1. One of the typological differences between Vietnamese and English is the tonal system of the Vietnamese language and the stress in English

The Vietnamese 
Language Learning Framework
Part One
:
s
Linguistic
Binh N. Ngo (Ngô Như Bình) 
Harvard University
1. Brief Survey of the Vietnamese Language Programs at U.S. Universities 
According to the survey conducted by the Center for Advanced Research on Language 
Acquisition (CARLA) at the University of Minnesota, Vietnamese is currently offered 
at twenty-five universities and colleges in the USA
1
.
2. Teaching and Learning Vietnamese in the United States and the 
aterials
2
Teaching M
Vietnamese was offered in the United States for the time as the Army Specialized 
Training Course, which was conducted by Prof. Murray B. Emeneau, a linguist, at the 
University of California at Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin at Madison 
between the summer of 1943 and the end of 1944. The materials used for teaching 
Vietnamese at these institutions were developed by Lý Đức Lâm, M.B. Emeneau and 
Diether von den Steinen. They were never published. However, Prof. M.B. 
Emeneau's work 
Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) Grammar
, based on the teaching 
materials, was the first book in English on Vietnamese linguistics; it was published by 
the University of California Press, Berkeley, in 1951. 
If we do not count that course meant for the GIs during the World War II, then 
Cornell, Georgetown, Yale and Columbia were the first universities offering 
Vietnamese as an academic course in the 1950s. The course taught by Prof. Huỳnh 
Sanh Thông and Prof. R. B. Jones, Jr. with the assistance of a number of Vietnamese 
native speakers at Georgetown University in 1953-1954 on contract with the 
Department of State resulted in a well-organized textbook entitled 
Introduction to 
Spoken Vietnamese
by R.B. Jones Jr. and Huỳnh Sanh Thông [Washington, DC: 
1
URL: http://carla.acad.umn.edu 
2
A great deal of the information in this chapter was garnered from Prof. Nguyễn Đình-Hoà's paper 
Teaching Vietnamese at the Tertiary Level in the USA (unpublished) and through personal conversations 
with Prof. Nguyễn. I would like to express my deep gratitude for his generous permission to use his 
materials. 
1

 Since the course 
was offered to American diplomats assigned to South Vietnam, this textbook 
introduced the Saigon dialect. 
Between 1953 and 1956 a few students enrolled in a Vietnamese language course 
offered in the Department of General and Comparative Linguistics at Columbia 
University. This course was taught by Prof. Nguyễn Đình-Hoà, who later published 
his textbook, 
Speak Vietnamese
, in Saigon in 1957. 
Around 1954, the U.S. Army Language School in Monterey, California (later renamed 
the Defense Language Institute) began to offer Vietnamese courses taught by L.C. 
Thompson who had completed a structural analysis of the Saigon dialect as his 
doctoral dissertation at Yale University. Dr. L.C. Thompson later continued his 
research on Vietnamese linguistics at the University of Washington, with the 
collaboration of the late Mr. Nguyễn Đức Hiệp who was a teacher and journalist.
They co-authored a collection of graded texts, called 
A Vietnamese Reader
. The same 
university press later published Dr. L.C. Thompson's book, 
A Vietnamese Grammar
. 
For a long time the State Department Foreign Service Institute has had excellent 
language programs designed for diplomats and foreign service officers. Its 
Vietnamese language program is among the longest-established and most consistent in 
the United States. 
While a number of texts for teaching Vietnamese at the beginning level were 
published in the late 1950s and in the 1960s, there was great demand for materials for 
the intermediate and advanced levels. The late Dr. Nguyễn Đăng Liêm of the 
University of Hawai'i published two textbooks, 
Intermediate Vietnamese
in two 
volumes, and 
Advanced Vietnamese: A Culture Reader
, that helped fill the vacuum.
At that time Prof. Nguyễn Đình-Hoà also published two textbooks, 
Read Vietnamese
and 
Colloquial Vietnamese
, for Vietnamese language instruction at the intermediate 
and advanced levels. 
In the mid 1960s several Vietnamese language courses were offered at the University 
of Washington and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. The Vietnamese language 
program at the University of Manoa was run by Dr. Stephen O'Harrow and Dr. 
Nguyễn Đăng Liêm and became one of the most consistent Vietnamese language 
programs in the United States. 
In the fall of 1969, the Center for Vietnamese Studies was established at Southern 
Illinois University with a grant from the United States Agency for International 
Development (USAID). Prof. Nguyễn Đình-Hoà was the Associate Director of the 
Center from 1969 to 1972 and the Director from 1972 to 1990. He was also in charge 
of the Vietnamese language courses at the Center and responsible for the development 
and supervision of intensive summer courses in Vietnamese, Khmer and Lao. 
Harvard University started its Vietnamese language program in 1971. Vietnamese has 
been continuously taught at Harvard since then. A Vietnamese language textbook 
was developed by Robert Quinn and entitled 
Introductory Vietnamese.
This text was 
2

The textbook 
Intermediate Vietnamese
by F.E. Huffman and Trần Trọng Hải, 
based on the Saigon dialect, was published by the same Cornell University Press in 
1980 and used at a number of universities where the second year of Vietnamese 
language instruction was offered. In the 1970s and 1980s several universities set up 
Vietnamese language programs, including the University of California at Berkeley and 
the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The Southeast Studies Summer Institute 
(SEASSI) was founded in the 1980s and has made a great contribution to the teaching 
of Southeast Asian languages, including Vietnamese, to those who are interested in 
these languages but unable to take such language courses during the academic year. 
Vietnamese studies was on the rise in the 1990s, and numerous universities began to 
offer Vietnamese consistently. Currently Vietnamese is taught at the University of 
Washington, the University of Oregon, the University of California at Berkeley, the 
University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at San Diego, 
Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, Cornell University, Harvard 
University, and the University of Hawai'i. These universities are members of the 
Group of Universities for the Advancement of Vietnamese Abroad (GUAVA). In 
addition to the GUAVA members, Vietnamese is also officially offered by a number 
of other universities, including Yale University, California State University at San 
Francisco, and Texas University of Technology in Lubbock. 
Several Vietnamese language textbooks were published in the 1990s, among them the 
following texts used to teach Vietnamese at the college level: 
1. 
Spoken Vietnamese for Beginners
by Nguyễn Long, Marybeth Clark and Nguyễn 
Bích Thuận. This text is accompanied by 
Activities Manual Books
developed by Lê 
Phạm Thuý-Kim. 
2. 
Conversational Vietnamese
by Trần Hoài Bắc. 
3. 
Contemporary Vietnamese: An Intermediate Text
by Nguyễn Bích Thuận. 
4. 
Elementary Vietnamese
by Ngô Như Bình. 
5. 
Conversational Vietnamese: An Intermediate Text 
by Lê Phạm Thuý-Kim and 
Nguyễn Kim-Oanh. 
References 
1. M.B. Emeneau. 
Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) Grammar
. Berkeley: 
University of California Press, 1951. 
2. R.B. Jones Jr. and Huỳnh Sanh Thông. 
Introduction to Spoken Vietnamese
. 
Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1957; revised edition 1960. 
3. Nguyễn Đình-Hoà. 
Speak Vietnamese. 
Saigon, 1957 (revised Saigon edition 1963, 
which was reprinted in Tokyo, 1966). 
3

