Chữ Quốc ngữ 𡨸國語

chữ Quốc ngữ · from Vietnamese

What is Chữ Quốc ngữ?

Chữ Quốc ngữ is the modern Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet, using diacritics to mark tones and vowel qualities.

It was developed by Portuguese and other Catholic missionaries in the 17th century and codified in Alexandre de Rhodes's 1651 dictionary. It became the official script in the early 20th century under French rule, replacing Chinese characters and chữ Nôm. It has 29 letters plus five tone marks.

Examples

Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese language); cảm ơn (thank you); phở (noodle soup); ma, mà, má, mả, mã, mạ (six tones)

Kungfucius says: Vietnamese looks easy because it uses Latin letters. Then you count the accent marks on one vowel.