Quokings

In the XIII century, the Vietnamese language received writing from China. The words were written in Chinese characters, which were called tyn-nom ( Vietnamese. Chữ nôm , tyn -nom 字 喃 ) , each hieroglyph denoted a word. The writing was based on classical Chinese (which in Vietnam was called ti-no ( Vietnamese. Chữ nho , ti-nom в ) , but it was supplemented with the hieroglyphs “ti thu номnom” invented in Vietnam ( Vietnamese. Chữ thuần nôm , “correct nomic signs” )

As early as 1527, Portuguese missionaries preaching in Vietnam began to transcribe the words of the Vietnamese language in Latin letters. This led to the creation of the modern Vietnamese alphabet, based on the work of the French missionary Alexander de Rod , who worked in the country from 1624 to 1644. Based on the work of Gaspard d'Amaraal and Duarte da Costa, he published in Rome in 1651 Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum , a Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary that used its transcription ^[1] .

The use of tynom and tyn-ne continued until the beginning of the 20th century, until the French colonial government translated the language into the Latin alphabet of Rhod. Nationalists considered the Latin alphabet as a way to combat occupation and actively disseminated it, opening schools and printing periodicals on the Kuokings. By the end of the 20th century, Vietnamese were universally recorded with the help of Kuokngs , and the circle of people who own hieroglyphics is limited to scientists.

Pamela Pierce believes that the French, planting the Latin alphabet, cut off the Vietnamese from ancient literature, making it impossible to read it ^[2] .

Each syllable in Vietnamese is written separately. Previously, syllables of polysyllabic words were written through a hyphen, but after the end of the Vietnam War and the unification of the country, this system did not take root. The syllable has three parts:

1. obligatory initial (in the absence of a written initial designation, the syllable begins with the laryngeal bow ) ^[3]
2. Mandatory medal with a tone icon,
3. optional finale.

Most consonants are pronounced in accordance with IPA , with the following exceptions.

• Both d and gi are pronounced either as [z] (northern dialects), or as [j] , th (in central and southern dialects). In the Middle Vietnamese language, the letter d recorded the sound [ð] , since the Portuguese letter d has such a pronunciation; and gi meant the sound [ʝ] , roughly corresponding to Italian [dʒ] , which is recorded as gi (Giovanni: Giovanni ).
• đ pronounced with a guttural bow at the end.
• s is pronounced as "c" in the north and as "sh" in the south of the country. The spelling of this sound as s was chosen because of its resemblance to a similar whistling consonant in Portuguese.
• ng - velar nasal consonant ( IPA : [ŋ] ). It is available in English (“si ng i ng ”). Never pronounced as "n" or as "ng".

The digraph gh and the trigraph ngh are variants of g and ng used before i so as not to mix with the digraph gi .

The Vietnamese letter does not use the letter f . The phoneme [f] is transmitted by the digraph ph .

The phoneme [ʨ] is transmitted by the digraph tr .

Pronunciation

The letters y and i are equivalent and denote the same sound everywhere except diphthongs ( tay , hand, read / tɐi / , and tai , ear, read / taːi / ). Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been attempts to standardize spelling, which have not been successful. The reason may be the reluctance of the Vietnamese to write the surname Nguyen as Nguiễn , and the popular female name Thúy as Thúi (smelly). At the beginning of the XXI century, spelling without y is found only in scientific publications.

Spelling

Monophthongs

The table shows the pronunciation of monophthongs and the corresponding entry in Vietnamese.

Sound	Spelling	Sound	Spelling
/ i /	i, y (see below)	/ e /	ê
/ ɛ /	e	/ ɨ /	ư
/ əː /	ơ	/ ə /	â
/ aː /	a	/ ɐ /	ă
/ u /	u	/ ɤ /	ô
/ ɔ /	o

Note: the vowel / i / can be written in different ways:

• it is usually denoted by the letter i : / si / = sĩ ;
• sometimes written with the letter y after h, k, l, m, s, t, v: / mi / = Mỹ .
  • It is always written with the letter y if it is preceded by a vowel ( / xuiən / = khuyên ), as well as at the beginning of Sinism ( / iəw / = yêu ).

