only created more confusion). Documents written by Vietnamese in Classical Chinese now have to be translated like any other Chinese-language document in order to be understood. DHN 00:50, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Documents written in Classical Chinese also have to be translated into modern Chinese to be understood by most Chinese speakers.108.131.83.127 (talk) 01:00, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Reforming the Vietnamese Alphabet

I'm Vietnamese and I was wondering if there are any efforts by Vietnamese linguists to reform the writing systems. It is extremely cumbersome in the computer age with all the markings. Also, it was created by non-Vietnamese.

See the proposal here, which IMO, is horrible. DHN 06:26, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Pinyin comparison

Following the Chữ nôm and Vietnamese language articles, writing Chinese characters has been replaced by writing chữ quốc ngữ. Understanding a Chinese text written in Pinyin (which I compare to the Vietnamese alphabet, as it is some form of romanization/latin script replacer) can be difficult to impossible, as Chinese has many homophones. Does this hold true with the "current" Vietnamese alphabet as well? --Abdull 19:06, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

See the discussion in Sino-Vietnamese#Usage. The problem exists, but is very minor, usually having to do with etymology. DHN 19:08, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi DHN, thank you very much for your help - the link given by you helped me a lot. Unfortunately, it is quite hidden right now (... i didn't expect to find the answer to my question in the Sino-Vietnamese article). Bye, --Abdull 23:55, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. Feel free to add what you learned there to this article. DHN 00:26, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the most important difference is that written Vietnamese is an accurate transcription of spoken Vietnamese while written Chinese is not an accurate transcription of spoken Chinese. Thus a written Vietnamese text is not harder to understand than a conversation between two people (even easier to understand). If written Chinese is the same as spoken Chinese, then how the heck do they talk to each other?! DHN 21:27, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, it is like the case with English "to", "too", and "two". If we were to write English phonetically, the three words would be the same. Then some sentences that are unambiguous in writing, like "I want to fish" and "I want two fish" would be written the same. Except that in Chinese the peoblem is much more pervasive because there are more homonyms. In speech (English or Chinese) there are usually clues of timing and stress that resolve any ambiguities that are not resolved by context ("I want to-FISH" vs "I want TWO fish"); but those clues are not recorded in pinyin. Makes sense? Jorge Stolfi 22:16, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

So is the stress part of Mandarin as well as the tones? I thought that in Chinese, like in Vietnamese, each syllable is distinct and can not affect the other syllables. DHN 06:00, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, Mandarin does not have the conspicuous lexically-signifcant stress like Indo-European. I was thinking of stress/timing clues that could be useful to the listener but too subtle to be recorded in any writing system. Even in the "to fish"/"two fish" example, methinks that such clues would not be noticeable in IPA, or are they? Jorge Stolfi 06:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

As for the other point, Mandarin Chinese has a thing called "tone sandhi" meaning that the tone of one syllable can cause changes in the tone of the following one. But this practically exhausts my knowledge of Chinese... Jorge Stolfi 06:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

There is an article about tone sandhi, thank you for this hint. What I learned in my Chinese class yet (one semester), sentence stress is not so important in Mandarin as it is in European languages. Yet it is used to emphasize a particular meaning. With the words we have already learnt, all tone changes happen with the preceding word (not the following one). For example 不 (not) is usually pronounced bù, but when it is followed by the fourth tone (falling tone), it changes to bú, as in 不要 (do not want): bú yào. Bye, --Abdull 11:31, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Modern Standard Mandarin has made the distinction of character (Zi 字) and word (Ci 词). Characters are always mono-syllable, whereas words are always multi-syllable. Multi-syllable words even existed in Shang Dynasty (1700 BCE to 1100 BCE). For speakers of European languages, characters correlated to stems, and words to words. For example, the word for telephone is Dian Hua (电话), which consists of two characters Dian meaning eletricity and Hua meaning conversation. The European words formation is two stems, tele and phono.

By the way, we have been speaking Chinese for over 6000 years now and have been writting in characters in 4000 years, and we never got confused so no worry, it is very unlikely that we will got confused in the next 2000 years.

Karolus 2006/10/11

Main Vowel?

