The Vietnamese phonetic inventory is very similar to the International Phonetic Alphabet chart from the reading in that Vietnamese utilizes:
- Bilabial plosive p and b; bilabial nasal m,
- Labiodental fricative f and v
- Alveolar plosive t, d, th; alveolar trill r; alveolar fricative s and z; alveolar liquid l
- Postalveolar fricative ʃ and ʒ
- Retroflex plosive ʈ
- Palatal plosive c; palatal nasal ɲ; palatal glides j
- Velar plosive k and g; velar nasal ŋ; velar fricative x, velar glides w
- Glottal fricative h
For the most part, English and Vietnamese seems to share a lot of sounds. However, there are sounds that exists in Vietnamese that doesn’t exist in English such as: th, c, ɲ, ʐ, ɣ, ɯ, ɽ, ɤ̆, ȿ, ŋ, x, ʔ, and et cetera. Similarly, there are sounds that only exists in the English language such as, but not limited to: ð, ʧ, Ɵ, ð, ɪ, ɚ, ɝ, ʤ, and et cetera.
A few examples of Vietnamese words with their phonetic transcriptions would be:
- Nước Nga which means “the country of Russia” is nɨɜ:kŋα:
- Nhanh which means “fast”, “cursory”, and “quick” is ɲα:ɲ
- Gương which means “mirror” is ɣɨɜ:ŋ
- Hôm qua which means “yesterday” is homkwα:
- Trung tâm which means “city center” is t∫ʊŋtɜm(northern dialect) and ʈɽʊŋtɜm (southern dialect)
- Sâm panh which means “champagne” is sɜmpα:ɲ
I would like to make a note that while I have tried my best in providing the closest possible phonetic transcriptions to the best of my ability, Vietnamese is a tonal language. This means that there is an excessive usage of tones that are used to distinguish between different words. The tones that exists in Vietnamese that changes the meaning of words always alters the phonetic readings of words or parts of a word, and I have not yet figured out how to write those transcription properly.
However, the best thing about Vietnamese is that, unlike English, the phonetic readings of a letter does not change when combined with other letters to make a word. Therefore, in Vietnamese, as long as we knows how each letter is read along with basic understanding of tone, we can always just đánh vần (ɗaɲjɜn (southern dialect) or ɗaɲvɜn (northern dialect) which means “spelling” but in practice, it is more like “sounding out”) words and get the reading correct.
As a native Vietnamese speaker, I already have an advantage in listening and speech. However, as my understanding of Vietnamese is constrained to just the southern dialect, I think that learning how to discriminate differentiated segments could definitely help with my comprehension of the central and northern dialect. For example, the southern dialect makes uses of j while the northern dialect makes uses of the z sound instead.
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