29 letters, 7 of them new, and 4 missing friends
Vietnamese uses a Latin-based alphabet of 29 letters: 22 familiar ones (no f, j, w, z) plus 7 with diacritics (ă, â, ê, ô, ơ, ư, đ) that count as letters in their own right, not decorated versions of other letters.
The Vietnamese alphabet, called chữ Quốc ngữ (script of the national language), looks familiar at first glance, since it is based on the same Latin letters used for English.
Below is the full alphabet with the sound of each letter. Vietnamese children learn these sounds just like English speakers recite "ay, bee, see". Tap any letter to hear its name spoken in your selected accent.
Orange cells are the 7 diacritic letters. Tap a letter to hear its name.
Vietnamese does not use f, j, w, or z. The sounds you might expect them to represent are covered by other letters: ph says "f", and gi/d/r cover the "z" and "y" territory.
You will still meet these four letters in foreign words and names, especially modern loanwords and brand names, but they are not considered part of the Vietnamese alphabet.
| Letter | Vietnamese name | Where you might see it |
|---|---|---|
| f | ép, ép-phờ | Foreign words: "wifi", "fansipan" |
| j | gi | Foreign words: "jeans", "judo" |
| w | vê đúp, vê kép, đấp-liu | Foreign words: "web", "show" |
| z | dét, giét | Foreign words: "zero", "Gen Z" |
This is the single most important idea in the Vietnamese alphabet: ă is its own letter with its own sound, not just "a with a mark", just as "i" and "j" are separate letters in English.
6 of the 7 diacritic letters are vowels. The little marks change the quality of the vowel (and for ă/â, the length too). Listen to the difference:
Tap each group: e vs ê, o / ô / ơ, u vs ư, and an / ăn / ân (ă and â can't stand alone).
The 7th diacritic letter is the consonant đ. The bar through it is no hint: d and đ are completely different sounds.
đ is a hard, punchy "d" (your throat tightens slightly, like the "d" in "duh!" said with emphasis). Plain d, meanwhile, sounds like "z" in Hanoi and "y" in Saigon. If you remember one pair from this page, make it this one.
đa (hard d) vs da (z/y sound). A world of difference.
Vietnamese also combines letters into digraphs, pairs that behave as a single consonant, just like English "sh" or "th". There are 10 digraphs and 1 trigraph (ngh).
Some exist only for spelling reasons: gh is just g before e/ê/i, and ngh is just ng before e/ê/i (a convention borrowed from Italian, like "ghetto").
| Combo | Sounds like | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ch | softer "ch" in church | cha |
| gh | = g (before e/ê/i) | ghế |
| gi | sounds like "z" in the north, "y" in the south | già |
| kh | a raspy "h" scraped from the back of the throat | khi |
| ng | "ng" in singer (can start words) | ngủ |
| ngh | = ng (before e/ê/i) | nghề |
| nh | "ny" in canyon, Spanish ñ | nhỏ |
| ph | "f" in fun | phở |
| qu | sounds like the "qu" of "queen" in the north, the "w" of "win" in the south | quả |
| th | strong "t" with a puff of air | thư |
| tr | sounds like "ch" in the north, tongue curled back in the south | trẻ |
The 10 digraphs + trigraph ngh. Tap an example to hear it. Full guide on the consonants page.
For most of its history, Vietnamese was written with Chinese characters (chữ Hán) and a homegrown adaptation called chữ Nôm. Both took years of study to master, so literacy stayed with the elite.
In the 1600s, Portuguese and Italian missionaries wrote Vietnamese in Latin letters instead, creating chữ Quốc ngữ, which later spread through public schools under French colonial rule and became the official everyday writing system by the 1920s. That origin explains the spelling: nh sounds like Portuguese "nh" (or Spanish "ñ"), and qu behaves like European "qu".