VIETNAMESE
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ABOUT THE VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE
The Vietnamese language has a rich development with influences from Chinese, French and other language groups, creating a diverse vocabulary for the Vietnamese language. The old writing system was based on the Chinese characters which is called Chu Nom. Chu Nom was dated back to the beginning of the 10th century (the independence period). The current Vietnamese language uses a Romanized alphabet with 24 letters, plus many different tones applied to certain letters. This writing system, Quoc Ngu, was contributed and developed by western missionaries came to Vietnam and learned Vietnamese in order to disseminate Catholicism in the 17th century. At the beginning of 20th century, the Romanized Vietnamese language became widely used. Nowadays, it is the official system for the Vietnamese language.
Countries/Areas where Vietnamese is spoken
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