There are some major differences between the Northern dialect (ND) and the Southern dialect (SD) in the Vietnamese language. These differences can be confusing when studying the language, especially when you study online. There have been some questions about this, so I hope this article can help you with any dialect issues you are having.
First of all, the Vietnamese alphabet. When checking out some websites, you will hear some sites teach you to say the letters as “a, bê, sê, dê..(a, b,c,d) ” but the others teach you “ a, bor, cor, dor…”. So, which one is correct? The answer is both are correct. As a native Vietnamese speaker, I still can’t explain why it happens.
This difference in teaching the alphabet may be from the ND and SD but maybe not. Vietnamese children learn the alphabet when they are in Grade 1, and the pronunciation of it changes every year or two, accordingly the text books for school also change frequently sometimes yearly. So you can choose either way to learn.
But one thing in the alphabet which I am sure of is the difference in how to say some pair of initial consonants:
The letter “d & gi”. Northern people pronounce as /z/ (the sound /z/ in “zoo”) while in the Southern dialect it is said as /y/ ( “yes”).
In the SD, the syllable “qu” is pronounced as “w”, ex. “qua /wa”, “quy /wi” and the ND as “kw”.
X is prounced as /s/ (seven, sun) and S is pronounced as ‘sh” (she, ship)in the ND but X & s are pronounced as /s/ in the SD.
Another big difference is the tones. Vietnamese language has 6 tones with 6 different pronunciations but in the SD, “d?u h?i” (’) and “d?u ngã” (~) are similarly pronounced. However this does not cause a big obstacle in the communication between Northern and Southern people.
One important thing you should remember is that it doesn’t matter how the word is pronounced differently between the ND or SD, it is still written the same (in terms of letters and tone markers).
The Vietnamese language takes the ND (represented by Hanoi accent) as the standard dialect. But it doesn’t mean the ND is the most correct. Which dialect you choose to learn should depend on where you live in Vietnam (the North or South) .
People from Central Vietnam, for example Danang or Hue, use the Southern dialect. So on this website – Learning Vietnamese Online – you will hear the Southern Dialect because I am from Danang.
Again, whichever dialect you choose, the people from any area can still understand you as long as you pronounce the words properly and use the tones correctly.
Here is a summary of the differences between the Southern and Northern dialects. (Click to enlarge)
