Talk:Vietnamese phonology

Accessibility
An effort to make the article more comprehensible to a non-linguist would be appreciated; obviously the article doesn't need to be "dumbed-down" or anything, but just explained with less reliance on technical jargon. For instance, in several cases it makes reference to sounds using IPA standard notation without making any note of which letter combinations actually make the sound. It seems silly that a native speaker of both English and Vietnamese cannot tell what sound you are referring to in an English article about Vietnamese. (Keep in mind that since as you well know the pronunciation of a sound varies by region, merely referencing the literal phonetic sound can be inadequate to identify what you are referring to.)

comments/suggestions?
I have, so far, been the main contributor to this page. It is very unfinished and my research is very preliminary. So I urge you to read at your own risk.

I dont know the Vietnamese language. I, simply, enjoy the way Vietnamese sounds to my ear, and I wish to know a little more about the precise phonetic description of this language's sound system. This page is really just some notes to myself. I thought perhaps others plugged in to Internet might be interested in reading my notes, so I am providing them to this community (but hopefully a little more cleaned up). Since I have a background in linguistics, I may not provide enough explanation for some readers. Please ask for better explanations if the material is not clear.

I have not actually read all of the materials listed in the bibliography. In fact, I do not have all of these works. But I do have the majority of them.

I would be interested to know what native speakers have to say or anyone else who has comments, suggestions, questions, answers, etc.

One thing that I am concerned with is whether or not this article is becoming too specialized and therefore not suitable material for an encyclopedia.

Another thing I predict is that this article will become too big. We may need separate the phonology stuff from the orthography stuff. There already exists a small Vietnamese alphabet article.

Peace. &mdash; ishwar  (S PEAK )  04:32, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

On Phomenes
A lot of work has gone into it. Good on you. I did change one fact - that about "v"s not being pronounced in HCMC. That's not exactly true. It's a Mekong Delta thing to pronounce their "v"s as "j"s- the city siders generally pronounce their "v"s quite well.

There's one problem - which will need some work to address. The U with a hook (&#432;) is pronounced as /&#623;/, not /&#616;/. Basically, you take your /u/, and flatten the lips. The /&#616;/ sound occurs in Russian (which I tried to learn some years back), and that sound does not occur in Vietnamese.

(I live in HCMC, and have been learning the language.)

It's a tough thing to work out the IPA for a, â, &#259; and &#417;. There's no standard trascription for these letters. Having an "Endnotes" for this "controversy" is a good idea, but maybe it belongs on another page.)

Anyway... well done! Tphcm

re /v/
hi. thanks for your comments. although i dont doubt your observations, perhaps "generally pronounc[ing] their 'v's quite well" is a bit more complex. i note that your observation is contrary to the some works i have read (e.g. Thompson 1965, Nguy&#x1EC5;n 1997). i list some relevant bits:


 * Thompson (1965:85) :


 * "Bas-Annam. The general characteristics of &#x0110;à-n&#x1EB5;ng speech apply for the most part to the balance of the territory of south central Viet Nam.... Somewhere not far north of the Saigon region [v] disappears; it is replaced by [j], which everywhere from Hu&#x1EBF; south resembles English y in you, yes. An early picture of this area is presented in Cadière 1911. The correspondence of Cochinchinese [j] to [v] of other dialects is discussed historically in Maspero 1912 (pp. 41-42, 70-74)."


 * Thompson (1965:89) :


 * "The lenis oral consonants in Saigon [v, th, r, l, g, h] are very noticeably more relaxed than their Hanoi counterparts. In addition there are a few other differences. Saigon [v] appears only before the semivowel [j] (4.22) and is itself palatalized in anticipation...


 * "v&#x1EE3; [vj&#x1EE3;&#x01B0;&#x032F;] HN [v&#x1EE3;&#x01B0;&#x032F;] wife


 * "The initial cluster [vj] corresponds to Hanoi initial [v]. Actually, this is a spelling pronunciation on the part of educated speakers in Saigon: the majority of the Saigonese (including many educated people) pronounce simply [j] in these forms. Some, then, add a [v] before the [j], knowing that the form is spelled with v. There are a few who pronounce a [b] sound before [j] in the same form; this sound is also lenis (quite unlike the sound heard in bài lesson)."


 * Thompson (1965:93) :


 * "The clusters [vj, kw] seem obviously secondary introductions into the system based on knowledge of the spelling of the words involved; less educated speakers have simply [j, w] in these forms, and educated speakers, too, often use them in less careful speech.


