Origin and overview of Vietnamese

The following lists will show an overview of Vietnamese language data.

• Vietnam population: 101.7 million (2025)
• Location: East Asia, Southeast Asia
• Writing: Latin
• Writing in history: Han, Nom (hieroglyphs)
• Number of Vietnamese users: 97 million (2019)
• Rank: 21st among the most popular languages.
• Origin of Vietnamese Latin script: from the 16th century, when Portuguese priests and other European missionaries came to Vietnam and began to create a way to use Latin script to record Vietnamese sounds.
• Linguistics: Each Vietnamese word is made up of vowels, consonants, and tones.
• Number of Vietnamese letters: 29
• Single vowel: (12) a, â, ă, e, ê, i (y), o, ô, ơ, u, ư.
• Single consonant: (17) b, c, d, đ, g, h, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, x
• Double consonants: (10) ch, gh, gi, kh, ng, nh, ph, qu, th, tr.
• Consonant three: (1) ngh,
• Tone: (5) ◌́ sắc, ◌̀ huyền, ◌̉ hỏi, ◌̃ ngã, ◌̣ nặng,
• Language code: vi (ISO 639-1); vie (ISO 639-2); vi-VN (locale code).

A sample Vietnamese paragraph

In the United States Declaration of Independence there is a passage as follows:

"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" (1776)

Later in the Vietnamese declaration of independence, this idea was stated again in Vietnamese:

"Hỡi đồng bào cả nước! Tất cả mọi người đều sinh ra có quyền bình đẳng. Tạo hóa cho họ những quyền không ai có thể xâm phạm được; trong những quyền ấy, có quyền được sống, quyền sung sướng và quyền mưu cầu hạnh phúc". (1945)

An example Vietnamese word

For example, the word "table" in English. Will have the Vietnamese meaning "bàn".

• b (previous consonant)
• a (vowels)
• n (following consonants)
• ` (tone)

The pronunciation of children in Vietnam is:

1. a + n => an (vowel combined with final consonant)
2. b + an => ban (initial consonant combined with rhyme)
3. ban + ` => bàn (results combined with tone)