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The Vietnamese alphabet (, ) is the modern writing script for the Vietnamese language. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages like French, originally developed by Francisco de Pina (1585–1625), a missionary from Portugal.

The Vietnamese alphabet contains 29 letters, including 7 letters using four diacritics: , , , , , , and . There are an additional 5 diacritics used to designate tone (as in , , , , and ). The complex vowel system and the large number of letters with diacritics, which can stack twice on the same letter (e.g. meaning 'first'), makes it easy to distinguish the Vietnamese orthography from other writing systems that use the Latin script.

The Vietnamese system's use of diacritics produces an accurate transcription for tones despite the limitations of the Roman alphabet. On the other hand, sound changes in the spoken language have led to different letters, digraphs and trigraphs now representing the same sounds.

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Letter names and pronunciation

Vietnamese uses 22 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet. The 4 remaining letters aren't considered part of the Vietnamese alphabet although they are used to write loanwords, languages of other ethnic groups in the country based on Vietnamese phonetics to differentiate the meanings or even Vietnamese dialects, for example: or for southerner pronunciation of in standard Vietnamese.

In total, there are 12 vowels () and 17 consonants (, literally 'extra sound').

;Notes:

* The vowels in the table are bolded and italicized.
* The use of the terms or to refer to and as or to refer to is to avoid confusion in some contexts, the same for as or (literally, 'strong s' or 'heavy s') and as (literally, 'light x'), as (literally, 'short i') and as (literally, 'long y').
* is always followed by in every word and phrase in Vietnamese, e.g. 'trousers', 'to attract', etc.
* The name for is from the French name for the letter: (literally, 'Greek i'), referring to the letter's origin from the Greek letter ''upsilon''. The other obsolete French pronunciations include () and ().
* The Vietnamese alphabet lacks the 4 letters (, ), (), ( 'double u', , 'double v') and (). However, these letters are often used for foreign loanwords (even partially adapted ones: 'fluorine', 'joule', 'base') or may be kept for foreign names.
* is most commonly treated as a vowel along with . represents 'short ' and represents 'long '. can have tones as well as other vowels (, , , , ) e.g. 'America'. It may also act as a consonant (when used after and ). It can sometimes be used to replace , e.g. 'bread' can sometimes be written by some people, but it is not generally considered standard or accurate.
* and are similar to each other in sound in Northern Vietnamese dialects or with some Southern Vietnamese speakers (especially in the Mekong Delta region) and can sometimes be used interchangeably between these speakers, e.g. or 'grass jelly'.

Middle Vietnamese alphabet

The Vietnamese alphabet in the ''Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum'' of Alexandre de Rhodes has 23 letters:

In this dictionary, there are fewer letters than the modern alphabet. The letters ''ă'', ''â'', ''ê'', ''ô'', ''ơ'', and ''ư'' are regarded as separate letters in the modern alphabet and are used in the dictionary, but Rhodes (the author) does not regard them as separate letters. In the dictionary, a letter with diacritics, like ''à'', ''ạ'', ''ă'', ''ằ'', and ''ặ'', are not separate from the letter ; ''à'', ''ạ'', ''ă'', ''ằ'', and ''ặ'' are just regarded as the letter with diacritics.

In the alphabet, there is a letter, the letter b with flourish ''ꞗ'', that has fallen out of use. It was used to represents the voiced bilabial fricative /β/.

Two letters, ''ꞗ'' and ''đ'', are neither upper nor lower case. So according to that orthography, the names of the two provinces Đồng Nai and Lâm Đồng will be ''đồng Nai'' and ''Lâm đồng''. In the modern alphabet, the lower case version of ''đ'' is ''đ'', and upper case version of ''đ'' is ''Đ''.

There are two variants of minuscule ''s'': the long s, ''ſ'', and the short s, ''s''. In the modern alphabet, the long s, ''ſ'', is no longer used, and the short s, ''s'', is the only variant of s.

Normal ''v'' in the dictionary has two variants: the normal v, ''v'', and the curving-bottom v, ''u''. In the 17th century, ''v'' and ''u'' were not different letters, ''v'' being a variant of ''u''.

Consonants

The alphabet is largely derived from Portuguese with some influence from French, although the usage of and was borrowed from Italian (compare , ) and that for from (Latinised) Greek and Latin (compare , , ), mirroring the English usage of these letters (compare , , ).

There is one trigraph, , and ten digraphs: , , , , , , , , , .

* The consonants also called with its phoneme with , except . So will be , will be and so on.

Vowels

Pronunciation

The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is somewhat complicated. In some cases, the same letter may represent several different sounds, and different letters may represent the same sound. This is because the orthography was designed centuries ago and the spoken language has changed, as shown in the chart directly above that contrasts the difference between Middle and Modern Vietnamese.

and are mostly equivalent, and there is no concrete rule that says when to use one or the other, except in sequences like and (i.e. 'arm, hand' is read as while 'ear' is read as ). There have been attempts since the late 20th century to standardize the orthography by replacing with when it represents a vowel, the latest being a decision from the Vietnamese Ministry of Education in 1984. These efforts seem to have had limited effect. In textbooks published by Nhà Xuất bản Giáo dục ('Publishing House of Education'), is used to represent only in Sino-Vietnamese words that are written with one letter alone (diacritics can still be added, as in , ), at the beginning of a syllable when followed by (as in , ), after and in the sequence ; therefore such forms as * and * are not "standard", though they are much preferred elsewhere. Most people and the popular media continue to use the spelling that they are most accustomed to.