 * "v&#x1EEB;a [(v)j&#x1EEB;â&#x032F;] HN [v&#x1EEB;â&#x032F;] to fit, suit"


 * Thompson (1965:97) :


 * "Although initial [w] is not distinguished from [v] by being preglottalized, the fact that [v] occurs only before [j], where [w] does not appear, places them together in a /w/ phoneme, as in Hanoi speech. (For those speakers who have a lenis stop before [j] this [b] clearly belongs to the /w/ phoneme, in place of the [v] just discussed). The semivowel [j] is seen to fill the empty position in the laminal column...."


 * Thompson (1965:98), in a chart of dialectal correspondences:


 * " ORTHOGRAPHY v; HANOI v; VINH v; HUE v; DA-NANG v; SAIGON (v)j; TRA-VINH j; "


 * Thompson (1959:459) :


 * "/w/ Lenis labial oral nonsyllabics [sic].
 * Initial before /j/ : [v] palatalized.
 * /wj&#x0251;`/ ‘and’
 * Before /y/, and after /i y u &#x028C;/ : nonsyllabic [u].
 * /wy&#x014B;/ ‘Huân [family or given name]’, /twy&#x014B;`/ ‘week’; /&#x02C0;iw/ ‘cherish’, /kyw`/ ‘sheep’, /&#x0251;uw&#x02DC;/ ‘sleep’, /&#x02C0;t&#x028C;w/ ‘unspecified location’, /&#x02C0;&#x028C;w&#x014B;/ ‘gentleman’
 * Before syllabics other than /y/, and after /e a/ : nonsyllabic [&#x1D1C;].
 * /kwen/ ‘forget’, /kw&#x0251;/ ‘to pass’, /&#x0251;w&#x0251;j`/ ‘outside’; /new´/ ‘if’, /&#x02C0;aw&#x014B;/ ‘bee’
 * After /&#x025B; &#x0251;/ : nonsyllabic [o].
 * /h&#x025B;w/ ‘pig’, /&#x02C0;t&#x0251;w/ ‘sick’ "


 * Thompson (1959:466) :


 * "Note that aside from /&#x02C0;p &#x02C0;t wj/ all clusters have /w/ as second element.... The clusters /wj kw/ tend to disappear in less careful speech; the resulting forms are the same as the corresponding popular forms. Since these clusters are distinguished in the official orthography but are not present in the popular speech of the dialect area, it is reasonable to suggest that in the educated dialect of Saigon they represent artificial restorations under the influence of the written language.
 * /wj/ is replaced by /j/  /ja`/ ‘and’ "

So, basically what Thompson is saying is that generally southern-ish varieties dont have a contrast between [v](/[b]) and [j] unlike the northern and central varieties and in Ho Chi Minh City there is a situation of literacy affecting pronunciation and perhaps somewhat marginally the sound system. Thompson further analyzes this marginal [v]/[b] as an allophone of /w/ occuring before /j/.

Thompson's fieldwork was done during the 1950s. Several have noted that in big cities, such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, there has been a certain amount of mixing of varieties. So I would speculate that you may be observing (1) stronger influence of literacy (assuming, of course, that more Ho Chi Minh speakers have become literate since the Vietnam War) and (2) more influence of northern/central varieties on the Ho Chi Minh variety. Anyway, just a guess! It would be interesting to note if all speakers that you observe having [v] are literate and/or of the same socioeconomic background. I would also be interested in knowing if [v] is still as palatalized as Thompson describes.

There have been several phonological works written in Vietnamese which I havent seen (and probably will not be reading). There are a few PhD dissertations on Vietnamese phonology scattered here & there. These are all more recent than Thompson. They may have something on this. Also, Thompson's grammar explicitly does not claim to be a comprehensive study of Vietnamese language variation: he very pointedly states that there is little work in this area (as of 1965). (if you dont have this grammar, i could provide a biblio with references in Vietnamese). peace &mdash; ishwar  (S PEAK )  09:41, 2005 May 15 (UTC)

re /&#x01B0;/
ok, my short answer: i dont know. traditional description is following Thompson (who is generally very accurate). what i remember from Han's studies in the 60s (i dont have a copy, just looked at them) is that she indicates that this vowel is central, not back. her evidence is the average frequency of the 2nd formant as measured with a spectrograph. but, i dont remember how she calculated F2. maybe she just reported it without any weighting of F3. (if you arent familiar with acoustic phonetics, the value of F2, i.e. the second formant, is generally a rough indication of horizontal tongue position. a high F2 indicates an advanced tongue & a low F2 indicates a retracted tongue.) there are a few researchers now that transcribe or otherwise indicate this vowel as central (i'm speaking of Brunelle & Pham). but, as i have mentioned before, i am not a Vietnamese linguist so i havent read all that much. i personally want some more data. anyway, i will read more & report back here. peace – ishwar  (speak)  06:27, 2005 July 31 (UTC)