Hi, I am wondering if anybody can provide more detailed information about the main vowel? I am interested in the placement of the tone mark using the new style which emphasizes linguistic principles. Is there any reference about how to determine which is the main vowel and where to put the tone mark? I heard that the government has some newer official regulation on tone marks based on the linguistic principles. But since I can't read Vietanamese, it is difficult for me to dig thos document out. The reason I want to know more detail is that I would like to see if a similar scheme can be implemented for Taiwanese written in Pe̍h-ōe-jī. I would really apprecaite if anybody can provide some information. Thanks! pektiong 12:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

A good source is [3]. Below is my translation. DHN 16:04, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Translation

Definitions

1. syllable: the basic unit of sound. In Vietnamese, a syllable is always pronounced with a tone, and different syllables are separated by a space. In writing, each syllable is written as a "word". E.g: “hoa hồng bạch” consists of 3 words or 3 syllables.
2. vowel letter: letters used to write vowels, i.e. a, ă, â, e, ê, i, o, ô, ơ, u, ư, y.

   Note: In Vietnamese o and u are also sometimes used as a semivowel for w ...

3. consonant letter: letters used to write consonants, i.e. b, c, d, đ, (f), g, h, (j), k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, (w), x, (z).
4. consonant combination: groups of consonants used as digraph or trigraphs, i.e. ch, gh, kh, ng, ngh, nh, ph, th, tr, gi, qu.

   Note: In the case of gi and qu, u and i are not used to represent any vowel, so they are also considered consonant combinations

Rules

1. With syllables containing only one vowel, the tone mark must be placed on that vowel. Examples: á à, ì ạch, ọ ẹ, ủ rũ, ọp ẹp, ục ịch, hà, lán, giá, giục, quả, quỹ, quỵt... (in the case of gi and qu see definition 4)
2. If the syllable has only one vowel with a quality mark (i.e. Ă, Â, Ê, Ô, Ơ, Ư), then the tone mark must be placed on that vowel (in the case of ƯƠ, the tone mark lies on the Ơ). Examples: ế ẩm, ồ ề, ở rể, ứ ừchiền chiện, cuội, cừu, duệ, duềnh, giội, giường, ngoằng, quyệt, ruỗng, rượu, siết, suyển, tuẫn tiết, tiến triển...
3. With syllables that has two vowels and ends with a consonant or a consonant combination, then the tone mark is placed on the last vowel. Examples: choàng, hoạch, loét, quẹt, suýt, thoát, xoèn xoẹt...
4. With syllables ending with oa, oe, or uy, then the tone mark is placed on the last vowel. Examples: hoạ, hoè, huỷ, loà xoà, loé, suý, thuỷ...
5. With syllables ending with two or three vowels that are not oa, oe, or uy, then the tone mark is placed on the next-to-last vowel. Examples: bài, bảy, chĩa, chịu, của, đào hào, giúi, hoại, mía, ngoáy, ngoáo, quạu, quẹo, ngoẻo, chịu, chĩa...

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no move. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 00:06, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

Vietnamese alphabet → quốc ngữ – The article is about more than the alphabet. It's about the writing system, like Pinyin. All the other versions of this article in other languages use the proper name of the writing system in Vietnamese. It should also retain the proper diacritics because it is discussing a writing system specific to Vietnamese. DHN 20:39, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: Furthermore, the article name "Vietnamese alphabet" is not the most commonly used name (violated WP:NC(CN)). See discussion below. DHN 21:46, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

You just disproved your own point. The primary focus of that guideline is that it should not conflict with other uses. "Vietnamese alphabet" doesn't have any other uses that I'm aware of. The guideline doesn't provide for foreign language uses; obviously there will be more native speakers that use a given foreign word, but this is the English wikipedia. We use Spain, not España, even if more people in the world use the latter. Kafziel 16:16, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Look at the discussion below. Most English-language reference to this topic do not use "Vietnamese alphabet". Furthermore, the primary focus of that guideline is to use "the most common name that does not conflict with other uses". Neither "Vietnamese alphabet" nor "quốc ngữ" conflict with other uses, but "Vietnamese alphabet" is clearly not the most common name in English. DHN 17:29, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It's the only name in English. The other name isn't English at all. The fact that English-speaking linguists use it doesn't make it English. Kafziel 17:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Just like Costa Rica, Beijing, Côte d'Ivoire, Bundestag aren't English. Could you define what constitutes "English"? DHN 17:54, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Those are used by everyone, not just specialists in their fields. The articles for Spain, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, China, and countless other places all use their English names. Using country names is really comparing apples and oranges, though. It might be better to compare this with Greek alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, or Chinese character. Kafziel 18:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

