In informal writing, “W”, “F”, and “J” are sometimes used as shorthands for “QU”, “PH” and “GI” respectively. “W” (vê-đúp)” is sometimes used in place of “Ư” in abbreviations. The letters “F”, “J”, “W” and “Z” are not part of the Vietnamese alphabet, but are used in foreign loan words.Until the early 20th century, Quốc Ngữ was used in parallel with Chữ-nôm. During the 17th century, Roman Catholic missionaries introduced a Latin-based orthography for Vietnamese, Quốc Ngữ (national language), which has been used ever since. Vietnamese was originally written with a Siniform (Chinese-like) script known as Chữ-nôm. There are also Vietnamese speakers in the USA, China, Cambodia, France, Australia, Laos, Canada and a number of other countries. Vietnamese is a language spoken by about 82 million people mainly in Vietnam.
