It is part of the Austroasiatic language family of which it has by far the most speakers (several times as many as the other Austroasiatic languages combined).[6] Vietnamese vocabulary has borrowings from Chinese, and it formerly used a modified set of Chinese characters called chữ nôm given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ) in use today is a Latin alphabet with additional diacritics for tones, and certain letters