4. L.C. Thompson and Nguyễn Đức Hiệp. 
A Vietnamese Reader, 
Seattle: University 
of Washington Press, 1961. 
5. L.C. Thompson. 
A Vietnamese Grammar. 
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 
1965; reprinted in 1987 as 
A Vietnamese Reference Grammar
, Mon-Khmer Studies 
XIII-XIV. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1984-1985. 
6. Nguyễn Đăng Liêm. 
Intermediate Vietnamese
.
South Orange, NJ: Seton Hall 
University Press, 1971. 
7. Nguyễn Đăng Liêm. 
Advanced Vietnamese: A Culture Reader. 
South Orange, NJ: 
Seton Hall University Press, 1974. 
8. Nguyễn Đình-Hoà. 
Read Vietnamese. 
Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1966. 
9. Nguyễn Đình-Hoà. 
Colloquial Vietnamese. 
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois 
University Press, 1974. 
10. Robert Quinn. 
Introductory Vietnamese. 
Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 
1972. 
11. F.E. Huffman and Trần Trọng Hải. 
Intermediate Vietnamese.
Ithaca, NY: 
Cornell 
University Press, 1980. 
12. Nguyễn Long, Marybeth Clark and Nguyễn Bích Thuận. 
Spoken Vietnamese for 
Beginners. 
De Kalb, IL: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Southeast Asian 
Language Series,
Northern Illinois University, 1994. 
13. Trần Hoài Bắc. 
Conversational Vietnamese.
Tokyo:
Tan Van/Mekong Center 
Publisher, 1996; second edition, 1999; third edition, 2002; fourth edition, 2005. 
14. Nguyễn Bích Thuận, 
Contemporaty Vietnamese: An Intermediate Text, 
Northern 
Illinois University Press, 1996. 
15. Ngô Như Bình, 
Elementary Vietnamese, 
Charles E. Tuttle, 1999; revised edition, 
Charles E. Tuttle, 2003. 
16. Lê Phạm Thuý-Kim and Nguyễn Kim-Oanh, 
Conversational Vietnamese: An 
Intermediate Text, 
University of Washington Press, 2001. 
4

3. Some Theoretical Issues of the Vietnamese Language 
3.1. Overview 
3.1.1. Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam. It is spoken by 76 million people 
in Vietnam and approximately 2.5 million overseas Vietnamese in 79 countries, 
including the United States (1 million), France (350,000), Canada (300,000), Australia 
(300,000), Germany (100,000), Russia (100,000)
3
. 
3.1.2. Vietnamese belongs to the group of Mon-Khmer languages in the Austroasiatic 
family of languages
4
. There are over 170 Austroasiatic languages, which are divided 
into three groups: 
Mon-Khmer, Munda
and 
Nicobarese
. The languages of the Mon-
Khmer group, which is the largest one in the family, are spoken in Southeast Asia, in 
the countries between China and Indonesia. The Munda group of languages is spoken 
in the north-east of India, and the Nicobarese group of languages is found on the 
Nicobar Islands. 
The Mon-Khmer group consisits of three languages: 
Vietnamese, Khmer
and 
Mon
(or 
Talaing
). Khmer is the official language of Cambodia, spoken by more than seven 
million people. Mon is spoken by half a million in some areas of Burma and 
Thailand. 
Links between Vietnamese and the other members of this family of languages are not 
entirely clear. On the other hand, Vietnamese shares some similarities with the Tai 
languages, spoken in neighboring countries and by several ethnic minorities in 
Vietnam. For instance, both Vietnamese and Tai languages have tones, whereas 
Khmer is a non-tonal language. A number of similarities in vocabulary are also found 
between Vietnamese and Tai languages. This is the reason why some scholars relate 
Vietnamese to the Tai family. 
3.2. The Writing system 
3.2.1. From 111 BC to 939 AD Vietnam was ruled by China, during which time Chinese 
was the official language used for administrative and educational purposes. Even 
after Vietnam gained independence from China in the tenth century, classical Chinese, 
which is called 
chữ Hán
(Chinese script), was also widely used in Vietnam by the 
royal court and by Vietnamese scholars and poets in the educational system. This 
situation continued until the beginning of the twentieth century. 
3.2.2. In the thirteenth century, some Vietnamese Buddhist scholars began to use a new 
writing system to create poems in Vietnamese. Many contemporary researchers in 
Vietnam suggest that this writing system appeared in the eleventh century, when 
Vietnam became a powerful feudal state. This writing system is called 
chữ nôm
3
According to the newspaper
Sài Gòn giải phóng, September 25, 1996. 
4
Nguyễn Đình-Hoà. 1990. 
Vietnamese, in The World Major Languages, edited by B. Comrie. Oxford 
University Press; Crystal, David. 1997. 
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University 
Press. 
5

