There are 80 million native speakers of Vietnamese, which is spoken in Vietnam and among Vietnamese diaspora. Vietnamese borrowed vocabulary words from Chinese and was originally written using Chinese characters. Today Vietnamese is written in the Latin alphabet with additional diacritics. Important Vietnamese writers include Nguyen Du, a eighteenth century poet, Ho Xuan Huong, an early nineteenth century poet dubbed "the Queen of Nom poetry," and Pham Thi Hoai, a contemporary Vietnamese novelist.

First and second year Vietnamese language courses are offered each year. It is not possible to major or minor in Vietnamese.