Language
Vietnamese is the official language of the country. It is a language pertaining to the Austroasiatic language family, a language family also including Khmer, Mon, etc. Vietnamese was spoken by 65.8 million people in Vietnam at the 1999 census. In the early 21st century, around another three million Vietnamese speakers are found outside of Vietnam. Thus Vietnamese is the most spoken language of the Austroasiatic family, being spoken by three times more people than the second most spoken language of the family, Khmer. Both languages, however, are extremely different: under the influence of Chinese, Vietnamese has become a tonal language, while Khmer has remained non-tonal. Vietnamese was heavily influenced by Chinese and a great part of the Vietnamese vocabulary is Chinese, while Khmer was heavily influenced by Sanskrit and Pali and a great part of its vocabulary is now made up of Indian words, so that both languages look very dissimilar on the surface. Since the early 20th century, the Vietnamese have used a Romanized script introduced by the French. (See Vietnamese language and Vietnamese alphabet).
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Vietnam
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content ... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)
“Whether we regard the Women’s Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.”
—Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)
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—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)