Official language: Vietnamese
Spoken languages: Chinese, dialects of ethnic groups who live in the mountains
Until the XIIIth century the Vietnamese used Chinese characters ; then, they created their own writing system (nom). Alexandre de Rhode, briliant French Jesuit father, introduced the Romanised Phonetic alphabet in the XVIIth century (quoc ngu), still in application. There is a huge difficulty for Westerners: there are 6 tones. Business language: English, which is rather well spoken by urban populations, but the Vietnamese accent can make it difficult to understand for western businessmen.
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