Vietnamese vs Chinese
How to tell Vietnamese from Chinese
Vietnamese and Chinese are unrelated (Austroasiatic vs Sino-Tibetan), but centuries of Chinese influence left Vietnamese with a large Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and similar analytic, tonal structure. Vietnamese is now written in a Latin alphabet.
The short answer
Vietnamese uses Latin letters stacked with diacritics (ư, ơ, ạ, ễ); Chinese uses characters. In speech, northern Vietnamese has six tones, some creaky or glottalised, and more vowel sounds, while Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone.
The verdict
Latin letters stacked with diacritics (ư, ơ, ế) mean Vietnamese; characters mean Chinese.
Closeness score
8 / 30
Mutually intelligible?
no
Shared vocabulary
Estimates of the Sino-Vietnamese share range widely (often cited around 30% to 60% of the lexicon, higher in formal registers)
Which first?
Chinese first makes Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary click.
Kungfucius says: Vietnamese kept the vocabulary and swapped the characters for diacritics.
Side by side
電話 / 电话
diànhuàSino-Vietnamese reading of 電話; the characters are no longer written in Vietnamese.
大學 / 大学
dàxuéSino-Vietnamese reading of 大學. Note the modifier order matches Chinese here because it is a fixed Sino-Vietnamese compound.
國家 (国家)
guójiāVietnamese keeps the final -c (from Middle Chinese -k) in quốc.