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Minh’s Notes Archives

The Alphabet

I’ve created yet another article for my Vietnamese section, and this one is also about pronunciation. I’ve attempted to explain how to precisely and easily pronounce certain vowels and consonants in the Vietnamese alphabet. Read on for the article.


The Vietnamese alphabet consists of 24 letters, including most of the letters found in English. This is because, as you may already know, the Vietnamese writing system is based on that of Latin. Many, but not all, of the letters are pronounced like they are in English. Note that approximate pronunciations are based on [Ohioan] American English:

The Vietnamese also recognize other letters that are not found in the alphabet as letters. For example, a Vietnamese newspaper talking about an American named George Williams would call him George Williams, even though the letter w is not a Vietnamese letter.

Another thing to keep in mind is that, while these are all the letters found in the Vietnamese alphabet, they are not all the Vietnamese letters that exist. Most Vietnamese dictionaries consider a and â separate letters, and therefore separate words beginning with those letters.

Finally, Vietnamese dictionaries also consider digraphs and trigraphs like ph and kh as separate letters.

And, as a friendly reminder, don’t forget those accent marks!

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