A Vietnamese syllable, which in most cases corresponds to a word, is 
most frequently represented by combining two Chinese characters, one of which 
indicates the sound and the other the meaning. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth 
century many major works of Vietnamese poetry were composed in chữ nôm, 
including 
Truyện Kiều
by Nguyễn Du. 
3.2.3. The modern Vietnamese alphabet is based on the Roman script. It was devised by 
European Catholic missionaries who first came to South Vietnam to disseminate 
Christianity at the end of the sixteenth century. At first they just needed a system of 
rules for transcribing Vietnamese words in order to speak with their new Vietnamese 
followers and to translate the Bible. The rules of transcription were gradually 
improved and as a result, a new writing system called 
chữ quốc ngữ
(national script) 
was created.
Dictionarium Annamiticum-Lusitanum-Latinum
(A Vietnamese-
Portuguese-Latin Dictionary) was the first work written in 
chữ quốc ngữ
by Alexandre 
de Rhodes, a French Catholic missionary. It was published in Rome in 1651. The 
dictionary provides researchers with valuable data about Vietnamese society in the 
first half of the seventeenth century and about the Vietnamese language at that period 
of time. For instance, Vietnamese had three double initial consonants 
bl
, 
tl
and 
ml
which are no longer found in contemporary Vietnamese. In the dictionary by A. de 
Rhodes, 
trời 
(heaven), 
trăm 
(hundred) and 
lời 
(word) appeared as 
blời
, 
tlăm 
and 
mlời 
respectively. 
At the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, the 
Vietnamese alphabet and the spelling rules were significantly improved in the works 
of a Vietnamese Jesuit priest named Fellipe Bỉnh (his Jesuit name was Fellipe de 
Rosario). He published nearly thirty books and papers in Vietnamese in Lisbon which 
accurately depicted life in Vietnam at that time. 
Half a century later the Romanized writing system was used for the first time by 
Trương Vĩnh Ký to write research works and by Hồ Biểu Chánh to create literature in 
South Vietnam (Cochinchina). This part of the country was the French overseas 
territory, according to the Treaty of Peace signed by the French government and the 
Vietnamese royal court in 1883. North Vietnam (Tonkinchina) was under the so-called 
French protectorate, and Central Vietnam (Annam) was under French half-
protectorate. The Vietnamese royal court continued to use classical Chinese for 
paperwork, and some poems were still composed in 
chữ nôm
. At the end of the 
nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century a number of newspapers and 
magazines written in the Romanized alphabet were found in both the North and the 
South which made a significant contribution to its popularization. The coexistence of 
the three writing systems lasted until 1910 when the French governer general in North 
Vietnam issued the order to use the Romanized alphabet in all kinds of paperwork. In 
that year the modern Vietnamese alphabet became the official writing system in 
Vietnam. 
The Vietnamese alphabet contains twenty two Roman characters: a, b, c, d, e, g, h, i, k, 
l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, x, y. Some diacritic marks are also used to indicate specific 
sounds: ă, â, ê, ô, ư, ơ, đ, and the tones: `, ´, ,
~
, 
.
. 
/
6

Generally speaking, the modern Vietnamese alphabet is a very regular writing system 
in which in most cases one letter (grapheme) represents one phoneme. There are, 
however, some irregularities which will be addressed in 3.4. Phonology. 
3.3. Dialects 
Vietnamese has three main dialects: northern, central and southern. The dialectal 
differences concern both the vocabulary and the phonetic system. However, 
Vietnamese everywhere understand each other despite these dialectal differences. 
The Vietnamese language does not have a standard pronunciation. The Hanoi dialect 
represents the phonetic system of the language more fully than the other dialects. The 
Vietnamese language used in news broadcasts on the Vietnamese radio and television, 
and in Vietnamese books, newspapers and magazines is mostly based on the Hanoi 
dialect. The next most significant dialect is the dialect spoken in Saigon (Ho Chi 
Minh City), the biggest city in Vietnam and the most important political, economic 
and cultural center in South Vietnam. 
3.4. Phonology 
3.4.1. In the Vietnamese language, the 
syllable
is the minimal meaningful unit that 
cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. Each syllable consists of two 
mandatory components: a tone and a nuclear vowel; in addition, three optional 
components may be present: an initial consonant, a sound indicating the labialization 
(rounding of the lips) of the syllable, and a final consonant or semivowel. The 
structure of the Vietnamese syllable can be presented as follows: 
T
O
N
E
INITIAL 
LABIALIZATIO
N
NUCLEAR 
FINAL 
CONSONANT
VOWEL
CONSONANT/ 
SEMIVOWEL
The tone and the nuclear vowel are the compulsory constituents of the Vietnamese 
syllable. The initial consonant, labialization and final consonant/semivowel are not 
always obligatorily present. 
3.4.2. Vietnamese is a tonal language in which changes of the pitch level and/or contour 
signal a change in meaning. The Hanoi dialect of Vietnamese has six tones: mid-
level, low-falling, high-rising, low-falling-rising, high-rising broken and low-falling 
broken. Except for the mid-level tone, all the other tones are denoted by diacritics. 
7

3.4.3. The Vietnamese phonetic system contains 23 
initial consonant
phonemes
5
: /b/, /f/ 
(ph), /v/, /m/, /t/, /d/ (đ), /t
h
/ (th), /s/ (x), /z/ (d), /n/, /l/, /
/ (tr), /ʃ/ (s), // (gi, r), /c/ 
(ch), // (nh), /k/ (c, k, q), /γ/ (g), /χ/ (kh), / / (ng), /h/, /p/, /r/
6
N
The possible 
Vietnamese consonants are represented in the following chart based on the place and 
manner of their production (articulation). 
PLACE
Labial
Alveolar Retroflex Palatal
Velar
Glottal
MANNER
Stop
Voiceless
p
t
c
k

Stop
Voiced
b
d
Stop
Voiceless
t
h
Aspirated
Fricative
Voiceless
f
s
χ
ʃ 
h
Fricative
Voiced
v
z
γ

Nasal
Voiced
m
n
N 

Lateral
Voiced
l
Rolled
Voiced
r
3.4.4. 
Labialization
of the beginning of a syllable may occur in the syllables that do not 
contain the rounded vowels. The lips start rounding when the initial consonant (if 
any) is produced and finish rounding at the beginning of the production of the nuclear 
vowel. 
Labialization is represented by the character 
u
in syllables containing the close nuclear 
vowels
i, ê, ơ, â:
huy
(the character 
y
indicates the nuclear 
i
), 
thuê, thuở, khuấy. 
When labialization occurs in syllables with
e, a
and 
ă
as nuclear vowels, it is 
represented by the character 
o:
khoẻ, nhoà, hoay
. 
5
A character or a combination of characters in the alphabet which represents a phoneme is put in the 
parentheses after the phoneme in the cases where the phoneme symbol and the character indicating it are 
different. 
6
The consonants p and r in the Hanoi dialect occur only in words borrowed from European languages; 
however, the consonant r occurs in some other dialects of Vietnamese. 
8

