Tag: type

How to write vietnamese letters and tones

I just started a vietnamese course, and of course, as someone who uses a computer every day, I want to learn how to type those new letters and tones!

It’s actually a lot simpler than I thought it would be, once you have the proper input language set up on your computer.

To enable vietnamese input on OSX, here are the steps to follow:

  1. Open System Preferences
  2. Open Language & Text
  3. Click on Input Sources
  4. Scroll down to Vietnamese UniKey and select Telex

If you want to be able to quickly switch between your input sources with a keyboard shortcut, you will need to follow the following steps, as the shortcuts are disabled by default, and Spotlight has one similar shortcut. I’m only using one of the 2 Spotlight shortcuts so I reassigned the other for this:

  1. From the Language & Text window, and Input Sources tab, if the shortcuts on the right hand side are greyed out, click on the Keyboard Shortcuts button
  2. Select Spotlight
  3. Uncheck Show Spotlight Window
  4. Select Keyboard & Text Input
  5. Check Select next source in input menu
  6. Click on the right hand side to assign a new shortcut, and assign the one you want (I use alt+cmd+space)

That’s all you need to get started with OSX, if you are running Windows or Linux, I’m afraid I can’t help you.

Now, let’s start with the new letters found in the vietnamese alphabet, you will have to type the base letter, plus a second letter to create the new one which I’ll designate as the modifier:

Letter Base Modifier
Ă ă A a w
 â A a a
Đ đ D d d
Ê ê E e e
Ô ô O o o
Ơ ơ O o w
Ư ư U u w

As you will notice, it’s quite simple.

Now, there are also 6 tones in the vietnamese language, these tones apply to the whole word, so they are not tied to a specific letter, therefore, you will first type the word you want, and then apply the tone by hitting another letter (modifier):

Tone name Example Base Modifier
ngang ba ba
huyền bà ba f
ngã bã ba x
hỏi bả ba r
sắc bá ba s
nặng bạ ba j

I will not even try to explain how these tones are pronounced, that’s out of the scope of this post.

Thế thôi !