My First Book of Vietnamese Words. Phuoc Thi Minh Tran
Dedication
In memory of my loving parents Trần Minh Ý and Nguyễn Thị Sua.
To my family with love, respect, and laughter.
To the late Stephen Michael Jadick—this one’s for you.
And to all the girls and boys who have never read about Việt Nam.
—Trần Thị Minh Phước
To our daughter Danchi, whose first Vietnamese words brought joy to our hearts and inspired us.
—Nguyễn Thị Hợp & Nguyễn Đồng.
A Note to Parents
Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt or Quốc Ngữ) is the national and official language of Vietnam. Each word is monosyllabic. Multiple words can be combined to convey any part of speech. For example, the words “sở thú” together mean “zoo.” Westerners generally combine two words/syllables into a single word when writing place names, such as Vietnam, (Việt Nam), Saigon (Sài Gòn) and so on.
Unlike many other Asian languages, Vietnamese uses the alphabet of Romance languages, the difference lying in the diacritics that change the sound and meaning of the vowels. There are in fact 18 ways to write the vowels a and o, 12 to write e and u, and 6 to write i and y. For a more in-depth look at Vietnamese vowels and language rules, and to hear the Vietnamese words in this book spoken aloud, please visit this book’s page at www.tuttlepublishing.com.
The letters f, j, w, and z do not exist in Vietnamese. Even so, there are 29 letters in the Vietnamese alphabet : a, ă, â, b, c, d (pronounced dz), đ (pronounced d as in English), e, ê, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, ô, ơ, p, q, r, s, t, u, ư, v, x, y.
Basic vowels are pronounced as follows:
a as in father ă as in cat â makes a short u sound, like in under e as in tent ê makes a long a sound, as in late i makes a long e sound, as in me o makes an aw sound as in law ô as in so ơ makes a er/ur sound, as in fur u makes an oo sound as in moo ư as in butter y makes a long e sound, as in sheep (similar to i)
A is for Ao.
This is a pond where kids chase the dragonflies of which they are fond.
There’s an old saying that if you let the dragonfly bite your belly you’ll be able to swim. Isn’t that funny?
B is for Bà.
Our grandma loves to tell us silly tales, that make us laugh. She tells them very well!
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