An essential descriptive introduction to a South-East Asian language with over seventy million speakers, this book provides a conservative treatment of the phonology, lexicon and syntax of Vietnamese, with comments on semantics and history, with particular reference to writing systems, loan words and syntactic structures. All example texts are transcribed and glossed. Prof. Nguyễn Ðình-Hoà has based this grammar on his vast teaching experience and gives basic insights into “Vietnamese without veneer”.