VIETNAMESE PHONOLOGY

This article is a technical description the sound system of the Vietnamese language, including phonetics and phonology.

Contents

Consonants

Hanoi

Phonetics

Phonological processes

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Phonetics

Regional consonant variation

Vowels

Monophthongs

Diphthongs and triphthongs

Regional vowel variation

Tone

six-tone analysis

eight-tone analysis

Syllables and phonotactics

Endnotes

Bibliography

See also

External links

Consonants

Two main varieties of Vietnamese, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, are described below.

Hanoi

The 21 consonants of the Hanoi variety:
:

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Dental/ Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal
Plosive	unaspirated						()
	aspirated
	glottalized
Fricative
Approximant

Phonetics

★ is labial-velar and always preceded by a consonant or glottal stop ().

★ at the beginning of words is a nonnative borrowed phoneme. It occurs only in vocabulary derived from French. Native Vietnamese only occurs at the end of words.

★ The glottalized stops are preglottalized and voiced: (i.e., the glottis is always closed before the oral closure). This glottal closure is often not released before the release of the oral closure, resulting in the characteric implosive pronunciation. However, sometimes the glottal closure is released prior to the oral release in which case the stops are pronounced as . Therefore, the primary characteristic is preglottalization with implosion being secondary.

★ Among the coronals:

★
★ are dental: .

★
★ are alveolar: .

★
★ are apical (i.e. with the tongue tip).

★
★ are laminal (i.e. with the tongue blade).

★
★ HCMC is not present

★ are phonetically palatoalveolar (i.e. the blade of the tongue makes contact behind the alveolar ridge).

★ is often slightly affricated , although much less than English . (Note that the English affricate is also aspirated and usually apical, unlike Vietnamese). This affrication, however, is not obligatory.

Phonological processes

★ A glottal stop is inserted before words that begin with a vowel or the glide :
:

''ăn''	'to eat'
''uỷ''	'to delegate'

★ When stops occur at the end of words, they are unreleased :
:

''đáp''	'to reply'
''mát''	'cool'
''khác''	'different'

★ When the velar consonants follow , they are articulated with a simultaneous bilabial closure (i.e. doubly-articulated) or are strongly labialized .
:

''đục''	'muddy'
''độc''	'poison'
''ung''	'cancer'
''ong''	'bee'

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

The 22 consonants of the Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) variety (a.k.a. Saigon variety):
:

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Dental/ Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive and Affricate	unaspirated							()
	aspirated
	glottalized
Fricative			()
Nasal
Approximant

Phonetics

The HCMC Vietnamese variety is essentially the same as the Hanoi with the following exceptions:

★ is generally not present in HCMC. When it is pronounced, it is often a spelling pronunciation in which case it always occurs palatalized with a following it: . In addition to this , there is that is present among other speakers. These pronunciations are remnants of a merger and sound change involving in southern speech ( is generally still present in the northern and central regions).

★ Hanoi is not present in HCMC.

★ HCMC is generally slightly more palatalized than the Hanoi variety: .

★ In southern speech, the phoneme has a number of variant pronunciations that depend on the speaker. More than one pronunciation may even be found within a single speaker. It may occur as a retroflex fricative , a postalveolar fricative , a flap , a trill , or a fricative flap/trill . This sound is generally represented in Vietnamese linguistics by the symbol < r >.

★ Among the coronals:

★
★ is dental: .

★
★ are alveolar: .

★
★ are apical: .

★
★ are laminal: .

★ Unlike Hanoi, the glide in HCMC when at the beginning of a syllable is not preceded by a glottal stop.