 * I can only give a piece of anecdotal evidence here (native Hanoian Viet, speak English decently, currently learning Japanese). The Vietnamese Ư is unlikely to be a back vowel, since there is a clear distinction between it and Japanese う (/ɯ/ when not preceded by a consonant). I tried to replicate Vietnamese Ư and Japanese う in a few times, and I believe it is correct to transcript Ư as a central vowel. My friend (another native Hanoian Viet, speak English and Chinese fluently) noticed that when she heard the Japanese う for the first time, it sounded like a mix between Vietnamese U and Ư (probably because う is unrounded back, while U is rounded back and Ư is unrounded central). Pokokichi2 (talk) 17:07, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

re ǎ & â
Great article. I have two observations. This one is about the lax/tense vowels. The main difference between the short vowels and ǎ & â and the long vowels a & ơ is in their phonation. The long vowels are tense (using modal phonation), while the short vowels are lax (lax/slack phonation.) IPA uses a small circle under a phoneme to mark lax phonation. Vietphone (talk) 03:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

re õ
This seems to be a vowel in Vietnamese, as in the name of the singer Võ Hạ Trâm. Shouldn't this article treat it? The Wikipedia article on Õ does discuss its Vietnamese use briefly.Peter Brown (talk) 17:18, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Nope, this is the vowel  with ngã tone. Both are covered in the article. MuDavid (talk) 00:59, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

re th
I am pretty sure th consonant is glottalized (glottalic egressive), regardless of southern/northern dialect. I think what you have pointed out as glottalized consonants: b, đ, plus th and maybe even kh, would become "pharyngealized" in emphasized speech, (whether they are ingressive or egressive seems to correlate directly with whether they are voiced or voiceless.) I mean, in emphasized speech, sometimes I can hear a pause or a RTR schwa between these consonants and the vowels that follow. (RTR = retracted tongue root.) By "pharyngealized" I mean the airway is not just closed at the glottis, but closed with tongue root closing the pharynx. For instance, the Vietnamese word thi sounds different from English word tea, not just in consonant... in emphasized speech, even the vowel sounds a bit different because of the tongue-root retraction. Anyway, too technical. I wish there is another place where people could talk more about Vietnamese phonetics in detail. Thanks for your hard work. The points I am raising may be too technical to be included. Vietphone (talk) 03:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Terminology
I have a small quibble. In normal usage, I've never heard the southern dialect being referred to as "Ho Chi Minh City dialect". It's either "Saigon dialect" (ti&#7871;ng/gi&#7885;ng Sài Gòn) or "Southern dialect" (ti&#7871;ng/gi&#7885;ng nam). Do any of your more recent references refer to it as "Ho Chi Minh City dialect"? DHN 04:05, 17 May 2005 (UTC)


 * hi.


 * using Ho Chi Minh City variety is just an arbitary editorial decision. older work refers to it as Saigon dialect.  older still: Saigonese.  as far as i can tell more recent works used Southern variety.  i have seen Ho Chi Minh dialect somewhere, but this is not used in the majority of what i have read.  i choose this because of the city's name change and because someone else on Wikipedia used HCMC dialect.  if you (or anyone else) would prefer to use Saigon, then please change it.


 * as a linguist, i dont really like the word dialect due to all of the negative associations this word carries, regardless of this widespread use in popular writing. variety is a more neutral term (this term is common in linguistics).


 * so, i am not so interested in labels, just the phonology. you can make this editorial change with no objection from me.  peace &mdash; ishwar   (S PEAK )  15:59, 2005 May 17 (UTC)

nh and ch
Hi. The article says:


 * In the Saigon variety the codas nh and ch do not exist.

Does this mean that these are pronounced differently? If so, how? I only speak a little Vietnamese and I'm not a linguist, but I've always had the impression these codas are always pronounced, although not always in the same way. Beautiful article. If it's somewhat finished, I may translate it to Dutch – as I've done with the main article on Vietnamese language already.

