Vietnamese pronunciation relies heavily on how you finish a word.

There are exactly eight ending consonants in the Vietnamese language.

Learning how to pronounce these correctly will instantly make your spoken Vietnamese sound more natural.

Unlike English, Vietnamese ending consonants are never released with a puff of air.

I’ll break down exactly how to form these sounds and explain the major regional differences between the North and South.

The golden rule: unreleased consonants

English speakers naturally release air at the end of words.

If you say the English word “cat”, your tongue taps the roof of your mouth and releases a tiny puff of air.

In Vietnamese, you must stop the airflow completely.

When you pronounce a word ending in a consonant, your mouth freezes in the final position.

There’s absolutely no puff of air or extra sound at the end.

This unreleased quality is the most important habit to build when speaking Vietnamese.

The nasal endings (m, n, ng, nh)

Nasal consonants are produced by pushing air through your nose.

Vietnamese has four nasal endings: m, n, ng, and nh.

For m, simply close your lips tightly at the end of the vowel.

For n, press the tip of your tongue against the back of your upper teeth.

For ng, raise the back of your tongue to touch the soft palate at the back of your throat.

For nh, place the flat middle part of your tongue against the roof of your mouth.

Here are some common words using nasal endings to practice with:

The stop endings (p, t, c, ch)

Stop consonants abruptly cut off the airflow in your mouth.

Vietnamese has four stop endings: p, t, c, and ch.

These closely mirror the mouth positions of the nasal endings, but you don’t push air through your nose.

For p, press your lips together firmly and hold them shut.

For t, press the tip of your tongue against the back of your upper teeth and freeze.

For c, block the back of your throat tightly with the back of your tongue.

For ch, press the flat middle part of your tongue against the hard palate.

Here are examples of these stop consonants in action:

The lip-closing rule for c and ng

There’s a unique physical trait to the c and ng endings in Vietnamese.

When these endings follow the round vowels o, ô, or u, you must close your lips at the very end of the word.

If you don’t puff your cheeks and close your lips, the word will sound incorrect to a native speaker.

For example, look at the word for “study”.

To pronounce học, you start with the “họ” sound, block your throat for the “c”, and simultaneously puff your cheeks while closing your lips tightly.

This physical motion also applies to everyday words like xong (finished) and chúc (wish).

Northern vs southern pronunciation differences

Vietnamese ending consonants change dramatically depending on where you are in Vietnam.

The rules I explained above are strictly followed in standard Northern Vietnamese.

However, Southern Vietnamese merges and simplifies many of these ending sounds.

In the South, words ending in t are usually pronounced as if they end in c.

For example, mát (cool) sounds exactly like mác to a Southerner.

Southern speakers also merge the n ending into the ng ending.

Because of this, the word bạn (friend) is pronounced like bạng in the South.

Similarly, the ch ending often becomes a t sound, and the nh ending becomes an n sound.

You don’t need to change how you speak if you’re happily learning the Northern dialect.

However, knowing these Southern variations will massively improve your listening comprehension across the country.