Vietnamese language

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Vietnamese
Tiếng Việt 

Pronunciation:
tiɜŋ₃₅ vḭɜt₃₠(Northern)
tiɜŋ₃₅ jḭɜk₃₠(Southern)

Spoken in: Vietnam
USA
Cambodia
France
Australia
Canada
Taiwan 

Region: Southeast Asia

Total speakers: 70-73 million native (includes 3 million overseas)
80 million total 

Ranking: 13–17 (native); in a near tie with Korean, Telugu, Marathi and Tamil

Language family: Austro-Asiatic^[1]
 Mon-Khmer
  Vietic
   Viet-Muong
    Vietnamese 

Writing system: Latin alphabet (quốc ngữ) 

Official status

Official language in: Vietnam

Regulated by: no official regulation

Language codes

ISO 639-1: vi

ISO 639-2: vie

ISO 639-3: vie 

Major Vietnamese-speaking communities

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ^[2]), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Việt or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese, most of whom live in the United States. It is also spoken as a second language by some ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together). Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was pronounced in the Vietnamese way. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.

[edit] Geographic distribution

As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California^[3]). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.

According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Vanuatu and Taiwan.

[edit] Genealogical classification

Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago^[4] to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Việt-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages was acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Việt-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Việt-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Việt-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguồn (of Quảng Bình Province).^[5]

[edit] Language policy

While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, while written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.

[edit] History

It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Tai-Kadai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.^{[citation needed]} The Vietnamese language has strong similarities with Cantonese with regard to the specific intonations and unreleased plosive consonant endings.

The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.

Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.E. With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Việt (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tự, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").

As contact with the West grew, the Quốc Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as đầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sơ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.

[edit] Language variation

There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being:^[6]

Dialect region Localities Names under French colonization

Northern Vietnamese Hanoi, Haiphong, and various provincial forms Tonkinese

North-central (or Area IV) Vietnamese Nghệ An (Vinh, Thanh Chương), Thanh Hoá, Quảng Bình, Hà Tĩnh High Annamese

Central Vietnamese Huế, Quang Nam High Annamese

Southern Vietnamese Saigon, Mekong (Far West) Cochinchinese

Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info)

The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)

Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese

Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)

Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyễn Tài Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern Nghệ An Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.

These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar.^[7] The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.

It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.

Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.

Regional variation in grammatical words^[8]

Northern Central Southern English gloss

này ni nầy "this"

thế này ri vầy "thus, this way"

ấy nớ đó "that"

thế, thế ấy rứa vậy "thus, so, that way"

kia tê đó "that yonder"

kìa tỠđó "that yonder (far away)"

đâu mô đâu "where"

nào mô nào "which"

sao, thế nào răng sao "how"

tôi tui tui "I, me (polite)"

tao tau tao, qua "I, me (arrogant, familiar)"

chúng tôi bầy tui tụi tui "we, us (but not you, polite)"

chúng tao bầy choa tụi tao "we, us (but not you, arrogant, familiar)"

mày mi mầy "you (thou) (arrogant, familiar)"

chúng mày bây, bá»n bây tụi mầy "you guys, y'all (arrogant, familiar)"

nó hắn, nghỉ nó "he/him, she/her, it (arrogant, familiar)"

chúng nó bá»n hắn tụi nó "they/them (arrogant, familiar)"

ông ấy ôông nớ ổng "he/him, that gentleman, sir"

bà ấy mệ, nớ, bà nớ bả "she/her, that lady, madam"

cô ấy o nớ cổ "she/her, that unmarried young lady"

chị ấy ả nớ chỉ "she/her, that young lady"

anh ấy eng nớ ảnh "he/him, that young man (of equal status)"

The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.

Regional consonant correspondences

Syllable position Orthography^[9] Northern North-central Central Southern

syllable-initial x [s] [s] [s] [s]

s [Ê‚] [Ê‚] [Ê‚]

ch [ʨ] [ʨ] [ʨ] [ʨ]

tr [ʈʂ] [ʈʂ] [ʈʂ]

r [z] [ɹ] [ɹ] [ɹ]

d [ÉŸ] [j] [j]

gi [z]

v ^[10] [v] [v]

syllable-final c [k] [k] [k] [k]

t [t] [t]

t
after e [k, t]

t
after ê [t] [k, t]

t
after i [t]

ch [c] [c]

ng [Å‹] [Å‹] [Å‹] [Å‹]

n [n] [n]

n
after i, ê [n] [n]

nh [ɲ] [ɲ]

In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:

l, n variation

Orthography "Mainstream" varieties Rural varieties

n [n] [n]

l [l]

Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as năm by itself and in compound numerals like năm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lăm in mÆ°á»i lăm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhăm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lăm.^[11]

The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants /ʈ^Ê‚, z/, respectively).

Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.

Regional tone correspondences

Tone Northern North-central Central Southern

 Vinh  Thanh
Chương Hà Tĩnh

ngang 33 35 35 35, 353 35 33

huyá»n 2̤1̤ 33 33 33 33 21

sắc 35 11 11, 1̰3̰ 1̰3 1̰3̰ 35

há»i 31Ì°3Ì° 31 31 31Ì°Ê” 312 214

ngã 3ʔ5 1̰3̰ 22̰

nặng 21̰ʔ 22 2̰2̰ 2̰2̰ 212

The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the < ˷ > symbol; breathy voice with < ̤ >; glottal stop with < ʔ >; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)

[edit] Vocabulary

As a result of a thousand years of Chinese domination, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics are derived from Chinese. As much as 70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with the Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Recently many words are borrowed from English, for example TV (pronounced tivi), phông for font. Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese (phần má»m for software, lit. soft part).

