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About Vietnam >> Vietnam's Culture :>> Vietnam's Culture - Language Vietnamese (Tieng Viet), formerly known under the French colonization as Annamese, is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people, who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese, most of whom live in the United States. It is also spoken as a second language by some ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant. Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, and it was originally written using the Chinese writing system. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters. In its early history, Vietnamese writing used Chinese characters. In the 13th century, the Vietnamese developed their own set of characters called Chu nom. The celebrated epic Doan Truong Tan Thanh (Truyen Kieu or The Tale of Kieu) by Nguyen Du was written in Chu nom. During the French colonial period, Quoc ngu, the romanized Vietnamese alphabet used for spoken Vietnamese, which was developed in 17th century by Jesuit Alexandre De Rhodes and several other Catholic missionaries, became popular and brought literacy to the masses. Various other languages are spoken by several minority groups in Vietnam. The most common of these are Tay, Muong, Khmer, Chinese, Nung, and H'Mong. The French language, a legacy of colonial rule, is still spoken by some older Vietnamese as a second language, but is losing its popularity. Russia - and to a much lesser extent German, Czech, or Polish - is sometimes known among those whose families had ties with the Soviet bloc. In recent years, English is becoming more popular as a second language. English study is obligatory in most schools. Chinese and Japanese have also become more popular.
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