This article is a technical description of the sound system of the Vietnamese language, including phonetics and phonology. Two main varieties of Vietnamese, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), are described below.
Initial consonants[]
Initial consonants which exist only in the Hanoi dialect are in red, while those that exist only in the Saigon dialect are in blue.
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Stop/ Affricate |
tenuis | (p) | t | ʈ | c | k | (ʔ) |
| aspirated | tʰ | ||||||
| glottalized | ɓ | ɗ | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʂ | x | h | |
| voiced | v | z~j | ɣ | ||||
| Approximant | l | w | |||||
| Rhotic | r | ||||||
Vowels[]
Front Central Back Centering /iə̯/ ⟨ia~iê⟩ /ɨə̯/ ⟨ưa~ươ⟩ /uə̯/ ⟨ua~uô⟩ Close /i/ ⟨i, y⟩ /ɨ/ ⟨ư⟩ /u/ ⟨u⟩ Close-mid/
Mid/e/ ⟨ê⟩ /ə/ ⟨ơ⟩
/ə̆/ ⟨â⟩/o/ ⟨ô⟩ Open-mid/
Open/ɛ/ ⟨e⟩ /a/ ⟨a⟩
/ă/ ⟨ă⟩/ɔ/ ⟨o⟩