Latin characters and Vietnamese alphabets To many people's surprises, the Vietnamese language uses a modified alphabetic system for writing with 29 letters compared to 24 letters system in English. From my point of view, this could make Vietnamese learners less struggle when learning to write in English compared to learners in a country where a different sybolic writing system was used. Historically, the system was introduced to Vietnam in the 17th century by an Italian missionary. Since its introduction, alot of changes have happened, for example, in the mid of 20th century, the letter "z" was used alot but now replaced by "gi". It is noticeable that the Vietnamese alphabetic system does not have 4 letters "f", "w", "j" and "z". However, there are suggestion that they should be added in the future to better reflect modern words. Also, English/ foreigner names in general, were previously modified to become Vietnamese words (such as: meeting-> mít ting, café -> cà phê) to make them easier to pronounce. However, as English becomes more popular in Vietnam lately, this practice has become less common and has been gradually replaced by stating the words exactly as they are.