ai ao au ay u y eo u ia i iu oa o oe oi

oo i i ua u ui u uy a u i u
Nh Hp T Dyads
-a

-e

a-

-i

-o

ai

ao

-u

-y

au

ay

e-

eo

i-

ia

o-

oa

i
o

oe

iu
oi

u-

ua

ui

oo

uy
u

Table 2: Tm tt v nh hp t A summary of the dyads

For the purpose of pronunciation, these dyads are made into three groups.
Group 1 This group comprises most of the dyads (18 of 29), which never take a final consonant.
ai ao au ay u y eo u iu ia oi i i ua ui a i u
These dyads consist of a primary, which is the one that comes first, and the secondary that follows. If a tonal
mark is needed, it is always above or under the primary. See Table 3 for offglide vowels. It is recommded that
users set their Vietnamese keyboarding in linguisitic mode o u instead of a u (aesthetic mode).
These dyads consist of a primary vowel that is preceded by a semivowel offglide to either a high front
position [i], a central [] or a high back [U]. Although i and y are phonologically identical in most cases, the
two dyads ai and ay are distinctly different. In the ai, the primary a is lengthened: [a:i] and in the ay, the y
causes the a to be shortened [ai:].
Here are some examples showing the placing of tonal marks. Diacritics will be introduced in the latter
section.
i o u y u y o u u a i i i a i a i u u