Vietnamese voice overs: what you need to know

Vietnamese is an Austroasiatic language with around 95 million native speakers, primarily in Vietnam where it’s the sole official language. Vietnamese is also widely spoken outside its motherland. It’s the sixth most spoken language in the United States!

Additionally, prominent Vietnamese-speaking communities are found in Australia, Canada, China, and the European Union. Surprisingly, Vietnamese even has the official minority language status in the Czech Republic.

Vietnamese is also one of the official languages of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations).

Language History

Vietnamese originated from Proto-Viet–Muong — a language variety that’s thought to be the ancestor of Vietnamese and Muong languages.

In fact, Vietnamese is rather an ancient language whose history is grouped into six periods: Pre-Vietnamese, Proto-Vietnamese, Archaic Vietnamese, Ancient Vietnamese, Middle Vietnamese, and Modern Vietnamese. Linguists believe that as an independent language, Vietnamese emerged in the Proto-Vietnamese period — around the 7th century.

Modern Vietnamese as it’s spoken today has been heavily influenced by the country’s history. For many centuries, Vietnamese has been greatly impacted by the Chinese language. More recently, in the 19th century, after France invaded Vietnam, French became a powerful influence.

In 1975, Vietnamese became the official language of unified Vietnam.

Close Relations

Vietnamese is related to other Austroasiatic languages, such as Khmer and Mon. However, its closest relative is the Muong language that’s primarily spoken in the north of Vietnam. The two languages have a high mutual intelligibility rate. The main difference between them is that Vietnamese has been considerably influenced by Chinese, while Muong kept more of its ancient features.

Vietnamese also has some similarities to Mandarin Chinese because of its historical influence. While the two languages are not mutually intelligible, they are both tonal, monosyllabic, and share a great part of common vocabulary.

In fact, around 50% of Vietnamese vocabulary is actually borrowed from Chinese. Additionally, Vietnamese has an extensive number of French loanwords. More recently, words of English origin have entered the Vietnamese vocabulary — they are mostly technological and popular culture terms.

Accents and Voice Over Tips

Vietnamese is categorized into three regional dialects: Northern (Hanoi dialect), Central (Huế dialect), and Southern (Saigon dialect). All three language varieties are mutually intelligible.

Standard Vietnamese is used in education, politics, and all official matters of the country. The standard language variant is based on the dialect spoken in the country’s capital city Hanoi. So when recording a Vietnamese voice over, the standard dialect is most likely the correct choice (unless, of course, it’s a highly-specific recording that requires a regional Vietnamese).

One of the most important things to keep in mind is that Vietnamese is a tonal language — the tone of the pronunciation can change the word’s meaning. Vietnamese has six different tones — all of them are marked over or under the words with symbols. Because of that, Vietnamese sounds very musical and even bird-like.

If your target audience is foreign to Vietnamese, make sure you slow down and clearly pronounce the words. Otherwise, the recording might sound like a very beautiful song, however, not very intelligible!

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