vietnamese

Vietnamese, or Tiếng Việt, is an Austroasiatic language of the Vietic branch spoken primarily in Vietnam and by Vietnamese communities abroad. It is the national and official language of Vietnam and the native language of the majority Kinh (Viet) people. The term Vietnamese can also refer to the people or culture of Vietnam.

It belongs to the Vietic subgroup of Austroasiatic and is related to Muong; dialects vary regionally but are generally mutually intelligible to some degree. Major regional varieties include Northern, Central, and Southern Vietnamese, with notable differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and tone inventories.

Vietnamese is written with the Latin-based Quốc Ngữ script, which uses diacritics to indicate tones and certain vowels. Quốc Ngữ was developed by scholars and missionaries in the 17th century and became the standard script in the 20th century. Earlier writing included chữ Hán and chữ Nôm.

It is a tonal and analytic language with subject–verb–object word order. It uses little inflection, relies on particles and word order for grammatical relationships, and employs classifiers when counting nouns. The language features phonemic tones that differ by dialect, and its phonology includes a large inventory of vowels and consonants.

Vietnamese is the predominant language of Vietnam but is also spoken by overseas communities in many countries. It coexists with minority languages within Vietnam, and language policy supports bilingual education and media in Vietnamese across the country.