TIMED PRACTICE · Tiếng Việt
Vietnamese typing speed test
Flow like a stream. Space commits a word, backspace fixes the last one. Tab or Esc restarts.
Testing your Vietnamese typing speed
Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 33 characters beyond a-z — đ, à, ớ, ư, ó and more.
If you already touch type English, most of Vietnamese transfers on the first session. What does not transfer is the 33 characters this bank reaches for beyond a-z — đ, à, ớ, ư, ó and ờ, and the rest of the set — and they are not decoration: leave them off and the word is misspelled. Almost every word in this bank needs at least one.
One number is worth carrying into the first session. About 58% of the letters in these Vietnamese words come from just ten characters. Get those ten genuinely automatic — not merely findable — and the rest of the layout stops being the thing standing between you and a readable sentence.
Most people arrive at Vietnamese able to type and unable to type Vietnamese, which is a narrower problem than it feels. The letter keys are already done. What is left is a small number of positions, and the willingness to reach for them rather than paste them in.
Two modes, timed and word-count, plus the option to paste your own text. The words come at random from 61 common Vietnamese words. What you get back is not just a number: net and raw WPM, accuracy, consistency across the run, and the keys you got wrong most often.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 61
- Distinct characters
- 52
- Average word
- 3.2 units
Characters beyond a-z in the Vietnamese practice words
- đ7
- à6
- ớ5
- ư5
- ó3
- ờ3
- â2
- ạ2
- ê2
- ế2
- ô2
- ữ2
Counted across the 61 practice words. 84% of them need at least one.
và của là trong có được không cho này đã một ngườiTelex and VNI: two ways to type the tone marks
Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet with more diacritics than almost any other language that does — seven additional letters and five tone marks, which combine, so a single vowel can carry two marks at once. No keyboard has keys for all of them.
The solution is an input method that builds them from ordinary letters. Telex, the more common one, uses letter keys as modifiers: typing "aa" gives â, "aw" gives ă, and "s", "f", "r", "x", "j" append the five tones. VNI uses the number row instead — "a1" for á, "a2" for à, and so on.
Both are typed on an ordinary QWERTY keyboard and both are a genuine skill of their own. Which you learn is usually decided by which your family or workplace uses; Telex is more common in Vietnam, VNI more common among the diaspora, and neither is going away.
Questions about typing in Vietnamese
Do I need a Vietnamese keyboard?
No. Your operating system already offers a layout that produces đ, à, ớ, ư and ó from the keys you have — through a dead key on some, a modifier such as right Alt on others. Which one depends on the language and on the layout you select; the hardware does not change either way.
Which Vietnamese keyboard layout do these tests use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 33 characters beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 61 practice words between them use 52 of those 59, so 7 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Vietnamese?
61 of the most common words in Vietnamese, drawn at random. They use 52 distinct characters between them and average 3.2 written units each, with the longest running to about 5. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is Vietnamese hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 84% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, 33 such characters appear in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
How long should a Vietnamese typing test be?
Longer than you would like. A 15-second test measures your sprint and flatters you; over two minutes your sustainable speed shows up, along with the fact that concentration runs out. If you want one number that describes you rather than your best moment, take the longer one.
Why does my score change so much between attempts?
Partly the draw and partly you. No two runs of the Vietnamese typing test use the same words — they are sampled fresh from the bank each time, so one attempt can hand you a friendlier set than the next — and concentration varies more than most people credit. Take three and look at the middle one rather than the best.
How is typing speed measured here?
In words per minute, where a "word" is a fixed five characters rather than an actual word. That convention is what makes a WPM figure comparable between languages whose real words are very different lengths. The number reported is net WPM: uncorrected mistakes are subtracted, so it reflects text you actually produced correctly.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
Neither. There is no paid tier and no required sign-in — the 61 Vietnamese practice words, the speed test and all three games are the whole product, available immediately. Signing in is worth it only if you practise on more than one device.
Also in Vietnamese: lessons and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Welsh, Yoruba, Zulu, Afrikaans, Albanian, Azerbaijani. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Typing Vietnamese: Telex, VNI and the tone marksVietnamese needs more characters beyond a-z than any other Latin alphabet here, and no keyboard has keys for them. How Telex and VNI build them instead.
- Do typing games help, and what do they measure?Games are a good diagnostic and a poor teacher. What pressure exposes that a calm test does not, and the limit of playing your way to a faster speed.
- Typing accented letters and symbolsDead keys, AltGr, Option, compose and the Unicode escape hatch: the five ways to type é, ñ, ü or ß, and which one is actually worth learning.