Phan Dang Nhat Minh misses Vietnamese vowel question in Olympia competition

Phan Dang Nhat Minh, the 17th Đường Lên Đỉnh Olympia champion known as the “Google boy,” previously struggled with a question regarding the Vietnamese alphabet during the competition's warm-up round.

The question, which was posed in English, asked how many vowels are in the Vietnamese alphabet. While Nhat Minh answered 9, the correct answer is 12. The Vietnamese alphabet consists of 29 letters, including 12 vowels: a, ă, â, e, ê, i, o, ô, ơ, u, ư, and y.

The difficulty of the question stemmed from the requirement to process the inquiry in English before identifying the Vietnamese linguistic components. Additionally, the presence of similar-looking characters and the distinction between single vowels and diphthongs can lead to errors in rapid-fire settings.