Here're some notes & practice in reading Quốc Ngữ Hi everybody.  I wrote the following article for a non Asian friend beginning Vietnamese at the junior college level.  The first six sections are the notes; the rest are practice questions and encouragement.  Share this with everybody you know who may be having a hard time learning to read and write Vietnamese -- or just anyone who's interested.  So, without further ado... Reading Quốc Ngữ     1.     Quốc Ngữ represents Vietnamese as a monosyllabic language.  That is, each syllable of Vietnamese has meaning.  For instance, “Quốc Ngữ” means: “National Language,” but is understood as: “Vietnamese writing system.”  Traditional grammarians distinguish between “initials” and “finals,” which include vowels, final consonants (if any) and tones.  Tone marks are written on top of (or under) the most important vowel, usually the first if there is more than one.  Every syllable is written separately, with a space before and after it – even in the case of words which consist of more than one syllable. 2.     Four letters of the English alphabet do not appear in Vietnamese.  These letters are: /F/ (represented by the Vietnamese letter combination: /PH/; /J/ (a sound that does not exist in Vietnamese); /W/ (represented by Vietnamese letter combinations such as /UƠ/ and /UÂ/; and /Z/ (present only in the northern dialect of Vietnamese, and represented by the Vietnamese letter combinations: /D/ and /GI/.The letter /R/ is pronounced /Z/ in the north, and is a true /R/ in the south.  Those sounds pronounced /Z/ in the north are pronounced /Y/ in the south. 3.     As you already know, the Quốc Ngữ system uses 22 English letters, to which it adds several extra marks to represent tone and vowel quality.  These marks are as important as the letters, and cannot be left out if your Vietnamese is to be easily read by all.  The word for “mark” in Vietnamese is: “dấu.”  The table below shows the special marks of Quốc Ngữ, and gives their proper Vietnamese names (used in spelling). Dấu Mũ (“hat mark” for vowelsDấu ă (used only over this vowel) Dấu Sắc (rising tone) Dấu Huyền (falling tone) Dấu Hỏi (question tone)**Also question mark, but remember questions are not signaled by a rise in pitch in Vietnamese, but rather by question words or context. Dấu Ngã (“Ngã” or “stumbling” tone) Dấu Nặng (heavy tone) **In addition, the special Vietnamese vowels Ư and Ơ are clearly variants of these letters in English.  I don’t know if the hook on these letters has a name.** 4.     The Vietnamese call consonants “phụ âm” (literally: “helping sounds”), a reminder that the most important part of any syllable is the vowel: “nguyên âm” (“originating sound”).  Every syllable in Vietnamese must at least have a “vần,” the “final” vowel and/or consonant at the end, and may have an initial consonant.  Vietnamese out-loud spelling consists of saying the names of the letters (some consonants voiced with the carrying vowel “ơ” after their names in English, others with the vowel “ê”), the tone and then the whole word, like this: “Vê,  i-ngắn, ê, tê, nặng, Việt; Nơ, A, Mơ, Nam: Việt Nam.”  As you may have noticed, we do not say the names of vowel marks, but instead treat them like separate letters.  The Vietnamese letter /i/ is called “short I” (i-ngắn), while the letter /Y/ is called “long I” (“i dài”).  It might be helpful to remember that “I dài” can only appear at the beginning of a syllable.  Don’t forget: You have to include the name of the tone (without the word “dấu”) in spelling.  Otherwise, when referring either to the tones themselves or the tone marks, you must say: “Dấu” and the name of the tone.  And why are there only five tone marks/names?  Because there is one tone shown by the absence of a tone mark.  We don’t bother with this in spelling, but it’s called “không dấu” (“No-Tone tone”), and is referred to in linguistic tracts and on other occasions when it needs to be distinguished. 5.     Vietnamese has a simple syllable structure that makes learning a snap.  In theory, any combination of consonants and vowels could be represented by the Quốc Ngữ system, but in practice some combinations of sounds are not Vietnamese, and would only ever be written as a guide to the pronunciation of a minority language in Việt Nam.  Once you can clearly identify which syllables are not Vietnamese, you’ll be well on your way to learning the language, because unlike English, Vietnamese is pronounced exactly as it is written.  That is, if you see it in print, you can pronounce it correctly.  Conversely, any word you learn out loud you’ll probably spell correctly, although this is not foolproof.  As you saw in #2 above, the sounds represented by the English letters /Y/ (in the southern dialect) and /Z/ (in the northern) are represented in Vietnamese by several different combinations of letters.  Conversely, the Vietnamese letter: /Đ/ looks just like our letter /D/ except for the horizontal line.  REMEMBER: This is the only  symbol for that sound.  Two more spelling problems present themselves: the Vietnamese vowels /â/ and /ơ/ are pronounced exactly the same.  Finally, in the southern dialect of Vietnamese, there is no difference in sound between the ngã and hỏi tones.  