Type Vietnamese: Telex, VNI and tones

At a glance: Vietnamese Keyboard

• Keyboard: Vietnamese Keyboard (Bàn phím tiếng Việt), Latin + diacritics script, Vietnam.
• Direction left to right; 45 keys and 97 characters across all layers.
• Engine: 40 transliteration rules — the examples below come straight from it.
• This guide: 4 method steps and 4 answered questions.
• Typefaces: Noto Sans, Be Vietnam Pro, Arial.
• Search and export: Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Translate, DuckDuckGo.

Common mistakes to avoid

Nine times out of ten, a Vietnamese Keyboard problem is one of these — each takes five seconds to fix. Work through them in order before assuming the keyboard is broken.

• Nothing converts, not even « as » → « á »: check that Transliteration mode (not the physical keyboard) is on, and that you type plain lowercase Latin letters.
• Missing accents: click the exact accented key rather than the base letter — “e” and “é” are two different keys.
• Unexpected layout: the Telex variant changes the keys — switch back to the standard variant if anything surprises you.
• Clusters split after paste (Arabic, Indic and Southeast Asian scripts): paste into this editor first and re-copy — it normalizes the Unicode shaping that Word and chats sometimes break.

Try these conversions now

Copy each left-hand transcription into the keyboard linked above and confirm the script on the right. Six quick wins that calibrate your fingers to the engine.

• Type “as” → get á.
• Type “es” → get é.
• Type “is” → get í.
• Type “os” → get ó.
• Type “us” → get ú.
• Type “ưs” → get ứ.

The exact rules behind the examples

The walkthrough above uses a handful of conversions. Here is the complete engine behind this guide — all 40 mappings of the Vietnamese Keyboard, longest match first. Find the transcription you need, then try it live in the keyboard linked at the top of this page.

More questions about this keyboard

• Which Vietnamese input methods are supported? — Telex and VNI are both supported, plus a basic romanized mode.
• Telex or VNI? — Telex for beginners (mnemonic letters s, f, r, x, j), VNI for digit fans (1-5).
• How do I type đ? — Type “dd” in Telex mode or click đ on the virtual keyboard.
• How do I type ă, â, ê, ô, ơ, ư quickly? — In Telex double the vowel: “aa” → ă, “ee” → ê, “oo” → ô, “ow” → ơ, “uw” → ư.
• How do I type ơ and ư in VNI? — Use digit 7: “o7” → ơ and “u7” → ư.
• How do I undo a tone? — Press Backspace once to remove the last tone mark without deleting the vowel.

Neighbouring keyboards

The same method often applies to neighbouring languages. Each of these has its own full keyboard page with virtual keys, engine and dictionaries.

• Chinese Pinyin Keyboard: Type Chinese: enter pinyin and pick the character, or click the virtual keys. Simplified and traditional characters supported.…
• Japanese Keyboard: Type Japanese with the romaji engine: “konnichiwa” becomes こんにちは. Kana layout and vocabulary resources included.…
• Korean Hangul Keyboard: Type Korean Hangul with smart jamo composition: “annyeong” becomes 안녕 automatically as you type.…

All method guides

Twelve guides cover the most requested scripts. Pick yours — every guide embeds its keyboard, so you can practise each step immediately.

• Type Arabic without an Arabic keyboard: complete guide: Type “marhaba” and get مرحبا: transliteration, harakat, copy-paste and virtual keyboard.…
• Type Russian on a French/English keyboard: easy method: “privet” becomes привет: JCUKEN transliteration, Ё key and Russian physical layout.…
• Type Hebrew with vowels (niqqud) online: “shalom” → שלום, Shift layer for vowels: Hebrew RTL keyboard guide.…
• Type Chinese with pinyin: how-to: Type “ni hao” and pick 你好: tones, simplified/traditional and pinyin keyboard.…
• Type Japanese: romaji → hiragana, katakana, kanji: “konnichiwa” → こんにちは: romaji engine, kana keyboard and vocabulary resources.…
• Type Korean (Hangul): automatic composition: “annyeong” → 안녕: jamos combine into syllables in real time.…
• Type Hindi (Devanagari): transliteration guide: “namaste” → नमस्ते: matras, conjuncts and Devanagari keyboard.…
• Type Greek: modern and polytonic: “kalimera” → καλημέρα: transliteration, tonos and Greek keyboard.…
• Spanish, German, Italian accents without a local keyboard: “como estas” → ¿Cómo estás?, “gruesse” → grüße: accent autocorrection.…
• Arabic, Persian, Urdu: which keyboard to choose?: Same script family, 3 languages: letter differences (پ چ ژ گ), digits and usage.…
• Online dictionaries by language: the Lexilogos-like hub: Each keyboard embeds its hub: monolingual, bilingual, grammar, press and resources.…