Vietnamese Phonology

See parent article Vietnamese language for more information about Vietnamese.

Vowels

Monophthongs

• All vowels are unrounded except for the three back vowels: , , and .
• and are pronounced very short, shorter than the other vowels. Short and long are different phonemic vowels, differing in duration only (and not quality). (The symbol indicates length.) There seems to be a question of whether and differ in quality and length or in length only. This description takes the stance that there is also a difference in quality (following Thompson 1965).
• (orthographic ư) is a close central unrounded vowel. Some descriptions (such as Thompson 1965, Nguyễn 1997), consider this vowel to be a close back unrounded vowel . However, instrumental studies seem to indicate that it is more centralized than back (Han 1966). (Brunelle 2003 also transcribes this vowel as close central.) Additionally, is slightly lower than .

Diphthongs and Triphthongs

• never follows front vowels (which are , , ).
• never follows rounded vowels (which are , , ).

Vowels and Orthography

monophthongs

• two different monophthongs or
• both a monophthong and a diphthong,

• different letters represent the same monophthong:

• usually written as i: = sĩ 'scholar'.
• sometimes written as y: = Mỹ 'America'.
• always written as y if
1. preceded by an orthographic vowel: = khuyn 'to advise';
2. or at the beginning of a word: = yu 'to love'.
• (Note that i and y are also used to write the consonant semivowel .)

di- / tri-phthongs

• written as ia in open syllables:

/miɜ/ = ma 'sugar cane'

• written as i before a consonant:

/miɜŋ/ = miếng 'morsel'

• the i is written as y at the beginning of words or after an orthographic vowel:
• ya: /xwiɜ/ = khuya 'late at night'
• y: /xwiɜn/ = khuyn 'to advise'; /iɜn/ = yn 'calm'

• written as ua in open syllables:

/muɜ/ = mua 'to buy'

• written as u before a consonant:

/muɜn/ = mun 'ten thousand'

• written as ưa in open syllables:

/mɨɜ/ = mưa 'to rain'

• written as ươ before consonants:

/mɨɜŋ/ = mương 'irrigation canal'

Tones

• pitch
• length
• contour melody
• intensity
• glottality (with or without accompanying constricted vocal cords)

Consonants

Hanoi

• Implosives: A more accurate description of the implosives & is that they are preglottalized voiced stops (i.e., the glottis is always closed before the oral closure). This glottal closure is most often not released before the release of the oral closure resulting in implosion. 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.
• is a nonnative borrowed phoneme. It occurs only in vocabulary derived from French.
• Apicals: , , , , are apical.
• Laminals: , , , and are laminal.

Ho Chi Minh City

• is not present in HCMC (except as a spelling pronunciation in which case it always occurs palatalized with a following it: ).
• Hanoi is not present in HCMC.
• HCMC is generally slightly more palatalized than the Hanoi variety: .
• Apicals: , , , , , , and are all apical. (Unlike the Hanoi variety, HCMC is laminal.)
• Laminals: , , and are laminal.

Syllable structure

Endnotes

(Note: one of the external links one the Vietnamese language page has an incorrect vowel chart on its website: http://www.de-han.org/vietnam/chuliau/lunsoat/sound/3.htm. The author of this page is following Thompson. Thompson describes this vowel as a "relatively low back unrounded vowel" which is realized as either "lower mid back" or "lower mid back, strongly centralized". The web page author incorrectly lists this vowel as lower low back unrounded .)

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). Mar. 10, 2005, http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/mb236/Papers+Pubs.html.
• Earle, M. A. (1975). An acoustic study of northern Vietnamese tones. Santa Barbara: Speech Communications Research Laboratory, Inc.
• Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Socit 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 IV. Los Angeles: Acoustic Phonetics Research Laboratory, University of Southern California.
• Han, Mieko S. (1969). Vietnamese tones. Studies in the phonology of Asian languages VIII. Los Angeles: Acoustic Phonetics Research Laboratory, University of Southern California.
• Han, Mieko S.; & Kim, K. O. (1974). Phonetic variation of Vietnamese tones in disyllabic utterances. Journal of Phonetics, 2, 223-232.
• Haudricourt, Andr-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularits de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dn Việt-Nam, 3, 61-68.
• Haudricourt, Andr-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.
• Nguyen, Đang Lim. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8702-2462-X
• Nguyễn, Đnh-Ho. (1955). Quốc-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
• Nguyễn, Đnh-Ho. (1992). Vietnamese phonology and graphemic borrowings from Chinese: The Book of 3,000 Characters revisited. Mon-Khmer Studies, 20'', 163-182.
• Nguyễn, Đnh-Ho. (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, Đnh-Ho. (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Việt khng son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 1-55619-733-0.
• Nguyen, Van Loi; & 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. Fry, A. D. Green, & R. van de Vijver (Eds.), Proceedings of HILP5 (pp. 140-158). Linguistics in Potsdam (No. 12). Potsdam: Universitt 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 0-4159-6762-7.
• 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 finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.

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