The Google search comparision below shows not just specialists who use it. "Vietnamese alphabet" is outnumbered by a factor of more than 10-to-1. In fact, most pages that uses "Vietnamese alphabet" are talking about the typography or are mirrors of this article (or sourced from here). DHN 18:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

"Quoc ngu" (no diacritics) comes up with over 20,000 hits. I don't have a problem with using an anglicized form of the words, but we should be using the English alphabet. Encyclopedia Britannica does. Kafziel 18:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I prefer "quốc ngữ" over "quoc ngu" because it is more technically correct, an important consideration especially for this article's subject matter. Why be incorrect when it's technically feasible to be correct? DHN 14:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Because I'm looking at my keyboard, and I don't see a "ố" anywhere. That means practically every visitor to that page would get there via redirect. I tried to compromise, but you're just going to argue no matter what. Fine, then. My "oppose" stands. Kafziel 14:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Strong oppose. The proposer has not tried to distinguish between "alphabet" and "writing system" here. Moreover, the Vietnamese term is unknown to nearly anyone who doesn't already speak Vietnamese. Evertype 21:26, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. Violation of Use English guideline. Need better explanation of twhy the scope of the article is incorrect.--Dhartung | Talk 09:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. This is the English Wikipedia. The title should be in English. Kafziel 17:44, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
• Strong support, I can't see the difference of this lemma that is unknown to nearly anyone who doesn't already speak Vietnamese to lemmata like Hán Tự, Chữ nôm, Áo dài or Lục bát (to name just a few) which are undisputed. I go with DHN that quốc ngữ is more correct and most often used (not only in Vietnamese texts) and therefore the article should be moved there. --峻義 Jùnyì 論 23:08, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I can't see this going anywhere. I know what Chu nom [sic] is. The others I never heard of. The Luc bát talks about "Quốc ngữ script" and I'm sorry, there's no such thing. It's the Latin script, and the Vietnamese alphabet is one of the many alphabets made out of the Latin script. There's no reason to prefer "Quốc ngữ". What is "quốc"? What is "ngữ"? Evertype 23:21, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. Oh no no no. Pls use English not Vietnamese in an English language article. – Axman (☏) 12:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
• Vehemently oppose. This is the English-language Wikipedia. Hebrew alphabet is under that, not Alef-bet...need I go on? --Lukobe 18:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

  A more apt comparision is with Hangul, with an English name "Korean alphabet" that hardly anyone uses. DHN 18:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Could anyone who votes with "oppose" here name just one scientific book (in English) about the Vietnamese language written in the past 30, 40 years that doesn't use the technical term quốc ngữ but speaks of a Vietnamese alphabet? It would be much more convincing if you could back up your vote with a stronger argument than that the lemma is not an English one. There are lots and lots of articles in the English wikipedia that have lemmata in other languages (if you don't believe: Luk kreung, Pathet Lao or Zhōngyuán Yīnyùn are just 3 of hundreds of examples). They all have an article name in another language because in their case that is the correct lemma. --峻義 Jùnyì 論 18:58, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Frequency of use in "scientific" books is not a criterion for naming articles at Wikipedia. Using English, however, is. That is an official policy, not just a side note to be ignored, and it doesn't matter how many exceptions you can find. We have all given examples such as Hebrew alphabet, Greek alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, and Arabic alphabet. Those are the precedents for naming articles on writing systems, and Vietnamese is no exception. Kafziel 19:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

The name "Vietnamese alphabet" violates the "most commonly used name" convention. Virtually all academic mention of this topic uses "quoc ngu" or the proper term "quốc ngữ". Compare on Google: "Vietnamese alphabet" 900 hits, "quoc ngu" 21000 hits, quốc ngữ 54000 hits . DHN 21:41, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Just a few books (not written in Vietnamese language) that use the term quốc ngữ but not Vietnamese alphabet (to name just a few, see bibliography of the article for more):

