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Alphabet & Pronunciation

Vietnamese alphabet, the six tones, diacritics and key pronunciation rules
Hệ thống nguyên âm: đơn, đôi, ba
Vowel inventory: mono-, di-, triphthongs
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Vietnamese has an unusually rich vowel inventory
Thanh điệu trong từ ghép
Tones in compound words
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Each syllable keeps its own tone; there is little true tone sandhi
Hệ 6 thanh (Bắc) vs hệ 5 thanh (Nam)
Northern six-tone vs Southern five-tone systems
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hỏi and ngã often merge into one tone in the South
Phụ âm cuối: -p, -t, -c/-ch
Final stop consonants: checked syllables
unreleased stops
These endings are cut off abruptly, shaping the tone contour
Hợp âm vùng miền: v/d, r/g, s/x
Regional consonant mergers
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Certain consonant pairs are pronounced identically in some regions
Bán nguyên âm cuối: -i/-y, -o/-u
Final semivowel glide distinctions
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Subtle spelling differences mark slightly different glide qualities
Trọng âm và ngữ điệu
Stress and prosody in Vietnamese
mostly even stress
Tone carries the prominence that stress carries in English
Âm Hán Việt vs từ thuần Việt
Sino-Vietnamese vs native word phonology
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Two vocabulary layers with distinct phonological regularities
Từ chữ Nôm đến chữ Quốc Ngữ
From Nôm script to the Latin-based Quốc Ngữ
romanization history
The current alphabet replaced a Chinese-character-based system
Lỗi phiên âm thường gặp
Common transliteration pitfalls for learners
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Tone and vowel-length errors are the most frequent learner mistakes