The native name of the Vietnamese language is Tiếng Việt.

Vietnamese is a tonal language with six distinct tones. Changing the tone completely alters the meaning of a word. Because it is tonal and subtle, Vietnamese learners often make tone mistakes that are either very embarrassing or amusing to native speakers.

Some learners accidentally say “your potatoes are very beautiful” instead of “your earrings are beautiful.”

It uses a Latin alphabet script (called Chữ Quốc Ngữ) introduced by European Christian missionaries, replacing older writing systems. It was developed in the 17th century by people like Alexandre de Rhodes.

The older script before the Latin alphabet was Chữ Nôm, which used Chinese characters along with newly created ones to write Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese alphabet has 29 letters, but it does not include F, J, W, or Z in its native set.

Nouns are not inflected for plurality; you do not add an “s” as in English. Quantity is shown through context or additional words, which is very common in Asian languages.

There are three major dialect regions in Vietnam (Northern, Central, and Southern), each with noticeable pronunciation and vocabulary differences.

A large proportion of Vietnamese vocabulary (about 60%) is derived from Chinese (Sino-Vietnamese) due to long periods of Chinese rule.

Vietnamese names follow the order: family name, middle name, then given name. The family name “Nguyễn” is particularly common.

There are many loanwords from French (due to the colonial period) and English, which sometimes have Vietnamese pronunciations.

Onomatopoeic expressions are common, for example: “lạch bạch” (the sound of water splashing) and “rào rào” (the sound of heavy rain).

There are no grammatical genders, nouns are gender-neutral, unlike in French or German for example.