Typing in Vietnamese With Diacritics

This post: Android.

(1) Bring up the Settings page (the little gear)

(2) Select Language and Input

(3) Select Keyboard Input Settings (this may differ on your device; hunt for it)

(4) Select Input Languages

(5) Add Tiếng Việt (download it should it not already appear on the list)

̣(6) Go back to home screen

Open an app that uses the keyboard, e.g. the messaging app

(1) The Spacebar should now read English; swipe-gesture across it, it should change to VI or Vietnamese

(2) to the right of the L you will see a new button labeled Ž` ̉, these are your tone marks

(3) To type related letter, hold down the English one, e.g. hold down the o to choose ô, or ơ.;hold down the d to choose đ.

̣(4) use the tone button to add a tone mark after entering the letter. Android allows nonsense, by the way.

I forget where the ₫ symbol is, but it's there somewhere.

Hope this helps.

Chúc mừng viết đúng tiếng Việt.

This post: Windows

Click this link

http://batkhuat.net/Document/Vpskeys43.exe  Moderators: this is not spam

and download VPS Keys.  If you read Vietnamese, đọc hương dẫn đi.  If not:

Open the setting menu and set it to run when Windows starts.  You can toggle it on and off anytime.

Choose the "Vietnam" menu option

Explore the number keys to find everything, it's self-explanatory and will take you less time to find all the keystrokes than it would take to read them here.

The hat letters and the đ are written using double letters; aa for â, ee for ê, etc.

While VPSKeys is running, to type normally e.g. to type a number, hit the Escape key before the letter and it lets you bypass VPSKeys and type one letter normally.

This post: iOS (iPhone, iPad, iTouch)

Part One: Adding Vietnamese

(1) Open the Settings applet

(2) Select General, then Keyboard, then Keyboards then Add New Keyboard

(3) Tap Vietnamese and go all the way back to the Home screen

Open an application that uses the keyboard.  Tap a text entry field to show it.

To the right of the number button at bottom left ("123") you'll see a new World button that may not have been there before unless you already had some other language, in which case you didn't need the stuff above anyway.  Tap it to toggle between English and Vietnamese, or hold it down to bring up a languages menu and choose Vietnamese

Part Two: Typing Vietnamese

You can hold down a letter and select from a menu, but it's slow and offers all the European choices too, so it's better to create extended characters with multiple keystrokes.

aw = ă
aa = â
ee = ê
oo = ô
ow = ơ
uw = ư
dd = đ

and

₫: hold down the $ sign and this will be a new option on the popup menu

Tone Marks

as = á
af = à
ar = ả
ax = ã
aj = ạ

So double-diacritics you just compose

ẫ = aax
ử = uwr

Caveat: this only words if you don't have letters following.  If you accidentally type ân when you wanted ăn you can't just put the insert point after the a and backspace and and type aw right before the n.  You have to be typing into a space or at the end of the line.  And sometimes it relocates the tone mark unpredictably, like khỏe turning into khoẻ

That's it

thanks for the instructions. I can't get the dual diacritics where one goes on top of the other on my Android. Like tie^'ng Vie^.t.

I downloaded GoTiengViet app but the instructions are in Vietnamese. Guess I will play around with it some more when I have time.

This Post: Mac

(1) Open the System Preferences app

(2) Select Language & Text

(3) On the segment bar across the top select Input Sources

(4) In the list, check Vietnamese

Close the app.

(optional) Install the free LangWitch software to toggle between languages with keyboard shortcuts otherwise you'll be hobbled by using the mouse / keypad all the time.  With it you can use hotkeys to switch between languages

Click the flag on the status bar to select input language.

With Vietnamese as the selected language, use the following key substitutions:

1 ă
2 â
3 ê
4 ô
5 - 9 tone marks (see below)
0 đ
= ₫
[ ư
] ơ

Tone examples

a5 à
a6 ả
a7 ã
a8 á
a9 ạ
17 ẵ

So for nướng you would type n[]8ng

ăn cơm rồi, không?

1n c]m r45i kh4ng?

This one takes a little memorizing because the tones are not in any standard order

That's it.  Any questions, please post here.

Tiếng việt lol i cheated. I typed tieng viet and selected the auto suggestions

khanh44 wrote:

thanks for the instructions. I can't get the dual diacritics where one goes on top of the other on my Android. Like tie^'ng Vie^.t.

