DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 125 305 PI 007 896

TITLE A Brief Look at the Vietnamese : Sounds and Spellings. General Information Series, No. 6. Indochinese Refugee Education Guides.. INSTITUTION Center for Applied Linguistics, Arlington, Va. PUB DATE [76] NOTE 16p.; For related documents, see FL 007 890-891 and 007 895-899

EDRS PRICE MF-$0.83 HC-$1.67 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS ; ; Indochinese; Language Patterns; Native Speakers; Oral Communication; Orthographic Symbols; *; *; *Pronunciation; Punctuation; Refugees; Second language Learning; *Spelling; ; *Vietnamese; ; Written Language

ABSTRACT This short description of the sound and spelling systems of the is intended for the sponsor, teacher or friend (of Vietnamese refugees) who may have difficulty in

. pronouncing Vietnamese names, handwriting, or using a Vietnamese-English dictionary or phrasebook. Focusing primarily on the Southern dialect of Vietnamese, the guide discusses such areas as structure, consonants, vowels, tones,punctuation, handwriting, and the Vietnamese . (Authbr/DE)

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GENERAL INFORMATION SERIES:A Brief Look at the Vietnamese Language: Sounds and Spellings

The purpose of this bulletin is to give a shortdescriklon of the sound and spelling systems of the Vietnamese language. The information pre- sented here will be useful to the sponsor, teacher or friend inpractical matters such as pronouncing Vietnamese names, readinghandwriting and using a Vietnamese-English dictionary or phrasebook. We hope, however, that the information in this bulletin will have the furthereffect of stimulating the American to learn more about the Vietnamese languageand culture, both for his own enjoyment, and for the benefit of the Viet- namese with' whom comes into contact.

We will, throughout the bulletin, be talking about the sounds and tones of Vietnamese, and how -they differ from those of English. But written descriptions of sounds, no matter,how detailed, are a poor substitute for hearing the sounds and noting the differences first-hand. We en- courage the reader, therefore, to ask a nativespeaker of Vietnamese to demonstrate the sounds whenever possible, and have included numerous LL examples of Vietnamese words for this purpose. The teacher is also en- couraged to try imitating the native speaker's pronunciation, notonly for an understanding of , but also for anincreased appreciation of his student's difficulties in learning English.

Pronunciation of the Vietnamese words will vary slightly from speaker to speaker, depending on where in the speaker comes from: there are three major dialects, Northern, Central and Southern.While these dia- lects differ, sometimes very markedly, a speaker of one of themhas no great difficulty understanding or communicating with aspeaker of another. In general, we are describing the Southerndialect, which is spoken in Saigon. fSyllablestructure)

Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language!:all words consist of only one syllable. Moreover, the syllables themselves alwaysconsist of one or the other of the combinations of consonants andvowels listed below:

'slow' A. One, two or three vowels; e..,o 'checkerboard square',61 (as in business), ao 'pond', ai 'who?', oai'impressive-looking'.

'three', ca 'Miss', . + one, two, or three vowels; e.g., ba tai 'I', bao 'bag', tiAl 'black pepper', xoay 'pirouette'.

C. One, or two vowels + consonant; e.g., em'younger sibling', an 'favor', Ilan 'rotten', oan 'unjust'.

cam . Consonant + one, two, or three vowels + consonant; e.g., 'orange', cifc 'chrysanthemum',tan 'week', man 'borrow',

tuye't 'snow'.

Note that while vowels can occur togetherin Vietnamese syllables, conso- nants cannot: there are no consonant clusters in Vietnamese.

(Consonants I Vietnamese consonants are for the most partroughly similar to parallel consonants in English. But their distribution -- their occurrence,either initial (at the beginningor final (at theend) in syllables -- often differs from "their distribution in English,and their exact pronunciation differs in subtle but noticeable ways fromthe pronunciation of their English counterparts.

