Vietnamese Language - Language Variation

Language Variation

There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being:

Dialect region	Localities	Names under French colonization
Northern Vietnamese	Hanoi, Haiphong, and various provincial forms	Tonkinese
North-central (or Area IV) Vietnamese	Nghệ An (Vinh, Thanh Chương), Thanh Hoá, Quảng Bình, Hà Tĩnh	High Annamese
Central Vietnamese	Huế, Quảng Nam	Low Annamese
Southern Vietnamese	Saigon, Mekong (Far West)	Cochinchinese

Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info) The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help) Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)

Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyễn Tài Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern Nghệ An Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.

These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent, while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.

It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and, to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the temporary division of the country, almost a million northerners (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved south (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas) as part of Operation Passage to Freedom. About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.

Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975–76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system has resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but, more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.

Regional variation in grammatical words

Northern	Central	Southern	English gloss
này	ni or nì	nầy	"this"
thế này	ri	vầy	"thus, this way"
ấy	nớ, tê	đó	"that"
thế, thế ấy	rứa, rứa tê	vậy đó	"thus, so, that way"
kia	tê	đó	"that yonder"
kìa	tề	đó	"that yonder (far away)"
đâu	mô	đâu	"where"
nào	mô	nào	"which"
sao, thế nào	răng	sao	"how, why"
tôi	tui	tui	"I, me (polite)"
tao	tau	tao, qua	"I, me (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng tôi	bầy tui	tụi tui	"we, us (but not you, polite)"
chúng tao	bầy choa	tụi tao	"we, us (but not you, arrogant, familiar)"
mày	mi	mầy	"you (thou) (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng mày	bây, bọn bây	tụi mầy	"you guys, y'all (arrogant, familiar)"
nó	hắn, nghỉ	nó	"he/him, she/her, it (arrogant, familiar)"
chúng nó	bọn hắn	tụi nó	"they/them (arrogant, familiar)"
ông ấy	ông nớ	ổng	"he/him, that gentleman, sir"
bà ấy	mệ nớ, mụ nớ, bà nớ	bả	"she/her, that lady, madam"
cô ấy	o nớ	cổ	"she/her, that unmarried young lady"
chị ấy	ả nớ	chỉ	"she/her, that young lady"
anh ấy	eng nớ	ảnh	"he/him, that young man (of equal status)"

The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.

Regional consonant correspondences

Syllable position	Orthography	Northern	North-central	Central	Southern
syllable-initial	x
	s
	ch
	tr
	r		,	,	,
	d
	gi
	v
syllable-final	c
	t
	t after e
	t after ê
	t after i
	ch
	ng
	n
	n after i, ê
	nh

In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:

l, n variation

Orthography	"Mainstream" varieties	Rural varieties
n
l

Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as năm by itself and in compound numerals like năm mươi "fifty" but appears as lăm in mười lăm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mươi nhăm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mươi lăm.

The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blời with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trời in Southern Vietnamese and giời in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants /ʈᶳ/, /z/, respectively).