Vietnamese translation agency

Vietnamese is, of course, the official language of Vietnam. It is a tonal language which belongs to the Austronesian language family. Vietnamese has the largest number of speakers in this family, ten times as many as the second-most spoken language, Khmer. More than seventy million people speak Vietnamese.

The history of the language

Vietnamese has been heavily influenced by Chinese and was originally written in adapted Chinese characters. As a consequence of more contact with Western Europe in the seventeenth century, transcription into the Latin alphabet was developed. France conquered Vietnam in the nineteenth century so that the French language also had an influence on Vietnamese. Various words were adopted and created based on the western ideas brought in by the French. The Latin script is now mainly used for official purposes.

Tonal language

As mentioned, Vietnamese is a tonal language. This means that a change in tone when expressing a particular syllable can change the meaning. The same syllable has several meanings depending on the tone in which it is pronounced.