Which Vietnamese dialect is transcribed?

The tool uses the Northern (Hanoi) standard, where six tones are fully distinguished. Southern Vietnamese merges hỏi and ngã, so the six-way contrast here reflects Northern speech.

How are the six tones marked in IPA?

Ngang is level ˧, huyền is low-falling ˨˩, sắc is high-rising ˧˥, hỏi is dipping ˧˩˧, ngã is creaky rising ˧ˀ˥, and nặng is low-glottalised ˨˩ˀ. The tool prints each as IPA tone letters.

Why does d become /z/?

In Northern Vietnamese, the letters d and gi both surface as /z/, while đ is the implosive /ɗ/. The tool applies the Hanoi consonant values, so these spellings map to their spoken sounds rather than their letter names.

Does it handle the ng and nh codas?

Yes. Final ng is /ŋ/ and nh is /ɲ/, and after the back rounded vowels they trigger the labial-velar offglide. The tool maps the orthographic finals to their correct nasal and stop IPA codas.

What is the Vietnamese IPA Transcription Tool?

Convert Vietnamese Latin (chữ Quốc ngữ) to IPA in your browser, mapping onsets, glides, nuclei, and codas to Northern Hanoi phonemic values and marking all six tones with correct IPA contour diacritics. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

Vietnamese IPA Transcription Tool

Name: Vietnamese IPA Transcription Tool
Creator: Gera Tools
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Vietnamese IPA transcription maps chữ Quốc ngữ (the Latin orthography) to International Phonetic Alphabet symbols, including all six Northern tones. Each Vietnamese syllable has a strict onset–glide–nucleus–coda structure, and the tone is carried by a diacritic over the nucleus.

How it works

The transcriber strips the tone diacritic from the nucleus to identify the tone, then maps the syllable parts to Hanoi phonemic values:

onsets:  d, gi → /z/   đ → /ɗ/   ph → /f/   x → /s/   kh → /x/   r → /z/
nuclei:  a → /a/   ơ → /əː/   ư → /ɯ/   ô → /o/   ê → /e/
codas:   ng → /ŋ/   nh → /ɲ/   ch → /k/   c → /k/   t → /t/
tones:   ngang ˧   huyền ˨˩   sắc ˧˥   hỏi ˧˩˧   ngã ˧ˀ˥   nặng ˨˩ˀ

Tone marks are detected by decomposing each vowel to NFD and reading the combining accent, after which the base letter feeds the nucleus lookup.

The six tones of Northern Vietnamese

Vietnamese tone is one of the features that make it genuinely challenging for learners from non-tonal language backgrounds. The six tones carry not just melody but also phonation type (voice quality), which is why simplified “rising” or “falling” descriptions miss part of the picture:

Tone name	Mark	IPA contour	Description
Ngang (level)	No mark	˧	Mid-level, modal voice
Huyền (falling)	Grave: à	˨˩	Low falling, slightly breathy
Sắc (rising)	Acute: á	˧˥	High rising, tense
Hỏi (dipping)	Hook: ả	˧˩˧	Falling then rising, sometimes with creak
Ngã (broken rising)	Tilde: ã	˧ˀ˥	Creaky rising with glottal break
Nặng (heavy)	Dot below: ạ	˨˩ˀ	Low falling with glottal closure

The key phonetic contrast between hỏi and ngã is mainly the glottalisation and more prominent creak in ngã. In Northern (Hanoi) speech these are clearly distinct; in Southern Vietnamese they merge, which is why this tool targets the Northern standard.

Consonants that surprise learners

Several Vietnamese consonant letters correspond to unexpected IPA values in the Northern dialect:

d and gi both → /z/ (not /d/ as a learner might expect)
đ → /ɗ/ (a voiced bilabial-alveolar implosive, not a plain /d/)
r → /z/ in the North (so ra and da are near-homophones)
x → /s/ (not /ks/ or /ʃ/)
ph → /f/
kh → /x/ (a voiceless velar fricative like German ach)
nh → /ɲ/ (palatal nasal, like Spanish ñ)
ng → /ŋ/ (can appear at syllable onset — try pronouncing ngon /ŋɔn/ “delicious”)

Worked examples

má (mother / cheek): onset /m/, nucleus /a/, sắc tone → [ma˧˥]

nghiêng (to lean): onset ngh /ŋ/, glide i /i/, nucleus ê /e/, coda ng /ŋ/, ngang tone → [ŋiəŋ˧]

đường (road / sugar): onset đ /ɗ/, nucleus ươ /ɯə/, coda ng /ŋ/, huyền tone → [ɗɯəŋ˨˩]

xin chào (hello): two syllables — xin /sin˧/ and chào /tɕaːw˨˩/

The transcription is phonemic rather than phonetic — it represents the underlying sound system rather than fine articulatory detail, making it suitable for linguistics coursework, language learning, and typological comparison.