Yesterday I learned how to use Simple Telex to type Vietnamese, this page will document what I found.

It’s pretty simple to use, which we can learn from its name.

Vowels

As you already know if you’ve ever seen Vietnamese written, aside from the vowels we have in English - Vietnamese also has â ô ê ă ơ ư and y (which is like the y used in the Latin alphabet so we type it as usual).

Vowels with hats

Just repeat the vowel twice - for example to type â, type aa, to type ê, type ee, to type ô, type oo.

Vowels with “horns”

Write the vowel with w after it - to type ơ, type ow, to type ư, type uw.

The other Ă

To type ă, type aw (like the “horns” example).

Consonants

The only consonant that appears in Vietnamese but doesn’t exist in English is đ, to type it, type dd.

Tones

After learning how to type all of the vowels and consonants, the only thing we have left is only the tones.

Vietnamese has 6 tones and only 5 of them are marked with diacritics.

To add the tone markings - we simply append a letter, we can either append it after the vowel or at the end of the word.

The unmarked tone is produced without using any letter for marking the tone.

The high rising tone is producded using the letter s - for example to type á, type as.

The low falling tone is produced using the letter f - for example to type à, type af.

The mid falling tone is produced using the letter r - for example to type ả, type ar.

The glottalized rising tone is produced using the letter x - for example to type ã, type ax.

The glottalized falling tone is produced using the letter j - for example to type ạ, type aj.

Summary

In Simple Telex, we simply append letters to change the vowel, consonant or tone. We can also combine the changes by appending more letters - for example to type ệ, type eej.

tạm biệt (tajm bieejt)