Reading Vietnamese aloud (i)

From teacher To-Lan Vu and linguist William P. Hyde at Dunwoody Press

dấu hỏi (as the kay? in) you okay? Think Swedish nurse.

dấu huyền (as oh in) uh-oh. Gentle sigh.

dấu nặng (as) um. To mean no definitely not. A frog refusing to be kissed.

dấu ngã (as) uh-uh. Firm.

dấu ngang (as) hey. Gentle as to a child, or, like a bugle.

dấu sắc (as ha!) in ah-ha!

Rounded and flattened o's and u's contrast meaningfully in a regular way as they do in French and Spanish and irregularly in English. We mark them either way.

(The ng in Nguyen as the ng in) sing on. Consonants otherwise as you already do. Well đ with that bar is d. Plain d's are z, in Ha Noi, the school way to learn.

In Saigon it sounds like a y and so can everything they say. In the middle of the country they all swallow everything, frog talk.

So, sound out the Ha Noi way. Spelling is phonetic if you are Portuguese in the 17C.

That's about it. Like rowing a boat. Harder than it looks, easier than it seems.

For about a month I have been shouting dialogues for 15-30 minutes from the back porch most afternoons. No idea why. It just makes me happy.

Viet Nam letters has since addressed the work of teacher To-Lan Vu and linguist William P. Hyde again on November 5, 2022.