Coastline Community College
Distance Learning
Department of International Languages
Vietnamese Program
Cultural Awareness Workshop
Four Characteristics of the Vietnamese Language vs Four Characteristics
of the English Language
The Vietnamese language has four major characteristics compared to those of the English
language:
A. Monosyllabic vs Polysyllabic
The Vietnamese language is phonologically monosyllabic. Each word – short or long – is
implosively articulated as one syllable.
a) Short words: A!
Ê!
em ma con cưng
không
b) Long words: huỳnh Nguyễn khuynh nguệch nghiêng
The longest word in Vietnamese may be nghiêng ‘inclined’ with 7 letters; still it has three main
sounds [ΝϑεΝ]. And the shortest word is a [ah].
On the contrary, the English language is highly polysyllabic. An English word may have as short as
one letter, as “I” [ai] or as long as 14 letters – indecipherable – or more, as
“antidisestablishmentarianism.”
B. Tonal vs Stress shifting
Vietnamese has six tones whose order as found in alphabetized dictionaries is as follows:
unmarked, high rising, low falling, low rising, high broken and low broken. (Words that
are phonotactically non-existent are followed by an underscore):
a) không dấu (
‘unmarked’
b) dấu sắc
(
‘high rising’
c) dấu huyền (
‘low falling’
d) dấu hỏi
(
‘low rising’
e) dấu ngã
(
‘high broken’
g) dấu nặng (
‘low broken’
ta
tô
) ta
tố
) ta
tă_
tơ
tắ_
tớ
tằ_
tồ
tâ_
tu
tấ_
tú
tầ_
tờ
te
tư
té
tứ
tè
tù
tê
ty
tế
tý
tề
từ
) ta
tẳ_
tỗ
tẵ_
tỗ
tặ_
tộ
tẩ_
tủ
tẫ_
tở
tậ_
tợ
tẻ
tử
tẻ
tủ
tẹ
tụ
tể
tỷ
tẽ
tử
tệ
tự
)
tổ
) ta
) ta
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ti
to
tí
tó
tì tò
tỳ
tỉ
tỏ
tĩ tõ
tỹ
tị tọ
tỵ
These tonal marks play a crucial part in denoting the meaning of a word. Changing the mark
significantly changes the meaning! Many attempts have been made to get rid all of the tonal marks but
in vain. Here is how these marks affect the meanings:
ba
bá
bà
bả
bã
bạ
‘three’
‘cling’
‘grandma’
‘she’
‘waste’
‘record’
ma
má
mà
mả
mã
‘ghost’
‘cheek’
‘but’
or
mạ
‘grave’ ‘appearance’ ‘rice seedling’
English learners have problems with shifting stress from a noun to a verb: conduct vs
conduct, present > present, desert > desert, etc.; or a noun to another part of speech: photo >
photography, economy > economic, and so on.
Another factor that affect Vietnamese students learning English is that Vietnamese is
implosively articulated; whereas English is highly explosive. For this reason, most Vietnamese
learning English fail to pronounce the final sounds correctly.
C. Non-inflectional vs. Inflectional
Although the Vietnamese language has been romanized, it has no “real” prefixes or suffixes as do
European languages. Everything comes in the form of a word, or more specifically, a one-syllable
word!
Verb: gặp ‘to meet’
Verb phrase: gặp ông ấy ‘to meet him’
Sentence: Tôi gặp ông ấy. ‘I meet him.’
Adverb: đã ‘already’ sẽ ‘will’ (tense marker):
Tôi đã gặp ông ấy. ‘I already met with him.’
Tôi sẽ gặp ông ấy. ‘I will meet with him.’
Tôi đang gặp ông ấy. ‘I am meeting him now.’
Noun: việc làm ‘job’ bàn ghế ‘furniture’
sự làm việc ‘working’
Adjective: đẹp ‘pretty’ new ‘mới’
Sentence: Hoa đẹp ‘Flowers (are) beautiful.’
Bộ bàn ghế mới. ‘A new set of table and chairs’
Adverb: giỏi ‘well’ nhanh chóng ‘quickly’
Nam làm giỏi. ‘Nam works well.’
Cô ta làm việc giỏi. ‘She works well.’
Anh ấy làm việc nhanh chóng. ‘He does the work quickly.’
Preposition: trong ‘in’ > trong nhà ‘at home’
tại ‘at’ > tại phi trường ‘at the airport’
In brief, Vietnamese does not have any inflectional forms like –ed, –ing, and the plural –s –es
and so forth, of English. Vietnamese learning English fail to add an “s” or “es” to the verb in third
person or the “ed” to a regular verb to indicate past tense. This has a reason: Vietnamese language does
not have verb conjugation. That’s why time phrase plays a crucial part in an utterance or a sentence.
For instance: English: “The meeting will be here at 03:00 pm tomorrow.” Vietnamese: ‘Three o’clock
tomorrow there will be a meeting here.” Introducing a time phrase brings the listener to the set scenario
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of an event: “Yesterday afternoon at this place, has a dog race very interesting” is exactly what is
written in Vietnamese for an English sentence, which should be: “There was an interesting dog race at
this place yesterday afternoon.”
D. Head Initial
Except for cardinal numbers, which always appear before a noun, all other Vietnamese modifiers
follow the head-noun they modify. The following examples show how the modifiers of the two
languages mirror. Oppositely, English head nouns are at the end of a noun phrase. Let’s compare the
two noun phrase structures and find out how much they mirror.
The terms in bold type are modifiers:
Vietnamese head initial English head final
nhà ‘house’
nhà mới ‘new house’
nhà mới màu trắng ‘new white house’
xe
xe cũ
xe cũ rẻ tiền
xe cũ rẻ tiền màu đỏ
‘car’
‘old car’
‘inexpensive old car’
‘red inexpensive old car’
Besides these factors, there are many others like topological patterns, such English direct locution
and Vietnamese circular locution. This hampers Vietnamese learners to correctly express their ideas in
their English essay writings. As a result, their essays usually tend to be “irrelevant” to the given topic.
Dung Tran,
Instructor of Vietnamese
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