ENGLISH ADDRESSING FORMS

Addressing forms is an interesting phenomenon in the study on cross-

cultural communication. There exist numerous addressing systems in different
cultures and languages. Like many other Eastern languages, Vietnamese
language has a so complicated one that makes foreigners get confused when
using Vietnamese addressing forms. Many foreigners say that accessing to
Vietnamese addressing forms is not much different from entering to a maze. It
is partly true and understandable because Vietnamese addressing system is
one of the most complicated features in Vietnamese language that even its
people find it difficult to use or explain it let alone foreigners who have little
knowledge of the culture of Vietnam. Therefore, this essay will aim at
discovering basic characteristics of the addressing system in Vietnamese
language. This essay will focus on three main parts: the Vietnamese
addressing terms, kinds of addressing relationship and culture shocks that
people often meet when using addressing system.
Firstly, the essay will start off with the Vietnamese addressing terms.
Addressing terms are words used to addressee or call the hearer or speaker in
the communication. It is quite impossible to list in this essay all addressing
terms used in Vietnamese languages. However basically, Vietnamese
addressing terms can be categorized into ten main types. Firstly, like many
other languages, Vietnamese people use basic personal pronouns such as
“tao”, “chúng tôi”, “mày”, “các bạn” ,etc, to addressee each other. This kind
of addressing term are the most commonly used in Vietnamese
communication The next commonly used terms are kinship ones such as
“ông”, “chú”, “cháu”, “con”, etc. Kinship terms are the ones that people
firstly used to call members of ascending generations and then they are
extended to call other members that have no relative relationship in the
society as well. In addition, Vietnamese addressing system also have
addressing terms which are proper name “Lan”, “Mai”,etc; title words such as
“giáo sư”, “giám đốc”, etc; occupational words like “thầy”, “bác sĩ”, etc, or
both title or occupational words plus proper name such as “giáo sư Mai”,
“thầy giáo Hùng”, “trưởng phòng Lan”, etc. More over, Vietnamese people
also use normalizing adjectives to call themselves or the hearer. For example,
an old people can address himself as “già” or “lão”. Such words are originally
adjectives which means “old”, but now are used as personal pronouns. It is
the similar thing applied when people address others by their nicknames such
as “còi”, “béo”, etc. More interestingly, the next addressing term is a very
special one that exist only in Vietnamese addressing form, that is
demonstrative terms such as “đây”, “đằng này”... for the speaker and “đấy”
“đằng ấy”, “ấy” for the hearer. Originally, such words are not personal
pronouns but here they function as personal pronouns effectively. Besides, it
is impossible to forget to list here addressing terms that borrowed from other
countries especially from China and French. This kind of term contributes
dramatically to the diversification of Vietnamese addressing term. They are
words borrowed from China such as “huynh”, “đệ”, “tỷ”, “muội”, “trẫm”, etc
and from French such as “moa”, “toa”, etc. Finally there are also terms of
affection or endearment such as “cưng” “cún con ”, “anh yêu”, etc which are
used most commonly when the addresser and addressee have an very,
intimate relationship.
According to many people both Vietnamese and foreigners, Anglicist
addressing system is much simpler than Vietnamese one. It is because of this
that in Anglicist system, there exists a neutral dyad “I-You” which is used in
communication as “prefabricated units”. “Prefabricated units,” means that
these units can be used in any context and with anyone. It can do so because
“I” and “you” do not include in themselves any information of age, gender or
family relationship, etc. However, unluckily, Vietnamese addressing one has
no equivalence with the dyad “I-You” in Anglicist because there are always a
number of socio-cultural factors dominating Vietnamese addressing system.
The factors that determine languages forms of address terms vary from one
culture to another. However, the prominent determining factors in Vietnamese
forms may be occupational status, age, family hierarchy and interactional
context. The occupational status factor say that people with different social
status will be addresses differently depending on the position that they take in
the society. For example a teacher can be addressed as “thầy giáo” but when
he become a headmaster, he will be called “Thầy hiệu trưởng”, etc. The same
thing can be applied to the factor of age. It is deepened on the gap between
the speaker and the hearer that a person can decide the appropriate addressing
term to call himself and the interlocutor. For example if the speaker is much
older than the hearer, he can address the hearer as “ông” or as “bác”, “chú”,
“anh” if the hearer is less older. Kinship terms are one of the most widely
term used in Vietnamese addressing system and family hierarchy is the
dominant factor in choosing the right addressing term. Family hierarchy is the
order of the relationship between people who share some family connections.
However, it is used to address people that between them there have not any
family ties also but if the relationship between the interlocutors is family
relationship, the addressing term system will be decided by this factors
regardless of another factors such as age or interactional context. Supposing
the speaker is much older than the hearer but the hearer is the younger sister
of the speaker’s mother, therefore the speaker will have to address himself as
“cháu” and call the hearer as “dì”. However this factors will not be apply if
kinship terms are used to address people without family ties, in that case there
will be other factors will affect the decision-making of the interlocutors. The
factor of interactional context also plays a very important role in deciding the
addressing term. It means that the decision of choosing addressing term is
different in different context of communication. The addressing terms used in
trade transactions is different with those used in meeting or at school. For
instance, a son at home can address himself as “con” and call his mother as
“mẹ” but at school, his mother is his teacher also, he has to change the
addressing terms as “em” and call his mother as “cô”. Besides these main
factors, there are still a number of important other ones that affect similarly
the way people addressee as the mentioned factors. They are such factors as:
gender, qualifications, physical strength, occupations, marital status and
dwelling area. Among which, the factor of dwelling area is also an important
and interesting one that affect the way people address. For example, in the
North of Vietnam, people call their parents as “bố” and “mẹ” but in the South,
they call them as “ba” and “má” or people living in northern villages call their
parents as “thầy” and “u”. The choice to use appropriate addressing term
sometime is made easily but sometime very difficulty especially when a
number of socio-cultural factors dominate the choice at the same time. In
order to understand more about how to addressing people, the next part of this
essay will work as a very efficient tool.
As mentioned above, there are many kinds of address forms in
Vietnamese which are dominated by different socio-cultural factors. One of
the most important particular traits of the Vietnamese is that they always
appreciate their families, which also affects the usage of address forms in
daily life. Therefore the most popular address form in Vietnamese is kinship
terms which have been used to address people within the family.
In Vietnamese (Northern dialect), there are usually 34 dyads of kinship
terms which are equivalent to the dyad I – YOU in American English in terms
of 6 generations around “ego”

