Vietnamese language

Vietnamese is a tonal language descended from Chinese. Before the French occupation, an ideographic written language was used which was also based on Chinese. The French introduced (mandated?) a phonetic written language system with roman characters which is now the dominant written language.

The six tones in Vietnamese are:

Symbol  Name    Description
----------------------------
        Khong   no tone (flat)
/       Sach    rising
\       Huyen   falling
?       Hoi     dipping
~       Nga     dipping (but not as low)
.       Nam     low, glottal

Tone markers are written above the vowel they affect, with the exception of Nam, where the dot goes below the vowel. For example, the common family name:

  ~
Nguyen

begins with "ng" (this sound is difficult for native English speakers to place at the beginning of a word), and is followed by something approximated by the English word "win". The ~ indicates a dipping tone; start somewhat low, go down in pith, then rise to the end of the word.

Most (all? is this true at all?) simple words in Vietnamese have one syllable, and there are lots of compound words. Dipthongs and tripthongs are very common. Marked differences in Vietnamese accents are found between natives of North (Ha Noi), Middle (Hue) and South Vietnam (Saigon).