Vietnamese is natively spoken by about 85 million people, primarily in Vietnam, where it is the official language. It is integral to Vietnamese cultural identity, known for its Confucian heritage, water puppetry, and Lunar New Year celebrations. Written in the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet (Quốc ngữ), Vietnamese grammar features a subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, no grammatical gender or articles, and a system of markers to indicate aspect, tense, and mood.