Kinship terms as address forms used in family

STT
First person Second person
1 Cè ChÝt / Con
2 ChÝt / Con Cè
3 Kþ Chót / Con
4 Chót / Con Kþ
5 Cô Ch¾t / Con
 6 Ch¾t / Con Cô
7 ¤ng Ch¸u / Con
8 Ch¸u / Con ¤ng
9 Bµ Ch¸u / Con
10 Ch¸u / Con Bµ
11 B¸c Ch¸u / Con
12 Ch¸u / Con B¸c
13 Bè Con
14 Con Bè
15 MÑ Con
16 Con MÑ
17 Chó Ch¸u / Con
18 Ch¸u / Con Chó
19 C« Ch¸u / Con
20 Ch¸u / Con C«
21 ThÝm Ch¸u / Con
22 Ch¸u / Con ThÝm
23 CËu Ch¸u / Con
24 Ch¸u / Con CËu
25 D× Ch¸u / Con
26 Ch¸u / Con D×
27 Dîng Ch¸u / Con
28 Ch¸u / Con Dîng
29 Dîng Ch¸u / Con
30 Ch¸u / Con Dîng
31 Anh Em
32 Em Anh
33 ChÞ Em
34 Em ChÞ

Table 1: Kinship terms as address forms used in family

Kinship terms in Vietnamese are more diversified than in English
because in Vietnamese kinship terms, there are :
 Distinction between status in family hierarchy
B¸c Anh ChÞ
Chó Em Em

 Distinction between paternal and maternal relationship

 B¸c – Chó C«
CËu D×

 Distinction between blood and marital relationship

B¸c – Chó – CËu C« - D×
Dîng ThÝm – Mî

Because of the habit of Vietnamese people, kinship terms as address

forms are not only limited in family relationship but also used as an effective
way to communicate in society. In social communication, the participation of
kinship terms as address forms is very active and in fact they overwhelm
other relationships.
However, not all kinship terms are widely used in social
communication. When being used in social relationship, some of them
disappear as in Table 2

