Image 1. Vietnamese Tones, from A Rough Guide To Vietnamese
This information in this page was originally part of CJKV Numerals from this site.
Vietnamese sounds and tones are written in the VIetnamese Quotable Readable (VIQR) form using ASCII keyboard characters (some information about this standard used here, can be found at http://www.nonsong.org/viqr.html).
Of these, some have diacritics [a( a^ e^ o^ o+ u+] and others are digraphs [ch gh gi kh ng ngh nh ph qu th] and one special characters [dd].
The following letters are not found on the QWERTY keyboard so under ASCII, existing characters are modified to represent them. This modification is given in blue.
| Other Vietnamese Symbols | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| a^ | e^ | o^ | a, e, and o with a circumflex ^ on top |
| o+ | u+ | o and u with a spout | |
| a( | a with a croissant on top, horns pointing up | ||
| dd | only one letter d with a horizontal bar across the stem | ||
The order of the characters above also indicates the order they appear in the Vietnamese romanised dictionaries.
| Vietnamese Tones | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marking | Nguyen's V. Dictionary | V. term | Rough Guide to Vietnamese | YHCD |
| a (unmarked) | Level | ngang /ba(`ng | Mid Level Tone | /55/ |
| a' | High Rising | sa('c | High Rising Tone | /35/ |
| a` | Low Falling | huye^`n | Low Falling Tone | /11/ |
| a? | Low Rising | ho?i | Low Rising Tone | /214/ |
| a~ | High Rising Broken | nga~ | High Broken Tone | /135/ |
| a. | Low Constricted | na(.ng | Low Broken Tone | /11/ |
The diagram below shows the approximate way the tone varies. N.B. they are not in the order shown in the table above. The descriptions in the diagram should be matched with those under the heading "Rough Guide to Vietnamese".
More recently, I've found some other sites on the internet, the first two of which have audio files for you to get an idea of the tones. I've listed the tones as I think they are for those audio files below, though Net4 which is James Campbell's site has his own tone contours. The ? question mark represents a glottal stricture which is found in Vietnames tones. Book 1 and Book 2 are those used in this page.
| Marking | Tone | Net1 | Net2 | Net3 | Net4 | Book 1 | Book 2 |
| audio | audio | text | JC | RG | VH | ||
| a | ngang | 33 | 55 | 33 | 33 | ml 33 | 55 |
| a' | sac | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | hr 45 | 35 |
| a` | huyen | 31 | 31 | 21 | 42 | lf 21 | 11 |
| a? | hoi | 21?5 | 214 | 212 / 313 | 243? | lr 13 | 214 |
| a~ | nga | 35?5 | 21?45 | 21?4 | 2?5 | hb *?45 | 135 |
| a. | nang | 21 | 21 | 32 | 13? | lb *1? | 11 |
Sources