Accents (Dấu)

In Vietnamese, in addition to the extended alphabet, we have a series of different markings called dấu, or accents/tone marks which determine how we say a word.

Name	None (Không Thanh) Thanh Ngang	Sắc	Huyền	Ngã	Hỏi	Nặng
Pronunciation	Neutral Tone	Rising Tone	Descending Tone	Wavy Tone	Questioning Tone	Heavy Tone
Example	a	á	à	ã	ả	ạ
Audio

It is important to keep these accents in mind because if you were to try and say a word in Vietnamese and use a different tone, it is more than likely that you are just going to end up saying the completely wrong word. This is also true when trying to write down a word you have heard in Vietnamese that you don’t know how to spell. Think of words whose spelling are separated by an accent in the same way as you would think of words with slightly different spelling. You wouldn’t look at bar and bear as the same word, so apply the same logic to words like ma and má.

A point that has to be brought up with these accents is the similarity between ngã and hỏi. These 2 accents are so similar that Southern Vietnamese have effectively given up on trying to pronounce them distinctly and have resorted to pronouncing them the same. But if you want to try and learn how to distinguish them, ngãis spoken at a higher pitch in comparison to hỏi.What helps me out when trying to pronounce these 2 is that ngãsounds slightly more like asking a question when you are surprised, while hỏisounds more like asking a question when you’re thinking about something and want to confirm it with somebody.