David 11:33, 30 July 2005 (UTC)


 * hi. the Saigon variety does not have syllables ending in /c/ or /ɲ/. the proto-Vietnamese sounds that have remained in the North have merged with /t/ & /n/. so,


 * orthographic ch & nh = North /c/ & /ɲ/ = South /t/ & /n/
 * orthographic t & n = North /t/ & /n/ = South /k/ & /ŋ/  or   /t/ & /n/ (depends on environment)
 * orthographic c & ng = North /k/ & /ŋ/ = South /k/ & /ŋ/


 * using orthography here is confusing, so this should be clarified in the future (actually it simply needs to be written in the first place!). a helpful note is that the syllable-initial consonant letters represent mostly the southern varieties while syllable-final letters represent mostly the northern varieties. (no Vietnamese speaker will make all the contrasts that are suggested in the writing system.)


 * i dont think that the article is even halfway finished. (i havent even finished responding to one editor's comment up above). it doesnt have a phonological processes section yet. the discussion of tone is very empty. there is an 8-tone analysis that needs to be presented. Vietnamese tone is very complicated. i havent had time to figure it out yet. i am not saying dont translate, i think that you should (Vietnamese is a very nice language, after all). but it will have to be a living translation, just like the article is slowly growing. but, better yet, you can always go to source material which is listed in the article.


 * anyway, thank you reading. please offer suggestions if you have any. peace – ishwar  (speak)  06:14, 2005 July 31 (UTC)


 * Okay, I see. This clarifies a lot. I'm watching this article and one day I'll certainly translate it. It will indeed be "living" as you say, just as the Dutch article on Vietnamese language is living as the English version is being elaborated. And as for using the source material listed in the article: there isn't much material about Vietnamese language here in Belgium (where I live) and Wikipedia is one of the better sources I've discovered so far. Peace tot you too. David [[image:Da Vit in Chu Nôm.jpg|23px|Da Vit]] 11:52, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Some requests
Hi, the article looks great! But it would be nice if there were some discussion of how the sounds of the northern dialect map onto the sounds of the southern dialect and vice versa. As for the pronunciation of final -ch and -nh above, it was said they're pronounced in the North but /t, n/ in the South. But in Đinh-Hoa Nguyên's chapter "Vietnamese" in The World's Major Languages (ed. Bernard Comrie, Oxford University Press 1987, ISBN 0-19-520521-9), the author says they're pronunced, so anh "elder brother" and bach "white" are pronounced and  respectively. Is that a third dialect? Is it just a narrower transcription of and ? Is it a mistake? --Angr/undefined 20:54, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
 * What do Southern correspond to in the North?
 * What does Northern /z/ correspond to in the South?
 * Is the orthography pandialectal, or are words spelled differently in each dialect, based on pronunciation? What letters stand for which phonemes in each dialect? (We have this information for vowels at the very bottom of the page, but we don't have it for consonants at all.)
 * Regarding the pan-dialectical nature of the orthography: In the early years of the 20th century when quốc ngữ was just becoming popular, everyone pretty much used their own orthography (Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary pamphlet Đường kách mệnh would be written as Đường cách mạng nowadays). After some conferences the issue was somewhat settled.  However, the partitioning of the country in 1954 caused some differences to form: the North used an orthography based on the northern variety of Vietnamese while the South used its own variety.  Some differences include bệnh (N) vs. bịnh (S), nhất (N) vs. nhứt (S), etc.  After reunification, the Southern orthography gradually died out in favor of the Northern orthography.  The orthography is not settled, however.  There have been occasional recommendations to change it in favor of a more "scientific" approach: ph->f, d->z, đ->d, etc.  Most of these never gained momentum, but some already have: the issue of i/y and over which vowel to place tone mark had been settled with textbooks favoring the i spelling (although everyone else use the y orthography) and placing the tone mark over the main vowel. DHN 00:21, 1 August 2005 (UTC)


 * hi. thank you for the comments. the correspondences will be written one day...


 * the analysis of Nguyễn is different from the analysis of Thompson. this is partly due to Hanoi variation (Nguyễn's speech is not the same as all Hanoi speakers). an article by Thompson discusses these different analyses:


 * Thompson, Laurence E. (1967).  The history of Vietnamese final palatals.  Language, 43 (1), 362-371.