Regional consonant variation

At the beginning of syllables, Hanoi appear as HCMC . HCMC appears as Hanoi , HCMC appear as Hanoi , and HCMC appear as Hanoi . The table below summarizes these sound correspondences:
:

Syllable onsets
Hanoi	HCMC	Example
		word	Hanoi	HCMC
		''vợ''   "wife"
		''da''   "skin"
		''ra''   "to go out"
		''chi''   "what/why/how"
		''trắng''   "white"
		''xa''   "far"
		''số''   "number"

There are also sound mergers involving syllable-final consonants among the different regional varieties. These correspondences differ from the initial consonant correspondences discussed above. Coronals in Hanoi appear as velars in HCMC, except when the coronals occur after the higher front vocalics , in which case HCMC remain the same as Hanoi . Additionally, Hanoi appear as HCMC when they occur after (otherwise they are ):
:

Syllable codas
Hanoi	HCMC	Example
		word	Hanoi	HCMC
		''hát''   "to sing"
		''thác''   "waterfall"
		''xuân''   "spring"
		''vâng''   "to obey"
after		''ít''   "few, small in quantity"
after		''ếch''   "frog"
after		''đến''   "to arrive"
after		''lính''   "soldier"

As can be seen above, vowels also vary among different regions.

Vowels

Monophthongs

The IPA vowel chart of monophthongs (i.e., simple vowels) below is a composite of the phonetic descriptions of Nguyễn (1997), Thompson (1965), and Han (1966). This is a vowel description of Hanoi Vietnamese (i.e., other regions of Vietnam may have different inventories).
:

	Front	Central	Back
Close
Close-mid
Open-mid
Open

★ All vowels are unrounded except for the three back rounded vowels: .

★ and are pronounced short — shorter than the other vowels.

★
★ : Short (orthographic ''ă'') and long (orthographic ''a'') are different phonemic vowels, differing in length only (and not quality). (The symbol indicates a long vowel.)

★
★ : Han (1966) suggests that short (orthographic ''â'') and long (orthographic ''ơ'') differ in both height and length, but that the difference in length is probably the primary distinction. Thompson (1965) seems to suggest that the distinction is due to height (as he does for all Vietnamese vowels), although he also notes the length difference.

★ (orthographic ''ư'') is close 'central' unrounded and backed and lowered: . Many descriptions, such as Thompson (1959, 1965), Nguyễn (1970), Nguyễn (1997), consider this vowel to be close 'back' unrounded: . However, Han's (1966) instrumental analysis indicates that it is more central than back. Brunelle (2003) and Pham (2003) also transcribe this vowel as central.

★ The high and upper-mid vowels have phonetic offglides: , particularly in open syllables:
:

''chị''	'elder sister'		→			''quê''	'countryside'		→
''tư''	'fourth'		→			''mơ''	'to dream'		→
''thu''	'autumn'		→			''cô''	'paternal aunt'		→

Diphthongs and triphthongs

In addition to monophthongs, Vietnamese has many diphthongs and triphthongs. Most of these consist of a vowel followed by /j/ or /w/. (Phonologically speaking, it is best to consider these as a sequence of a vowel and a consonant.) Below is a chart (Nguyễn 1997) listing the diphthongs & triphthongs of general northern speech.
:

Diphthongs	Diphthongs/Triphthongs	Diphthongs/Triphthongs

★ never follows front vowels .

★ never follows rounded vowels .

Regional vowel variation

Thompson (1965) says that in Hanoi words spelled with ''ưu'' and ''ươu'' are pronounced as , respectively, whereas other dialects in the Tonkin delta pronounce them as and . Hanoi speakers that do pronounce these words with and are using a spelling pronunciation.
Thompson (1965) also notes that in Hanoi the diphthongs, ''iê'' , ''ươ'' , ''uô'' , may be pronounced as , respectively (as the spelling suggests), but before and in open syllables these are always pronounced .