When labialization occurs in syllables with /k/ as the initial consonant, it is 
represented by the character 
u
, and the initial /k/ - by the character 
q:
quả, queo,
quý. 
3.4.5. The Vietnamese language has eleven 
nuclear
monophthong
vowels
7
: /i/, /e/ (ê), /
ε/ 
(e), /
ω/ (ư), /ə:/ (ơ), /ə/ (â), /a:/ (a), /a/ (ă), /u/, /o/ (ô), /ɔ/ (o) and three 
nuclear
diphthongs
: /i
e/ (iê/ia), /ωə/ (ươ/ưa), /uo/ (uô/ua). According to the part of the tongue 
that is raised, the monophthongs can be 
front
: /i/, /e/, /
ε/, 
mid:
/
ω/, /ə:/, /ə/, /a:/, /a/ and 
back:
/u/, /o/, /ɔ/). They can be 
high:
/i/, /
ω/, /u/, 
mid:
/e/, /ə:/, /ə/, /o/ and 
low:
/
ε/, 
/a:/, /a/, /ɔ/, depending on the extent to which the tongue rises in the direction of the 
palate. The lips are rounding when producing the three 
rounded
vowels /u/, /o/, /ɔ/ and 
the diphthong /u
o/. The nuclear vowels in Vietnamese are represented in the triangle 
on the basis of the part of the tongue that is raised and the position of the tongue 
toward the palate.
3.4.6. In Vietnamese there are six 
final
consonants: /p/, /t/, /k/ (c/ch), /m/, /n/, /
N
/ (ng/nh) 
and two final semivowels: /i/ (i/y), /u/ (o/u). 
3.4.7. There are a number of graphemic/phonemic irregularities of the spelling rules in 
Vietnamese. 
3.4.7.1. The initial phoneme /
γ/ is denoted by the character 
g
when it occurs before the 
mid and back nuclear vowels and by the combination of two characters 
gh
before the 
front vowels, for instance: gà, gù, ghi. 
3.4.7.2. The initial phoneme /
N
/ is represented in the spelling system by the combination 
of two characters 
ng
when it occurs before the mid and back nuclear vowels and by the 
combination of three characters 
ngh
before the front vowels, for example: ngà, ngủ, 
nghi. This inconsistency and the previous one can be explained by the influence of 
the mother tongues of the founders of the modern Vietnamese alphabet. Most of them 
were native speakers of the Romance languages where the character 
g
does not 
indicate the consonant /g/ when occurring before the front vowels. 
3.4.7.3. The phoneme /k/ is represented by the character 
c
before the mid and back 
vowels, by the character 
k
before the front vowels and by 
qu
in a labialized syllable. 
3.4.7.4. There are several hypotheses about the reasons why the character 
đ 
was created 
to represent the consonant phoneme /d/ and the character 
d 
was used to denote the 
consonant phoneme /z/. The consonants /d/ and /z/ might have sounded in a different 
way four hundred years ago, or, they might have had specific features in the dialect(s) 
the European missionaries first had to deal with. These consonants in the 
contemporary Hanoi dialect are, however, very similar to the alveolar consonants /d/ 
and /z/ in many European languages. If the character 
d
represented the phoneme /d/ 
7
A character or a combination of characters in the alphabet which represents a phoneme is put in the 
parentheses after the phoneme in the cases where the phoneme symbol and the character indicating it are 
different. 
9

3.4.7.5. As mentioned in 3.4.4., labialization is represented by the character 
u
in syllables 
containing the close nuclear vowels /i/, /e/, /ə:/, /ə/, and by the character 
o
before the 
open vowels /ε/, /a:/ and /a/. It would be consistent if the labialization were indicated 
by one character, for instance, character 
w
, in all positions. 
/ is indicated by 
3.4.7.6. The short vowel /a
the character 
ă
when followed by the final 
consonants /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/, /
N
/: bắp, bắt, bắc, băm, bắn, băng, and by 
a
when 
followed by the final semivowels /i/ and /u/: bay, báu. It could be everywhere 
represented by ă
,
for instance, băi, bắo or bắu, to avoid inconsistencies, but it is not. 
3.4.7.7. The character 
a
denotes not only the vowel /a:/ in all the positions, but also the 
short vowel /ε/ when this vowel occurs before the velar final consonants /k/ and /
N
/ 
which are indicated by 
ch
and 
nh
: ách, anh. 
3.4.7.8. The nuclear vowel /i/ may be represented by both the character 
i
and the 
character 
y
: thi, ly. 
3.4.7.9. The final consonants /k/ and /
N
/ are indicated by the characters 
c
and 
ng
respectively after the mid and back vowels and by the characters 
ch
and 
nh
after the 
front vowels: các, cáng, cách, cánh. 
3.4.7.10. The final semivowel /u/ is denoted by the character 
u
after all the vowels except 
the open vowels /ε/ (e) and /a:/ (a), after which it is indicated by the character 
o
: chịu, 
hưu, chèo, hào. 
3.4.7.11. The final semivowel /i/ is represented by the character 
i
after the long vowels 
and by the character 
y
after the short vowels: mai, may, mới, mấy. 
This is another inconsistency: the choice between the two characters 
u
and 
o
denoting 
the final semivowel /u/ is based on the feature openness/closeness of the nuclear 
vowels (in 3.4.7.10. 
i
in chịu and 
ư
in hưu are the closest vowels among the front and 
mid vowels), whereas the principle of choosing 
i
or 
y
representing the final semivowel 
/i/ is the feature length/shortness (in 3.4.7.11. 
a
in mai, 
ơ
in mới are the long vowels, 
a
in may and 
â
in mấy are the short vowels). 
3.5. Morphology 
3.5.1. Vietnamese belongs to the group of 
isolating
languages where there are no 
inflectional endings and all the words are invariable. Grammatical relationships are 
expressed not by changing the internal structure of the words (the use of inflectional 
endings), but by the use of auxiliary words and word order. In this sense, the 
traditionally recognized inflectional morphology is not applicable to Vietnamese. 
10

In Vietnamese each morpheme, which in phonetic respects in most cases is a syllable, 
tends to form a separate word. The number of morphemes within a word is 1.06
8
. 
Vietnamese is at the low end of both morphological scales, one of which measures the 
degree of fusion 
(isolation - agglutinating - fusional),
while the other one indicates the 
degree of synthesis 
(analytic - inflected - polysynthetic). 
3.5.2. The Vietnamese morpheme: Different points of view are described in detail in 
Từ 
tiếng Việt
published by the Institute of Linguistics, National Center of Social Sciences 
and Humanities in Hanoi in 1998. 
3.5.3. Derivational morphology: word formation 
There are three types of words in Vietnamese: simple (từ đơn), reduplicative (từ láy) 
and compound (từ ghép). In addition, Vietnamese has borrowed vocabulary from 
other languages, including Chinese, French and English. 
3.5.3.1. Simple words 
Most simple words in Vietnamese are monosyllabic. The number of polysyllabic 
simple words such as bù nhìn (scarecrow), ễnh ương (frog) , mồ hôi (sweat), mà cả 
(bargain) is relatively small. 
3.5.3.2. Reduplicative words 
Reduplication is a specific type of word-formation in Vietnamese, which is discussed 
in a large number of works (see section 6). Vietnamese is among the languages in the 
world which most frequently use reduplicatives. Learners should be taught 
reduplicatives from the beginning through the advanced levels of instruction. 
3.5.3.3. Compounds 
There are three types of compounds in Vietnamese. 
1. Coordinate compounds are formed by two morphemes, neither of which modifies 
the other one, such as quần áo (cloths), mua bán (purchase and sell), phải trái (right 
and wrong). 
2. Subordinate compounds are formed by two morphemes, one of which modifies the 
other one, such as xe đạp (bicycle), xe máy (motorbike), xe hơi (car), xe lửa (train), 
khó tính (be difficult to please), khó chịu (unbearable), khó nghe (be difficult to hear), 
khó thương (not be lovable), trắng tinh (immaculate), trắng muốt (pure white), trắng 
phau (very white), trắng hếu (very light, white, of skin), nhà báo (journalist), nhà văn 
(writer), nhà thơ (poet), nhà doanh nghiệp (businessman), hội trưởng (president of an 
association), đội trưởng (head of a group), nhóm trưởng (head of a group), tổ trưởng 
(head of a small group). Many morphemes in this type may be regarded as affixes. 
3. Unlike the coordinate and subordinate compounds, isolated compounds do not form 
systems. Such compounds as mè nheo (bother with requests), thiêu thân (May fly), tai 
hồng (a part of bicycle) belong to the isolated type of compounds. 
3.5.3.4. Vietnamese vocabulary includes a large number of borrowings from Chinese 
(about 70% of the vocabulary used in written Vietnamese was borrowed from classical 
8
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1960
. A Quantitative Approach to the Morphological Typology of Language. 
International Journal of American Linguistics 26. 
11