 * (i have a pdf of this article if you are interested & dont have access to it...). the analysis of [c] as /k/ is supported by the funny distribution of [c] and by some phonetic data indicating that [c] is really articulated further back. there is a vowel which could be a realization of  or . Thompson notes that the glide [j] is not always present in his data. i dont have Thompson or Nguyễn's grammars with me right now, so i cant consult them.


 * i dont know what the status of /c/ is in all dialects. it was present in the Vietnamese of the 1600s. i need to get some info on other regions (i feel bad about their under-representation).


 * peace – ishwar  (speak)  06:09, 2005 August 1 (UTC)


 * I notice that Haiphong dialect is similar to Hanoi but it has the "right" r-, s- not same as x-, gi- d- r- not the same, and seems that tr- and ch- not the same. The endings -ch -nh are just [j]+velars.


 * There's finally a note about the final palatals. – ishwar  (speak)  19:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

8 tone
Would it be possible to hear (as briefly as you like) what you hope to cover under the Eight Tone Analysis? I'm using this article as help in my Vietnamese-learning (and it IS a help!) and I was wondering what further information might appear here... [philip]


 * hi. I dont remember exactly what it is (Vietnamese is not one of my areas of study). Basically, 2 of the tones in the 6-tone analysis are split up into 2 different tones each. The 8-tone is an older analysis that is assumed in traditional poetry & the like (before Vietamese was written in Roman characters). Recently, Pham's dissertation (2003) has presented evidence in support of 8 tones. If you are reading pedagogical stuff, then you probably will not encounter any mention of 8 tones. It would be harder to teach too because the current writing system only identifies 6 tones. You should also be aware that speakers in different regions of Vietnam have different numbers of tone (the north has 6, other places have less). None of this is in article, of course. peace – ishwar  (speak)  08:31, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for this. It gets me somewhere! - philip


 * following Chinese, the eight system assumes the stopped syllable (with -p,-t,-c,-ch) to be separate tones. You may notice that those syllables only have sac and nang tone.

Comment: Imiraven
Imiraven 16:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC) Imiraven 06:00, 20 January 2006 (UTC)Writing that the letter "ă" represents the "ash" vowel is a serious mistake. It should be similar to the low central vowel [a] as in German "dann". Please check again.


 * hi. i believe that is what the article explains (i.e. that it is low central). can you point out where it says otherwise (because i cant seem to find it). peace – ishwar  (speak)  19:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

User:Imiraven A sound similar to the ash vowel exists in Southern Vietnamese dialects and is represented by the letter "a", when it stands in isolation or doesn't stand before "nh."

Cleanup needed
There is a lot of good stuff here. All of it is pretty much relevant. However, I'd try to make it more consise. My ideas:

(a) Put the phototactics first. That would make a lot of the subsequent article make sense.

(b) Then make one table (not two) encompassing the consonants of Hanoi and HCMC. Add footnotes for which sounds only occur in one of the cities (e.g., "z").

(c) Then make two tables - one for initial consonants, and then one for coda consonants. A lot of the information is spread around the place. It would be nice to have it in one place.

(d) Then vowels.

(e) Finally tone.

(f) Finally, the rough appendix - showing the various symbols used by various authors for the same phoneme. Again, a little cleanup here would be good.

All honor and praise to "Ish ishwar", whose work made it possible.

--Tphcm 05:13, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

An example of this can be found here:

--Tphcm 08:37, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Chinese-Vietnamese tone correspondence
Say what the correspondence between Vietnamese tones for Chinese loanwords vs. the Old Chinese tones is, if any. Jidanni (talk) 01:15, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Vietnamese IPA key
As part of an effort to have consistent IPA transcriptions in various languages, I'd like to develop a Vietnamese IPA key and corresponding IPA-vi template, and would appreciate the input of people here. The idea is that we would make all the distinctions relevant for Hanoi and Saigon, and hopefully for Vinh, Hue, etc. as well, so we would transcribe e.g. v, d, r and the 6 (8) tones with distinct IPA values in the transcription, and leave it to the key to note that certain ones of these are not distinct in Hanoi, and others are not distinct in Saigon. This isn't meant for detailed treatments like this article, but rather for articles that include one or two Vietnamese terms, for which we need to give basic pronunciation information for readers who are not familiar with Vietnamese orthography, often alongside Chinese, Khmer, or other languages. It would be similar to WP:IPA for English, which glosses over the differences between the US and the UK; or WP:IPA for Spanish, which is moving in the direction of having the Castillian transcription as the default, since Latin American pronunciations are predictable once you know the Castillian. I think it would be best to use fairly common symbols as long as that does not cause a loss of information (say [a] for ă rather than, and [ə] for â rather than ), since many of our readers struggle with the IPA. It would also be nice if we could agree on tone diacritics along the lines of Thai, such as I've proposed in the key, rather than tone letters, which might lead to arguments over the exact phonetic realizations of the tones.

