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How to Learn Vietnamese Letters Online

Vietnamese is spoken by about 80 million people in Vietnam, along with 2 million more in other parts of the world, according to Arizona State University's Vietnamese Language Program. Vietnamese is a tonal language using six tones, which means that a word can have different meanings depending on its pitch or how the tone changes. Written Vietnamese is based on the Latin alphabet, and it uses diacritic marks above or below a word to indicate the tone. Before you can read and write in Vietnamese, you will need to learn the letters in its alphabet, which you can do online.

Instructions

- 1
  Go to the Omniglot website of Vietnamese Language, Alphabet and Pronunciation.
- 2
  Study Omniglot's list of letters in the Vietnamese alphabet, and learn how they are pronounced by reading English translations below each letter. Practice copying each letter and the diacritic marks.
- 3
  Pay attention to the different diacritic marks. The first one is a level tone, the second one is a high-rising tone, the third is a low/falling tone, the fourth is a dipping-rising tone, the fifth is a high-rising glottalized tone, and the sixth is a low glottalized tone. The word "ma" using each of those respective tones would mean "ghost," "cheek," "but," "tomb," "horse" and "seedling."
- 4
  Go to Seasite's Vietnamese Alphabet Table website.
- 5
  Click on each letter, marked with different diacritic marks, to hear how it is pronounced.

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