What is the Vietnamese Language
Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (người Việt or người Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of
about three million overseas Vietnamese, most of whom live in the United
States. It is also spoken as a second language by some ethnic minorities of
Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has
the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the
other Austroasiatic languages put together). Much vocabulary has been
borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the
same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was
originally writ
ten using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was pronounced in the Vietnamese way. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (người Việt or người Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of
about three million overseas Vietnamese, most of whom live in the United
States. It is also spoken as a second language by some ethnic minorities of
Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has
the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the
other Austroasiatic languages put together). Much vocabulary has been
borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the
same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was
originally written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was pronounced in the Vietnamese way. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, while written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
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