> Note: The Vietnamese words in the original version of this essay used diacritical marks. To comply with New York Times style, the marks were removed before publication.
Why, in the year 2025, does the NYT still deem this to be necessary?
Not directly related, but to avoid another thread on diacritics: I wonder if any other language chose to use so many diacritics for its official transliteration to a Latin alphabet. As someone who doesn't read it, Vietnamese text often appears as if it's randomly scribbled over.
On to your main topic: diacritics are only really useful for people who speak a language. To everyone else, such as the vast majority of the NYT's audience, they are purely a distraction. My own language uses some diacritics, and we basically never use them in international contexts. For example, if I have to write my address on a paper form outside my country, I won't ever write București, I will write Bucuresti, because it makes no difference to the reader and it may even confuse them. For example, if someone wrote their address on paper as "Đinh Lễ", I wouldn't be surprised if it got copied over as "Inh Le" street, with the person doing the copying assuming that the striketrhough was a correction, not a diacrtic.
I disagree, but your opinion may come from your ignorance (sorry, lack of knowledge perhaps) of Vietnamese. First, it's not a transliteration, it's their native alphabet. And the diacritics mark tones, which is a very important part of the language. An example from the article itself:
> In the case of Hỏa Lò Prison, for example, “hỏa” means “fire,” and “lò” means “furnace”: the Burning Furnace Prison. Without the marks, “hoa” means “flowers,” and “lo” means “worry,” rendering the term “Hoa Lo” meaningless.
Your example doesn't work because (a) it's an address, not text meant for reading and (b) turning ș into s only alters the pronunciation, while the meaning is still intelligible.
I wouldn't say the Vietnamese alphabet is "transliteration". Vietnamese is one of the most, if not the most tonal language in the world. The same word, speaking with different tones will convey different meanings.
The modern Vietnamese alphabet was developed in 17th century (so it's not a transliteration) with tonal marks as a core feature. The writing language is very phonetic. Within a region with similar accent, if you hear a word, you can write it. And if you see a word, you can pronounce it.
The tonal marks are very important to the language. It allows for rich poetic rules that makes Vietnamese poem fun and musical to read:
> To everyone else, such as the vast majority of the NYT's audience, they are purely a distraction
in the same sense that any foreign word you can't pronounce is a distraction. I thought the point of reading is to learn new things? Words and pronounciation are unremarkable now?
I think it's quite the opposite, diacritics teach me how to speak a language that I'm not native.
Portuguese don't use as many as Romanian, but they are very useful. After all what's the difference between avó and avô and just avo?
We don't use in very informal settings, like Whatsapp chat, because a native reader can infer from the context. And that's how English without them works, right?
Actually I wanted the English language to have some, so the tiny differences in certain constructions would be more obvious.
The latin alphabet was designed for atonal languages. When you need to also indicate tone, you've gotta put the marks somewhere. You could do a lot worse than diacritics whose shape roughly reflects a graph of pitch over time. (In Mandarin, pinyin uses diacritics that exactly graph pitch over time. Very helpful.)
You can blame a Jesuit priest for the diacritics. He published a Vietnamese-Portugese-Latin dictionary in 1641 and invented the modern Vietnamese script.
> For example, if I have to write my address on a paper form outside my country, I won't ever write București, I will write Bucuresti, because it makes no difference to the reader and it may even confuse them.
Funny thing, this is exactly the reason I always include the diacritics!
I don’t really fault the NYT for writing Hanoi and Vietnam, not Hà Nội and Việt Nam. It’s a newspaper for English-speakers, at the end of the day. It calls Warszawa Warsaw, Praha Prague, Москва Moscow, and hundreds of other places by their English names.
I wouldn't expect Russian newspapers to write New York instead of Нью-Йорк, either.
Yeah, very silly in an article specifically about language. But one may also ask, why do people still read NYT (and other newspapers) in 2025, given that they are just inferior versions of blogs, that you also have to pay for?
tsimionescu|4 months ago
On to your main topic: diacritics are only really useful for people who speak a language. To everyone else, such as the vast majority of the NYT's audience, they are purely a distraction. My own language uses some diacritics, and we basically never use them in international contexts. For example, if I have to write my address on a paper form outside my country, I won't ever write București, I will write Bucuresti, because it makes no difference to the reader and it may even confuse them. For example, if someone wrote their address on paper as "Đinh Lễ", I wouldn't be surprised if it got copied over as "Inh Le" street, with the person doing the copying assuming that the striketrhough was a correction, not a diacrtic.
haskellshill|4 months ago
> In the case of Hỏa Lò Prison, for example, “hỏa” means “fire,” and “lò” means “furnace”: the Burning Furnace Prison. Without the marks, “hoa” means “flowers,” and “lo” means “worry,” rendering the term “Hoa Lo” meaningless.
Your example doesn't work because (a) it's an address, not text meant for reading and (b) turning ș into s only alters the pronunciation, while the meaning is still intelligible.
thanhhaimai|4 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics)
The modern Vietnamese alphabet was developed in 17th century (so it's not a transliteration) with tonal marks as a core feature. The writing language is very phonetic. Within a region with similar accent, if you hear a word, you can write it. And if you see a word, you can pronounce it.
The tonal marks are very important to the language. It allows for rich poetic rules that makes Vietnamese poem fun and musical to read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%E1%BB%A5c_b%C3%A1t
nsonha|4 months ago
in the same sense that any foreign word you can't pronounce is a distraction. I thought the point of reading is to learn new things? Words and pronounciation are unremarkable now?
rodrigodlu|4 months ago
Portuguese don't use as many as Romanian, but they are very useful. After all what's the difference between avó and avô and just avo?
We don't use in very informal settings, like Whatsapp chat, because a native reader can infer from the context. And that's how English without them works, right?
Actually I wanted the English language to have some, so the tiny differences in certain constructions would be more obvious.
bobbylarrybobby|4 months ago
rawgabbit|4 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionarium_Annamiticum_Lusit...
tasuki|4 months ago
Funny thing, this is exactly the reason I always include the diacritics!
keiferski|4 months ago
I wouldn't expect Russian newspapers to write New York instead of Нью-Йорк, either.
decimalenough|4 months ago
vjerancrnjak|4 months ago
Phonemic orthography should win and destroy all spelling bees.
antonyh|4 months ago
(Edit: I misread your comment, fixed mine, I agree with you)
galaxy_gas|4 months ago
haskellshill|4 months ago
saoh|4 months ago
haskellshill|4 months ago
Rather, the removal of them affects readability in a similar way to removing accents, punctuation or writing in all lowercase.
unkeen|4 months ago
ragazzina|4 months ago
haskellshill|4 months ago