3.5.4. Word classes 
Based on their notional definitions and grammatical behavior, Vietnamese words are 
traditionally classified into nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, numerals, 
classifiers, prepositions, conjunctions, particles and interjections. There are, however, 
many other classifications suggested by linguists in Vietnam, as well as in other 
countries. For instance, some linguists do not list classifiers as a separate class. In 
some classifications, many adjectives are treated as stative verbs. In many works, 
words classified as full words (thực từ) and empty words (hư từ) are then divided into 
subclasses. A number of linguists are reluctant to use the traditional terminology and 
suggest different terms for word classes in Vietnamese. For instance, L. Thompson 
only recognizes four classes: substantives, predicatives, focuses and particles. 
4. Linguistic difficulties in learning Vietnamese
9
4.1. Stress and tones 
4.1.1. One of the phonetic typological differences between Vietnamese and English is 
that Vietnamese is a syllable-timed language in which the rhythm appears to be fairly 
even, with each syllable giving the impression of having about the same duration and 
force as any other; English is a stress-timed language in which stressed syllables recur 
at intervals. Another key difference is that Vietnamese is a tone language in which the 
pitch levels are used to distinguish words; English is a non-tonal language. 
Stress does not create interference for English-speaking learners studying Vietnamese 
if at the very beginning they are introduced to Vietnamese as a language in which 
words in a phrase or in a sentence are in most cases pronounced with the same 
duration and force. However, they should be careful with pauses in a sentence or in a 
phrase that should be placed properly, otherwise a misunderstanding may occur, for 
instance: 
Nhiều người nói / tiếng Ý hay lắm. 
(Many people say Italian sounds very beautiful.) 
versus
Nhiều người / nói tiếng Ý hay lắm.
(There are many people who speak Italian 
very well.) That is, the two syllables of a two-syllable compound should be spoken 
together. At a higher level of the language structure, words in a phrase should be 
pronounced together with one another. It is a good idea to split a long sentence into 
phrases between which short pauses are made, whereas there should not be any pause 
between the syllables of a two-syllable word (a compound, a reduplicative etc.). 
4.1.2. The six tones in Vietnamese cause a variety of difficulties for learners, both in 
producing and maintaining the tones in speech flow. 
9
Ngô Như Bình. 1998. 
Identifying and overcoming the difficulties in teaching Vietnamese to English-
speaking beginners. 1
st
International Conference on Vietnamese Studies, Hanoi, Vietnam. 1999, Journal of 
Linguistics, issue #3, Hanoi, Vietnam (in Vietnamese). 
12

Linguists distinguish register tones and contour tones. The pitch of register tones 
hardly goes up and down during the production of a particular tone. In contrast, 
contour tones have more than one pitch. 
The pitch pattern of the mid-level tone, called 
thanh ngang
or 
thanh không
, which is a 
register tone, does not change at all. This tone stays at a single pitch level. It seems 
easiest to produce but is in fact hardest to maintain at the same pitch. Learners' 
attention should be directed to the importance of keeping the same pitch of voice at all 
times when they pronounce words with the mid-level tone. In other words, all the 
words and syllables with the mid-level tone in a sentence should be pronounced at the 
same pitch, no matter how long the sentence is and how many words with other tones 
are inserted between them. For example: 
Tôi ăn cơm
. (I am eating.) and 
Tôi mời anh 
tối nay đến nhà tôi ăn cơm với gia đình tôi
. (I invite you to come over to my house for 
dinner with my family tonight.) 
The pitch pattern of the low-falling (
thanh huyền
) tone does not vary significantly.
The pitch pattern of the high-rising (
thanh sắc
) tone is more complex. This tone in 
syllables with no final or with the final semivowels /u/ and /i/ and with the nasal 
voiced final consonants /m/, /n/ and / / does not change its pitch very much. 
N
When a 
syllable ends in one of the three stop voiceless final consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/, the 
pitch rises sharply.
10
Generally speaking, these two tones should be produced at a low 
or high enough pitch in order to maintain contrast between the tones. Learners very 
often pronounce the mid-level tone at a lower pitch when it occurs before a word with 
the high-rising tone. For instance, they would say 
Đấy là một nhà thờ lớn
. (That is a 
big church.) when they want to say 
Đấy là một nhà thơ lớn
. (That is a famous poet.) 
(Notice that in the first example a low tone is indicated for the underlined word, 
whereas in the second example, the underlined word has the mid-level tone.) 
The pitch patterns of the contour high-rising-broken (
thanh ngã
), low-falling-rising 
(
thanh hỏi
) and low-falling-broken (
thanh nặng
) tones change significantly.
Additionally, the high-rising broken and the low-falling broken tones are accompanied 
by a glottal stop at the end. Although the two tones are hard to produce, they are 
easily recognizable in speech and are usually not mixed up with one another. 
The following graphic of the Vietnamese tones with their pitch patterns and contours 
would be very useful to illustrate these principles to the learners. 
10
Some researchers have suggested that the high-rising and the low-falling-broken tones in syllables with 
one of the final stop consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/ are, in fact, two independent tone phonemes. That is, the two 
words in each of the following pairs have the same final consonant, but differ from each other by the tones: 
cám/cáp, cạm/cạp, bán/bát, bạn/bạt, láng/lác, lạng/lạc . In that case, Vietnamese would have two more 
tones (eight instead of six), but the number of final consonants would reduce by three. There would be no 
more stop final consonants. 
13

