Vietnamese is spoken mainly in Vietnam and a number of countries by over 70 million speakers. Although Vietnamese was spoken for thousands of years by local people, it was not the official written language of Vietnam until the 20th Century.
For much of its history, Chinese characters and a Chinese-based writing system were adapted and primarily used. However, eventually the Latin writing system was integrated and used for administrative purposes.
Due to many years of French colonial rule, Vietnamese has borrowed many words from French, and recently adopted many words from English due to Western influence.
