New Vietnamese Help Thread

[Guest DOVAHKIIN]

Vietnamese help? Look here!

Due to a little fuss made by some members, the lovely (and notorious) Aziraphale and I quickly grumbled, mumbled and complied to the request for a different Vietnamese help thread, as others said the one merged with the Nguyen topic was a poorly organized one. From here, I will provide some links for your convenience. Followed by some simple copy and pasted information on the Vietnamese language.

The same rules from the other pinned language threads apply:

- Please check this first post and the posted links for help first. Don't create pages and pages of the same questions.

- Please try to refrain from helping people unless you're completely sure that you're right. Don't risk telling people wrong stuff. If you would still like to try and help, please say that you are not completely sure in your posts.

- If you have any corrections to this first post of mine, or any links to contribute, please PM them to me x-factor not the other mods, and I will change them as soon as possible.

- The rest should be common sense... hopefully.

- Avoid asking me specifically for help, I can't read or write Vietnamese if my life depended on it ;/

Resources:

Vietnamese-English Bilinguals in Melbourne: Social Relationships in the Code-Switching of Personal Pronouns

Vietnamese Dictionary & Translation

Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French

Online Keyboard for Vietnamese

Vietnamese language, alphabet and pronounciation

Vietnamese Alphabet - Wikipedia (Use at your own discretion)

Vietnamese Language - Wikipedia (Use at your own discretion)

Vietnamese pronouns - Wikipedia (Use at your own discretion)

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Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ), formerly known under the French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of Vietnamese people (người Việt or người Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese, most of whom live in the United States. It is also spoken as a second language by some ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together). Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, and it was originally written using the Chinese writing system. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.

Vietnamese Dialects

There are various mutually intelligible spoken dialects, the main three being:

Main dialect -Locality dialect - Names under French colonization

Northern Vietnamese - Hanoi dialect, Other Northern dialects: Haiphong, and various provincial forms - Tonkinese

Central Vietnamese - Huế dialect, Nghệ An dialect, Quảng Nam dialect - High Annamese

Southern Vietnamese - Saigon dialect, Mekong (Far West) dialect - Cochinchinese

These dialects differ slightly in tone, pronunciation, and sometimes vocabulary, although the Huế dialect is more markedly different from the others due to its local vocabulary. The hỏi and ngã tones are distinct in the north but have merged in the south. The ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in the Southern and Central dialect but are merged in the Northern dialect. Grammatical differences are negligible.

The Vietnamese alphabet has the following 29 letters, in collating order:

A Ă Â B C D Đ E Ê G H I K L M N O Ô Ơ P Q R S T U Ư V X Y

a ă â b c d đ e ê g h i k l m n o ô ơ p q r s t u ư v x y

Vietnamese also uses the 10 digraphs and 1 trigraph below.

CH GH GI KH NG NGH NH PH QU TH TR

These groups were formerly considered single letters and one can find them in older dictionaries. They are no longer considered single letters for collating and similar purposes; so, for example, "CH" will be collated between "CA" and "CO" in modern dictionaries.

The letters "F", "J", "W" and "Z" are not part of the Vietnamese alphabet, but are used in foreign loan words. "W" is sometimes used in place of "Ư" in abbreviations. In informal writing, "W", "F", and "J" are sometimes used in place of "QU", "PH", and "GI", respectively.

Simplified consonant pronunciation guide

Wikibooks

Wikibooks Vietnamese has a page on the topic of

How to pronounce the Vietnamese "ng"

At the beginning of syllables, sounds are pronounced as in English except for the following:

* "ph" is like English "f".

* Rural Southern "v" is like English "y". (Hanoi and standard Southern "v" is the same as English "v".)

* "đ" is like French/English "d".

* "t" is like French or Spanish "t" or like pinyin "d".

* "th" is like Hindi "th" (थ) or like English "t" at the beginning of words.

* "x" is like English "s".

* Hanoi "d" is English "z". Saigon "d" is like English "y".

* "ch" is like Pinyin "zh", similar to the "j" in English "jar". (but never aspirated, as in "chair")

* "nh" is like Portuguese "nh", Spanish "ñ", or French "gn".

* "c" is like English "k" (and never like English "c" in "cede" or "s" in "seed" but "c" in "code").

* "kh" is like German or Scottish "ch" or Arabic or Persian "kh".

* "g" is like Dutch "g" or modern Greek "gh" (Γ).

o However, Vietnamese "gi" is like English "z" in Hanoi (the North) and like English "y" in Saigon (the South).

* "ng" is like Hangul "ng" (ㅇ) or English "ng" (without a little hard "g" sound at the end)

* Saigon "tr" is like Hindi "ṭ+ṣ" (ट+ष) or like English "tr" with the tongue tip curled backwards.

