Vietnamese is a very phonetic language. The pronunciation and the spelling of words closely match up. This means you can learn to ‘read’ Vietnamese (ie. read aloud) very quickly.
Vietnamese uses a Latin alphabet and many letters are pronounced as you’d expect like b or m.
Although just like European languages, there is some variation on the basic Latin alphabet. Spanish has letters like ñ while Vietnamese has letters like đ and ư and some letters that have a different sound (eg. Vietnamese th- sounds more like an English t-). But you simply need to learn how these sound because đ always sounds like đ, th- is always th- so on.
I learnt how to pronounce written Vietnamese by using the phonetic guide in my phrasebook. There are online, including .
Learn which letters make which sounds, brush up on your then get practising. You could practice by reading aloud the words from this , then comparing with the audio.
In no time at all you’ll be able to pronounce written Vietnamese – allowing you to read aloud signs, addresses and even poetry if you wish!
Granted, this won’t teach you what any of it means but knowing these rules will help you pick up new words that you see and also help you with .
Over to you: How did you learn to pronounce Vietnamese words? Do you find it easy to read Vietnamese words aloud (even if you don’t know what they mean)?
Photo credit: hvaldez1