I downloaded GoTiengViet app but the instructions are in Vietnamese. Guess I will play around with it some more when I have time.

Android is far and away the weakest of the bunch as it allows nonsense combinations.  The fact that Mac and iOS use different combinations is odd, especially since the iOS ones are so much more intuitive.

I can type Vietnamese on iOS as fast as I can English now , and only a little slower on a Mac.  I don't use Windows much anymore so I am starting to forget that.

Most of this stuff is hard to find instructions on.  Now you have it all in one place

I can't find the diacritics but I have to sleep. Got a 12 hour shift 6 hours from now. Will play around with the Vietnamese keyboard some more tomorrow.

khanh44 wrote:

thanks for the instructions. I can't get the dual diacritics where one goes on top of the other on my Android. Like tie^'ng Vie^.t.

But that means toggling keyboards, back and forth.  I don't know about you but I find that nerve-wracking.  I'd rather have letter sequences like iOS.

On windows, I just use Uni key same deal as vps but far more common in my experience.

laidbackfreak wrote:

On windows, I just use Uni key same deal as vps but far more common in my experience.

For German and Spanish I just use the Alt-key with the number pad, but that's awkward with Vietnamese and most people can't memorize all those key codes.  For an ideographic language like Chinese that isn't really an option.

Hi ChrisFox,

thanks for this post. You should actually post it as an article in the expat guide : https://www.expat.com/en/guide/asia/vietnam/

All the best,

Julien

Done and submitted.  Hope some find it helpful

There are language specific keyboards for most European languages; get a German keyboard and you have ä, ü, ß, etc.; get a Spanish keyboard and you have ñ on a key.  It does seem odd that there is no such thing as a Vietnamese keyboard, there aren't that many additional characters.  Anyone ever seen one?

Vietnamese often use Unikey or Vietkey for PC and Gõ Tiếng Việt on Android or swiftkey. But i can see that you have a full feature of typing software!
Could you please share me some experience about program on Android platform? Which program language is good for Android?

I like Go Tieng Viet's auto suggestion. Don't know if this is common amongst other platforms.

I haven't started learning Android yet but it's my understanding that Java is the only native option.  There are portability tools that allow one to write in HTML or some other platform-nonspecific language but I don't trust things like this.

I'm not keen on Java, it makes, like C#, an idiomatic use of the throw keyword which in my opinion is the worst thing to ever happen to programming.

Chris.
In your Mac section is this an app which isn't available in App store ?
Can you be more specific about :
(optional) Install the free LangWitch

Thx
Charles

I should have got a blackberry playbook.

thekat wrote:

Chris.
In your Mac section is this an app which isn't available in App store ?
Can you be more specific about :
(optional) Install the free LangWitch

Thx
Charles

Here is a review with a download link.

http://macdownload.informer.com/langwitch/

Moderators: this is not spam, the application is free and not my work

I have hotkeys to switch between English and Vietnamese.  The current-language flag icon changes when I use the hotkeys.  Let me know if it's not available in your country, maybe I can help.

ChrisFox wrote:

I haven't started learning Android yet but it's my understanding that Java is the only native option.  There are portability tools that allow one to write in HTML or some other platform-nonspecific language but I don't trust things like this.

I'm not keen on Java, it makes, like C#, an idiomatic use of the throw keyword which in my opinion is the worst thing to ever happen to programming.

Have a platform for programer that want to develope a software on Android. Both Java and C# have framework and depend on the framework. I also want to develope an Android software but dont know where to start.
Thank you for sharing. comback to your thread! Sorry if i make you trouble.

ChrisFox wrote:

I'm going to do a series of posts on how to set up your PC or mobile device to type Vietnamese with the diacritics.  You should be able to type người nước ngoại, not nguoi nuoc ngoai or ngu'o'\i nu'o'/c ngoa.i.  The latter is hideous and the blank free typing software one is unreadable to anyone but a native speaker.

First, you don't need to install any special fonts.  All personal computers and almost all devices have extended character sets that include Vietnamese and even CJK (Chinese-Japanese-Korean).  They're already on your device.  If you have a phone restricted to a small set of languages, this won't help.

For Linux or any unlisted device, ask me, or ask someone who has one because I don't know all of them.  I do type Vietnamese on Linux but there may be easier ways than what I use.

Yes Agree