Diphthongs and trifthongs

Sound	Spelling	Sound	Spelling
Diphthongs
/ uj /	ui	/ iw /	iu
/ oj /	ôi	/ ew /	êu
/ ɔj /	oi	/ ɛo /	eo
/ əːj /	ơi
/ əj /	ây, ê in ‹ênh› / əjŋ / and ‹êch› / əjk /	/ əw /	âu, ô в ‹ông› / əwŋ / и ‹ôc› / əwk /
/ aːj /	ai	/ aːw /	ao
/ ɐj /	ay, a at ‹anh› / ɐjŋ / and ‹ach› / ɐjk /	/ ɐw /	au, o at ‹onɡ› / ɐwŋ / and ‹oc› / ɐwk /
/ ɨj /	ưi	/ ɨw / , in the north usually / iw /	ưu
/ iə /	ia, ya, iê, yê	/ uə /	ua
/ ɨə /	ưa	/ ɨəː /	ươ
/ uo /	uô	/ uiː /	uy
Trifthongs
/ iəw /	iêu, yêu	/ uoj /	uôi
/ ɨəːj /	ươi	/ ɨəːw /	ươu

• / iə / can be written as ia (in open syllables: / miə / = mía ), iê (before the consonant: / miəŋ / ), ya, yê.

• i changes to y at the beginning of borrowing or after a vowel: / xuiə / = khuya , / xuiən / = khuyên , / iən / = yên .

• / uə / and / uo / are written as ua in open syllables ( / muə / = mua ) and as uô before consonants ( / muon / = muôn ).

• / ɨə / and / ɨɜː / are written as ưa in open syllables ( / mɨə / = mưa ) and as ươ before consonants ( / mɨəːŋ / = mương ).

Tone notation

The Vietnamese language is tone , that is, the meaning of each word depends on its pitch. There are six tones in the literary northern dialect, and in the south the tones “hoi” and “nga” merged. The first tone is not marked, and the rest is indicated on the letter by adding a diacritic to the corresponding vowel.

In the tone “nga” in the middle of the vowel, it is interrupted by a guttural bow . The tone “nang” at the end is also glottalized.

In syllables with diphthongs and trifthongs, the position of the tone icon is controversial. In the “old notation”, the icon is placed on the first or central vowel (hóa, yếu), in the “new” - on the main vowel in di or trifton (hoá). In both systems, if there is already diacritic on the vowel, then the tone icon is placed on it ( thuế , but not thúê ).

The vocabulary order in this case depends on the tone: tuân thủ stands before tuần chay , although c is the third letter in the alphabet, and t is at the end.

When recording Sinism in Latin, many homophones arise, for example, both 明 (light) and 冥 (dark) are read minh .

Unicode fully supports coookings, although it does not contain a separate Vietnamese range: coooks are scattered across the ranges Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B and Latin Extended Additional. ASCII- like encoding Vietnamese Quoted Readable and some other byte encodings like TCVN3, VNI and VISCII were widely used in the pre-Unicode era. Most modern documents are written in UTF-8 .

Unicode allows users to choose between ready-made letters with diacritics and ordinary Latin letters with combined diacritics, but because of problems with displaying the latter (for example, in Verdana font), most Vietnamese people write letters with pre-added diacritics.

To enter Vietnamese characters, free programs and keyboard drivers are used, for example, Telex , VIQR and its variants, and VNI .

• Ă , Â , Đ , Ê , Ô , Ơ , Ư
• Thi-nom
• Han you
• Vietnamese language

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• Haudricourt, André-Georges. Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien (Fr.) // Dân Việt-Nam: magazine. - 1949. - Vol. 3 . - P. 61-68 .
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• Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Việt không son phấn . Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 1-55619-733-0 .
• Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2003). Vietnamese tone: A new analysis. Outstanding dissertations in linguistics. New York: Routledge. (Published version of author's 2001 PhD dissertation, University of Florida: Hoa, Pham. Vietnamese tone: Tone is not pitch ). ISBN 0-415-96762-7 .
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• Shih, Virginia Jing-yi. Quoc Ngu Revolution: A Weapon of Nationalism in Vietnam . 1991.

• Scanned version of Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary
• Vietnamese Writing System
• Essay comparing the orthography variants
• Vietnamese Unicode FAQs
• Doctoral dissertation comparing learning efficiency between quoc ngu and Chinese characters
• Chữ viết (in Vietnamese)
• The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
• The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.