If you think it is worthwhile, we might even develop a template like convertIPA-hu (for Hungarian), which would automatically convert an input of Vietnamese orthography to IPA. That way if we later decided to change our IPA conventions, we could do it at the template rather than going through every article. kwami (talk) 22:20, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

/ɔ/
/ɔ/ is often pronounced /ɒ/. Fête —Preceding undated comment added 12:14, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I noticed you put that in the article. Do you have a source? — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]  15:23, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Saigonese kh
Is it really an aspirated /k/ (/kʰ/)? This is one mind-blowing discovery for me, since I'm Vietnamese and I've never perceive the sound that way.Fumiko Take (talk) 02:39, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I very much agree with you in that I have never heard this particular accent in formal or informal speech. I removed the claim, and I encourage anyone to argue their points if they believe it to be true. Including sources from the past 30 years would be ideal. Mijcon (talk) 05:25, 28 July 2015 (UTC)


 * That was introduced by this person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/138.229.28.169


 * It's wrong. The only [k] for /x/ (kh) is mentioned by Thompson is when /x/ is syllable-initial and follows another word ending in /k/ or /ŋ/ and he describes it as weak (and notates it with a superscript [k]). This is obviously some slightly differing timing alignment of voicing relative to lingual articulation. (Compare to English words like sense where the [ns] sequence is often realized as [nts] thus becoming similar to cents.) Probably not worth mentioning.


 * Most of the article is based on Thompson, so you don't need another source for /x/. – ishwar  (speak)  00:09, 10 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello everyone, it's not wrong, many Southerners pronounce exactly as the English "k", Khánh Hoà , the first word is pronounced as the first syllable as "country". 138.229.19.202 (talk) 16:00, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, as far I know most Vietnamese fricatives always begin with correspondent stop sounds, for example: /kx/ kh, /gɣ/ g, /bv/ v, /ts/ x. It is unusual and somehow difficult for them to pronounce pure fricatives.Khiemnguyen09 (talk) 05:45, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

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Error in common Vietnamese rhymes
In the table of common vietnamese rhymes the row /ʷo/ is wrong, it should be deleted. Such sounds don't exist in Vietnamese. In a word like muối the u is not a labiovelar glide, instead uố is the same vowel nucleus as in mua and i is an off-glide. Qtng (talk) 09:24, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Neutral form?
A Vietnamese friend told me that there actually is a Vietnamese which is pronounced as written, i.e. every distinction made in spelling is made in speech, and that this was the language they spoke at school. Yet the article makes it sound like there simply is no such thing. Can someone clear up that situation for me? Korn (talk) 10:32, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I am a Hanoian, and I may clarify it for you. No Vietnamese dialect actually speaks as it is written. You can hear a Hanoian Vietnamese anchorman speaking in the official TV channel here: https://vtv.vn/video/nguy-co-chay-rung-tu-viec-dot-rung-lam-ray-30849.htm. No Hanoian differentiates R (/r/) and D (/z/), albeit we do differentiate TR and CH in some very specific situations. The same with other dialects. Pokokichi2 (talk) 17:25, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

I am full agreed with Pokokichi2. If you take a look at the figure Regional consonant correspondences, Article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_language, you will see, what Pokokichi2 means.

Currently I am concerned about the fact, that vietnamese dictionaries do not completely consider the 3 different pronunciations as well as the words of the 3 regions of Vietnam. And teachers for vietnamese language do not care of this information lack neither. Intentionally or not intentionally! Sad but true.

By the way: In South Vietnam, before 1975, all 3 dialects (north, central, south) are spoken in the state-owned media (radio, TV, newspapers) and non state-owned media e.g. newspapers. Words of all 3 dialects are of equal value and written in all media, applying for all dictionaries. In official and non-official events. In "educated" and in "non educated" circles. Each vietnamese, regardless from North, Central or South, is proud of his/her dialect. No dialect is more privileged than the other. And that was in South Vietnam before 1975. Beautiful Bavaria (talk) 16:04, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

/i/
In the South, the /i/ is really pronounced, Ba Vì , it sounds like "ba vay". 138.229.19.202 (talk) 16:00, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

I am sorry. You make the thing more complicated that it is. The /i/ is pronounced as /i/. OMG. That is so simple. Please, don´t make the pronunciation different as it is. By the way: In "pure" south vietnamese dialect (Tiếng Nam) v is always pronounced as [j]. So: Ba Vi will be spoken as Ba Ji.

