Vietnamese – Official Vietnam Language

The Vietnamese language is a fusion of Mon-Khmer, Tai and Chinese. Vietnamese derived a significant percentage of its basic words from the nontonal Mpn-khmer languages. From the Tai languages came certain grammatical elements and tonality. Chinese gave Vietnamese most of its literary, technical and governmental vocabulary, as well as its traditional writing system.

There are six tones in spoken Vietnamese, this is the hardest of learning how to speak Vietnamese. It is quite difficult to explain how to pronounce them in paper, but we suggest you to listen and learn from local people when you travelling in Vietnam. Isn't it a funny part of your trip to Indochina?

Vietnamese grammar is fairly straightforward, with a wide variety of possible sentences structures. Nouns have no masculine, feminine or plural forms and verbs have only one form regardless of gender, person or tense. Instead, tool words and classifiers are used to show a word's relationship to its neighbors.

Words and Conversation:
Hello                Xin chao
Goodbye             Tam biet
Yes                  Vang/Da
No                  Khong
Please               Lam on
Thank you            Cam on
Excuse me            Xin loi
Sorry                Xin loi
How are you?         Co khoe khong
Fine, thank you        Khoe, cam on