Vietnamese
Vietnamese is one of approximately 150 languages belonging to the Austro Asiatic
family of languages. It is spoken mainly along the Eastern coast of the Indo-Chinese
Peninsula with most of its 59 million speakers living in Vietnam and the adjacent
countries of Southeast Asia. Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam.
As a result of economic and cultural development, particularly in the north,
Vietnamese is also widely used as a second language by many of the mountain-dwelling
ethnic minorities in neighboring countries like Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand
where a significant Vietnamese population exists. Three major dialectal variations
are generally recognized within Vietnamese: Northern (Hanoi), Central (Hue),
and Southern (Saigon). The Northern dialect forms the basis of the standard
language and is the prestige dialect. The dialects differ mainly in terms of
pronunciation and to a limited extent in terms of the vocabulary. They are,
however, all mutually intelligible.
From the second century BC until the tenth century, when Vietnam was a province
of China, Vietnamese was written using modified Chinese characters . In the
mid-seventeenth century, the modified Roman script now in use was introduced
by Catholic missionaries.
Vietnamese is a tone language; that is, the meaning of words and sentences is
affected by the pitch with which they are spoken. The tones in Vietnamese are
mid-level, low falling, high rising, low, rising after an initial dip, high
broken and low broken. "Broken" tones are spoken in a glottalized
manner.
Source:
UCLA Language Materials Project
Information on writing system:
Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:
Conversational Vietnamese, LIDS 19
Jones.
& Thong, Spoken Vietnamese (Tape)
Other Courses Available at UCSD
Other Local Resources:
UCSD International Center
Mingei museum of folk art
SD cultural events
International channel
International web radio
Landmark
Theaters: foreign films