• Lawrence C. Thompson: A Vietnamese Grammar, Seattle: University of Washigton Press, 1965 (this is considered to be the best Vietnamese grammar in a Western language by many linguists)
• Kenneth J. Gregerson: A Study of Middle Vietnamese Phonology, Saigon: Bulletin de la Société des Études Indochinoises, Tome XLIV, N° 2, 1969
• Hoàng Thị Châu: Grundkurs Vietnamesisch, Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopädie, 1982
• Dana Healy: Teach yourself Vietnamese, Lincolnwood, Il: NTC, 1997

In linguist discourse I hardly ever read anything else than this term. So those of you who oppose the move because this is a Vietnamese lemma in the English wikipedia certainly would accuse Thompson or Gregerson not to write in proper English - but outside wikipedia I never heard anything like that (I didn't know before that Univ. of Washigton Press published books in faulty English). Besides: Did anyone take notice of the frequencies of occurence as DHN demonstrated? Are they of no relevance at all? --峻義 Jùnyì 論 14:56, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Are you trying to say that you have never heard anyone call it the Vietnamese alphabet? That's absurd. Every alphabet has its own name in its native language, but in English we just call it the such-and-such alphabet. Kafziel 15:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Not really often, indeed. It's like calling chữ nôm "Vietnamese Kokuji", I did that myself to explain the term to sinologists - but I would never use it as lemma of an article in an encyclopedia because "chữ nôm" is more correct. Same as "Vietnamese alphabet" vs. "quốc ngữ". --峻義 Jùnyì 論 08:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

In the end, I don't really prefer one title over the other. But I'd like to make some observations that probably haven't been brought up yet:

1. This alphabet has been used to write other languages: [4] lists some books that use the modern Vietnamese orthography for minority languages in Vietnam. However, some of Kafziel's examples are also used as the primary orthography for multiple languages, including Hebrew (Yiddish) and Arabic (Urdu, Persian, Kurdish). (Cyrillic is also used in a number of languages, but its article isn't named after a specific language, as in this case.)
2. I've tried comparing the terms using our friend Google. For the term "Vietnamese alphabet", I've constructed this query, which excludes most entries from Wikipedia or its mirrors. About 624 results. For quốc ngữ [5], I've excluded any wiki, as well as any page in Vietnamese: it's a bit difficult to write a webpage in Vietnamese without any of the words với, của, hoặc, or để. I've required the word "with" in the results to ensure virtually only English-language results, and I've allowed the accentless "quoc ngu" and "quocngu", which are also found in English-language pages using the Vietnamese term. This relatively conservative query gets me about 13,300 results.
3. Similar searches in Google Scholar are even more in favor of quốc ngữ: Vietnamese alphabet (21) vs. Quốc ngữ (200, excluding entries containing the name Quoc Ngu Vu).
4. I used to use "Vietnamese alphabet" back when I only knew household Vietnamese. But the term "alphabet" oversimplifies things, and it doesn't do justice to everything that's included in this article. This orthography is not only a variant of the Latin alphabet, but also a romanization (one in common use by native writers). It's a replacement for an older orthography that wasn't based on the Latin alphabet. As counterexamples for Kafziel, Wikipedia uses titles such as Pe̍h-ōe-jī and Bàng-uâ-cê (with full diacritics) for the primary orthographies – romanizations – of minority Chinese languages.
5. Spanish alphabet redirects to Writing system of Spanish, which is divided into two main sections covering the alphabet and orthography. The alphabet section discusses the names and pronunciations of the letters (this article could use a list of letter names), and the orthography section mainly discusses diacritics. Whereas Spanish has a "writing system" article at the English Wikipedia, the more general Vietnamese article is only permitted to have an "alphabet" article, even though it covers the switch from a Chinese-based writing system to a Latin-based writing system, the use of Sino-Vietnamese, and issues surrounding the Vietnamese orthography on computers.
6. I still cringe when seeing the title for Vietnamese Wikipedia's article on Carl Friedrich Gauss spelled with a ß, since the eszett is so distinct from the letters of the Vietnamese alphabet. I'd imagine that a non–Vietnamese speaker would have a similar reaction when seeing such complex characters as ố and ữ in the title of an article in English – English would never have more than one diacritic on a letter, so quốc ngữ might come as a surprise to readers who've never encountered any Vietnamese writing. Then again, that's why the reader would need to read this article.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 02:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Proposed split

