The Alphabet (Bảng Chữ Cái)

The Vietnamese alphabet is deceptively simple. Originally, it was written using a set of characters developed primarily in China which was a system known as chữ Hán Nôm. Nowadays though, the Vietnamese language is instead written using an alphabet developed by Catholic missionaries starting in the 17th century which is known as chữ Quốc ngữ.

You would think that this new, Latin Alphabet using system would make learning how to pronounce Vietnamese words a breeze. All of the letters are way more familiar to English speakers and there’s way less of them than the thousands of old characters that used to be used. But there are a lot of little intricacies and differences from English that make Vietnamese way tougher to crack than you would think. And sometimes, that alphabet knowledge can work against you when letters are pronounced differently between languages. It doesn't help that there are regional dialects that change the way letters sound and that Vietnamese people tend to be lax with pronunciation.

But hopefully, after this section, you’ll understand how to bundle up all these letters so that you know how to pronounce every word you run into.