Vietnamese
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Vietnamese is a member of the Austroasiatic (which literally means “South
Asia”) language family. Of the 168 Austroasiatic languages, Vietnamese has by far
the most native speakers, numbering nearly 73 million, and is one of only two Austroasiatic
languages which have any status as an official or national language.
Vietnamese developed from a language that was originally based in an area now known
as Northern Vietnam along the Red River, and was influenced heavily by the Chinese
language. Until the start of the second millennium, in fact, Chinese was the only
language for literature and government in Vietnam, and was the chosen written language
of the upper echelons and ruling classes of Vietnamese society.
Chinese characters, and characters formed using the Chinese model, called Chữ Nôm,
served as the script for recording and writing in Vietnamese until the 17th and
18th centuries, when traders and missionaries from Portugal and other European countries
began travelling to Viet Nam . Quốc Ngữ, a written version of the language based
on Western alphabets, became prevalent as contact with the West continued through
colonization by the French, and was established as the official means of writing
Vietnamese in the late 20th century, as literacy and education rates soared amongst
the Vietnam population.1
In the United States, Vietnamese is the 7th most frequently-spoken language (out
of the 322 identified in the 2000 Census), with one of every 260 people age five
and above using Vietnamese in the home. Native speakers are heavily concentrated
in California, Louisiana, and Texas; in Santa Clara County, California, one in every
17.5 residents is a Vietnamese speaker (approximately 98,900 persons of an estimated
county population of 1,731,281 persons).2
Vietnamese is classified by the Defense Language Institute as a “category three”
(out of four) language with respect to difficulty of mastery by native English speakers3.
On the Foreign Language Institute language difficulty scale, Vietnamese is rated
as a “category two” (out of three) language, due to significant linguistic and cultural
differences from English.4
Vietnamese is one of the ten NLSC Pilot Program languages.
Vietnamese is designated as one of the ten pilot languages that the NLSC is recruiting
during its pilot year. The languages chosen were selected based upon the following:
- They meet short- and long-term requirements with emphasis on high-level expertise in languages critical to our national security.
- These languages generally meet the requirements for a pilot such as this based on the number of persons residing in the United States who are proficient in these languages.
- The list of languages includes some whose populations are difficult to locate and recruit.
- Each of these languages has multiple proficiency tests available.
Interesting Resources on Vietnamese
- National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition & Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA) Vietnamese Language and Culture page
- U.S. English Foundation Vietnamese Data Sheet
