Lessons › Lesson 6

Lesson 6 · Consonant teams & the regional splits

Nine two-letter teams (ch, tr, kh, ph, nh, ng, gh, gi, th), two spelling rules, and the places where Northern and Southern accents genuinely differ. After this page you can read every consonant start in the language.

Accent:

🗺 The team chart

ph	= English f (phở). Vietnamese never writes a bare f
kh	a throat fricative — the ch of “Bach” or Scottish “loch”
nh	the ny of “canyon” — Spanish ñ
ng / ngh	the ng of “singer” — but at the START of a word (drill below)
g / gh	hard g as in “go”
ch	close to English ch, a touch lighter
tr	North: identical to ch. South: tongue curled back, like the tr in “train”
x	= plain s as in “see”
s	North: identical to x. South: curled slightly toward “sh”
gi	North: z. South: y. (Exactly like barless d from Lesson 5)
r	North: z. South: a rolled or curled r

💪 The ng- drill

The hardest start for English speakers — not because the sound is new, but because of where it sits: English only allows ng at the END of a word. Trick: say “singer”, then drop the “si-”: (si)nger → nger. Keep your tongue exactly there and launch the word from that position.

✍️ Spelling rule: e, ê and i demand an h

ng → ngh

before i, e, ê

g → gh

before i, e, ê

👂 The three regional pairs

For each pair below, a Northern voice reads both words the SAME; a Southern voice keeps them apart. Flip the accent above and replay each pair to hear it yourself.

ch vs tr

chè (sweet soup) vs tre (bamboo); and the famous spelling pair chuyện (a spoken story) vs truyện (a printed one).

s vs x

sôi (boiling) vs xôi (sticky rice) — one letter, very different dinner. Same with sinh (born) vs xinh (pretty).

d · gi · r

The legendary trio: in the North all THREE words below sound nearly identical (all “z”); in the South d/gi become “y” while r rolls. This is why d/gi/r spelling has to be memorized by eye, not by ear.