Kinship terms as address forms

STT in social relationship
First person Second person
1 Ch¸u/ Con Cô
2 Ch¸u / Con ¤ng
3 Ch¸u / Con Bµ
4 Ch¸u / Con B¸c
5 Ch¸u / Con Chó
6 Ch¸u / Con C«
7 Em Anh
8 Em ChÞ
9 Anh Em
10 ChÞ Em
11 C« Ch¸u / Con
12 Chó Ch¸u / Con
13 B¸c Ch¸u / Con
14 ¤ng Ch¸u / Con
15 Bµ Ch¸u / Con
 Table 2: Kinship terms as address forms used in social relationship
Circular Relationship
From kinship terms used as address forms as discussed above, there has
a relationship called “Circular relationship”

Chart 3: Circular Relationship

This relationship is widely used in communication within family as well

as in society to show inequality, respect (inferior to superior), intimacy
(superior to inferior) and solidarity.

To Vietnamese foreign learners, understanding and using the

relationship appropriately are quite difficult. However, once making use of it,
effective communication is within their reach.

Horizontal relationship-Type I

Beside the Circular relationships, Vietnamese people also use

Horizontal relationships to express their equality in status and ages. There are
two types of Horizontal relationships in Vietnamese addressing forms.
The Horizontal relationship-Type I is used by interlocutors who are of
power equals, particularly by young people, friends and classmates.
Vietnamese people use Horizontal relationship-Type I to express informality,
equality and friendliness.
Followings are 15 common dyads used in Horizontal relationship-Type I:

Chart 4: Horizontal Relationship Type I in Vietnamese address forms

Like multiple name in English, the use of these dyads is really difficult
for Vietnamese foreign learners. These dyads are arranged in a relative way
because we do not mention other factors supplemented to the emotional
expression such as lexico-modal markers, paralinguistic factors, gestures, eye-
contact, facial expressions, proxemics, etc.
We would like to take notice on three interchangeable addressing dyads
in Vietnamese addressing forms:
Ai-Ai
Ta/ người ta- Mình
Mình- Ta/người ta
This is an interesting phenomenon in Vietnamese addressing forms.
“Ai” could be the first or the second person in different contexts:
Eg:
Ai đi để ai thương ai nhớ
Ai về cho ai hết sầu mong.
 Defining “mình” or “ta/ người ta” as the first or the second person
depends mostly on the context of speech.
Eg:
Mình về ta chẳng cho về
Ta nắm vạt áo ta đề câu thơ.
“Mình” is the second person and “ta” is the first person, but in the
sentence:
Mình đây ta đấy duyên còn nữa chăng?
“Mình” is the first person, and “ta” is the second person.
The dyad “mày-tao” is also remarkable phenomenon in Vietnamese
addressing forms. It is commonly considered a course dyad to express angry
but in fact, it is also used to express informality and friendliness as the dyad
“Je –Tu”in French and “Ia-Tu” in Rusian.

The next kind of relationship, the Horizontal Relationship type II are

also used among those who share the relatively equal social power and age
but instead of expressing the solidarity and intimacy like the horizontal
relationship type I, the horizontal relationship type II focuses on the
inequality, formality, politeness and respect. It is represented in the following
chart.

Interlocutors I YOU
Older but lower
T«i Titles
status
Younger but higher Kinship terms above
T«i
status “ego”

Table 5: Compromise with conflict between age and status

in Vietnamese address forms
 Looking at the chart, it can be seen that in this kind of relationship, there
are two cases. Firstly if the speaker has lower status but he is older than the
hearer, in this case the speaker can use the dyad “ Tôi-Title” in order to show
his respect and politeness to the hearer. For example, when the speaker wants
to speak to his director who is much younger than him, he can use the dyad
“Tôi -Giám đốc” such as: “Xin giám đốc cho tôi nghỉ phép hai ngày”.
Secondly, in the case that the speaker is a director, he wants to talk to his
secretary who is older than him, he can use the dyad “Tôi- kinship above ego”
in order to show his respect and politeness as well. The kinship above ego are
“anh/chị”, “cô/chú”, “bác”, “ông/bà”, “cụ”. Choosing what kind of kinship
above ego will depend on the gap between the speaker’s age and the hearer’s.

