If you have been making searches such as “English to Vietnamese” and “Vietnamese to English”, then you have come to the right place!

Vietnamese is a language present in Southeast Asia which comes from the Austro-Asiatic family, specifically the Vietnamese-Muong branch. It is the official language of the Vietnamese, who make up 87 % of the population in Vietnam. It is also the second language of the rest of the country’s population.

Vietnam was part of the Chinese Empire for centuries. After China became independent, the two countries continued to maintain trade and cultural ties. In addition, from the 17th century onwards, Portuguese missionaries introduced the Latin alphabet to Vietnam to facilitate communication. Years later, the French continued the work of the Portuguese. This explains various linguistic features of the language.

LINGUISTIC ASPECTS

Vietnamese contains a lot of vocabulary that comes from Chinese. In fact, before the 20th century, as it was part of the Chinese Empire, the language featured Chinese ideograms. It currently uses the Vietnamese alphabet, which is based on the Latin alphabet which Portuguese uses, as it shares diacritical marks with it. This explains why there are many Chinese, French and Portuguese loans in Vietnamese.

In this language there are five vowels. If certain Vietnamese diacritical marks are added to the vowels, this would create 6 more, so there are 11 in total.

In Vietnamese there are monopthongs, diphthongs, and triphthongs. The order of sentences in this language is: subject, verb and object. Vietnamese uses a certain order: in a prepositional syntagm, prepositions will always precede the noun; and in an adjectival syntagm, adjectives will always be after the noun.

It is also considered to be an analytical language. It does not use affixes on words to express case, gender, number or tense, which is why verbs are not conjugated, but only accompanied by certain modifying particles. This occurrence is similar in nouns and adjectives.

It is also a tonal language. In Vietnamese, tones distinguish words that have the same sequence of vowels and consonants, as in Thai. There are three obligatory components in a Vietnamese syllable: the tone, the attack, and the nucleus. The attack is the initial part and is always consonant. The nucleus is a vowel or diphthong, which may have by a preceding and a following part. There are six different tones, each corresponding to a symbol on the vowel that functions as the nucleus of the syllable.

IMPORTANCE OF VIETNAMESE

Today, Vietnamese plays a very important role on a global scale. This is because the economy is one of the world’s leading, with steady economic growth. Vietnam’s good relations with the United States, together with its close historical connection with China and France, mean that Vietnam learns from major world powers.

In fact, the economy is such an important issue in this country that the country’s central bank in 1988 separated its functions and created specialised state banks in different areas.

Vietnam’s culture is very rich, with Buddhists, Catholics, Muslims, Catholics, Caodaists and followers of the Hoa Hoa all living side by side in Vietnam. This atmosphere of intercultural and inter-religious tolerance makes it easier to maintain good international relations with the surrounding countries.

The beauty of the country, with its language, natural landscapes and cultures, is also conducive to a boom in tourism, which also has a positive impact on the economy.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that, in all this atmosphere of economic and cultural positivity, Vietnamese is the language of communication. This is why Pham Quang Hieu, Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, advocates the project “day to honour the Vietnamese language in the community of Vietnamese nationals abroad”.

Quang Hieu argued that language is a tool for the preservation, dissemination and transmission of culture that helps to preserve one’s cultural identity.