This leads to considerable confusion; even otherwise educated Vietnamese who should know better sometimes write: “ngả” instead of “ngã,” and some might conceivably write “phỡ” instead of “phở,” though I’ve never seen this popular dish misspelled.  Special sections of monolingual Vietnamese dictionaries address this very common problem.  The only sure fix is to learn the northern dialect, as it clearly differentiates all six tones.  If your ear learns southern pronunciations you’ll have to memorize the spelling of these tones, and will always be prone to confuse them. 6.     Finally, Vietnamese also uses the comma (“dấu phẩy”), period (“dấu chấm), the colon (“hai chấm – literally “two periods”), semicolon (“chấm phẩy”) and question mark (“dấu hỏi”).  The hyphen (“gạch nối”) was once commonly used to link syllables in multisyllabic words, but is now obsolete.  REMEMBER: “Dấu Hỏi” is also the name of a tone and its mark.  HOWEVER, don’t forget that you must not under ***ANY*** circumstances raise your voice at the end of a sentence to make it a question!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The usual question word comes at the end of the sentence, and is the Vietnamese word for “no” (“không”).  This word is pronounced in the “No-Tone” tone, AND MUST BE SPOKEN THAT WAY TO BE UNDERSTOOD.  Pronuncing it with “hỏi” tone would produce the syllable: “khổng,” part of the word “giant” (“khổng lồ”), or, if capitalized, would mean “Confucius” (“Đức Khổng-tử”).  You will be misunderstood if you do this; get used to pronouncing the proper tones now, and note how word choice and other overall changes in pitch (like speeding up or raising your VOLUME, but not your pitch) show Vietnamese emotions. 7.     Now it’s time to practice.  First, answer the following questions “true” or “false.”  A) Each Vietnamese syllable has meaning, and is written with white space on either side.  B) The Vietnamese writing system is called: “Quốc Ngữ.”  C) Tone marks are optional, and are written as part of the initial consonant letter, if any. 8.     Which English letters are not used in Vietnamese?  How are those sounds represented?  Do all the sounds referred to by these English letters exist in Vietnamese?  If not, which one(s) don’t exist?  How does Vietnamese write our /D/ sound?  Are any Vietnamese letters pronounced differently in different regions of Việt Nam?  Which one(s)? 9.     True or false: A) Vietnamese is written just like English, with no extra marks to contend with.  B) Some letters in Vietnamese, though they have extra marks attached, have no names for those marks.  If so, which ones?  C) The question mark is different from the “hỏi” tone. 10. How do we spell in Vietnamese?  Must we always mention the tone in spelling aloud?  Must we pronounce the tone, even if there is no mark?  If so, which tone is that? 11. A)The following syllables are written in the Quốc Ngữ alphabet, but are not Vietnamese.  Conversely, the Vietnamese letter combinations /ph/, /ng/, /ngh/, /gh/, /ghi/, /th/ and /qu/ count as single letters – and may only appear at the beginning of a syllable in Vietnamese words.  Can you see any patterns, or at least draw any conclusions, by knowing these syllables aren’t Vietnamese?  /đrây/, /Plố/, /tàs/, /Bliểm/, /rngày/. /thiệl/, /mãk/, /tha lắr/, /mỹm pơph/.  Can you come up with any more syllables that are not  Vietnamese?  What can you conclude by noting that such syllables as “luyện” and “nghĩa” are considered single Vietnamese syllables?  B) True or false: Vietnamese is pronounced exactly as it is spelled, and vice versa?  C) Which tones are often confused, and in which dialect?  What can you do to avoid this problem? 12. A) What do we call the English punctuation marks in Vietnamese?  B) Which mark is no longer used in Vietnamese to show that two syllables are part of the same word?  C) True or false: We raise our pitch to indicate we’re asking a question in Vietnamese? 13. See if you can read the following short passage out loud.  The English translation follows.  Tôi đang học tiếng Việt tại Đại Học Santa Ana.  Tôi chưa đọc giỏi chữ Quốc Ngữ, nhưng tôi đang tập luyện mỗi ngày.  Tiếng Việt là một ngôn ngữ đơn âm -- mỗi âm tiết đều có nghĩa cả.  Tiếng Việt khó học, nhưng càng ngày tôi càng hiểu biết nhiều hơn.  “I’m studying Vietnamese at Santa Ana College.  I don’t read Quốc Ngữ very well yet, but I practice every day.  Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language – every syllable has meaning.  Vietnamese is a hard language, but I understand more and more every day.  A) Is there anything false or impossible in the above passage?  B) Have you figured out the two syllable Vietnamese word for the Vietnamese language? 14. Now you’re well on your way to being able to read Vietnamese in the Quốc Ngữ alphabetic system.  The best way to practice is to start reading signs, newspaper headlines and book, movie and CD titles right away, out loud – even though you won’t understand them at first.  You also need good Vietnamese --) English and English --) Vietnamese dictionaries now.  I suggest the ones by the late professor Nguyễn Đình Hòa, published by Tuttle.  GOOD LUCK!!