Northern, central and southern Vietnam


Northern Vietnam, Central Vietnam and Southern Vietnam are historic, geographic and cultural regions within Vietnam. Each region consists of subregions, with considerable cultural differences between subregions.
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Northern Vietnam includes the following subregions:
Central Vietnam includes the following subregions:
Southern Vietnam includes the following subregions:
The Red River Delta in Northern Vietnam is the traditional homeland of the ethnic Vietnamese where various Bronze Age cultures such as Phung Nguyen and Dong Son originated over 4000 years ago. Through migration and conquests, Vietnamese people gradually spread south in a process called Nam Tiến.
Central Vietnam was home to Cham people, a Malayo-Polynesian ethnic group who founded their distinct Indianised Kingdom over the Central Coast before being subdued by the Vietnamese during the 14th century. Their predecessors, people who are now known as the Sa Huynh culture, dated back from 1000 BCE.
The Mekong Delta in southernmost Vietnam was part of Funan, Chenla then Angkor Empire. Chinese and Vietnamese started migrating en masse to this region during the 16th to 17th century.
Northern and Southern Vietnam was a fluid concept that changed constantly during the course of history. During the Lê–Mạc wars, Vietnam was partitioned with the Mạc dynasty holding the Red River Delta and Lê dynasty controlling the Central Region from Nghệ An to Bình Định while Champa and the Khmers still held their polities further south.
During the Trịnh–Nguyễn War, the country was partitioned between two ruling Lords with the border being the Gianh River in Quảng Bình Province. The North, called Đàng Ngoài was ruled by the Trịnh Lords and Nguyễn lords in the South, called Đàng Trong or Quảng Nam Quốc, with Lê emperors still nominally acting as head of state. The two sides ruled their own domain independent of the other, and frequently fought each other. The imposed separation encouraged the two regions to develop their own cultures.
After the Tay Son Wars and the founding of the Nguyễn dynasty, the country started getting the present shape with the center of power now switched to Huế in Central Vietnam. During French colonialism, the French divided the country into three parts, directly ruling over Cochinchina while establishing protectorates in Annam and Tonkin. Consequently, Cochinchina was more directly influenced by French culture than the other two regions. Hanoi, being the capital of French Indochina, was the only place in Northern Vietnam with significant French influence.
From 1954 to 1976, Vietnam was again divided into two separate countries,it divided by the Bến Hải River in Quảng Trị Province at the 17th parallel. The North, ruled by a communist government, was allied with communist China and the Soviet Union, while the South had a free-market economy, quasi-democratic government of the nation and had contact with the United States, the West and Western-aligned nations. Although the nation has been united since 1976, linguistic, cultural, and other differences serve to delineate the two regions from one another, with accompanying stereotypes.
The largest city in the North is Hanoi, the nation's capital; and the country's economic capital and largest city in the South today is Ho Chi Minh City.

Cultural differences

The cultural differences between the regions can be divided into two main categories: "tangible" cultural differences such as traditional clothing, cuisine, and so on; and "intangible" cultural differences dealing with stereotypes of behavior, attitude and such between the people of these two regions. Discussions of inherent differences between people in the North and in the South are prohibited and can be classified as "reactionary" in Vietnamese state-controlled media or undermining national unity.