Chart 6: Horizontal Relationship Type II in Vietnamese address forms

When using this kind of relationship, there are some notes that you have
to pay attention to. The first one is about the dyad “ Tôi-Cô/Chú” and “Tôi-
Anh/Chị”. Although in the family hierarchy, the addressing terms “cô/ chú”
show the higher status than the terms “Anh/Chị”, it is necessary to remember
that in the horizontal relationship type II, the dyad “Tôi-Cô/Chú” is less
formal and more solidarity than the dyad “Tôi-Anh/Chị”. In fact, the dyad “T”
is often used with people who are younger than the speaker. Using in such
way helps the speaker to maintain the formality and express the intimacy as
well.
 For example the sentence “Chú cứ nói thế chứ chú mà làm thì tốt hơn
tôi là cái chắc” is much less formal and more intimate than the sentence “Anh
cứ nói vậy chứ anh mà làm thì còn tốt hơn tôi ”.
Another note in this kind of relationship is that such dyad as “Tôi-
Ông/Bà/Cô” are rarely used in reality because people who are old enough to
be call “Ông/Bà/Cô” do in fact not work any longer.
However this kind of relationship does not exist for a long time, after a
period of time both the interlocutors will want to reach the intimacy and
solidarity in their relationship. Then, they will replace the horizontal
relationship by another one which is called the dynamic relationship

From the dyad “T«i – Title”, two new relationships called “Dynamic
Relationship” can be created.
Dynamic Relationship – Type I
In Vietnamese, after a certain amount of time knowing each other, the
dyad “T«i – Title” may be changed into “Ch¸u/ Em – Title” to show self –
abasement, intimacy as well as maintain the superior of the other.
Eg: An employee first may say to his boss like:
Xin trëng phßng cho t«i gÆp riªng mét lóc ®îc kh«ng ¹?
However, after a certain amount of time, with the same request he
may say:
Xin trëng phßng cho em gÆp riªng mét lóc ®îc kh«ng ¹?
 The relationship and its variant can be illustrated in table and chart as
follows:
T¤I TITLE
(YOU)
(I)

em/ ch¸u
Table 7: Dynamic Relationship – Type I in addressing with people with
higher status to show intimacy but respect

Chart 8: Variant of Dynamic Relationship – Type I

Today, the change in address forms like that in communication between
superior and inferior in Vietnamese society usually happens quite quickly.
Vietnamese people often drop the period of using the dyad “T«i – Title” to
straightly use the dyad “Ch¸u/ Em – Title” to show intimacy and respect in
relation. This phenomenon is relatively similar with the process of changing
from “Title Last name” to “First name” in English.
In the mentioned relationship, the first person changes while the second
person may change in correspondence with the first person as in table 7 or
remain unchanged as in chart 8.
However, there is another Dynamic Relationship which has a little
difference to Type I. In order not to get confused, we should consider
Dynamic Relationship Type II.
Dynamic relationship-Type II

Different from Dynamic relationship-Type I, in the Dynamic

relationship-Type II, the title of first person remains unchanged while the one
of the second person changes. The Dynamic relationship-Type II could be
described in the table below:

Anh/ ChÞ/C«/ B¸c/ ¤ng/Bµ/Cô

T¤I (I) TITLE (YOU)

Em/ Ch¸u/ Con

In this type, the title of the listener is modest and inferior to the one of
the speaker, In order to show the delicacy, respect and intimacy, Vietnamese
people avoid using title while communicating.
For example, when a man calls a waitress in a cafe, he hardly says;
-Này, cô hầu bàn, cho tôi 2 nâu nhé!
He usually bases on the age of the waitress to address in a suitable form.
If she has the same age with his children, he will use “cháu” instead of her
title, or if she has the same age with his older or younger sister, he will address
as “chị” or “em”, respectively. These kinds of addressing help remain the
formality (“tôi” for the first person) as well as the informality (kinship term
for the second person).
Eg:
Này, em ơi, cho tôi 2 nâu nhé!
 However, many Vietnamese people would like to express their
informality by using Circular relationship, particularly when the listener is
woman or the old
Eg:
Cụ cho con 2 bát chè đỗ xanh.
The variant of the Dynamic relationship-Type II could be described in
the following chart:

Chart 10
It is necessary to note that, in Anglicist countries, the person who
starts the changes often has higher status than the others. However, in
Vietnam, the person who starts the changes may either have higher or lower
status than the others.
Eg:
Xin thủ trưởng cho em nghỉ 2 ngày ạ!
The person start the change has lower status, but in
-Cụ làm ơn cho con hỏi đường về thôn Đoài đi ngả nào?
The person starts the change has higher status than the others