Vietnamese Pronunciation: Part I

The national written language of Vietnam is called Chữ Quốc Ngữ. An earlier post touched briefly on the origins of the Romanized letters. Delving a little deeper, I learned that Portuguese missionaries who journeyed to Asia in the 15th century were the first to impose the Latin alphabet onto the Vietnamese language. Therefore, the pronunciation of quốc ngữ is based on Portuguese--furthermore, it's based on 15th century Portuguese. Ever try reading a piece of 15th century English? It sounds...quite different. Verily, forsooth, by my troth 'tis so. So the pronunciation of written Vietnamese is pretty far removed from not only English, but modern Portuguese.

Words in Vietnamese are not often pronounced the way they would be said in English. A word that starts with d, like dat, is pronounced "yat." At least that's how it's pronounced in Southern Vietnam. In the north, it sounds like "zat." (Herein lies yet another complication; pronunciation of Vietnamese words varies extensively from region to region, most notoriously between the northern and southern dialects.) Maybe the pronunciation of d as a "y" or "z" is a holdout from Portuguese, or maybe it isn't. I imagine a strong grasp of 15th century Portuguese could facilitate intuitive pronunciation of some Vietnamese words. Um. Or maybe not.

The three phonetic aspects of Vietnamese language are vowels, consonants, and tones. To capture these aspects in written form, the Portuguese developed a 29-letter alphabet. This alphabet is unique to Vietnamese. One of the language's trademarks is the set of diacritic marks that determine the sound of the vowels and set the tone of the syllable. Six tones and twelve vowels may seem overwhelming, but at least the Vietnamese alphabet is consistent. Let's just say it's clearer than English, which is one of the most Godawful languages ever in terms of trying to pronounce words you've never seen. I feel a tangent coming on.

In English, we have a bunch of words based on the letter sequence "-ough." Thought, bough, through, though, rough, thorough. Realistically, if you had never heard any of those words before, you'd be lucky if you pronounced any one of them right. Because they all have the same letter combination, you would intuitively think pronouncing them would be easy. Yet none of these words sound the same. They don't rhyme. They don't even come close.

Gei3 or Jì.

The incompatibility between English and Vietnamese is all too familiar to me. It was hard in Hong Kong, where the English convention for pronouncing Chinese was so wrong, it was useless. For example, you often saw the same Chinese character in the name of many markets and diners. The character is pronounced "gei" in Cantonese, the lingua franca of Hong Kong, and pronounced "ji" in Mandarin. Your standard tour guide book doesn't tell you this. It just spells it in English letters. The character gei is spelled kee, as in Lee Kum Kee, the sauce brand. To me, kee (key) doesn't sound like gei (gay) at all. As if it weren't bad enough that some English-lettered Chinese words don't have the right vowel or consonant, the entire convention disregards tone. Good luck getting directions to that store when both the consonant and the vowel are wrong, and there's no tone to boot.

The moral of the story: pronouncing words the way you would in English will steer you into a headlong collision with confusion. Rather, it's important to learn the conventions of the local language, wherever you are. For the next three posts, I'll explore the phonetics of Vietnamese, and share with you what I learn about how to pronounce the tones, consonants, and vowels. For the most part, I'll be looking at whatever internet sources I can use. And I think I'll generally avoid dialectical differences. That means, given a choice, the Hanoi dialect will be the one I select, since it's considered to be proper Vietnamese. Tomorrow we start with vowels.


Provender
- breakfast: cơm bình dân
- snack: hồng xiêm (note: it was not ripe. Big mistake. So bitter.)
- supper: home cookin -- rice noodles with onion and green beans