Vietnamese phonology

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, are described below.

Initial consonants which exist only in the Hanoi dialect are in red, while those that exist only in the Saigon dialect are in blue.

In the Saigonese dialect, all initial consonant + /w/ clusters have been reduced:

In Hanoian Vietnamese, d, gi and r are all pronounced /z/, while x and s are both pronounced /s/. The table below summarizes these sound correspondences:

/ə̆/ ⟨â⟩

/ă/ ⟨ă⟩

The IPA chart of vowel nuclei to the right is based on the sounds in Hanoi Vietnamese, (i.e., other regions of Vietnam may have different inventories). Vowel nuclei consist of monophthongs (i.e., simple vowels) and three centering diphthongs.

In Vietnamese, vowel nuclei are able to combine with offglides /j/ or /w/ to form closing diphthongs and triphthongs. Below is a chart listing the closing sequences of general northern speech.

/ə̆w/ ⟨âu⟩

...
Wikipedia