Typing in Vietnamese requires a special software input method to create all the necessary accent marks.

The Vietnamese alphabet uses standard Latin letters, but it adds specific diacritics for unique vowels and tones.

Standard Western keyboards don’t have these characters built into the physical keys.

Instead, you must use specific keystroke combinations to tell your computer or phone to produce Vietnamese letters.

The two most common typing systems used to do this are Telex and VNI.

Understanding Vietnamese typing methods

To type a Vietnamese word, you’ll always type the base letters first.

After typing the base letter, you type a specific code to add the “hat” (vowel mark) or the tone.

Your computer or phone software instantly reads this combination and replaces it with the correct Vietnamese character.

Modern typing software allows you to type the tone code right after the vowel or at the very end of the word.

If you make a mistake, typing the tone key a second time will usually cancel the tone and revert it to normal text.

How to type using Telex

Telex is the most popular Vietnamese input method today.

It uses unused English consonant keys (like s, f, r, x, j, w) to add tones and special vowels.

Since you only use letter keys, your hands never have to leave the main typing area of the keyboard.

Here’s how you type the special Vietnamese letters using Telex.

Vietnamese also has six tones, meaning you need to add tone marks to your vowels.

Here’s how you add the five tone marks using Telex.

To see how this works in practice, let’s type the word for “hello”.

To type chào in Telex, you’ll press these exact keys in order: c h a o f

The software sees the “f” at the end and automatically places the down-tone (huyền) over the “a”.

How to type using VNI

The VNI input method uses the number row on your keyboard to add vowel hats and tone marks.

This method was created by a Vietnamese-American software company and is very popular in Southern Vietnam.

Because it uses numbers instead of letters, it’s much easier to mix English and Vietnamese words in the same sentence without accidentally creating weird characters.

Here’s how you type the special Vietnamese letters using VNI.

To add tones in VNI, you use the numbers 1 through 5.

Here’s the table for typing tones in VNI.

Let’s look at a short phrase to see how VNI works.

To type cảm in VNI, you’ll type: c a m 3

To type ơn in VNI, you’ll type: o 7 n

Telex vs VNI: Which is better?

Neither system is officially better, but Telex is significantly more popular today.

Telex allows for much faster typing speeds once you memorize the key combinations.

Your fingers never have to stretch up to the number row while typing in Telex.

Furthermore, Telex is the default Vietnamese keyboard on iOS and Android smartphones.

However, VNI is an excellent choice if you frequently type bilingual documents.

If you use Telex and try to type an English word like “offer”, the double “f” might accidentally turn into a Vietnamese tone.

VNI prevents these bilingual typos entirely because English words rarely contain numbers inside them.