Hi. I agree with the remarks above that the current version of this article is about more than the alphabet. One way to sort this out is to move part of it to a new article named Vietnamese orthography / Quốc ngữ. In the new article, I would put:

• Details about sound-to-spelling conversion (currently in the section "Pronunciation");
• Tone marks (since they don't produce new letters);
• The "Structure" section;
• The "Description" section (which is more about the orthography in general, than about the alphabet alone;
• Possibly the historical notes, along with the remark about Sino-Vietnamese words.

As I do not know much about the language, it would be nice if someone more knowledgeable could assist... FilipeS 22:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I think any discussion of the alphabet without mentioning the tones and structure, or conversely, any discussion of the orthography without mentioning the letters, is incomplete. I'd rather see the entire article renamed into Vietnamese orthography. DHN 01:31, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The current version of this article has a table for letter-to-pronunciation conversion, and then another for sound-to-letter conversion. The former shouldn't be here. In principle, it could be moved to Vietnamese phonology, except that that article is already cluttered with I-forget-how-many different vowel lists! Same with the diphthongs. What do you suggest doing with those tables?... FilipeS 16:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

If you feel that they are unfit for this article, I guess you can split it into a different article. Just make sure that the reader has some background information. DHN 15:20, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

After looking at other language alphabet articles, I'm withdrawing the split proposal, although I still feel that the name "Vietnamese orthography" would be more appropriate. FilipeS 21:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Creaky tone(s)

Can it be described which tones are "creaky" I think it's the one with the tilde (~).

They are described with "glottalized", it's the ones with tilde and dot below. David 07:16, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Real-life pronunciations

Can it please be made clear, using real-life pronunciations (rather than symbols most people don't understand) the difference, for example, between the pronunciation of "a," "ă," and "â"? Badagnani 20:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Go to the article Vowel. There's a chart in it with the phonetic symbols. By clicking on each one, you reach their respective articles, most of which have a recording of the vowel in question. FilipeS 21:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Letter c and letter k

What is the difference between letter c and letter k? -✉ Hello World! 03:33, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

K is never found at the end of a syllable. As far as I know, when used in the beginning of a word for the /k/ sound, k is used in front of e, ê, i, and y while c is used in front of all other vowels. K can be also used in the digraph kh, while c can be used in the digraph ch. I think there weren't much difference about them in the beginning either (革命, now written as "cách mạng", was written as "kách mệnh" in the title of one of Ho Chi Minh's early works). I guess nowadays whether a word with a /k/ sound begins with a k or a c is a historical matter. DHN 08:08, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Letter k and letter q

What is the difference between letter k and letter q?--Steven X (talk) 09:13, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Q is seldom (or never) used by itself. "Qu" is usually used to represent the "kw" or "w" sound. DHN (talk) 17:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Use for other languages

I've come across linguistic articles and Wikipedia articles (such as Hmong language) that mention adaptations of the Vietnamese alphabet for minority languages in Vietnam. Though this article currently covers the alphabet's use for Vietnamese in particular, it would be nice if there were a more explicit explanation here. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:08, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

"Y" and "E"?

My father was born and raised in Vietnam (although he is of Cantonese descent). He told me that My Tho is pronounced "Me Tho" (as in, to rhyme with "be" or "free" in English). Does this also apply to other words, like would "Ky La" be "Key La"? Or is it only for certain words? I am not familiar with any Southeast Asian languages, just East Asian. ★Dasani★ 02:22, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

That's my understanding of it and the article supports your father. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:31, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

When used as a vowel, the letter "y" is exactly the same as the letter "i". In fact, in modern textbooks, the trend is to replace all vowel uses of "y" with "i". DHN (talk) 06:43, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

pronunciation of ieu

It's unclear to me how the name Triệu is pronounced. There are no triphthongs listed for "ieu." Does that mean this is a bisyllabic word? Wakablogger2 (talk) 22:14, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there is a triphthong listed for "iêu". Check again. DHN (talk) 04:35, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! I searched without the diacritic, thinking that would be the easier way :) Wakablogger2 (talk) 05:48, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

"Ph" and (lack of) "F"?

