The Vietnamese language, which, like Chinese and Thai, is tonal (that is, one word may have several different meanings depending on the speaker’s tone), is the official language of Vietnam, spoken by a majority of the population. Regional accents are noticeable in the North, center, and South, but in most cases such differences do not preclude mutual understanding. Thanks to Alexander de Rhodes,a seventeenth-century missionary who mastered and transcribed the language into the Latin alphabet, Vietnamese—a musical language that de Rhodes likened to the chattering of birds—is much easier to read than to speak and understand. Most of the ethnic minorities who live in the mountainous regions, while preserving their own languages,study and speak Vietnamese.There are exceptions, however, and these are determined by economic priorities. For those who live in areas that attract large numbers of tourists, such as Sapa, a charming town near the Chinese border that is a former French colonial outpost, many members of ethnic minorities who make their living selling arts-and-crafts items to foreigners may speak better English than Vietnamese.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which coincided with Vietnam’s market reforms and gradual integration into the global economy, Russian has long since been replaced by English as the country’s second language, followed by French, Chinese, and Japanese. Many older people speak French, and quite a few middle-aged Vietnamese who studied in Russia and Eastern Europe speak the languages of those countries.Khmer (Cambodian) and various tribal languages have recently been introduced in some colleges and universities, and some specialized graduate programs are even offered in English.