Tone

Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Tones differ in

★ pitch

★ length

★ contour melody

★ intensity

★ glottality (with or without accompanying constricted vocal cords)
Unlike many Native American, African, and Chinese languages, Vietnamese tones do not rely solely on pitch contour. Vietnamese often uses instead a '''register complex''' (which is a combination of phonation type, pitch, length, vowel quality, etc.). So perhaps a better description would be that Vietnamese is a register language and not a "pure" tonal language (Pham 2003).
In Vietnamese orthography, tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel.

six-tone analysis

The six tones in the Hanoi and other northern varieties are:
:

'Name'	'Description'	'Chao Tone Contour'	'Diacritic'	'Example'
''ngang''	high (or mid) level	33	(no mark)	''ba''  'three'
''huyền''	low falling	21	'`'	''bà''  'lady'
''hỏi''	(low) dipping-rising	313	' ̉'	''bả''  'poison'
''ngã''	creaking-rising	35 or 315	'˜'	''bã''  'residue'
''sắc''	high (or mid) rising	35	'´'	''bá''  'governor'
''nặng''	constricted	32 or 31	' ̣'	''bạ''  'at random'

There is much variation among speakers concerning how tone is realized phonetically. There are differences between varieties of Vietnamese spoken in the major geographic areas (i.e. northern, central, southern) and smaller differences within the major areas (e.g. Hanoi vs. other northern varieties). In addition, there seems to be variation among individuals. More research is needed to determine the remaining details of tone realization and the variation among speakers.
Below are details about tone realization in the northern varieties.
'Ngang tone:'

★ The '''ngang''' tone is produced with modal voice phonation (i.e. with "normal" phonation).
'Huyền tone:'

★ The '''huyền''' tone has accompanying breathy voice phonation in some speakers, but this is lacking in other speakers: '''bà''' = or .
'Hỏi tone:'

★ The '''hỏi''' is pronounced low falling in the beginning of the syllable, and rises slightly after that.
'Ngã tone:'

★ For 'some' speakers, the '''ngã''' tone is pronounced falling-rising, with the rising part noticeably higher than the Hỏi tone. '''Hỏi''' = ³¹³; '''ngã''' = ³¹⁵. In Southern Vietnam this tone is merged with the '''hỏi''' tone (same pitch levels).
'Sắc tone:'

★ The '''sắc''' tone is produced with modal voice although the vocal cords are often tenser than the '''ngang''' tone. In some speakers, the '''sắc''' tone has the same tone contour as the '''ngã''' tone (i.e. ³⁵). In other speakers, the '''ngã''' tone is noticeably higher than the '''sắc''' tone: '''sắc''' = ³⁴ or ²⁴; '''ngã''' = ³⁵ or ⁴⁵.
'Nặng tone:'

★ The '''nặng''' is pronounced falling and glottalized.

eight-tone analysis

Syllables and phonotactics

The Vietnamese syllable structure follows the scheme:
:: (C₁)(w)V(G)(C₂)+T
where
:

★ C1 = initial consonant onset ★ w = bilabial glide ★ V = vowel nucleus

★ G = glides ★ C2 = final consonant coda ★ T = tone.

In other words, a syllable can optionally have one onset consisting of single consonant or a consonant and the glide and an optional coda. The vowel nucleus may have an additional glide element.
More explicitly, the syllable types are as follows:
:

Syllable	Example	Syllable	Example
V		wV
VG		wVG
VC		wVC
VGC		wVGC
CV		CwV
CVG		CwVG
CVC		CwVC
CVGC		CwVGC

'C₁:'
Any consonant may occur in as an onset with the following exceptions:

★ does not occur in native Vietnamese words

★ does not occur in Hanoi, but it does occur in HCMC and other varieties (due to sound change)
'w:'

★ does not occur after labial consonants

★ does not occur after in native Vietnamese words (it occurs in uncommon Sino-Vietnamese borrowings)

★ the sequences appears in HCMC as , excepting spelling pronunciations
'V:'
The vowel nucleus V may be any of the following 14 monophthongs or diphthongs: .
'G:'
'C₂:'
The optional coda C₂ is restricted to labial, coronal, & velar stops and nasals .
'T:'
Syllables are spoken with an inherent tone contour. All tone contours are possible for open syllables (syllables without consonant codas). If the syllable is closed only 2 contours are possible, that is the ''sắc'' and the ''nặng'' tone.

