ABSTRACT
The language described here, known to its native speakers as tiếng Việt Nam or simply tiếng Việt (literary appellation: Việt ngữ), is used in daily communication throughout the nation of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Việt Nam), formerly known as Annam (Vietnamese: An Nam), a name that lingered into the early twentieth century. Vietnamese is the first language of the ethnic majority called người Việt or người Kinh – some 94 million inhabitants who mainly live in the delta lowlands of Vietnam, plus over three million overseas Vietnamese, in France, the USA, Canada, Australia, among other countries. Other ethnic groups in Vietnam, such as Chinese, Cambodians, and the highlanders, sometimes called ‘Montagnards’, often know Vietnamese and can use it in their contacts with the Vietnamese.
