Re: Questions about Vietnamese pronunciation

"nathanielamentstone" <natcas@...> wrote:

> I'm *starting* to figure out Vietnamese orthography (thank you, dear
> Portuguese colonists, for all those treasured diacritic marks!), but
> I'm confused about a few letters.
  I think the only alternative was a system like Korean hangul or the
Chinese characters. These would be a bit less intuitively readable than
the present diacritic marks, I think :))

  The diacritical marks are rather logically used:

  The first set is the tone accent marks, these are not part of a
letter (my terminology comes from Hungarian sources):
  - 'acute ´ above': high rising tone
  - 'grave ` above': low falling tone
  - 'tilde ~ above': dipping-rising tone.
  - 'dotless question mark ? above': high rising glottalized tone
  - 'dot below': low falling glottalized tone
  (No accent mark: level tone)

  The second set consists of letter modifiers:
  - circumflex ^ above' makes the sound more closed: A [A:] > A^ [@],
    E [E] > E^ [e:] (length is not phonemic), O [O] > O^ [o];
  - 'apostrophe (9-quote mark) on the upper right corner' makes the
    sound unrounded: O [O] > O' [7], U [u] > U' [M];
  - 'breve above' makes a long sound short (and more front): A [A:] >
    A( [a];
  - 'bar across' makes a plosive D (North) [z`] (Central-South) [j] >
    D- [d].

  N.B. [a] is rather extra short [a_X] and [A:], [e:] is half-long
  [A:\], [e:\].

  The not mentioned letters that differ from English are the following:
C [k]*, Ch [t_j]*, G [G], Gh [G] (before e, e^, i), Gi [z] or [z`], I
(before or after a vowel) [j] (otherwise) [i], K [k] (not aspirated),
Kh [x], M [m]*, Ng [N], Ngh [N] (before e, e^, i), Nh [J], P [p]* (not
aspirated), Ph [f], Q [k], R (North) [z`] (South) [r], S (North) [s]
(South) [S], T [t]* (not aspirated), Th [t_h], Tr (North) [cC] (South)
[tr] (affricate) or [ts`], X [s`], Y (before or after a vowel) [j]
(otherwise) [i:].
  Those marked with an *asterisk (c, ch, m, nh, p t) are pronounced
without an audible release when they are in syllable-final position.

> Portuguese?
  It's a result of an international co-operation. Portuguese
misionaries cretated the system but the French monk Alexandre de Rho^de
codified in the 17th century.

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