Viet Nam Latest Headlines:
Tru?ng Sa - Hoàng Sa - Ta Là M?t

Xuan Thao:Teen Model from Vietnam receives numerous offers at IMTA!

Jolie and Pitt in Vietnam to adopt boy, 3

Korean pop idol Bi-Rain to perform in Vietnam

Vietnam girls sold as wives in Malaysia

Vietnamese (tie^'ng Vie^.t)
Vietnamese is an Austroasiatic language spoken by about 68 million people in Vietnam. It is also spoken in Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Co^te d'Ivoire, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the UK, USA and Vanuatu.

Vietnamese was originally written with a Siniform (Chinese-like) script known as Chu+~ No^m or No^m. At first most Vietnamese literature was essentially Chinese in structure and vocabulary. Later literature developed a more Vietnamese style, but was still full of Chinese loan words. The greatest literary work in Vietnamese is Kim Van Kieu, the 'Tale of Kieu', a romance written by Nguyen-Du (1765-1820).

Chu+~ No^m was used until the 20th century. Courses in the Chu+~ No^m script were available at Ho Chi Minh University until 1993, but since then knowledge of and interest in the script has died out.

During the 17th century, Roman Catholic missionaries introduced a Latin-based orthography for Vietnamese, Quo^'c Ngu+~ (national language),which has been used ever since. Until the early 20th century, Quo^'c Ngu+~ was used in parallel with Chu+~ No^m. Today only Quo^'c Ngu+~ is used.

Vietnamese alphabet

The letters J, W and Z are also used, but only in foreign loan words.

Vietnamese is a tonal language with 6 tones. These tones are marked as follows:

Sample text in Vietnamese

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Longer sample text (Tower of Babel)

Vietnamese language courses, dictionaries, etc.

Other languages written with the Latin alphabet

Links

Vietnamese wikipedia (added 10/24/07)
vi.wikipedia.org

Vietnamese wiktionary (added 10/24/07)
vi.wiktionary.org

Online Vietnamese courses and other resources
http://vietnameseonline.net
http://www.evietnamese.net/courses/
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/vietnamese/VNMainpage/vietsite/vi etsite.htm

Online Vietnamese dictionaries
http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~duc/Dict/
http://www.ksvn.com/anhviet_new.htm
http://vdict.com

Vietnamese Electronic talking dictionaries
http://www.ectaco.com

Online radio in Vietnamese
http://www.radiohaingoai.com/
http://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/

Free Vietnamese fonts
http://kicon.com/VNFonts/
http://www.vps.org
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vietunicode/