Vietnameselanguage

Vietnamese language, or tiếng Việt, is an Austroasiatic language in the Vietic branch and is the most widely spoken language in Vietnam. It forms a dialect continuum across the country, with major regional varieties commonly described as Northern, Central, and Southern. The Northern (Hanoi) dialect is often treated as the basis for the standard form, while Central dialects (around Hue and Da Nang) and Southern dialects (including Ho Chi Minh City) show substantial phonological and lexical differences. Despite these differences, speakers from regions typically understand one another with some variation in vocabulary and pronunciation.

Vietnamese is a tonal, analytic language. It has a rich system of tones, whose number varies by region; Northern and Central varieties typically have six phonemic tones, while the Southern variety generally has five due to a merger of two mid-level tones. Syllables usually follow a CV or C(C)V(C) structure, and a large portion of the vocabulary is built through compounding and reduplication rather than inflection.

The language uses classifiers in noun phrases and relies on word order rather than morphology to convey grammatical relationships. Vietnamese lacks grammatical tense and number inflections, with tense and aspect often indicated by adverbs or context. Personal pronouns and honorifics encode social relations and age.

Writing in Vietnamese is done with the Latin-based chữ Quốc ngữ, which uses diacritics to indicate tones and certain vowels. Earlier scripts included Chữ Nôm and classical Chinese characters. Today, Quốc ngữ is the standard script taught in schools and used in government, media, and education.

The core Vietnamese lexicon is native Vietic with extensive Sino-Vietnamese borrowings; influences from French, English, and other languages appear in modern vocabulary. Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam and is also spoken by diaspora communities worldwide.