1
2
3
5
4
6
The Hanoi dialect of Vietnamese has six tones: 1) mid-level tone, 2) low-falling tone, 
3) high-rising tone, 4) low-falling-rising tone, 5) high-rising broken tone, 6) low-
falling broken tone. 
4.1.3. In English, as in many other European languages, the intonation may function as 
the only means of distinguishing various types of sentences, for example: 
He is 
coming
. versus 
He is coming?
In Vietnamese intonation is rarely used as a way to 
form questions. If an assertive statement ends in a word with the high-rising tone, the 
voice should be raised at the end of the sentence, for example: 
Hôm nay trời nóng lắm
. 
(It is really hot today.) On the other hand, if a question ends in a word with the low-
falling tone, the voice should be lowered at the end of the question, for example: 
Hôm 
nay trời nóng lắm
à?
(Is it really hot today?) In many European languages the pitch of 
voice in an assertive statement is usually dropped at the end. In Vietnamese the 
meanings of the sentences 
Ông
ấy đi tu
. (He has become a Buddhist monk.) and 
Ông
ấy đi tù
. (He has been sent to prison.) are completely different. Learners' attention 
should be drawn to the fact that the Vietnamese language uses certain grammatical 
patterns for assertive, negative and interrogative statements. Intonation in Vietnamese 
is strictly restricted by the tones. 
14

4.2. Sounds 
4.2.1. The Vietnamese language has a complicated phonemic system. In addition, some 
characters in the romanized Vietnamese alphabet may be misleading to native 
speakers of languages with alphabets based on the Roman script, even though the 
modern Vietnamese writing system is relatively phonological in comparison to 
English or French. Learners should be first introduced to a sound and then to the 
character or combination of characters representing the sound, not vice versa. 
4.2.2. The structure of the Vietnamese syllable is critical to understanding the function of 
a sound in a syllable and in a word, and students should be encouraged to memorize 
the spelling rules which are in most cases consistent with the sounds. 
4.2.3. Initial consonants 
Learners' attention should be focused on the following consonants that are very 
specific to English native speakers. 
4.2.3.1. In English the unaspirated /t/ and the aspirated /t
h
/ are the allophones of the 
phoneme /t/ . The aspirated /t
h
/ occurs at the beginning of a stressed syllable, the 
unaspirated /t/ in the other positions. In other words, they are in complementary 
distribution. For example, in the word 
taskmaster
, the first consonant 
t
is aspirated 
/t
h
/, the second one is unaspirated /t/. The unaspirated /t/ and aspirated /t
h
/ are 
different phonemes in Vietnamese that distinguish the meanings of words: 
ta
(we) ≠ 
tha
(to forgive), 
tơ
(silk) ≠ 
thơ
(poetry), 
tư
(private) ≠ 
thư
(letter). On the other hand, 
the Vietnamese aspirated consonant /t
h
/, which is indicated by the combination of the 
two characters 
th
, should not be confused with the English consonants /θ/ and /ð/. 
4.2.3.2. The voiceless consonant /t/ should not be mixed up with its voiced counterpart 
/d/: 
ta
(we) ≠ đ
a
(banyan tree), 
tà
(evil) ≠ 
đà
(momentum), 
tá
(dozen) ≠ 
đá
(to kick).
In American English some words with the voiceless /t/ tend to be pronounced with the 
voiced /d/, for instance: be
tt
er, wa
t
er. 
4.2.3.3. Learners should not confuse the three nasal consonants /n/, // and / /.
N
The 
Vietnamese alveolar consonant /n/ is similar to the English /n/. The English 
consonant /
N
/ occurs only at the end of a syllable, for example: 
sang, long, thing, 
single
. The Vietnamese /
N
/ functions both as an initial consonant, e.g. 
ngà, nghe, ngủ
, 
and as a final consonant, e.g. 
ngang
. The consonant // rarely occurs in English. 
Learners may have trouble producing the initial consonants // and / /.
N
Their 
attention should be focused on the distinctive features of the consonants in terms of the 
place of articulation: /n/ is an alveolar consonant made with the contact of the tongue 
tip against the alveolar ridge, // is a palatal consonant produced with the back of the 
tongue rising toward the hard palate and touching it, /
N
/ is a velar consonant, which is 
created with the blade of the tongue moving backwards and the back of the tongue 
contacting the velum. 
15

4.2.3.4. The palatal consonant /c/ is another specific consonant in Vietnamese. In the 
production of this consonant the tongue tip is down near the back of the lower teeth 
and contact is made by the tongue blade against the hard palate. The combination of 
the characters 
ch
represents the Vietnamese consonant /c/. The sound that represents 
/c/ should not be mixed up with the English consonant /t∫/, e.g. Vietnamese 
cha, chú, 
cho
versus English 
char, choose, chop
. 
4.2.4. Vowels 
When the vowel and final systems are introduced, the attention of learners should be 
directed to two essential characteristics of the Vietnamese vowels. 
4.2.4.1. The difference between a rounded vowel and an unrounded vowel, and, 
accordingly, between a rounded syllable and an unrounded syllable, is critical. In 
English a rounded syllable may occasionally be pronounced as unrounded without 
changing the meaning of the word, e.g. the rounded syllable 
on
in the sentence 
The 
computer is on
. may have an element of the unrounded sound [αn]. This is impossible 
in Vietnamese. Some characters denoting the rounded vowels (
u, ô, o
) and unrounded 
vowels (
ư, ơ
) seem to be confusing, since the characters 
ư
and 
ơ
may be perceived as 
characters representing rounded vowels. Learners should be introduced to the sounds 
before seeing the characters. Minimal pairs containing the oppositions
ư/u,
ơ/ô
and 
ưa(ươ)/ua(uô)
are very helpful, e.g. 
thư
(letter)/
thu
(autumn), 
cớ
(reason)/
cố
(make 
efforts), 
mưa
(rain)/
mua
(buy), 
mượn
(borrow)/
muộn
(late). 
4.2.4.2. The final consonant following a vowel in some cases significantly changes the 
quality of the vowel. As a result, there are several specific types of syllables in 
Vietnamese. 
4.2.4.2.1. When one of three rounded monophthong vowels /u/, /o/ and / /
ɔ is followed by 
one of two final consonants /
N
/ or /k/, the rounding of the vowel does not start until the 
middle of the articulation, and the lips come together at the end of the articulation, e.g. 
cung, công, cong, cúc, cốc, cóc. 
4.2.4.2.2. When one of the three front vowels occurs before the same final consonants /
N
/ 
and /k/, they are produced shorter than when they precede the other finals or when 
they are not followed by any final. The vowel /ε/ is denoted by the character 
a
, the 
final /
N
/ is represented by 
nh
, and 
ch
indicates the final /k/, e.g. 
kinh, kênh, canh, kịch, 
kệch, cạch
. The production of 
canh
as \ka] and 
cạch
as \kạc] should be avoided. 
4.2.4.2.3. The "long" and "short" features of vowels are phonologically relevant in both 
English and Vietnamese. In Vietnamese there are only two pairs of vowels which 
differ from one another as long and short vowels: /a:/ 
≠ /a/ and /ə:/ ≠ /ə/. The 
spelling rules should be introduced so that learners can recognize the short vowels in 
written texts and distinguish the short and long vowels when producing them. In 
addition, some exceptions should be highlighted in order to distinguish the short 
vowels from their long counterparts. For instance, the short vowel /a/ is represented by 
16

