Language and Scripts
Among the 54 Vietnamese ethnic groups some have had their own scripts for a long time and some have not preserved their ancient scripts. As a matter of fact, some ethnic groups consisting of some hundreds of individuals living in remote areas have their own languages.
More than 80% of the population speaks Vietnamese or Kinh/Viet Nam, the natinal language. Many ethnic minority people speak Kinh and their own native language.
Three scripts have influenced Viet Nam’s history:
* Chinese Han ideograms were used until the beginning of the 20th century
* The Nom script, created between the 11th and 14th centuries, was derived from Han script to transcrible the popupar national language
* European missionaries in the 17th century first developed quoc ngu, the Romanised transcription of the Vietnamese language used to this day.
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