I'm learning Vietnamese and recently decided I need to start writing up some of my vocabulary so I will remember it. Back 1994 when I first started learning Vietnamese you had to run these totally hokey add ons so you could type the accents and the special characters.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Mac OS has support for Vietnamese (and most other languages) built right in. Here's a one page summary of how to do this. Basically you just select Vietnamese in the system preferences and then you can type Vietnamese and easily switch back and forth between English and Vietnamese keyboard mappings.
(This doesn't seem to be the case for Windows. Everyone I've met here seems to use some sort of add on to make this work in Windows.)
Vietnamese is a rare Asian language that uses a westernized script. Like Chinese, Vietnamese is a tonal language. This means that words have a different meaning depending on how you say them. In English we use tones very differently. For instance, we use an up tone to indicate questions. When you say "Are you sure?" your voice goes up. In Vietnamese there are 5 tones that are written as accents. The accents are always on the vowels. Here is an example with the letter e: è, ẻ, ẽ, é, and ẹ. The first 4 go above the letter, the last goes under it. There are other accent marks but these are not tonal but indicate different sounds. For instance the letter 'd' makes the 'y' sound so the Vietnamese word 'de' sounds like 'yea'. However, the letter đ sounds like the English letter d as in dog. The Vietnamese word đi (dee) means to go. Vietnamese is missing some letters that we have. They don't have J or Z. There are a few special versions of certain vowels: ă, â, ê, ô, ư, and ơ. I won't even try to explain in text how to pronounce these, right now this is the hardest part for me. The tones are much easier than trying to figure out the difference between the sound of a versus ê. Oh well, practice makes perfect, if you practice perfect. And therein lies the rub.
8 comments:
Rất vui khi gặp một người bạn Tây học tiếng Việt, hơn nữa lại cũng là người cùng ngành nghề. Rất vui... Tiếng việt rất hay phải không bạn?
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Glad to see a foreigner learning Vietnamese. More than that, we work on the same job-domain. Very happy... Vietnamese is very exciting, isn't it?
Adam, Windows actually does have a Vietnamese input keyboard just like Mac OS X.
It's just that nobody uses the Windows standard, which by the way looks very much like the Mac OS X standard (probably identical actually).
But that standard is not used the Vietnamese community, which uses VNI and Telex. That's why additional software is installed on Windows.
You shouldn't use the Mac OS X keyboard either--you'll be alone learning that standard. Stick to VNI like everyone else.
But as far as I can tell, Mac OS X may actually ship with VNI, Telex, VIQR. These options are in there separately from the Mac OS X Vietnamese option.
"Tiếng Việt là một ngôn ngữ khá là khó đối với người nước ngoài, mình thấy rất vui khi gặp được một người nước ngoài có hứng thú với tiếng Viêt như bạn."
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"Vietnamese is a quite difficult language, especially for foreigners. I'm very happy when i met a foreigner enjoying Vietnamese like you."
If you have Leopard, you can go into System preferences - International - Input. Then check the box Vietnamese Unikey and check VNI under it. Close that window.Now you can change the input method from American to Vietnamese by click on the icon next to the clock at top right corner of your screen.
Thank you for the tip! just what i was looking for!
I followed the advice of Anonymous ... But is still unable to type in Vietnamese via. internet or email messaging.
In Windows - I can download VPS key commands ... Where / how I can do that for Mac OS Leopard?
Thanks in advance.
Really are you serious? I need to know how to put the input keyboard in vietnamese on windows. tell me because I do not know how
@Julio: u can download and install Unikey from this link: http://www.unikey.org/bdownload.php
most of Vietnamese use this software. we dont rely on the input that comes with Windows.
good luck!
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