Vietnamese Translation, English to Vietnamese - ProTranslations, Indianapolis

VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION

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ABOUT VIETNAMESE
Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam and is used in the country's media and throughout its educational system. Most Vietnamese speakers live in Vietnam and the adjacent countries of Southeast Asia; Vietnamese is also widely used as a second language in neighboring countries like Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. A significant number of Vietnamese speakers also live in the U.S. and France, and to a lesser extent in Canada, Australia, Senegal, and Côte d'Ivoire. Worldwide, there are 80 million Vietnamese speakers.

There are three major dialects generally recognized in Vietnam, each identified by the geographical/metropolitan area where it is spoken: the Hanoi dialect of North Vietnam (formerly called Tonkinese), the Hue dialect of Central Vietnam (formerly called High Annamese), and the Saigon dialect (formerly known as Cochinchinese). The former names of these dialect divisions correspond to the former colonial administration divisions, which were Tonkin, Annam, and Cochin-China. The dialects differ mainly in pronunciation, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary. The Northern Hue dialect forms the basis of the standard language and is considered the prestige dialect.

Vietnam was under Chinese imperial rule until the middle of the 10th century. As a result, so many Chinese words entered the language that Vietnamese was long thought to be related to Chinese. It was written using modified Chinese characters until the 17th century, when Catholic missionaries devised a Roman script incorporating influences from Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and French. This Roman-based writing system was not widely used until the end of the 19th century, when the French administration encouraged its use by all sectors of society.

Under Chinese rule, the official spoken language in Vietnam was the classical Chinese Chu Han. Even after national independence was gained, the Vietnamese people continued to use Chu Han. After the revolution ending the French colonial regime, a movement developed advocating the study of national languages and national culture. It was at this point that Vietnamese was made the official language of the Republic of Vietnam.

The Vietnamese language has seven tones, and it depends on strict word order to convey meaning — sentences always comprise subject-verb-object. Written Vietnamese contains a complex system of diacritical marks, some distinguishing certain vowel sounds and others indicating tone. Nouns and verbs are not marked for things such as subject agreement, tense, number, grammatical gender, or case. Words (or just portions of words) may be repeated to indicate plural, extension, repetition, or intensity.