Introduction
The Vietnamese language is part of the Austro-Asiatic family of languages In the early development of the language, Vietnamese scholars initially used Chinese characters for its official written Vietnamese language. The influx of missionaries from Europe resulted in the romanized form of the language in the 17th century—one that used diacritics to differentiate tones in the language. The use of diacritics became fully assimilated in Vietnamese in the 20th century.
There are about 84 million people in Vietnam and another three million people in other parts of the world who speak Vietnamese.
The English language is the first language for approximately 400 million people residing in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. It is also the second language for approximately 600 million people, especially from the former British colonies in Africa, Asia and the Commonwealth, and its use in the business, educational, professional and communications spheres makes it an almost universal language. Many countries and international organizations use English as their official language. With the proliferation of the Internet, it has also become the common language for Internet users.
In the last fifty years, there have been so many changes in both the English and Vietnamese languages in all aspects of life. New terms have been invented to meet the development of society, especially in media and communications. The demand for a basic, inexpensive and up-to-date Vietnamese-English/English-Vietnamese dictionary has grown dramatically in recent years.
We are confident that with its 26,000 entries for every aspect of daily living, the Tuttle Pocket Vietnamese Dictionary will become an essential tool for English-speaking users as well as Vietnamese who are learning the English language.
Phan Vaên Giöôõng
How To Use This Dictionary
This dictionary is in two parts: a Vietnamese–English section and an English-Vietnamese section. The entries in each section are arranged alphabetically, following the English order from A-Z; and according to the Vietnamese tradition for tones and sequence for the Vietnamese-English section.
Each headword is in color, enabling the user to locate the word he/she wants quickly. The word class(es) of each word, set in italics after each headword, gives the common form of the meaning the headword has. If there are more than one expression for the meanings, commas are used. For words with multiple meanings, these are separated by semicolons. Square brackets give additional information or clarification to the meaning(s) of the headword under study.
List of abbreviations used in this dictionary are as follows:
| Abbreviations | Full word |
| adj. | adjective |
| adv. | adverb |
| conj. | conjunction |
| intj. | interjection |
| n. | noun |
| num. | numeral |
| pi. | plural |
| prep. | preposition |
| sing | singular |
| v. | verb |
| pron. | pronoun |
A Guide to Vietnamese Pronunciation
Like Chinese and Thai, Vietnamese is a tonal language where no word is conjugated. The Vietnamese alphabet has 29 letters:
a, aê, aâ, b, c, d, ñ, e, eâ, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, oâ, ô, p, q, r, s, t, u, ö, v, x, y.
The Vietnamese consonants are written as single letters or a cluster of two or three letters, as follows:
b, c, ch, d, ñ, g, gh, gi, h, k, kh, l, m, n, ng, ngh, nh, p, ph, qu, r, s, t, th, tr, v, x.
The vowels in Vietnamese are the following: a, aê, aâ, e, eâ, i/y, o, oâ, ô, u, ö. Vowels can also be grouped together to form a cluster or a word.
The following charts show the vowels and consonants in Vietnamese pronunciation with their English equivalents.
Vowels
| Vietnamese | English | Example | Meaning |
| a | father | ba | three |
| aê | hat | aê | to eat |
| aâ | but | aâm | sound |
| e | bet | em | younger brother/sister |
| eâ | may | ñeâ m | night |
| i/y | me | kim | needle |
| o | law | lo | to worry |