The Vietnamese alphabet

29 letters, not 26

Vietnamese is written in the Latin alphabet, which makes it look familiar – but the set of letters is different. There are 29 letters. Seven of them are vowels with a mark that is part of the letter itself: ă â ê ô ơ ư. One consonant is unique: đ.

đ is not d

This is the first trap. đ sounds like English d in do. Plain d sounds like z in the north and y in the south. They are two different letters and swapping them changes the word.

đito go

dito move (a different word)

Letters Vietnamese does not have

There is no f, j, w or z in native Vietnamese words. You will still meet them in brand names and abbreviations, and Vietnamese people name them when spelling in English.

Some sounds are written with two or three letters: ch, gh, kh, ng, ngh, nh, ph, th, tr, gi, qu. Treat each of those as one letter – that is how a Vietnamese dictionary treats them.