Anyway: Pronunciation of v as [v] used by south vietnamese people does not mean, these south vietnamese people are more "educated", "intellectual" than people speaking "pure" south dialect. That is not a question of educated/or not, of intellectual or not. It is just a question of where you are working, either as reporter, as correspondent, as moderator,as "someone" who speaks to any audience (TV or social media, e.g. YouTube.). In fact it is not yet clear, when this "mixture" of north- and south pronunciation appears in the very first time. As mentioned, this "mixture" only appplies to south vietnamese people speaking in the "spoken" media.

As far as the north vietnamese dialect is concerned, north vietnamese people do not pronounce d, r, tr as written neither. They still pronounce their "pure" north vietnamese dialect.

Vietnam should be proud of their (at least) 3 different dialects (north, central, south).

Please remember: A good vietnamese teacher teaches vietnamese language with all the nuances (pronunciation, words) of the 3 dialects, since these 3 dialects are in equal value. Beautiful Bavaria (talk) 15:32, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Saigon Finals section rework
The Saigon Finals section as it stands is so bad as to be totally useless. I have PhD in Linguistics and I could not understand what it was trying to communicate. Besides the terrible quality of English, the "Merger of finals" is way too compressed and self-contradictory, and it is utterly unclear what the "table of rimes ending in /n, t, ŋ, k, ŋ͡m, k͡p/ in the Saigon dialect:" is trying to communicate: what is the vertical axis – a claim about what the underlying coda phoneme is? Why does each cell contain 2 forms? If this is supposed to illustrate pronunciations, why is all the content of the cells orthographic forms, no phonetic transcription? Why are some cells empty? Why do some cells have "–" as the second form? It says "Combinations that have changed their pronunciation due to merger are bolded" – but if *every* cell that isn't empty has a bold-faced string as the first of the 2 strings in it, what is the bold-facing representing?

In contrast, the Language Variation > Consonants section of the Vietnamese Language article is crystal clear. The "Regional consonant correspondences" table there is crystal clear too: the vertical axis is labeled with the orthography, sometimes with qualifications like "after i, ê", and the Saigon column has the phonetic transcription of the coda consonant. I suggest that Vietnamese Phonology > Saigon Finals be scrapped entirely and essentially replaced by the relevant section of Vietnamese Language > Language Variation > Consonants section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:189:C480:DF40:8C85:EB01:4A72:225D (talk) 13:06, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Chapter Saigon initials
In this chapter I am wondering about following remarks, e.g.: 1) ... careful speech by some speakers. 2) ... especially in careful speech or when reading a text.. 3) ... However, in many speakers .. 4) ... In informal speech .. 5) ... formal speech or when reading a text... The way how south vietnamese people are pronouncing the above mentioned "mixture" of north- and south dialects has absolutely nothing to do with the form of the speech (careful, not careful, formal, not formal/informal). This dialect mixture is rather used by south vietnamese people speaking in state-owned media, in "censored" socia media, regardless of the "form" of the speech.

In South Vietnam before 1975 south vietnamese leaders always spoke their own, pure dialect, regardless of they were born, from North, Central or from South Vietnam, regardless of where they have spoken, on media, with the audience, private or not private, "careful" or not "careful", "formal" or "not formal". They always keep their own dialect.

Example:

Ngô Đình Diệm born in Quảng Bình, central North Vietnam. He spoke north central dialect. Dương Văn Minh born in Mỹ Tho, Mekong Delta, South Vietnam. He spoke south dialect. Nguyễn Cao Kỳ born in Sơn Tây, North Vietnam. He spoke north dialect. Nguyễn Văn Thiệu born in Phan Rang, central South Vietnam. He spoke this own south central dialect.

A mixture of pronunciation like mentioned above is unknown for them.

The question is:

WHY THIS MIXTURE? WHERE DID IT BEGIN?

