Basic Vietnamese phrases for travellers

The Vietnamese you will actually use on a trip: greetings, directions for a driver, ordering street food, bargaining and asking for help. Each phrase is written in Vietnamese with a pronunciation you can read straight off the screen.

Before you start

Vietnamese has six tones (in the south two of them sound alike), and the marks over the letters show them. The pronunciation here does not, so when a phrase does not land, show the written Vietnamese.

The north and the south use different words for a few everyday things. Where it matters (yes, expensive, thousand), both are listed: the first is used in Hanoi, the second in Ho Chi Minh City.

Prices are almost always said in thousands of dong, and menus often write 50k for 50,000. Learning the numbers up to ten plus nghìn or ngàn covers most of what you will pay.

The pronunciation is a simple English spelling, not an exact transcription. It gets you understood; a native speaker will still hear an accent.

Basics and politeness

Getting around

Food and drink

Shopping and money

Help and health

Numbers

Other phrase lists

• Thai phrases (49)
• Indonesian phrases (50)