History of Vietnamese Language

Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam.

There are approximately 59 million people who speak Vietnamese globally. although the majority of speakers live in Vietnam, a substantial population speak Vietnamese abroad, especially in the United States (600,000), France (10,000), and a minor amount in Canada, Australia, Senegal, and Cote d'Ivoire (1992 data). Vietnamese may also be used as a second language by many people in mountainous communities and in adjacent countries such as Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand.

Vietnamese is one of nearly 150 spoken languages connected to the Austro-Asiatic family of languages.

Within the Austro-Asiatic family, three major branches are generally recognized. Viet-Muong (or Annam-Muong) includes Vietnamese and its sister language Muong (spoken in the Midlands). While Vietnamese and its sister language Muong form a group on their own, some scholars favor the inclusion of Vietnamese within the Mon-Khmer group.

While taking on lots of components from the Chinese language, the Vietnamese people altered numerous Chinese words, progressively making Han-Viet (Chinese-Vietnamese) which blended purely Vietnamese words. According to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, "Vietnamization" did not just focus on Chinese language, it also altered French and other language groups, producing a diverse vocabulary for the Vietnamese language.

Vietnamese is said to be first written by using revised Chinese characters when Vietnam was a province of China, from the second century BC until the tenth century. During the medieval period, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, Buddhist scholars and priests created a writing method based on Chinese characters. This writing, called chu nom, used combinations of Chinese characters; a single element gave the meaning and the other element alerted the pronunciation.

Dialects of Vietnamese Language

Vietnamese has three different dialects spoken according to the three primary sections in Vietnam: Northern Vietnam (Hanoi), Central Vietnam (Hue ), and Southern Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City). The Northern dialect shapes the foundation of the common language and is the prominent dialect. The dialects differ primarily in pronunciation and to a lesser degree in vocabulary. These differences in dialects do not disrupt intelligent conversation among native speakers of the various dialects, however.

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