Vietnam Language

Almost every nation has its own language that speaks of its culture and heritage, so does Vietnam. 'Vietnamese' is the official language of Vietnam. Having a similarity with Cambodia's official language 'Khmer', Vietnamese is a bit difficult language especially for the foreigners. Other than Vietnamese, Chinese, Khmer, Cham and other tribal languages are also spoken in Vietnam.

Each syllable of Vietnamese can be spoken in six different tones, which makes it confusing and difficult sometimes. Much of the vocabulary of Vietnamese has been borrowed from Chinese. For writing Vietnamese, Roman alphabets and accent marks are used to represent tones. So in a way we can say, vocal Vietnamese is difficult than the written one.

Spoken by about 68 million people in Vietnam, Vietnamese is an Austroasiatic language. Apart from Vietnam, Vietnamese is also spoken in countries like Australia, Cambodia, Finland, France, Laos, Germany, Netherlands, Senegal, UK, USA, China, Canada, Norway and Philippines.

Originally Vietnamese was written with a Siniform script, which was essentially Chinese in structure, but later Vietnamese literature developed a more Vietnamese style. Kim Van Kieu, the 'Tale of Kieu', a romantic novel written by Nguyen Du is one of the greatest literary work in Vietnamese. It was in the 17th century, when the Roman Catholic missionaries introduced a system of writing Vietnamese in the Latin alphabets.