The Vietnamese consonants are listed on thefollowing pages. The letter of the alphabet is given first, then itsdistribution, then the sound it represents, and then an example. CONSONANTS LETTER initial POSITION b as in lox SOUND ba 'three' EXAMPLE c- e,initial e, i, yexcept before as in skill canhac 'sing' 'music' -c finala following2 5 1 5 ...,e II u6...... , d 9 dd..., k as in take du&sacp'strength' 'torch' -c o,final o, ufollowing ^ 2 kas as insoundtaneously in stop, take, like (itanda 2) will simul- ITIKkhOccdc 'mildew' 'weep''chrysanthemum' ch- initial morewillch as sometimes likein chop (itsound -) chacho 'give''father' -ch d- finalinitial y tas as in in young lit archdadi 'skin' itarge'go' e,initialinitial e, i except before d English.doesn'tasish in gdone asexist in lagsin Like Span- go21. 'wood''chicken' Ell: e,initialinitial e, i before y sameas in sound yard as g ylligi5 'record' 'hour' EA:I,- initial as in hat haigi5 'old''two' . CONSONANTS LETTER k- initial before e, g, POSITION k as in skill (same SOUND ka 'narrate' EXAMPLE kh- i,initial English.doesn'tchsound as asinexist c)ach) in (German c.hLAini 'no' m-,1- -m initial,initial final m 1as as in in man, lane dim manamlgn 'ghost' 'go'south' up' -nn- finalinitial following i, e nas as in in no ten Wg.xinno 'full''beg''arrive' -n 5,a,final following a, i, o, 8, d, u ^ Liz as in _Eau hOnhimcfan 'kiss''knit' 1.0 final following o, o, u ciationalternativejustsamelisted belowas fromjust for pronun- ngabove:-RA as listed Ianson 'short''lipstick' -.la ufinal following o, o, A ngeouslyas aslike in in sum m)(itlong, simultan-will and sound m lIngRhammong 'hair' 'hope''velvet' -ng - tnitialg,final e, 11 following a, g, nyng as in canyonsnag hangnhax'a-bents 'cave' 'house' 'crowbar' -p-nh finalfinal following a, e, i 2 nas as in in to ten -,--bepxinhxanhle"nh 'kitchen''cute''blue' 'order' LETTER POSITION CONSONANTS SOUND EXAMPLE 1:11.-911- I initialinitial wkwf as as in in wetPhilip suire, or quaphep 'cross'permit' over' s-- initial . r shas asin inraw show raso 'go 'number' out' -tt- initi-1final following ;, i t as in litstop toiit 'I''little' -t 5,final e, o, following u, 6, d, a, g, d k as in take motbotvg'tphut 'foam''one''trace' 'minute' -t final following o, 8, u ciationalternativetakejust andabove: from 2 pronun-as -tk inaslisted 122in 'hitmotbot 'one' 'minute''foam' th- initial willsimultaneously.t soundas in liketime. a 2. It will It thd 'letter' tr- initial asound trlong as as hin afterward.thogh strong there is tre 'bamboo' v-x- initial 2....Tyv sas as asin inin van,revue sing or xinvdOn 'beg' 'garden' -

[Vowels 1 The vowels of Vietnamese, like the consonants, areby and large similar to parallel vowels in English.Again, though, they differ from their counterparts in subtle but noticeable ways. They are listed below: the letter of the alphabet is given first,then the sound it represents, then a Vietnamese example.

VOWELS

LETTER SOUND EXAMPLE

'go' i ee as in beet

e ay as in play dg 'dike' xe 'vehicle' e e as in bet, or a as inbat. It will sound like both or either

d more or less like uh asin love td 'silk'

6 o as in Lo t8 'bowl'

xu 'cent' u oo as in too, boot

like oo as in book, but with td 'fourth' the lips spread

ca 'sing' a like a as in father

g like a, only shorter in length an 'eat' can 'weigh' g like o, only shorter in length

to 'big' o like a, but with lips rounded

y same sound as i ly 'glass'

[Tones

The most interesting -- and difficult tolearn -- aspect of Vietnamese every word is its tones. Vietnamese, like Chinese, is a tonelanguage: has a particular always associatedwith it, and if a speaker does not pronounce the correct tonefor a word, he either mispronounces the word, or pronounces another word entirely.

7 (English has 'tones' too, but they areassociated with sentences rather the difference in meaning than words, and called'intonation patterns': between "Now?" and "Now.", orbetween "He's a doctor?" and"He's a doctor.", is expressed by differentintonation patterns.)

each rep- There are five tones in theSouthern dialect of Vietnamese, resented in the spelling system by amark (called a ) over or under one of the vowels in thesyllable. In the chart below, the tones the tone is given, then its are listed. First, the of diacritic, then a rough Englishdescription, then examples.

Examples Vietnamese Diacritic English Name Description co 'flex', ban'committee' EMU a mid-level (no marking)

. co 'have', Ian 'sell' Sgc a high-rising ca 'stork', ban 'table' Huygn a low-falling 9 c; 'grass', ba/ n 'copy' HOi or lizi a or g mid-rising ban a low-rising co 'scrub-brush', 41-g -r friend'

dialect There is another tone, theLigg tone (i), which in the Southern sounds the same as theHOi tone (i). In the Northern dialect it is a different tone.

urge Any written description, ofthe way tones sound is inadequate; we Vietnamese the reader, here if nowhereelse, to ask a native speaker of experience, however, to pronounce the examples. In the absence of direct sound by comparing we can give a veryrough idea of the way the tones them to parallel intonation patternsin English.