As far as I can tell, "f" has never been used in quoc ngu, and /f/ has always been written as "ph". Does anyone have any idea why?
Right from the get-go, in Alexandre de Rhodes' 1651 dictionary, the section for the letter "F", p251 [6] is empty except for the note:
Omnia que conscribi possent per f. conscribentur cum ph. aptius ad pronunciandum hoc idioma.
...namely...
Everything that could have been written as "f", shall be written as "ph", more befitting for pronouncing this language.
Alexandre de Rhodes was apparently quite happy assigning Latin letters to Vietnamese sounds which were quite unlike the usual values of those Latin letters-- so I can't imagine that the (nonexistent) difference between normal Latin values of "f" and "ph" would compel him to decide that Vietnamese /f/ and Latin "f" would be too suddenly bafflingly remote a correspondence, and that "ph" would make it all better.
Does anyone have any idea what on Earth is going on?
(And I wonder: has anyone writing in quoc ngu ever just started using "f" instead of "ph"... and does it makes people's heads explode?) Sean M. Burke (talk) 13:13, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

To answer your second question, yes, "f" is a very common shorthand for "ph" in Vietnamese, especially in notetaking. DHN (talk) 22:30, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

It's possible that it was formerly an aspirated [p], though this is just wild speculation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 22:49, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Contradiction with Nasal release

On this page, we write that 'CH' is "Pronounced as [t̚] in the final position." In Nasal release (and Unreleased stop) we write: "...Vietnamese..., which are generally described as having unreleased final stops, actually have a short nasal release in such cases — Preceding unsigned comment added by Njaard (talk • contribs) 09:46, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Tai viet

Unicode has script encoded called "Tai Viet" (Scripts_in_Unicode). Can someone say what the link is with the Vietnamese alphabet, or anything else? Now it is a red link in {{Unicode navigation}}. -DePiep (talk) 10:17, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

See [7]. AFAIK it's not related to the Vietnamese alphabet. DHN (talk) 21:52, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll link to Tai languages. -DePiep (talk) 22:59, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Tai Dam language is more specific. -DePiep (talk) 23:18, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Ambiguity

Why are the syllables “gia” and “giu” ambiguous? --84.61.155.241 (talk) 09:53, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

How so? DHN (talk) 16:40, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The “i” in the syllables “gia” and “giu” can be considered part of either the consonant or the vowel. --84.61.155.241 (talk) 20:09, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

No, "gi" is a digraph that is always part of the consonant. If you have an "i" immediately after the "g" sound, a silent "h" will be inserted between them, for example: ghi, ghiền. The same is also done for "ng" (the letter "h" is added to separate between the "g" and "i"). In your examples, if you want to use the "i" as part of the vowel nucleus, you'd have to write "ghia" and "ghiu" (both nonsensical). DHN (talk) 22:27, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not the OP, but isn't there still an ambiguity? How do you distinguish between the consonant "gi" followed by the monophthong "a" (in IPA, [za:]) and the consonant "gi" followed by the diphthong "ia" (in IPA, [ziə])? Or between "gi + u" ([zu]) and "gi + iu" ([ziw])? Do you have to spell the syllables with the diphthongs giia and giiu? Pais (talk) 14:21, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Do such syllables exist in (standard) Vietnamese? If not, then there is no ambiguity. Is there a list of syllables anywhere, so we can find out? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:55, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Wiktionary gives only giã. Does the fact that the tone mark is over the a prove it's the monophthong? If it were the diphthong, would it have to be gĩa? Or wait, the article says of the diphthong [iə], "The i changes to y at the beginning of words or after an orthographic vowel", so maybe [ziə] would be spelled giya. I think we need someone who actually knows Vietnamese... Pais (talk) 16:10, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Words such as "giia" or "giya" are not legal in Vietnamese. If you have a "z" consonant followed by "ia", you'd use the letter "d" (which is used more often for that sound) and not the digraph "gi". It's very rare in Vietnamese to see double vowels - in fact, the only word I know that has a repeated vowel is "xoong" ("cooking pan"), which is borrowed from French. DHN (talk) 16:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, so [za:] (Southern [ja:]) is spelled either gia (giã) or da (da, dạ, dã), while [ziə] is spelled only dia (dĩa), is that right? The Wiktionary entries giã and dĩa suggest I was right that the position of the tone mark also lets you know whether you've got a monophthong or a diphthong. Pais (talk) 17:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

