A familiar alphabet doing unfamiliar work

Vietnamese is written in a Latin alphabet, so the page looks reachable to an English-reading parent. The marks are what carry the information English letters do not.

Some marks change the vowel itself, as in a, ă and â, or o, ô and ơ. Others sit above or below to mark tone. A word without its marks is not the same word, and often not a word at all.

  • Never strip the diacritics to make typing easier. It changes the meaning.
  • Read the mark as part of the letter, the way you read the dot on an i.

Tone is meaning, not mood

In English, pitch signals a question or surprise. In Vietnamese, pitch is part of the word, and the northern standard distinguishes six tones.

This is the part adults find hardest and children find easiest. A two-year-old hearing tones daily absorbs them without instruction, which is the strongest argument for reading aloud even imperfectly.

  • Do not flatten the tones to sound calm. Flat is a different word.
  • Ask a relative to say the six tones once on the same syllable. It makes the pattern audible.

North and south

Vietnamese from Hanoi and Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh City are clearly different to a speaker: consonants and some tone distinctions are not pronounced the same way, and the south merges a pair the north keeps apart.

The written language is shared, so a book serves both. There are also some everyday vocabulary differences by region.

  • Note which region your family's Vietnamese comes from; it explains most disagreements.
  • A relative who says it differently is not correcting the book.

Reading together

Vietnamese words do not change shape for tense or number, so the sentence on the page stays short and repeatable. That suits a first-words book well.

Say the Vietnamese word, point at the picture, then let the child hear it again a few seconds later. Repetition with a gap does more than explanation.

  • Record a grandparent naming six pictures and replay it at bedtime.
  • Family terms of address vary by relative and region. Use the ones your family uses.