The first time you look at Vietnamese writing, you might well be surprised at all the accents on and under the letters. Some vowels have not just one but two marks per letter – for example, in Việt Nam. Why is that?
In this post, we’re going to take a look at the Vietnamese tones and accent marks, and how to pronounce them correctly.
- Part 1 – Vietnamese tones
- Part 2 – Vietnamese accent marks
- Why do some Vietnamese words have two accent marks?
- Regional variations
Part 1 – Vietnamese tones
Vietnamese is a tonal language. That’s why it can sound musical or melodic. There are six tones (though some parts of the country don’t pronounce them all) and they are represented by symbols that actually quite closely match their sound.
Each tone has a different pitch and intonation, and these tones can a large part of the meaning. So it’s important to learn the tones and try your best to pronounce them well if you want to be understood when speaking Vietnamese.
What are the 6 Vietnamese tones?
| Example | Tone name* | My nickname | My notes | Some common words with this tone |
| la | ngang | high, flat tone | Remember this is not toneless, it’s a high, flat tone. | anh, em, không, tên, xem |
| là | huyền | low tone, down tone | Start low and stay low. | là, gì, và, làm, gà |
| lá | sắc | up tone | Start high and go higher. | có, nói, sống, cá, nóng |
| lạ | nặng | dot tone | Short and low. | chị, được, một, học, lạnh |
| lả | hỏi | question tone | Your voice goes up like you’re asking a question. Eg. Really? | phải, nhỏ, ở, của, trẻ |
| lã | ngã | tilde tone | Similar to đả but there is a short break (see the video below). In the south there is no break – ã is exactly the same as ả. | cũng, sẽ, cũ, sữa, mỗi |
If you look closely, the symbols used for each of the tones represent the sound they make. The sắc symbol goes up, just like the tone. Hỏi looks and sounds like a question. And nặng, the heavy tone, is the only tone written below the letter.
* The full name for the tones includes dấu (eg. sắc is dấu sắc), but a lot of the time they’re just referred to by the names in the table above (eg. we usually just say sắc).
Are Vietnamese tones hard?
Vietnamese pronunciation can be tricky for foreigners. Tones appear hard but I assure you, they are manageable.
First, it’s important to remember that no language is completely flat. English uses sentence intonation to express meaning. For example, when we ask questions the intonation goes up or down. We also emphasise words in a sentence to show annoyance or surprise.
So, tones are not so strange after all.
That said, it takes some time and effort to get used to them.
Many people give up at this point. That’s a real shame because besides tones, Vietnamese is a relatively easy and amazing language. You will need to practice to improve your pronunciation but if I can do it, so can you.
~
Resources for Vietnamese tones
Learn more about the tones here:
Part 2 – Vietnamese accent marks
Some vowel letters in Vietnamese are pronounced differently depending on whether or not an accent mark is used. If you’re familiar with a language like French, you’ll have seen accents like é and ê that change the sound of the letter ‘e’.
Vietnamese also has some accent marks to represent different vowel sounds.
Let’s look at an example:
ô, o and ơ are totally different sounds.
ô – eg. bộ (walk) – oh like in the English word ‘go’
o – eg. bò (beef) – o like in ‘hot’
ơ – eg. bơ (butter) – er or ir like in ‘bird’
Mixing ô and o is the most frequent mistake I heard in my Vietnamese classes.
Vietnamese vowels
Vietnamese has 12 vowels: a, ă, â, e, ê, i, y, o, ô, ơ, u, ư.
You can listen to all of these in this alphabet video. Pay attention to the speaker’s mouth as she makes each sound. For example, to make the ư sound, you have to smile a little when you say it.
I absolutely have to mention the name of two of the accent marks in Vietnamese:
ơ, ư, and ă have an accent called móc (hook)
â, ê and ô have an accent called mũ (hat)
Yes, ^ is called dấu mũ – literally ‘the hat accent’!
Why do some Vietnamese words have two accent marks?
We’ve seen how Vietnamese tones work and how the different accents work. These can be combined – a vowel can have both a tone and an accent.
Here’s a video combining some different vowels (a, o, ô, ơ) with the various tones.
Let’s look at an example – the word phở .
phở (Vietnam’s most famous noodle soup)
Accent: Smile a little to say the ‘uh’ sound, ơ
Tone: Say the whole word like it’s a question “phở?”
What does this look like in practice?
Let’s look at a short sentence:
Học tiếng Việt hay lắm. (=Studying Vietnamese is very interesting.)
Some words have one mark on the vowel(s) like học.
Others have two marks such as tiếng and Việt.
And some vowels have none like hay.
Regional variations
The tones and accent marks used in Vietnamese are the same throughout Vietnam. However, regional and dialectal differences can affect the pronunciation of these sounds.
The main difference you may notice is that southern Vietnamese only has 5 spoken tones. Ngã is pronounced the same as hỏi.
If you visit central Vietnam, you may notice some vowel differences. For example, ê is pronounced differently. But that’s getting well beyond beginner level.
In summary
Vietnamese has a unique writing system that can look a little confusing for beginners. However, with a little practice, you will be able to read, write and pronounce Vietnamese with ease.
If you want to pronounce Vietnamese well, you should practice repeating the sounds and use lots of audio material like Pimsleur* or VPod101*.
Over to you: How did you feel the first time you saw written Vietnamese? Was it reassuring to see a romanised alphabet or confusing to see two accent marks? Are you impressed by how phonetic Vietnamese is?