[edit] Sounds

Main article: Vietnamese phonology

[edit] Vowels

Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel chart of Hanoi Vietnamese.

  Front Central Back

High i [i] ư [ɨ] u [u]

Upper Mid ê [e] â [É™] / Æ¡ [É™Ë] ô [o]

Lower Mid e [É›] o [É”]

Low ă [a] / a [aË]

Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, ă, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â [É™] and ă [a] are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ [É™Ë]^[12] is long while â [É™] is short — the same applies to the low vowels long a [aË] and short ă [a].^[13]

In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs^[14] and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position [ɪ], a high back position [ʊ], or a central position [ə].^[15]

Vowel nucleus Diphthong with front offglide Diphthong with back offglide Diphthong with centering offglide Triphthong with front offglide Triphthong with back offglide

i – iu~yu [iʊ̯] ia~iê~yê~ya [iə̯] – iêu [iə̯ʊ̯]

ê – êu [eʊ̯] – – –

e – eo [ɛʊ̯] – – –

ư ưi [ɨɪ̯] ưu [ɨʊ̯] ưa~ươ [ɨə̯] ươi [ɨə̯ɪ̯] ươu [ɨə̯ʊ̯]

â ây [əɪ̯] âu [əʊ̯] – – –

Æ¡ Æ¡i [É™Ëɪ̯] – – – –

ă ay [aɪ̯] au [aʊ̯] – – –

a ai [aËɪ̯] ao [aËʊ̯] – – –

u ui [uɪ̯] – ua~uô [uə̯] uôi [uə̯ɪ̯] –

ô ôi [oɪ̯] – – – –

o oi [ɔɪ̯] – – – –

The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus^[16].

The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide [ɪ̯] is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs [aɪ̯] and [aËɪ̯] the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = ă + [ɪ̯], ai = a + [ɪ̯]. Thus, tay "hand" is [taɪ̯] while tai "ear" is [taËɪ̯]. Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = ă + [ʊ̯], ao = a + [ʊ̯]. Thus, thau "brass" is [taʊ̯] while thao "raw silk" is [taËʊ̯].

The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.

With regards to the front and back offglides [ɪ̯, ʊ̯], many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides /j, w/. Thus, a word such as đâu "where", phonetically [ɗəʊ̯], would be phonemicized as /ɗəw/.

[edit] Tones

Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones (but not Hanoi) as uttered by a male speaker. Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»…n & Edmondson (1998).

Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone^[17]. Tones differ in:

Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel).^[18] The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:

Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section above for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.

In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:

Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.

[edit] Consonants

The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.

Labial Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal

Stop voiceless p [p] t [t] tr [ʈʂ~ʈ] ch [c~tɕ] c/k [k]

aspirated   th [tÊ°]

voiced b [É“] Ä‘ [É—] d [ÉŸ]

Fricative voiceless ph [f] x [s] s [Ê‚] kh [x] h [h]

voiced v [v] gi [z] r [Ê~ɹ] g/gh [É£]

Nasal m [m] n [n] nh [ɲ] ng/ngh [ŋ]

Approximant u/o [w] l [l] y/i [j]

Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").

Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section above for further elaboration.

The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes /c, ɲ/ contrasting with syllable-final t, c /t, k/ and n, ng /n, ŋ/ and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch /c/. The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes /k/ and /ŋ/ that occur before upper front vowels i /i/ and ê /e/. (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)

[edit] Grammar

Main articles: Vietnamese syntax and Vietnamese morphology

Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number, and tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).^[19]

Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.

Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.

Mai là sinh viên.

Mai is student

"Mai is a student."

Giáp rất cao.

Giap very tall

"Giap is very tall."

NgÆ°á»i đó là anh nó.

person that is brother he

"That person is his brother."

Con chó này chẳng bao giá» sủa cả.

classifier dog this not ever bark at.all

"This dog never barks at all."

Nó chỉ ăn cÆ¡m Việt Nam thôi.

he only eat food Vietnam only

"He only eats Vietnamese food."

Cái thằng chồng em nó chẳng ra gì.

focus classifier husband I he not turn.out what

"That husband of mine, he is good for nothing."

Tôi thích cái con ngựa đen.

I like focus classifier horse black

"It is the black horse that I like."

[edit] Writing system

Main article: Vietnamese alphabet

Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591–1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar de Amaral and António de Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.

Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quốc ngữ.

Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954–1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyễn 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present.

Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:

The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and chữ nôm is nearly extinct.

[edit] Pragmatics and ethnography of communication

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (May 2008)

[edit] Word play

A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever. Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:

Original phrase Phrase after nói lái transformation Structural change

đái dầm "(child) wet their pants" → dấm đài (nonsense words) word order and tone switch

chửa hoang "pregnancy out of wedlock" → hoảng chưa "aren't you scared?" word order and tone switch

bầy tôi "all the king's subjects" → bồi tây "servant in French household" initial consonant, rime, and tone switch

bí mật "secrets" →