Endnotes

(1-2)
Thompson (1959, 1965) posits a glottal stop phoneme in a more abstract analysis of Hanoi Vietnamese that would eliminate the phonemes by involving sequences of glottal stop + consonant . Specifically, he proposes:

★

★

★

★

★

★
This analysis also simplifies the syllable description: all syllables have obligatory onsets.
In the southern varieties, does not occur before .
(3)
Below are three linguists' different descriptions of Vietnamese vowels. Which one is correct? You will have to make your own observations. Thompson and Han are not native speakers of Vietnamese, but Nguyễn and Đoàn are.

: Thompson's vowels   Front Central Back 'High '   ' Upper-Mid '   ' Lower-Mid '   ' Upper-Low '     ' Lower-Low '

Han's vowels   Front Central Back 'High ' ' Upper-Mid ' ' Lower-Mid ' ' Low '

Nguyễn's vowels   Front Central Back 'High ' ' Mid ' ' Low '

''Thompson'' (1965) says that the vowels (orthographic 'â') and (orthographic 'ă') are shorter than all of the other vowels, which is shown here with the length mark added to the other vowels. His vowels above are only the basic vowel phonemes. Thompson gives a very detailed description of each vowel's various allophonic realizations.
''Han'' (1966) uses acoustic analysis, including spectrograms and format measuring & plotting, to describe the vowels. She states that the primary difference between orthographic '''ơ''' & '''â''' and '''a''' & '''ă''' is a difference of length (a ratio of 2:1). '''ơ''' = , '''â''' = ; '''a''' = , '''ă''' = . Her format plots also seem show that may be slightly higher than in some contexts (but this would be secondary to the main difference of length). However, it must be pointed out that Han only considers F1 and F2 but not F3.
Another thing to mention about Han's studies is that she uses a rather small number of participants and, additionally, although her participants are native speakers of the Hanoi variety, they all have lived outside of Hanoi for a significant period of their lives (i.e. in France or Ho Chi Minh City).
''Nguyễn'' (1997) is probably simplifying his vowel description somewhat, making it more symmetrical (which is good phonology). He says that this is not a "complete grammar" but rather a "descriptive introduction". So, his chart above is more a phonological vowel chart rather than a phonetic one.
Below is a table comparing the different descriptions to the orthography. Notice that this website is mostly following Han (1966).
:

comparison of orthography & vowel descriptions

Orthography	this website	Thompson	Han	Nguyễn	Đoàn
i	''
ê	''
e	''
ư	''
u	''
ô	''
o	''
ơ	''
â	''
a	''
ǎ	''

Bibliography

★ Brunelle, Marc. (2003). Coarticulation effects in northern Vietnamese tones. (Longer online version of a paper published in the ''Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of Phonetic Sciences''). [Accessed August 05, 2006, http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~mbrunell/Viet%20coarticulation.pdf].

★ Đoàn, Thiện Thuật. (1980). ''Ngữ âm tiếng Việt''. Hà Nội: Đại học và Trung học Chuyên nghiệp, 1980.

★ Đoàn, Thiện Thuật; Nguyễn, Khánh Hà, Phạm, Như Quỳnh. (2003). ''A Concise Vietnamese Grammar (For Non-Native Speakers)''. Hà Nội: Thế Giới Publishers, 2001.

★ Earle, M. A. (1975). ''An acoustic study of northern Vietnamese tones''. Santa Barbara: Speech Communications Research Laboratory, Inc.

★ Ferlus, Michel. (1997). Problemes de la formation du systeme vocalique du vietnamien. ''Asie Orientale'', ''26'' (1), .

★ Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. ''Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises'', ''44'', 135-193. (Published version of the author's MA thesis, University of Washington). (Reprinted 1981, Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics).

