Читать книгу Vietnamese Picture Dictionary - Nguyen Thi Lien Huong - Страница 13

Sounds at the end of a syllable

Syllables can end in a vowel or they can end in a semi-vowel on consonant as follows:

Vietnamese has two semi-vowel finals:

and six consonant finals:

i, y [ i̭ ]

u, o [ṷ]

m [m]

n [n]

ng, nh [ŋ]

p [p]

t [t]

c, ch [k]

Vietnamese grammar and usage

Here are a few simple grammar points that English-speaking learners of Vietnamese should take note of:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

The word order of the main parts in a sentence is similar to English. That is, the subject (S) comes first followed by the verb (V), which is followed by the object (O): S + V + O. However, there are some other differences between Vietnamese and English word order. For instance, in English an adjective comes before a noun to modify it, whereas it comes after the noun in Vietnamese. Compare beautiful flowers vs. hoa đẹp literally, “flower beautiful.” And, a Vietnamese demonstrative comes after the noun it modifies. For example: this person vs. người này literally, “person this.”

A Vietnamese verb does not change form to express person, number, time or tense. These meanings are conveyed by other words used together with the verb. It is very important to know how these auxiliary words are used, since some of them are placed in front of a verb whereas others follow it.

Most questions are formed by specific sentence forms, unlike many other languages where intonation alone can be used to ask a question.

A Vietnamese noun does not change form and there are no plural forms or gender forms. Separate words are used to refer to multiple objects. Some nouns take a so-called “classifier” when it is used with a number or a demonstrative. Different classifiers are used with different nouns and it is good to learn these.

Vietnamese normally use kinship terms instead of pronouns to address someone. It is a good idea to ask the Vietnamese person you are speaking to how to address her or him and how to refer to yourself. Being aware of this complicated issue, the person will be happy to explain it to you. This dictionary uses the general terms bạn for the singular you and các bạn for the plural you. Literally, bạn means “friend.” Other common terms used to address people are:

For example, anh means “elder brother”, chị means “elder sister”

Phonetic pronounciation guides

To assist the reader, a separate phonetic pronounciation is given after each Vietnamese word or phrase to clarify how it is to be read. The following symbols are used in the phonetic pronounciations:

Vowels (the original Vietnamese letter is given on the left and the phonetic representation given after)

a (long a as in father or lager) and ă (short a as in hat) are both represented by a. The same sound is represented by ah if at the end of a syllable.

â (short “uh” as in about) and ơ (long “uh” as in early) are both represented by u. The same sound is represented by uh if at the end of a syllable.

e (as in let) and ê (as in the first part of may) are both represented by e. The same sounds are represented by eh if at the end of a syllable.

i and y (short i as in happy or long i as in seek) are represented by i when the vowel is short and ee when the vowel is long.

o (short o as in pod) is represented by o.

7