* Saigon "s" is like English "sh". (Hanoi "s" is the same as English "s").

* Saigon "qu" is like English "w". (Hanoi "qu" is the same as English "qu").

* Saigon "r" is variously like

- a ) Spanish "r" (most common) or

- b ) French "g", in provincial south, or

- c ) Spanish "rr". (Hanoi "r" is the same as English "z").

[Guest junghwa_melowdeeh]

hey vietnamese soompiers! what do these two phrases mean? please and thank you~

lan sau tui minh noi chuyen tiep nhe?

hen gap sau

thanks again!

[Guest xJK]

lan sau tui minh noi chuyen tiep nhe? - next time we will speak again?

hen gap sau - meet next time or see ya next time

im no translator but thats the basic of it.

[Guest Urban Kunoichi]

lan sau tui minh noi chuyen tiep nhe? - next time we will speak again?

hen gap sau - meet next time or see ya next time

im no translator but thats the basic of it.

literally, that's what it means.

lan sau tui minh noi chuyen tiep nhe? - talk to you later

hen gap sau - see you later

[Guest Madoki]

woahhh this is like viet class all over again lol. but hey this is a good vietnamese guide. nice stuff nice stuff

[Guest xoxo.poppinv]

P.S., this is something people get really mixed up with, but every Vietnamese word is one syllable, including Viet Nam... ^^

[d a y.b r e a k]

ou a viet help thread; good idea Will :]; i'll help once in awhile if no one doess xDD

-TEAA`

[Guest w4termelon]

how do you say "you're a loser" in viet？ ^^ im dissing my viet frnds

[Guest ima_robot]

hey. i was wondering if you could translate this for me >____<

"da khong yeu thi thoi."

please and thank you! <33

[onewhite lie]

Lol!

This is like Viet class all over again.

Joy-ness.

ima_robot - It's technically; If you don't love (me) then forget it.

Oh my gosh, I'm so rusty T-T

[Guest onetwothuy]

hey. i was wondering if you could translate this for me >____<

"da khong yeu thi thoi."

please and thank you! <33

Hahah it's like that Minh Tuyet song

I don't really know how to explain it though.

But I agree with the person above!

xoxo.poppinv I've always been confused about that!

This is a nice thread.

[Guest ima_robot]

=0!

asianxsesation

onewhite_lie

^OHOH thanks!! okok i have oneee more!!!

"dung vi mot noi sao ma quen het mot bau troi."

ahh last one i promise!!!

[Guest chocopocky]

Oh wow, I'm liking this thread! :'D

I'm finally re-learning Vietnamese~ Oh joy.

"dung vi mot noi sao ma quen het mot bau troi." - Don't say a word because you'll forget it later?

I hope that's right. Such a long sentence.. I don't know if it's a real sentence too..

[Guest tarochan]

=0!

asianxsesation

onewhite_lie

^OHOH thanks!! okok i have oneee more!!!

"dung vi mot noi sao ma quen het mot bau troi."

ahh last one i promise!!!

Don't because of a star and forget the whole sky.

^literal translation. basically means

Don't forget the whole sky just because of one star.

I've been trying to improve my viet ever since I came back from vietnam. I never realized how bad it was until I got there. Oyy. I used to think that "Cam Dai" [don't pee] means "tough orange.." Haha.. I was like but I don't see anyone selling oranges..

[Guest hesaid143]

how do you say "you're a loser" in viet？ ^^ im dissing my viet frnds

I don't really think that's a literal insult in Vietnamese, maybe some other insults.

[Guest Katxdbsk]

I've been trying to improve my viet ever since I came back from vietnam. I never realized how bad it was until I got there. Oyy. I used to think that "Cam Dai" [don't pee] means "tough orange.." Haha.. I was like but I don't see anyone selling oranges..

LOLLLL Thats funny. And u see that sign like every where in VN cuz people keep..... u know, everywhere at night, especially drunk people =.=

[Guest chairya]

HECK YEAHHHHHHH. we need one of these ;3

except i forgot a lot of my vietnamese... A LOT T__T ahaha

GOTTA RELEARNNN ;]

woo~ ^^

how do you say "youre freakin crazy" to someone (or the equivalent) in viet?

[Guest ima_robot]

tarochan & chocopocky thanks for the help.

.____. someone keeps sending me wierd messages in viet. AHHH

[onewhite lie]

chairya -

May dien qua - You're so crazy.

May that la dien - You're seriously crazy.

ima_robot - Block them!

[ohchells]

how do you say "you're a loser" in viet？ ^^ im dissing my viet frnds

Like someone said earlier, I don't believe there is an actual word for loser in Vietnamese.