intonation The Sac, or high-rising tone,is somewhat parallel to the the phrase given in English to the"no" of an emphatic rendition of the "No way!"; theHuye'n, or low-falling tone, is somewhat parallel to

8 -6- intonation given to the "way" of the samephrase. The 10i, or mid- rising tone, is fairly close to theintonation given to the question "Now?" (in fact, the English question"Now?" is a nearly exact pro- nunciation of the Vietnamese wordao 'brains'!) The Nang, or low- rising tone, is somewhat like theintonation given the English word "yeah" (as in "...and then when the cops gotthere...""Yeah?Yeah?"). hide- And if you count in English veryfast -- as if you were playing and-seek -- you will be giving each wordthe am, or mid-level tone.

Features to watchfort

what linguists (c), (k), (th). Both Vietnamese and Englishllave call aspirated and unaspirated stops. Aspirated stops are produced by stopping the airflow from thelungs for a semi-second, then releasing it in such a way that there is arelatively strong puff of air follow- aspirated ing the release. (English 2, t, and k in initial positions are while holding the back of your stops: If you say 'pan, tan, and can' hand close to your mouth, you can feel thepuff of air.) Unaspirated flow, but stops, on the other hand, areproduced by stopping the air releasing it so that there is nopuff of air following the release. (English 2, t, and k following s, andusually in final position, are unaspirated stops; if you say'span, Stan and scan' with the back of air that was your hand close to yourmouth, you won't feel the puff of there when you said 'pan, tan, andcan'.) English speakers are not because aware of the differencebetween, say aspirated and unaspirated t it is not an importantdifference: the word Stan pronounced with an distinc- aspirated t will merely sound odd. In Vietnamese, however, the The sounds tion between aspirated andunaspirated stops is important. represented by the letters c, k and t areunaspirated (see the list of consonants) and, because they occurin positions where English un- aspirated stops do not occur, they arehard to distinguish: to Ameri- and t will cans, the Vietnamese kand c will sound like g as in get, sound like d as in dog. Vietnamese has only one aspirated stop, rep resented by the letters th; it is notdifficult for Americans to hear, but it is not pronounced asEnglish aspirated t is: it sounds instead puff of air as though there were along h after it (a result of the being lengthened). To discover the differencebetween Vietnamese

9 to pronounce aspirated th, unaspirated t,and d, ask a native speaker for you the following:

thi 'be tested' ti 'tiny' cti 'go

tho' 'rabbit' to 'big' a 'red'

Doubly articulated sounds Aand u), -11a (fol- In_ the Southern dialect,Vietnamese -n (following o, o linguists call lowing o, a and u) and -t(following o, o and u) are what sounds produced doubly-articulated sounds: they are, in effect, two because the sounds in question simultaneously. This is physically possible -.as, for example,is pro- are produced indifferent parts of the mouth: is produced duced with the back of the tongueand the soft palate, and -m time, as they with the lips, so -Rs and -m canbe 'produced at the same doubly-articulated sounds, so are in Vietnamese. English does not have singly-articulated Americans have difficultydistinguishing them from will hear the doubly-articulated sounds. In particular, the American Vietnamese -t or Vietnamese -n or -na as m, andthe doubly-articulated between -mg (or -n) and -m,ask a -c as 2. To discover the difference following pair: chunk native speaker of Vietnameseto pronounce the between 'together' and chum 'earthenjar'. And to discover the difference h8t 'grain', hoc 'study', and -t or -c and -2, askhim to pronounce: 142 'box'.

Unreleased final consonants syllable is It will often seem to youthat the last consonant in a pronounced, 'swallowed' or maybe not pronounced atall. The consonants are American but are so. short that they are verydifficult to hear for the though, you can hear not trained in phonetics. If you listen carefully, in them, especially if they arecontrasted with no-sound-at-all, as shgin 'they'; ca 'fish', pairs like 2hE 'mix', Phap'France'; chu 'uncle', cat 'sand'.

IThe modification of The original native writingsystem of Vietnamese was a Vietnamese between , and was thesole for

10 -1v- the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the seventeenth century, the Portuguese priest , andother Europeans and Vietnamese, developed a new writing system tofurther their evangelical work with the Vietnamese. This writing system was a Roman alphabet, modified with so that it could representthe sounds of Viet- namese for which there were no Romansymbols, and of course the tones. The two writing systems -- the Chinese-basedand the Roman -based -- were used side-by-side for sometime, although by different segmentsof Vietnamese society. Gradually, however, the Roman-based alphabet re- placed the Chinese-based writing system, so thattoday it is the only writing system in general use. All of the examples of Vietnamese in the previous sections of this bulletin arespelled in conventional Vietnamese spelling currently in use.