AFAIK that's right. Regarding the position of tone marks on diphthongs, see #Tone marks. DHN (talk) 17:51, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Imposed

We are told that the French government "imposed" the Roman alphabet on the Vietnamese. I am not sure that force was ever used. The majority were illiterate in the 19th. century and could not read the Chinese script, anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.175.163 (talk) 10:11, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

In ref. 2, Pamela uses the word "instituted", not "imposed". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.175.163 (talk) 10:19, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Criticism of the vietnamese alphabet

The vietnamese alphabet and the act of typesetting it has been described as a "printer's nightmare".

http://books.google.com/books?id=HMQ5dhHMkasC&pg=PA123&dq=vietnamese+alphabet+printer's+nightmare&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oP6nUMy3IOXV0QGq5YGgBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=vietnamese%20alphabet%20printer's%20nightmare&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?ei=oP6nUMy3IOXV0QGq5YGgBA&id=SVRiAAAAMAAJ&dq=vietnamese+alphabet+printer%27s+nightmare&q=printer%27s+nightmare#search_anchor 94

http://books.google.com/books?ei=oP6nUMy3IOXV0QGq5YGgBA&id=kXxkAAAAMAAJ&dq=vietnamese+alphabet+printer%27s+nightmare&q=typesetting+nightmare#search_anchor 20 typesetting

Jerezembel (talk) 21:22, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

It's not perfect and there have been various attempts to modify it. DHN (talk) 20:09, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Anyway (just as with Arabic), the "nightmare" is now greatly diminished by the rise of modern character set standards and layout software. The problems with "difficult" scripts were most severe during the first waves of mechanization and computerization (typewriters, basic linotype, computers with 7- or 8-bit character sets, etc.). In 2014, it's probably too late to use technology as a reason for reform... AnonMoos (talk) 01:13, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Missing information on spellings like "oa" (in hoa) or "uyê" (in nguyen).

Words like "hoa" and "nguyên" aren't covered by this article. Spellings like "oa" and "uyê" can be considered diphthongs/triphthongs (in which case they're missing from this article) or alternatively they can be considered a /w/ onglide (spelt as "o" or "u") followed by one of the vowels/diphthongs already listed in this article.

Either way, something is missing from this article. It either needs information on the spelling of /w/ as "o" or "u", or else the list of diphthongs/triphthongs needs to be augmented with spellings like oa, oai, and uyê.

24.114.229.233 (talk) 21:18, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Your two year-old dreams have been answered. Mijcon (talk) 21:28, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Perfectly phonemic?

"quốc ngữ is an exact phonemic transcription of the spoken language"

From my experience of languages this seems unlikely to be true, for two reasons. 1. There are (at least) northern, central and southern dialects/accents of Vietnamese, and a particular spelling is unlikely to suit each dialect. 2. Pronunciation changes over time, while spelling usually does not. This might not affect many words, but it is likely to affect some. Dadge (talk) 22:17, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I came to this talk page over the same issue. It might have been true for one particular spoken dialect a century or two ago, but does not seem to be true for most forms of spoken Vietnamese today... AnonMoos (talk) 00:57, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

"Most importantly, since quốc ngữ is an exact phonemic transcription of the spoken language, its understandability is as high or higher than a normal conversation." I agree. From a linguistics standpoint, the whole statement is just poor. Not just the part that implies a 1:1 ratio of phonemes and graphs, but also the part about intelligibility. I would be shocked to see any written form of a language that has "higher understandability" than its spoken form in a given conversational context. Actually, strike that...if they were still using hanzi, probably some homophones would be unambiguous because of two distinct characters! But on the whole, spoken language - within a context and amplified by gesture, expression and other clues is much more expressive than a written form. 50.248.15.235 (talk) 00:41, 24 September 2014 (UTC)SoFlaTom