★ Han, Mieko S. (1966). ''Vietnamese vowels''. Studies in the phonology of Asian languages (Vol. 4). Los Angeles: Acoustic Phonetics Research Laboratory, University of Southern California.

★ Han, Mieko S. (1968). ''Complex syllable nuclei in Vietnamese''. Studies in the phonology of Asian languages (Vol. 6); U.S. Office of Naval Research. Los Angeles: University of Southern California.

★ Han, Mieko S. (1969). ''Vietnamese tones''. Studies in the phonology of Asian languages (Vol. 8). Los Angeles: Acoustic Phonetics Research Laboratory, University of Southern California.

★ Han, Mieko S.; & Kim, Kong-On. (1972). ''Intertonal influences in two-syllable utterances of Vietnamese''. Studies in the phonology of Asian languages (Vol. 10). Los Angeles: Acoustic Phonetics Research Laboratory, University of Southern California.

★ Han, Mieko S.; & Kim, Kong-On. (1974). Phonetic variation of Vietnamese tones in disyllabic utterances. ''Journal of Phonetics'', ''2'', 223-232.

★ Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. ''Dân Việt-Nam'', ''3'', 61-68.

★ Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1954). De l'origine des tons en vietnamien. ''Journal Asiatique'', ''142'' (1).

★ Haupers, Ralph. (1969). A note on Vietnamese kh and ph. ''Mon-Khmer Studies'', ''3'', 76.

★ Hoàng, Thị Châu. (1989). ''Tiếng Việt trên các miền đất nước: Phương ngữ học''. Hà Nội: Khoa học xã hội.

★ Michaud, Alexis. (2004). ''Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese''. Phonetica 61(2-3) (2004) pp. 119-146. Preprint version

★ Nguyễn, Đăng-Liêm. (1970). ''Vietnamese pronunciation''. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-87022-462-X

★ Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1955). ''Quốc-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam''. Washington, D. C.

★ Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1959). ''Hòa's Vietnamese-English dictionary''. Saigon. (Revised as Nguyễn 1966 & 1995).

★ Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1966). ''Vietnamese-English dictionary''. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle Co. (Revised version of Nguyễn 1959).

★ Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1992). Vietnamese phonology and graphemic borrowings from Chinese: The Book of 3,000 Characters revisited. ''Mon-Khmer Studies'', ''20'', 163-182.

★ Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1995). ''NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary'' (rev. ed.). Lincolnwood, IL.: NTC Pub. Group. (Revised & expanded version of Nguyễn 1966).

★ Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), ''The world's writing systems'', (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0.

★ Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1997). ''Vietnamese: Tiếng Việt không son phấn''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 1-55619-733-0.

★ Nguyễn, Văn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. ''Mon-Khmer Studies'', ''28'', 1-18.

★ Pham, Hoa. (2001). A phonetic study of Vietnamese tones: Reconsideration of the register flip-flop rule in reduplication. In C. Féry, A. D. Green, & R. van de Vijver (Eds.), ''Proceedings of HILP5'' (pp. 140-158). Linguistics in Potsdam (No. 12). Potsdam: Universität Potsdam (5th conference of the Holland Institute of Linguistics-Phonology. ISBN 3-935024-27-4.

★ Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2003). ''Vietnamese tone: A new analysis.'' Outstanding dissertations in linguistics. New York: Routledge. (Published version of author's 2001 PhD dissertation, University of Florida: Hoa, Pham. ''Vietnamese tone: Tone is not pitch''). ISBN 0-415-96762-7.

★ Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. ''Language'', ''35'' (3), 454-476.

★ Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). ''A Vietnamese reference grammar''. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1117-8. (Original work published 1965).

★ Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese final palatals. ''Language'', ''43'' (1), 362-371.

★ Thurgood, Graham. (2002). Vietnamese and tonogenesis: Revising the model and the analysis. ''Diachronica'', ''19'' (2), 333-363.

See also

★ Vietnamese alphabet

★ Vietnamese language

★ List of phonetics topics

External links

★ Ngữ âm học