The uses of and to represent the phoneme can be categorized as "standard" (as used in textbooks published by Nhà Xuất bản Giáo dục) and "non-standard" as follows.

This "standard" set by Nhà Xuất bản Giáo dục is not definite. It is unknown why the literature books use ''Lí'' while the history books use ''Lý''.

Spelling

Vowel nuclei

The table below matches the vowels of Hanoi Vietnamese (written in the IPA) and their respective orthographic symbols used in the writing system.

:

Notes:
*The vowel is:
**usually written : = (a suffix indicating profession, similar to the English suffix ''-er'').
**sometimes written after , , , , , , , , : = 'America'
***It is always written when:
::# preceded by an orthographic vowel: = 'to advise';
::# at the beginning of a word derived from Chinese (written as otherwise): = 'to love'.
*The vowel is written before or (since in that position represents ): = 'organ (musical)'; = . This generally only occurs in recent loanwords or when representing dialectal pronunciation.
*Similarly, the vowel is written before or : = ( Nghệ An/Hà Tĩnh variant of ). But unlike being frequently used in onomatopoeia, transcriptions from other languages and words "borrowed" from Nghệ An/Hà Tĩnh dialects (such as ), seems to be used solely to convey the feel of the Nghệ An/Hà Tĩnh accents. In transcriptions, is preferred (e.g. 'cardboard', 'accordion').

Diphthongs and triphthongs

:

Notes:

The glide is written:
* after (spelled in this instance)
* in front of , , or except after
* following and
* in all other cases; is written as instead of * (cf. ), and that is written as after

The off-glide is written as except after and , where it is written as ; is written as instead of * (cf. ).

The diphthong is written:
* at the end of a syllable: = 'sugar cane'
* before a consonant or off-glide: = 'piece'; = 'to slope, slant'
:The of the diphthong changes to after :
:*: = 'late at night'
:*: = 'to advise'
: changes to at the beginning of a syllable ( does not change):
:* = 'calm'; 'weak, feeble'

The diphthong is written:
* at the end of a syllable: = 'to buy'
* before a consonant or off-glide: = 'ten thousand'; = 'down'

The diphthong is written:
* at the end of a syllable: = 'to rain'
* before a consonant or off-glide: = 'irrigation canal'; = 'to water, irrigate, sprinkle'

Tone marks

Vietnamese is a tonal language, so the meaning of each word depends on the pitch in which it is pronounced. Tones are marked in the IPA as suprasegmentals following the phonemic value. Some tones are also associated with a glottalization pattern.

There are six distinct tones in the standard northern dialect. The first one ("level tone") is not marked and the other five are indicated by diacritics applied to the vowel part of the syllable. The tone names are chosen such that the name of each tone is spoken in the tone it identifies.

In the south, there is a merging of the and tones, in effect leaving five tones.

}
, ã
, X
, 4
, align="center" ,
, align="left" , glottalized rising, (Northern); slightly lengthened tone (Southern), , Ã/ã, Ẵ/ẵ, Ẫ/ẫ, Ẽ/ẽ, Ễ/ễ, Ĩ/ĩ, Õ/õ, Ỗ/ỗ, Ỡ/ỡ, Ũ/ũ, Ữ/ữ, Ỹ/ỹ
, -
, 6
, align="left" , dot below
, ạ
, J
, 5
, align="center" ,
, align="left" , glottalized falling, (Northern); low rising, (Southern), , Ạ/ạ, Ặ/ặ, Ậ/ậ, Ẹ/ẹ, Ệ/ệ, Ị/ị, Ọ/ọ, Ộ/ộ, Ợ/ợ, Ụ/ụ, Ự/ự, Ỵ/ỵ

* ''*'': Z (in TELEX) and 0 (in VNI) keys are used to remove the mark. For example, in VNI, U2 → , then press 0 → .
* Unmarked vowels are pronounced with a level voice, in the middle of the speaking range.
* The grave accent indicates that the speaker should start somewhat low and drop slightly in tone, with the voice becoming increasingly breathy.
* The hook indicates in Northern Vietnamese that the speaker should start in the middle range and fall, but in Southern Vietnamese that the speaker should start somewhat low and fall, then rise (as when asking a question in English).
* In the North, a perispomeni indicates that the speaker should start mid, break off (with a glottal stop), then start again and rise like a question in tone. In the South, it is realized identically to the Hỏi tone.
*The acute accent indicates that the speaker should start mid and rise sharply in tone.
*The dot or cross signifies in Northern Vietnamese that the speaker starts low and fall lower in tone, with the voice becoming increasingly creaky