Tones of the Vietnamese Language

A tone is part of the lexical form of a Vietnamese syllable. It applies to the entire syllable, although in writing the tone mark is placed on one of the vowel letters.

The Six Tones of the Northern Dialect

Using the conditional vowel a:

• ngang — a: level, unmarked;
• sắc — á: high rising;
• huyền — à: falling, generally softer and lower;
• hỏi — ả: dipping/broken contour;
• ngã — ã: in the north, characterized by a glottal stop and rise;
• nặng — ạ: low, short, tense, with a glottal component.

A tone cannot be reduced to pitch alone. In Vietnamese, the direction of movement, duration, and phonation type are also important.

The Tone Does Not Belong to the Consonant

Consonants do not receive their own tone marks. Graphically, the mark is placed on a vowel, but phonetically it characterizes the syllable as a whole.

For example, ma, má, mà, mả, mã, mạ are different tonal realizations of the same segmental structure.

Combination with Special Vowels

The tone is superimposed on the already chosen vowel: ă and â retain their quality and additionally receive a tone. Therefore, the forms ắ, ặ, ấ, ậ simultaneously encode both vowel quality and tone.

Dialectal Note

In Southern speech, some tonal distinctions are realized differently; particularly important is the merger/convergence of hỏi and ngã for many speakers.

Links

See Alphabet and Orthography, Phonetics, Dialects, and Syllable Structure.