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The Vietnamese alphabet (Vietnamese: chữ Quốc ngữ, lit. 'script of the National language') is the modern writing script for Vietnamese. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages^[6] originally developed by Portuguese missionary Francisco de Pina (1585–1625).^[1]

The Vietnamese alphabet contains 29 letters, including seven letters using four diacritics: ⟨ă⟩, ⟨â⟩, ⟨ê⟩, ⟨ô⟩, ⟨ơ⟩, ⟨ư⟩, and ⟨đ⟩. There are an additional five diacritics used to designate tone (as in ⟨à⟩, ⟨á⟩, ⟨ả⟩, ⟨ã⟩, and ⟨ạ⟩). The complex vowel system and the large number of letters with diacritics, which can stack twice on the same letter (e.g. nhất meaning 'first'), makes it easy to distinguish the Vietnamese orthography from other writing systems that use the Latin script.^[7]

The Vietnamese system's use of diacritics produces an accurate transcription for tones despite the limitations of the Roman alphabet. On the other hand, sound changes in the spoken language have led to different letters, digraphs and trigraphs now representing the same sounds.

Letter names and pronunciation

Vietnamese uses 22 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet. The four remaining letters are not considered part of the Vietnamese alphabet although they are used to write loanwords, languages of other ethnic groups in the country based on Vietnamese phonetics to differentiate the meanings or even Vietnamese dialects, for example: ⟨dz⟩ or ⟨z⟩ for southerner pronunciation of ⟨v⟩ in standard Vietnamese.

In total, there are 12 vowels (nguyên âm) and 17 consonants (phụ âm, literally 'extra sound').

Notes

• The vowels in the table are bolded and italicized.
• The use of the terms bê or bờ to refer to ⟨b⟩ and as pê or pờ to refer to ⟨p⟩ is to avoid confusion in some contexts, the same for ⟨s⟩ as sờ mạnh or sờ nặng. (literally, 'strong s' or 'heavy s') and ⟨x⟩ as xờ nhẹ (literally, 'light x'), ⟨i⟩ as i ngắn (literally, 'short i') and ⟨y⟩ as y dài (literally, 'long y').
• ⟨q⟩ is always followed by ⟨u⟩ in every word and phrase in Vietnamese, e.g. quần 'trousers', quyến rũ 'to attract', etc.
• The name i-cờ-rét for ⟨y⟩ is from the French name for the letter: i grec (literally, 'Greek i'),^[9] referring to the letter's origin from the Greek letter upsilon. The other obsolete French pronunciations include ⟨e⟩ (/əː˧/) and ⟨u⟩ (/wi˧/).
• The Vietnamese alphabet does not contain the 4 letters ⟨f⟩ (ép, ép-phờ), ⟨j⟩ (gi), ⟨w⟩ (u kép 'double u', vê kép, vê đúp 'double v') and ⟨z⟩ (giét). However, these letters are often used for foreign loanwords (even partially adapted ones: flo 'fluorine', jun 'joule', bazơ 'base') or may be kept for foreign names.
• ⟨y⟩ is most commonly treated as a vowel along with ⟨i⟩. ⟨i⟩ represents 'short /i˧/' and ⟨y⟩ represents 'long /i˧/'. ⟨y⟩ can have tones as well as other vowels (⟨ý⟩, ⟨ỳ⟩, ⟨ỹ⟩, ⟨ỷ⟩, ⟨ỵ⟩) e.g. Mỹ 'America'. It may also act as a consonant (when used after ⟨â⟩ and ⟨a⟩). It can sometimes be used to replace ⟨i⟩, e.g. bánh mì 'bread' can also be written bánh mỳ.
• ⟨s⟩ and ⟨x⟩ are similar to each other in sound in Vietnamese and can sometimes replace each other e.g. sương xáo or sương sáo 'grass jelly'.

Consonants

The alphabet is largely derived from Portuguese with some influence from French^{[citation needed]}, although the usage of ⟨gh⟩ and ⟨gi⟩ was borrowed from Italian (compare ghetto, Giuseppe) and that for ⟨c, k, qu⟩ from (Latinised) Greek and Latin (compare canis, kinesis, quō vādis), mirroring the English usage of these letters (compare cat, kite, queen).

10 digraphs consist: ⟨ch⟩, ⟨gh⟩, ⟨gi⟩, ⟨kh⟩, ⟨ng⟩, ⟨nh⟩, ⟨ph⟩, ⟨qu⟩, ⟨th⟩, ⟨tr⟩, and only one trigraph ⟨ngh⟩.