The six Vietnamese tones
Vietnamese is a tonal language: every syllable has a tone, and changing the tone changes the word. Standard (Hanoi) Vietnamese has six tones, written with five marks on the main vowel — no mark means the level tone. Southern speakers pronounce hỏi and ngã the same, so they have five.
Level tone — ngang
Mid, level pitch, held steady. Written with: no mark.
Falling tone — huyền
Low, gently falling pitch, often slightly breathy. Written with: grave accent ( ` ).
Rising tone — sắc
High, rising pitch. In syllables ending in -p, -t, -c, -ch it is short and sharp. Written with: acute accent ( ´ ).
Dipping tone — hỏi
Dips low then rises (Northern); in the South a low falling-rising tone that merges with ngã. Written with: hook above ( ̉ ).
Creaky rising tone — ngã
Rising with a glottal break in the middle (Northern); in the South pronounced like hỏi. Written with: tilde ( ~ ).
Heavy tone — nặng
Low, short and glottalized — cut off sharply (Northern); low falling-rising in the South. Written with: dot below ( ̣ ).
Examples: mạ (mother) · bạ (to do randomly or indiscriminately)
Where the tone mark goes
The mark sits on the main vowel of the syllable: on the vowel with a hat or horn if there is one (việt, người), otherwise usually on the second-to-last vowel when the syllable ends in a vowel (mùa, tài) and on the last vowel when a consonant follows (toán, hoàng). Both hoà and hòa are seen in print.
Syllables ending in -p, -t, -c, -ch can only take the rising (sắc) or heavy (nặng) tone: học, Việt Nam (Vietnam).
The Listen buttons use your browser's Vietnamese voice, for reference only. Tone descriptions follow the standard Hanoi pronunciation, with notes on Southern speech.