Perceived traits and stereotypes

While relations between northerners and southerners are generally civil, the increased contact due to the influx of northerners into the south since the start of the Vietnam War have given rise to some stereotypes about people from different regions:
Cuisine is one of the cultural differences between the regions. Northern Vietnam being the "cradle" of ethnic Vietnamese civilization, bears many of Vietnam's signature dishes. The cuisine is perceived to be complex in ingredients but simplistic in flavours.
The South's cuisine has been influenced by the cuisines of southern Chinese immigrants and indigenous Cambodians, and thus Southerners prefer sweet and sour flavors, respectively, in many dishes. Examples of sour-flavored food items include Canh chua and green mango salad/green papaya salad. Southern cookery also tend to use a significantly larger variety of fresh ingredients while Northern cuisine much relies on preserved and dried goods. The cuisines of Southern Vietnam and Cambodia also share considerable similarities in ingredients, cooking style and food dishes, such as Hủ tiếu Nam Vang.
Central Vietnamese cooking is distinct from the cuisines of both the Northern and Southern regions, in its use of many small side dishes and requiring more more complex preparation. The royal cuisine of Hue places greater importance and food presentation, examples like Bánh bèo and Bánh bột lọc. It is also distinctive in its spiciness when compared to its counterparts, for example in Bún bò Huế. Food items from this region also tend to be lesser in size of individual portions. Central Vietnam dishes also feature a large amount of seafood.
Certain unusual foods are more prevalent in one region than in another. For example, dog meat is much more popular in the North than in the South. Cat meat is also eaten in Northern parts of the country. Similarly, certain seafood dishes and game meat, such as basa fish or grilled rodent meat, while popular in other parts of the country, is uncommon in the North.
Southern Vietnam has a renowned coffee culture while tea is the preferred beverage in the North.

Clothing

Traditional clothes are also often used to symbolize different regions. In women's attire, commonly the Áo tứ thân is associated with the North, the áo dài with the central region, and the Áo bà ba in the South. However, the áo dài is now a very popular and widely worn ladies' attire nationwide.

Linguistic differences

The Vietnamese language features many accents, the three major dialects are those of the North, Center, and South with major differences in phonology and vocabulary. Due to cultural prominence, the Hanoi and Saigon accents are mostly intelligible to speakers from other regions. The Central accent, in particular from the provinces of Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh, Quảng Bình, Quảng Nam, and Quảng Ngãi is often unintelligible to speakers outside of these regions.
Differences in these accents lie in several different factors, including but not limited to the following:
In Central Vietnamese, the number of tones is reduced to 5 or only 4. One of the distinctive feature of Central Vietnamese and Quảng Nam accent is the use of a different set of particles and pronouns, making it stand apart from Northern and Southern Vietnamese. For example, chi, mô, tê, răng and rứa are used instead of gì, đâu, kìa, sao and vậy in Standard Vietnamese.
While these differences may seem superficial to non-Vietnamese speakers, even the difference in phonologyThe vocabularies of the different regions also differ. between Northern and Southern Vietnamese is quite striking.
Kinship terms are especially affected, as each term has a subtly different meaning in each region. In the South, the eldest child in a family is referred by the ordinal number two, while in the North "number two" refers to the second-eldest child. The vocabularies of the different regions also differ. Vocabulary differences can be confusing as sometimes the same word could have different meaning in each dialects. For example, the word mận refers to two different fruits: it is used for Prunus salicina in the North, while in the South it refers to Syzygium samarangense. Similarly, dĩa means "disk" in Southern Vietnamese and "fork" in Northern Vietnamese; chè is a dessert in Southern Vietnamese but means "tea" in Northern Vietnamese, ốm means sick in Northern Vietnamese and thin in Southern Vietnamese. "bông" refers to flower in Southern Vietnamese but means cotton in Northern Vietnamese, the word for "fart" in Southern Vietnamese is a curse word in Northern Vietnamese.
While the entire country lies in the tropics, there is quite a large difference in climate between Northern and Southern Vietnam.

Differences in climate

Northern Vietnam has a humid subtropical climate, with a full four seasons, with much cooler temperatures than in the South, as well as winters that can get quite cold, sometimes with frost and even snowfall. The lowest temperature reached in Hanoi was 2.7 °C in 1955. Snow can even be found to an extent up in the mountains of the extreme Northern regions in places such as Sapa and Lạng Sơn.
Southern Vietnam, with its much hotter temperatures, has only two main seasons: a dry season and a rainy season.

Miscellaneous cultural differences