Ancient Vietnamese script

A Vietnamese linguist decoded an ancient prehistorical Vietnamese script called koah Da. Can this be mentioned here? Can a senior editor in this project please advise? thank you- Sammycat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samsamcat (talk • contribs) 09:22, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

This page is for Latinized Vietnamese orthography... AnonMoos (talk) 01:19, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Computer support

The information of keyboard layout in Vietnam is not totally correct. This type of keyboard supports VNI input method, which is popular in the South of Vietnam, while in the North people mostly use Telex input method. However, in recent years, with the spread of modern smartphone, which only support Telex input method, lots of Vietnamese tend to choose Telex over VNI. Therefore, most current keyboards in Vietnam have the same layout as QWERTY keyboard. Quych (talk) 00:10, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Prescriptive vs Descriptive Analysis of Pronunciation

After reading through the Pronunciation section, I'm thoroughly convinced that it was written from a prescriptive perspective (and quite wordy at that). This is apparent considering the 16 different rules listed for when to use ⟨y⟩ or ⟨i⟩.

I am thinking about attempting to rewrite this section from a more descriptive perspective. This may include reducing dependency on phones and focusing more on phonemes. Instead of specifying the cases where a vowel "changes" because it follows or precedes certain sounds, perhaps we should simplify these countless cases into a simple diphthong analysis (rising vs falling, reducing the weak vowel, etc.) In addition, the y/i distinction may be more understandable if speaking is presumed to have preceded writing (which it clearly has). Joining these themes together, ⟨y⟩ clearly cannot be a weak vowel whereas ⟨i⟩ can. Mijcon (talk)

Sino-Vietnamese and quốc ngữ

Vietnamese is not an East Asian language, so it's wrong to use the term "as in other East Asian languages". --147.142.185.230 (talk) 15:37, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Vietnamese originates in and is primarily spoken in (South) East Asia, and has been very much influenced by other East Asian languages (like Chinese). What could be more East Asian? MuDavid (talk) 01:04, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

First of all, linguistically speaking, a language family such as "East Asian languages" does not exist. Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese are not related to each together. Borrowing words from other languages doesn't change that, neither does sharing the same writing system at some point. Mongolian didn't become related to Slavic languages by adopting the Cyrillic script. Can you explain what you mean by "very much influenced by other East Asian languages (like Chinese)"? Which other countries do you consider to be part of East Asia? Because southern Chinese varieties are possibly the only ones to have directly influenced Vietnamese vocabulary. Vietnam is technically not part of East Asia but of Southeast Asia and a statement grouping languages by geography has no value in general. How would you define a European language with isolates like Basque? This is about linguistic influences, not about cultural ones. --2.245.201.14 (talk) 20:29, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Nobody is saying "East Asian Languages" are a language family. "East Asian Languages" are the languages of East Asia. This section explains that Vietnam can be included in East Asia. Grouping languages by geography does have value when speaking about influences between languages, because languages often influence each other by geography. MuDavid (talk) 07:55, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

K before U

K comes before U in the city Pleiku. THis does not make any sense. Please give me an explanation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C2:4E00:7:84CF:24F0:FE72:57FF (talk) 21:35, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

"Pleiku" is considered a "foreign" word and does not follow Vietnamese orthography. The proper Vietnamese-language orthography for it would be Pờ-lây-cu. You can also see this in "Hồng Kông". DHN (talk) 22:52, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 December 2020

Tone mark section: It's not "Ngang or Bằng". "Bằng" (平) is a poetry term for both "ngang" and "huyền". The rest are called "trắc" (仄). Mazamadao (talk) 08:01, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: The page's protection level has changed since this request was placed. You should now be able to edit the page yourself. If you still seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. MadGuy7023 (talk) 14:01, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Name and etymology

I read somewhere several years ago that "Quốc ngữ" was originally an abbreviation for "chữ La tinh phiên âm tiêng quốc ngữ", searching it myself doesn't find me much results. As the term "Quốc ngữ" appears to have been used for the Latin version of Vietnamese even when Traditional Chinese characters were the main script for the Vietnamese language, is there an etymology that can be added to this page? --Donald Trung (talk) 21:54, 26 July 2021 (UTC)