:/ in 
tai
, 
cao
. 
A picture of the organs of speech would be of great use, especially for those students 
who rely on visual information. The vowel triangle is very helpful in explaining many 
spelling rules, e.g. when labialization is denoted by the character 
u
and when by the 
character 
o
, or when the consonant /k/ is represented by the character 
c
and when by 
the character 
k
. (These rules are certainly inconsistencies of the Vietnamese alphabet 
which should be removed in the future.) 
It is crucial for an instructor to be patient and consistent with the accuracy of learners' 
pronunciation, even if it means slow progress at the beginning. Attention must 
continue to be focused on accuracy of pronunciation at more advanced levels of 
Vietnamese when a learner has acquired more knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, 
otherwise a learner may lose the phonetic skills she/he learned at the beginning. 
4.3. Grammar 
4.3.1. Morphology 
Vietnamese morphology is not as complex as the morphology of inflected languages. 
When introducing Vietnamese morphology, an instructor should point out the 
following morphological issues. 
4.3.1.1. Vietnamese has a number of tense markers. Unlike European languages in 
which a verb in a sentence must have a tense form (past, present or future), in 
Vietnamese a tense marker is usually left out if there is a time expression in the 
sentence or if the tense is clear from the context. In those cases a sentence with a tense 
marker may sound unnatural. For example, in order to convey the meaning of the 
question/answer 
Why didn't you come to class yesterday?/I didn't come to class 
because I was sick
. learners would say
Vì sao hôm qua anh đã không đi học?/Hôm qua 
tôi đã không đi học vì tôi đã bị ốm
. 
Đã
should be omitted in both question and answer. 
The time expression 
hôm qua
makes the tense clear. 
4.3.1.2. In English, aspect is a grammatical category referring to the way that the time 
denoted by the verb is regarded. English has two aspects: the progressive (or 
continuous) aspect (He 
is teaching
French.) and the perfect aspect (He 
has taught
French for ten years.) The meaning of aspect in Vietnamese is expressed by a group 
of words. Learners should be drilled on the use of a number of words indicating 
aspects like 
vừa, mới, đang, liền, thì, rồi
etc. For example, they should recognize the 
difference between the two sentences 
Tôi học tiếng Việt ba năm.
(I learned 
Vietnamese for three years.) and 
Tôi học tiếng Việt ba năm rồi.
(I have learned 
Vietnamese for three years.) The position of the adverbial of time is critical for the use 
of the word 
mới
in the sense of "just" 
Anh ấy mới về tối qua
. (He just came back last 
night.) and in the sense of "not … until…" 
Tối qua anh ấy mới về.
(He did not come 
back until last night.) 
17

4.3.1.3. In European languages most nouns used in a sentence take either the singular or 
the plural form.
Các
and 
những
in Vietnamese not only have grammatical meanings 
but also have their own lexical meanings. In many instances, 
các
or 
những
is dropped 
when the context conveys the plural meaning. For example, 
các
in the sentence 
Các 
sinh viên lớp này học khá lắm.
should be left out. On the other hand, the use of 
những
is significantly restricted by the context which suggests that only a certain number of 
the total possible number of people or things are referred to. 
4.3.2. Syntax 
4.3.2.1. Vietnamese and English have the same basic SVO word order. Vietnamese is an 
isolating language in which the relationship between parts of a sentence is indicated by 
the word order and auxiliaries. As a result, word order is critical to convey the 
meaning of a sentence. Learners should focus their attention on the following points: 
4.3.2.2. A word follows the noun it modifies (
sách mới, anh tôi, vấn đề đầu tiên, văn học 
Việt Nam hiện đại
), unlike English which has the reverse word order (
new book, my 
brother, first issue, modern Vietnamese literature
). The basic word order of noun 
phrases should be stressed: 
Number/PlurMark Classifier
Noun
Adjective
Pronoun
4.3.2.3. In the basic structure SVP (Subject + Verb + (Subject) Predicative) the English 
copular verb
to be
is used to link 1) a noun to a noun, e.g., 
My name is John
. 2) a 
pronoun to a noun, e.g., 
He is my friend
. and 3) a noun or pronoun to an adjective, 
e.g., 
The movie is good
. In Vietnamese the sentences of type 3) do not use the copular 
verb 
là
, that is 1
) Tên tôi là John
. 2) 
Anh ấy là bạn tôi
. and 3) 
Bộ phim ấy ______
hay
. 
4.3.2.4. In English, interrogative words (
who, what, which, how, where, when, why
) are 
placed at the beginning of a question. In Vietnamese, some interrogatives are placed 
at the beginning of questions (
vì sao, tại sao, sao
). Some others are put at the end of 
questions 
(đâu, ở đâu
). For instance, 
Vì sao chị không đồng ý với chúng tôi?
(Why do 
you disagree with us?); 
Anh làm việc ở đâu?
(Where are you working?) The position 
of the interrogative words 
ai, gì, nào
depends on their grammatical function in a 
sentence. Interrogative words with the meaning of time (
bao giờ, khi nào, ngày nào, 
hôm nào, lúc nào, thứ mấy, ngày bao nhiêu
) refer to the past tense when placed at the 
end of questions and indicate the present or future when put at the beginning. For 
instance, 
Bao giờ anh ấy đến?
(When will he arrive?) vs. 
Anh ấy đến bao giờ?
(When 
did he arrive?) 
4.3.2.5. In interrogative sentences, Vietnamese native speakers distinguish the purpose 
and the reason by using different interrogative words, whereas the context identifies 
the purpose or the reason in English, for instance: 
Anh đi đến đấy làm gì?
(Why do 
you go there? Literally: For what purpose do you go there?) vs.
Vì sao anh không 
muốn đi đến đấy?
(Why don't you want to go there?) 
18

