VIETNAMESE FACTS:

NATIVE: Tiếng Việt

NATIVE SPEAKERS: 75 million

OFFICIAL LANGUAGE IN: Vietnam

WRITING SYSTEMS: Latin (Vietnamese alphabet, chữ quốc ngữ)

REGULATED BY: The Vietnamese language does not have a language regulator.

Language

Vietnamese is the native language of the Vietnamese (Kinh) people, as well the many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family. Vietnamese has no marking of case, gender, number, and tense. About 50% of the lexicon derives from Chinese loanwords. Vietnamese syntax is oriented to the subject–verb–object word order. Contrary to widespread belief, Vietnamese is not a monosyllable language. While approximately 80% of the language is disyllabic, some words have three or four syllables.

Economic Significance

Vietnam is experiencing rapid economic growth. Additionally, there is a large diaspora of Vietnamese people around the world.

History

The language is generally believed to have originated in the what is now northern Vietnam and Chinese had a profound influence on the Vietnamese lexicon. There are six periods of Vietnamese

Dialects

Southern Vietnamese, Central Vietnamese, Northern Vietnamese