Vietnamese

Vietnamese is spoken by approximately 84 million people worldwide and is the official language of Vietnam. In addition, through the migration of millions of Vietnamese, the language has spread throughout the world. The tone pitch and the tone pitch progression are crucial for the pronunciation of each syllable. A false pronunciation of a tone can lead to a distorted meaning. Originally, each word in the Vietnamese language used to consist of only one syllable. The basic vocabulary and all grammatically significant words were monosyllabic. Over time, however, many disyllabic words have been absorbed into the vocabulary, along with polysyllabic loanwords from Chinese. Word with new meanings are usually created through paraphrases, for example ‘máy thu thanh’ “machine-collect-sound” for ‘radio’.

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