I guess, a south vietnamese leader of the current political system in Vietnam has triggered for the very first time this "mixture". This mixture is "promoted" by the massive resettlement of north vietnamese population to South Vietnam and especially to Saigon (aka HCM city), by the nearly complete presence of north vietnamese people in the media, in the administration.

In a nutshell: The presence of south dialect spoken vietnamese people is more or less "zero" in the spoken media!

The "north vietnamese" presence is so all over in main cities of South Vietnam, so that one should have the feeling, he is staying in North Vietnam, and not in South Vietnam. Beautiful Bavaria (talk) 20:13, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Phonetic nature of the so-called “preglottalized” and “unaspirated” voiceless stops in Vietnamese
The article mainly draws on Thompson’s excellent A Vietnamese reference grammar (1965), but the description of what the author terms “Fortis stops” (2.2, p 22) is incorrect. This is particularly true of what he calls the “preglottalized stops” b [ɓ] and đ [ɗ]. These stops are not “preglottalized”, that is, they do not start with a glottal stop, as the author claims, but are simply voiced implosives, whose mechanism is well described e.g. in Catford (1988) and Ladefoged (2001). Thompson does not even use the term “implosive” but only writes of possible “implosion”. Thompson apparently believed that a glottalic airstream – egressive or ingressive - can only be initiated with a completely closed glottis, which is not true. Implosives are initiated with the glottis slightly open and ready for voicing, but unlike in the case of ordinary [b] and [d], the egressive (upward) airstream necessary for the vocal chords to vibrate for [ɓ] and [ɗ] does not come from pulmonic pressure, but from a rapidly descending larynx increasing subglottal pressure and decreasing intraoral pressure at the same time, thus generating the pressure difference necessary to set the vocal chords vibrating. Thompson writes the “preglottalized” voiced stops are “much stronger articulated” than their English counterparts. What really creates this much stronger sound effect in implosives is not the strength of articulation, but an oral resonance chamber greatly enlarged by the downward movement of the larynx. This is why [b] and [d] sound muffled compared with their implosive counterparts. Thompson’s “sharply released” voiceless unaspirated syllable-initial stops [t] and [k] are strictly speaking not just that. What Thompson describes as “sharply released” is in fact a kind of ejective where the glottis is not completely closed (as in an ordinary ejective) but slightly open and ready for voicing. This is why with the Vietnamese voiceless unaspirated stops you don’t hear a subsequent glottal stop, as is the case with ordinary ejectives. Thompson’s “sharp” release of the Vietnamese voiceless unaspirated stops is in reality the typical popping sound of ejectives. The aspiration of Vietnamese “th” is actually quite weak and can be almost completely absent. The acoustic difference between “t” and “th” for the native speaker mainly lies in the different initiating processes, glottalic (a pop) and pulmonic (absence of the pop). Thus the three-way distinction among Vietnamese stops seems to be one of airstream initiation (pulmonic – ejective – implosive), rather than one of phonation (voiceless aspirated – voiceless unaspirated – voiced), with aspiration just a by-product of open-larynx pulmonic initiation. The above also applies in large measure to the phonetics/phonologies of Thai and Khmer, which apparently form a sprachbund with Vietnamese. Soundshift (talk) 15:45, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Contradictory info on ʐ
The article states that the red phonemes in the consonant table are exclusively northern consonants, a color that ʐ is marked with, yet the only mention of ʐ occurring in Vietnamese is as a phoneme in southern Vietnamese. I'm not an expert on the language, so I want to bring this to the attention of someone who knows if it really is a northern or southern consonant, and if this discrepancy could be corrected. AnyGuy (talk) 20:19, 19 May 2022 (UTC)


 * According to Phạm & McLeod (2016), "Standard" and Central dialects pronounce an orthographic r as /ʐ/, Northern dialects as /z/ (creating the r-z merger) or /r/, and Southern dialects as /ɣ/.
 * The introduction from the IPA on Hanoi Vietnamese mentions only /z/, no /ʐ/.
 * Thompson (1987) says that Hanoi has the r-z merger, whereas Saigon has a /j/ and a [r] that "varies rather widely in manner", which is being represented with /ɺ/ in the table.
 * English Wiktionary currently assigns /ʐ/ to Central Vietnamese only. E.g. rượu.


 * So in conclusion /ʐ/ is a realisation of /ɺ/ in Saigon, and a "standard reading pronunciation" in Hanoi, but a natively distinct phoneme in Hue (although it is simply the main realisation of the orthographic rhotic r).
 * Michael Ly (talk) 11:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)