4.3.2.6. Some words have a position different from the position of English words with 
similar meanings and functions. For example: 
đẹp hơn
vs. 
more beautiful, Quyển sách 
này hay hơn quyển sách kia nhiều
. vs. 
This book is much better than that one. Tháng 
sau tôi đi Việt Nam
. vs.
I am going to Vietnam next month
. Some words have different 
meanings when placed in different positions, for instance: 
được nghỉ ba ngày
(to be 
allowed to take three days off) and 
nghỉ được ba ngày
(to be able to take three days 
off). 
4.3.2.7. The adverbs of degree 
rất
and 
lắm
are used without the adverb 
nhiều
"much" 
when the verb conveys the meaning of feeling. The adverb 
much
is necessary in 
English: 
Tôi rất thích quyển sách này
. or: 
Tôi thích quyển sách này lắm
. versus 
I like 
the book very much
. 
4.4. Vocabulary 
4.4.1. New words should be introduced in a context. When a new word appears, learners 
must memorize 1) the type of syllables to which the word belongs, 2) the tone with 
which it is pronounced and 3) its meaning in a sentence or a communicative situation. 
4.4.2. Learners' attention should be drawn to the essential role of particles in Vietnamese. 
Drills on particles point out 1) their positions in a sentence (initial, final or in the 
middle of a sentence), 2) the type of sentences in which they appear (assertive 
statements, negations, questions or exclamations), 3) which particles receive sentence 
stress and which particles are pronounced lightly, 4) whether they are used in formal 
or informal speech. 
4.4.3. Learners should be warned of potential interference of English, for example, 
chờ 
ai,
đợi ai
without the preposition 
cho
, not *
chờ cho ai
, *
đợi cho ai
because of the 
English interference 
to wait for someone
; or 
Tôi đi làm bằng xe buýt
. (I take the bus to 
go to work.), not *
Tôi lấy xe buýt đi làm
. English learners tend to use 
cho
whenever 
they want to convey the English 
for
, e.g. 
Anh ấy làm việc *cho năm tiếng liền không 
nghỉ.
instead of 
Anh ấy làm việc năm tiếng liền không nghỉ.
(He worked for five hours 
without a break.) 
Tôi đi bác sĩ *cho khám sức khoẻ.
instead of 
Tôi đi bác sĩ khám sức 
khoẻ.
(I went to see my doctor for a check-up.) 
Cô ấy mua cái xe máy *cho mười triệu 
đồng.
instead of 
Cô ấy mua cái xe máy mười triệu đồng.
(She bought the motorbike 
for ten million dong.) 
Tôi trả ba nghìn đồng *cho vé.
instead of 
Tôi trả ba nghìn đồng 
tiền vé.
(I paid three thousand dong for the ticket.) 
Ông ấy đi bộ *cho vài cây số.
instead of 
Ông ấy đi bộ vài cây số.
(He walked for a couple of kilometers.) 
4.4.4. The use of Vietnamese personal pronouns is not as complicated as it may initially 
appear. Vietnamese has few words which are personal pronouns by their lexical 
meanings (
tôi, mình, tao, mày, nó, hắn, họ, chúng
). The other personal pronouns are 
1) kinship terms (
bố, mẹ, anh, chị, em
), 2) nouns denoting occupations (
giáo sư, bác 
sĩ
), 3) personal names (
Hùng, Mai, Thắng, Thuỷ
). Personal pronouns should be 
introduced in the context of the relationship between the speaker and the person she/he 
is talking to, their age and, in some cases, their social status. 
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The introduction of personal pronouns must be consistent with the system of kinship 
terms in a dialect. The kinship terms in the Hanoi and Saigon dialects are based on 
different principles. These principles can be introduced at a more advanced level. 
However, even beginning students do need to be taught to understand the relationships 
which the various pronouns and kinship terms convey. 
5. Three levels of language proficiency: pedagogical goals, suggested topics 
and linguistic materials 
The pedagogical goals for each level are based on the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. 
Vietnamese belongs to Group 3, which includes Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Tagalog, Thai 
and a number of other languages. Both the goals and the suggested topics and 
minimal amount of linguistic materials may vary and be added or reduced at different 
institutions to meet the circumstances of the individual program. At most universities 
where Vietnamese is taught, a Vietnamese class meets five hours a week which 
amounts to approximately 120 to 130 hours per academic year. 
5.1. Beginning level 
5.1.1. Pedagogical goals 
At the end of a beginning course in Vietnamese, a learner should have achieved 
proficiency in the four skills of (1) speaking, (2) listening, (3) reading and (4) writing. 
That means, a learner should be able (1) to handle successfully a limited number of 
interactive, task-oriented and social situations, ask and answer questions, initiate and 
respond to simple statements and maintain face-to-face conversation; (2) to understand 
sentence-length utterances which consist of recombinations of learned elements in a 
limited number of topics. Listening tasks pertain primarily to spontaneous face-to-face 
conversations; (3) to understand main ideas and/or some facts from the simplest 
connected texts dealing with basic personal and social needs. Such texts are 
linguistically not complex and have a clear underlying internal structure, for instance, 
short news or advertisements from Vietnamese newspapers and magazines; (4) to meet 
a number of practical writing needs, to write short, simple letters. Content involves 
personal preferences, daily routine, everyday events and other topics related to 
personal experience. 
5.1.2. Suggested topics 
1) greetings, 2) introductions, 3) family, age, 4) language, nationality, 5) telling time, 
year, month, week, days of the week, date, 6) studies, 7) asking directions, 8) 
shopping, 9) health care, 10) ordering a meal in a restaurant and having a meal. 
5.1.3. Suggested linguistic materials 
5.1.3.1. Vocabulary: about 1,500 words and expressions related to the topics. 
5.1.3.2. Grammar and usage 
Patterns for assertive and negative statements, for questions: pattern S - V - O; không 
+ verb and không phải + là; frame construction có + verb + không and có phải + là + 
không; Patterns không phải … mà and chứ không …. 
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Question đã … chưa. 
Interrogatives ai, gì, nào, đâu, ở đâu, bao giờ, khi nào, vì sao, tại sao, sao, làm gì. 
Cardinal and ordinal numbers. Plural markers các, những. 
The use of của. 
Adverbs of degree rất, lắm, quá, khá, hơi. 
Comparison of adjectives. 
Modal verbs có thể, không thể, cần, phải, nên, muốn. 
Pronouns này, ấy, đó, kia, and adverbs đây, đấy, đó, kia. 
Location terms trên, dưới, trong, ngoài, giữa, trước, sau. 
Verbs of motion ra, đi, lại, lên, xuống, đến, tới, vào, qua, sang, về. 
Tense markers đã, vừa, mới, đang, sẽ, sắp; mới in the sense of not … until…. 
Time prepositions and conjunctions trước, trước khi, trong, trong khi, sau, sau khi, 
khi. 
Classifiers cái, chiếc, quả, con, ngôi, tờ, quyển, cuốn, toà, bộ, cuộc, nền. 
Active and passive voice. Different functions and meanings of the verbs được and bị. 
Subordinate clauses of time, cause, condition, purpose, concession, noun clauses with 
rằng and là.