RESOURCES

Typing Vietnamese: A Complete Guide

Vietnamese Alphabet

a, ă, â, b, c, d, đ, e, ê, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, ô, ơ, p, q, r, s, t, u, ư, v, x, y

Tone marks: sắc ( ´ ), huyền ( ` ), hỏi (  ̉ ), ngã ( ~ ) and nặng ( . )


Vowel diacritics: mũ [hat] , râu [hook] (After a closer look, you would probably agree that what you need to know how to type are just ă, â, ê, ô, ơ, ư and the 5 diacritics.

Installing Vietnamese keyboard

Vietnamese Keyboard on Mac

Mac has built-in support for Vietnamese Language. To enable Vietnamese typing support, go to System Preferences and open International. Then select the tab Input Menu.

For Operating System before Leopard, you would see only the Vietnamese option. For OS X Leopard onwards, you have the Vietnamese Unikey option where you can select the Telex or VNI input method.

If built-in keyboard causes some errors in your computer, install some external applications such as: GoTiengViet. 

Vietnamese Keyboard on Gnu/Linux

As for Mac, Gnu/Linux Operating systems such as Ubuntu has built-in support for Vietnamese. To activate Vietnamese typing support in Ubuntu, for example, go to: System->Administration->Language Support: Click Install/Remove Language and then select Vietnamese to install. 

GoTiengViet is also a stable application for Vietnamese keyboard if you find the built-in keyboard causing some problems when you switch between keyboards.

Vietnamese Keyboard on Windows

On Windows, you would need to install a software to help you type Vietnamese. Here are a couple of Vietnamese typing software that you can use.

 

Unikey is the most popular one. Just download the latest version and install it to your computer. The software is not heavy and it can also auto-corrects some common spelling mistakes.

Input Methods

The most common input  methods or typing styles are Telex, VNI and VIQR. The main difference between these input methods is that Telex uses letters (a-z), VNI uses numbers (0-9), and VIQR uses the punctuation marks or symbols to express the tones and diacritic marks 

Ví dụ: Tôi yêu Tiếng Việt

TELEX

Tooi yeeu Tieesng Vieejt

VIQR

To^i ye^u Tie^'ng Vie^.t

VNI

To6i ye6u Tie61ng Vie65t

TELEX Cheat Sheet

To write the pair of keys as two distinct characters, the second character has to be repeated. For example, the Vietnamese word cải xoong must be entered as cari xooong rather than cari xoong (*cải xông).

Character

Keys pressed

Sample input

Sample output

ă

aw

mawng

măng

â

aa

chaan

chân

đ

dd

ddaau | ddaua 

đâu

ê

ee

ddeem | ddeme

đêm

ô

oo

coo

cô

ơ

ow or [

mow | m[

mơ

ư

uw or w or ]

thuw | thw | th]

thư


Tone

Keys added to syllable

Sample input

Sample output

Ngang (level)

z or nothing

ngang

ngang

Huyền (falling)

f

huyeenf

huyền

Sắc (rising)

s

sawcs

sắc

Hỏi (dipping-rising)

r

hoir

hỏi

Ngã (rising glottalized)

x

ngax

ngã

Nặng (falling glottalized)

j

nawngj

nặng

VNI Cheat Sheet

Character

Keys pressed

Sample VNI input

Sample output

ă

aw8

ma8ng

măng

â

a6

cha6n

chân

đ

d9

d9a6u 

đâu

ê

e6

d9e6m 

đêm

ô

o6

co6

cô

ơ

o7

mo6

mơ

ư

u7

thu7

thư


Tone

Keys added to syllable

Sample VIN input

Sample output

Ngang (level)

z or nothing

ngang

ngang

Huyền (falling)

2

huye6n2

huyền

Sắc (rising)

1

sa8c1

sắc

Hỏi (dipping-rising)

3

hoi3

hỏi

Ngã (rising glottalized)

4

nga4

ngã

Nặng (falling glottalized)

5

na8ng5 | nang85

nặng

[Lazy] Easy Peasy - Add Accent Markers Automatically

NOT RECOMMENDED, but it’s fair to introduce to you all the available tools 🙂. The tool can add tone and diacritic markers to “tieng Viet khong dau”! 

Here are some pages supporting this functions:

However, machines cannot always guess the correct meaning you want to convey, and you still need to edit these texts after conversion. Therefore, it’s best if you practice typing properly! 


Practice Makes Perfect