Vietnam Language and Provinces


Vietnam is a small Southeast Asian nation, picturesque and beautiful, and is recognized more for its fighting spirit during the one and a half decade long Vietnam Warand the Nobel peace prize winner nationalist leader Aung San Su Chi.

About Vietnam language and Vietnam Provinces:

Vietnam language

Almost every nation has its own language that speaks of its culture and heritage, so does Vietnam. Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam. Having asimilarity with Cambodia official language Khmer, Vietnamese is a bit difficult language especially for the foreigners. Other than Vietnamese,Chinese, Khmer, Cham and other tribal languages are also spoken in Vietnam.
Each syllable of Vietnamese can bespoken in six different tones, which makes it confusing and difficult sometimes. Much of the vocabulary of Vietnamese has been borrowed from Chinese. For writing Vietnamese, Roman alphabets and accent marks are used to represent tones. So in away we can say, vocal Vietnamese is difficult than the written one.
Spoken by about 68 million people in Vietnam, Vietnamese is an Austroasiatic language. Apart from Vietnam, Vietnamese is alsospoken in countries like Australia, Cambodia, Finland, France, Laos, Germany, Netherlands, Senegal, UK, USA, China, Canada, Norway and Philippines.
Originally Vietnamese was written with a Sin iform script, which was essentially Chinese in structure, but later Vietnamese literature developed a more Vietnamese style. Kim Van Kieu, the Tale of Kieu, a romantic novel written by Nguyen Du is one of the greatest literary work in Vietnamese. It was in the 17th century, when the Roman Catholic missionaries introduced a system of writing Vietnamesein the Latin alphabets.

Vietnam Provinces

Though Vietnam is relatively a smaller country geographically, there are sixty four Vietnam provinces existing presently along with five municipalities existing at the same level. Historically however there were five Vietnam provinces. A brief idea about these provinces will act as a Vietnam travel guide of provinces to the visitor.
The largest municipality in Vietnam is Ho Chi Minh City which is the most populous city with over 5 million people livingthere as well as the top level administrative unit. Among the Vietnam provinces, while Thanh Hoa is the most populous one with over three anda half million people, the mountainous Vietnam province of Lai Chau is the least populous. The largest province in terms of land area inVietnam is Nghe An covering an area of 16,487 Sq Kms while Bac Ninh is thesmallest with 804 sq Kms of area.
The provinces of Vietnam aregrouped into eight regions for the convenience of administrative work. Theseregions are
- North Vietnam west called the TayBac
This region contains four inland provinces, two of which are alongVietnam’s border with Laos and one with China.
- North east called Dong Bac
This regionholds eleven Vietnam provinces, many of which are mountainous, lying north ofthe Red River Low lands which is highly populated.
- River Delta called Dong Bang Song Hong
This region holds nine small but populous provinces and twomunicipalities based around the Red River. The municipalities are Hanoi, thenational capital and Haiphong.

- North Central Vietnam Coast called Bac Trung Bo
The six provinces held by this region lies within the stretch from thecoast in the east to Laos in the west.
- South Central Coast called Nam Trung Bo
This region includes five coastal provinces and the municipality ofDanang.
- Central highlands called Tay Nguyen
Thismountainous region contains five inland provinces mostly inhabited by ethnicminorities with a small Vietnamese population.
- Southeast called Dong Nam Bo
This regionis a part of lowland southern Vietnam, north of Mekong delta. Seven provincesare included in this region along with the municipality of Ho Chi Minh City.

- Mekong River Delta called Dong Bang Song Cuu Long
There are twelve small and populous Vietnam provinces along with themunicipality of Can Tho that lies in this southern most region of Vietnam.