Good news for English speakers: the Vietnamese alphabet, called Quốc Ngữ, uses the same Latin script you already know. This makes it much more approachable than systems with entirely new characters. It has 29 letters in total. Many of them will look familiar, but some have different sounds, and a few are brand new.

While we won't dive into the tones just yet, it's helpful to know that those little marks you see on Vietnamese words are essential. For now, we'll focus on the letters themselves and the marks that change a vowel's sound.

The Vietnamese alphabet includes most of the letters you're used to, but it leaves out F, J, W, and Z. Some letters are pronounced very similarly to how they are in English, but others have their own unique sounds.

Let's look at a few examples. The letter 'C' in Vietnamese is always pronounced like the 'c' in 'cat', never like the 'c' in 'cell'. The letter 'G' is usually a hard 'g' sound, like in 'goat'. The letter 'S' is often pronounced closer to the 'sh' in 'shoe', especially in northern dialects.

Besides the familiar letters, Vietnamese adds seven more by using diacritics. These are marks added to a letter that change its pronunciation. These aren't related to tone; they create entirely new vowel sounds.

These seven letters are considered distinct letters of the alphabet, not just variations. Learning to recognize them and their sounds is a key first step. The diacritics are not optional; leaving them off changes the word entirely.

For example, ma (ghost), má (mother, in the south), and mạ (rice seedling) are three different words. For now, just focus on seeing how the marks change the core vowel.

Getting comfortable with these letters is the foundation for everything else. Practice saying them aloud and noticing the small but important differences from English.