Vietnamese is an Austroasiatic language spoken primarily in Vietnam where it is the national and official language. Vietnamese is spoken natively by around 85 million people, several times as many as the rest of the Austroasiatic family combined. It is the native language of the Vietnamese (Kinh) people, as well as a second or first language for other ethnic groups in Vietnam.

Chữ Hán is the term for Chinese characters in Vietnamese. Chữ Hán are used to write Literary Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in the Vietnamese language. They were officially used in Vietnam after the Red River Delta region was incorporated into the Han dynasty and continued to be used until the early 20th century where usage of Literary Chinese was abolished alongside the Confucian court examinations causing chữ Hán to fall into obscurity.