Vietnamese Language

Vietnam has Vietnamese as an official language that is spoken throughout the country. It has long history as well as the history of the country itself. Vietnam historically has had involvements with other foreign countries such as French, Russian, English and Khmer and these involvements are revealed in the language. Some words in Vietnamese are derived from other languages, for example, 'thien tai'-means 'natural disaster'- derived from Chinese and 'pho mat' -means 'cheese'- derived from 'fromage' in French. There are dozens of languages spoken by various hilly ethnic minorities which can be marked into the three main dialects categorized by northern, central and southern regions. Most are similar however the pronunciations and accents can be so diverse that some locals sometime do not understand each other.

80% of Vietnamese is influenced by Chinese during the Chinese Rule since the beginning of first century and gradually accepted some French's words into Vietnamese dictionary between 18th and 20 century. Vietnamese had been used Chinese characters in most official documents until fourteen century, when it was an creation of 'cho nom' followed by 'quoc ngu', a Romanized characters created by a French missionary in the seventeen century.

The most widely spoken foreign languages in Vietnam are Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), English and French. People in their 50s and older who grew up in the colonial period are much more to understand some French than the southerner successive generations whom English was indispensable for professional and commercial contacts with the Americans. Today much of elder generations still speak French, middle-age people speak Russian and other Eastern European languages and most of Vietnam's youth has fully embraced the English language.

As Vietnam was a part of world communist society with connection and assistance from Soviet Union during the Cold War, even after the country's reunification, the teaching of Russian was stressed all over the country until the popularity of studying Russian declined as a result of the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Studying English, on the other hand, was prosecuted as a part of general crackdown preventing people to flee to the West during the war. Recently, this attitude has changed and studying English has become a passion.

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by Royal Exclusive Travel

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