How to type Vietnamese on iPhone with Telex
Vietnamese stacks a vowel change and a tone mark on the same letter, which is one step further than the English keyboard’s press-and-hold accent menu goes. Here is why that menu falls short, how to turn on the dedicated Vietnamese keyboard, and how Telex spells marks like ế, ơ and đ from ordinary letters.
Holding down e on the standard English iPhone keyboard brings up è, é, ê and ë — enough for French or German, where one mark sits on one letter. Try to write a Vietnamese name or message the same way and it stops working partway through. A character like ế never shows up in that row, and there is a real reason for it rather than a gap Apple forgot to fill in.
Why the accent menu that covers é does not reach Vietnamese
Vietnamese writes twelve vowel sounds with letters, not five: a, ă, â, e, ê, i, o, ô, ơ, u, ư and y. On top of whichever of those a syllable uses, it can also carry one of five tone marks — sắc, huyền, hỏi, ngã and nặng — or none. Put a vowel modifier and a tone mark on the same letter and you get a single character like ế, which is ê with an acute accent added on top of it, not two marks a press-and-hold row could ever show side by side. The English keyboard’s accent menu was built to offer one variant per hold; Vietnamese routinely needs two layered on the same base letter, so no amount of holding e gets you there.
Turning on the Vietnamese keyboard
- Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard…
- Choose Vietnamese from the list.
- It joins your keyboard list immediately, no restart or extra setup needed.
- Tap the globe key 🌐 in any text field to switch to it, or press and hold the globe for a picker if you have several keyboards installed.
Typing the marks with Telex
Vietnamese keyboards, on a phone or a computer, are almost never typed with a key per accented letter — there simply are not enough keys. Instead they use Telex: you keep typing on the same Latin keys, and a second letter typed right after the first tells the keyboard which modifier or tone to apply. It is the same idea as holding a key for an accent, just spelled out in full rather than shown as a popup.
Vowel and consonant modifiers, each made by doubling a letter or adding w:
- aa → â
- aw → ă
- ee → ê
- oo → ô
- ow → ơ
- uw → ư
- dd → đ
Tone marks, added with a single letter right after the vowel — before any consonant that closes the syllable:
- s → sắc, the rising mark (´) — a becomes á
- f → huyền, the falling mark (`) — a becomes à
- r → hỏi, the dipping hook (ˀ) — a becomes ả
- x → ngã, the broken-rising mark (~) — a becomes ã
- j → nặng, the dot underneath (˙) — a becomes ạ
Put together: cà phê, Vietnamese coffee, is typed caf phee — c-a-f gives cà, because the tone letter f lands right after the single vowel a; p-h-e-e gives phê, because the doubled e becomes ê with no tone needed. Việt Nam is typed Vieejt Nam — v-i-e-e gives viê, and j immediately after applies nặng to that ê, giving Việ, before the closing t. The tone letter always follows the vowel it belongs to, never the consonant after it, which is also exactly where Vietnamese spelling itself puts the mark.
When copy-paste beats switching keyboards
Adding a whole keyboard is more setup than a single word is worth. If you only need one Vietnamese name or phrase now and then, copying it from wherever you found it and pasting it with iOS’s own Paste command — long-press the text field, or use the Edit menu — works regardless of which keyboard is currently active, because the system is doing the pasting rather than any keyboard extension.
Where Kibo fits
Vietnamese is one of the 30 typing languages built into Kibo, sitting in the same list as its other languages and reached the same way — a tap or hold of the globe key 🌐 — rather than needing a second keyboard app installed just for it. Whichever theme, key sound and lighting effect you already have set stays exactly as it was when you switch into Vietnamese, because it is one keyboard with many languages rather than a different keyboard per language. None of this needs Full Access — that switch in Kibo is read only by the Copy word, Copy line and Paste buttons on its own toolbar. Kibo is free to download.
Frequently asked questions
Does iPhone have a Vietnamese keyboard built in?
Yes. Go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard… and choose Vietnamese. It works immediately, with no extra app or download.
Why doesn’t holding down a letter give me the Vietnamese accent I need?
The press-and-hold accent menu on the English keyboard offers one mark per letter at a time, which covers languages like French or German. Vietnamese often needs a vowel modifier and a tone mark on the same letter at once — a character like ế — and that combination was never built into the hold menu.
Do I have to learn all of Telex just to type one Vietnamese word?
No. For an occasional word or name, it is usually faster to copy it from wherever you found it and paste it with iOS’s own Paste command than to add a keyboard and learn Telex. Telex is worth learning once you are typing Vietnamese regularly.
Try it on your own keyboard
Kibo is a free custom keyboard for iPhone with real mechanical key sounds, a wardrobe of themes and RGB backlight effects. No account, no ads, and it works with Full Access left off.