The sounds of Vietnamese
Reading Vietnamese, tone by tone.
Six tones marked by accents, six vowels with marks (ă, â, ê, ô, ơ, ư) and a few consonants that are not read the way you expect. Spelling is regular: once you know the marks, every syllable is read the way it is written. Northern pronunciation (Hanoi).
ơ
əːcơm
Tones and sounds
The sounds to know
Choose a group, then a sound. Listen to it in common words, at normal speed or slowly.
Sound
Reading rules
One syllable per written word, one tone per syllable.
Việt Nam
One syllable per written word
Each group of letters is one syllable, with its own tone. Two-syllable words are written in two parts: Việt Nam, điện thoại, bánh mì.
ma · má
The tone makes the word
Change the tone and you change the word: ma (ghost), má (cheek), mạ (rice seedling). The tone mark is never left out.
Việt
Two marks on one vowel
A vowel can carry a quality mark (â, ă, ơ…) and, on top of it, a tone mark: ệ = ê + dot below (nặng tone).
một
Unreleased finals
At the end of a syllable, p, t, c and ch close without releasing any air. Only the sắc and nặng tones can go with them.
cá · kem
One sound, several spellings
The k sound is written k before i, e, ê (kem, ice cream) and c elsewhere (cá, fish); likewise gh and ngh before i, e, ê. qu is read “kw”.
Reading