Viết Tiếng Việt¶

Vietnamese writing uses the Latin alphabet with diacritics. It can look intimidating, but the writing is pretty easy to learn. Vietnamese includes beautiful diacritics (accent marks). Typing is also extremely easy.

Tones¶

There are six tones in Vietnamese, they are written like this,

a á à ả ã ạ

The ngang (high flat) tone does not have a diacritical mark. The five tonal diacritical marks are as follows,

á = upward tone (acute) = sắc
à = falling downward tone (grave) = huyền
ả = question tone = hỏi
ã = tilde tone = ngã
ạ = heavy dot tone = nặng

Accent Marks¶

There are two accent marks in written Vietnamese, they are called, literally, “hook” and “hat” (“móc” and “mũ”). Notice the ê in Tiếng Việt, it looks like an e with a hat, and that is exactly what it is.

móc = “hook”¶

ă ơ ư

mũ = “hat”¶

â ê ô

Stroke¶

The d stroke is one of the most beautiful letters in the Vietnamese alphabet.

Đ đ

Writing¶

In total, there are 7 accented letters in the Vietnamese alphabet,

ă â đ ê ơ ô ư

uppercase,

Ă Â Đ Ê Ơ Ô Ư

The tone diacritics can be combined with one of the 7 accented letters, as in Ti ế ng Vi ệ t. Historically, this made Vietnamese a challenge for typography and typesetting (combining two diacritics above a single letter), although nowhere near as difficult as traditional Chinese typography.

So while Vietnamese writing may look difficult, it’s really just five tone markers, and seven accented letters (3 hats, 3 hooks, and the d-stroke). That’s it!

Input Methods¶

For typing in Vietnamese, there are a handful of input methods, the most common seems to be Telex and VNI. You can install these easily on most major smartphones and computers. They all use a standard Latin keyboard. I personally prefer Telex as it’s faster (especially on mobile devices).

Telex¶

mũ = press the key twice (oo → ô)
móc = letter + w (ow → ơ, aw → ă)

In other words,
aa → â, ee → ê, oo → ô
aw → ă, ow → ơ, uw → ư
dd → đ

For the tones, I’ve included some mnemonics,
s = sắc (os → ó) S up
f = huyền (of → ò) F alling
r = hỏi (or → ỏ) R olling
x = ngã (ox → õ) glottal X stop
j = nặng (oj → ọ) h j kl

VNI¶

Alternatively, the VNI method uses numbers rather than letters,
a6 → â, e6 → ê, o6 → ô
a8 → ă, o7 → ơ, u7 → ư
d9 → đ

1 = sắc (o1 → ó)
2 = huyền (o2 → ò)
3 = hỏi (o3 → ỏ)
4 = ngã (o4 → õ)
5 = nặng (o5 → ọ)

VIQR¶

I find VIQR intuitive, but extremely slow to type (especially on a smartphone).

a^ → â, e^ → ê, o^ → ô
a( → ă, o+ → ơ, u+ → ư
dd → đ

' = sắc (o' → ó)
= huyền (o → ò)
? = hỏi (o? → ỏ)
~ = ngã (o~ → õ)
. = nặng (o. → ọ)