The Vietnamese alphabet is phonetic: there is, by and large, one letter or combination of letters per sound, andonly one. (This is why we were able to present the soundsof Vietnamese letter by letter on the charts on pages 3 -6; the same kind of chart for Englishwould have to be done sound by sound, with very messyresults!) The one sound-one symbol correspondence worksperfectly for the Northern dia- lect, for which the alphabet was originallydesigned, but there are minor breakdowns in the Central and Southern dialects: both the letters d and for example, represent the same sound in theSouthern dialect (the

1. sound as in yea). In none of the dialects, however,does one symbol represent more than one sound.

The letter combinations which representsingle sounds are treated as though they are single letters. In dictionaries, for example, words beginning with ch are listed separately,after all the words beginning with c. For dictionary purposes, then, the orderof the letters of the alphabet is as follows: a, g, a, b, c, ch, d,cl, e, g, g, , gi, h, i, k, hg, 1, m, n, ng, ngh, nh, o,6, 8, p, ph, qu, r, s, t, th, tr, u, if, v, x, y.

The tones, also, occurin a particular order; our example words on page 7, for example, occur in dictionariesin the following order:

11. ban 'committee'; hon 'sell';ban 'table'; bln 'copy'; ban'friend'.

Another example oc ordering! various ma 'ghost';m 'cheek'; m5 (a structure word indicating horse); kinds of outcomes);ml 'tomb'; mg (Sino-Vietnamese root for ma 'rice seedling'.

Punctuation

As we mentioned before, words inVietnamese are all one syllable long. Often, however, two words will functiontogether as compounds, very much like English compounds such as orange juice,airport, brow-beat, and so

on. Most of these compounds are formedwith root words borrowed from mandate'); Chinese: cgch-ma ng 'revolution' (literally, 'change of phi-cd 'airplane' (literally,'flying craft'); other compounds are ono- matopoetic words likeldc-cdc 'knock-knock' and cap -c9,2'quack-quack', dg-dang 'easy', and or what linguistscall reduplicative syllables like hyphens, as above, sach-se 'clean'. These compounds are spelled with contexts, in formal contexts like proclamationsor textbooks; in informal like newspapers or letters, thehyphens are often omitted.

Hyphens come and go in compound place names aswell. There are many compound: names of cities and countrieswhichare compounds (Vietnam is a Viet (name of a tribe of people) + nam'south'); in the western , these are usually spelled as oneword, e.g. Vietnam, Saigon, Danam. In Vietnamese, these can occur with orwithout the hyphen, and with or without the first letter of the secondsyllable capitalized: Vietnam, then, will appear asViet-nam, Viet -Nam, Viet nam, or Viet Nam in Viet- namese writing.

Other than the hyphens, punctuationand capitalization are much the same as in English.

Handwriting

Vietnamese handwriting is very muchlike American English handwriting, although there are three or fourcharacters which differ slightly. Here is the ideal:

12 4c1 c-taD 4 qT :=4 )1

CLCraticl

7 I 0 / %oti-Cke La:C. A7 ci..o 00 0-ttAA, j01.4;)Co j'Acla c1/4/7191/

ti Art.a.61,-905 WeA, maxS).1.4. %.c%t9 .9rat zcLc.

Le-a:c- YaLkAne .c,k").-11-'9

(Phuong's sample is a letter to her uncle, asking after members of his

, family.)

and a nine-year-old's:

? IAIa) c7 ?,ILC:2) vik.. ,)GP--,L.k1-Eh )6 *, .k.....___Ar.

C:_0'em ah?-) h.RevLci_ Rd- gclic.fac)'n cd1--?)(3 61 di titS /Li. bLot.P0-;,; lccc) c6 .../. L 1-ik1,_;;)

1 4 - i4 and an adult's:

et. kA".. olst tv-`1-7

e) el. a. m Lo 4.4.A-to*"

s-% CL-, 0%.4r1.*

Note that in fast handwriting the tonemarks appear anywhere over the syllable, rather than over the last ofthe syllable, which is where they go in careful writing.

15 References

All of the studies on the sounds andspellings of Vietnamese are extremely However, technical.Most appear as Ph.D. dissertations orM.A. theses. if the reader would like to delve furtherinto the subject, we suggest the following book:

Vuong Gia Thuy. Vietnamese in a Nutshell. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1975. $2.45. Paperback. A linguistically-oriented, but easy-to-usephrasebook and grammar, with an 8,000 wordVietnamese-English, English-Vietnamese dictionary. Describes differences in Vietnamesedialects, outlines pronunciation and tonal system as well as basicsentence patterns. Small enough for pocket or purse.

16