Vietnamese is one of three Southeast Asian languages offered at SAIS. The M.A. and Ph.D. program require demonstrated proficiency, which includes the ability to understand conversation, a command of the spoken language sufficient for the exchange of political and economic substance in conversation with a native speaker, and the ability to read primary sources and other materials in the international relations field with accuracy and relative speed. As of 2000-01 five students were studying Vietnamese. SAIS offers beginning, intermediate, and advanced instruction in Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese language has an interesting history. With the ending of Chinese rule in the early part of the 10th century AD, Vietnamese culture developed independently. In the 17th century, Christian missionaries devised a romanized script which eventually displaced the older Chinese character-based writing completely. With the arrival of French colonial rule in the 19th century, the Vietnamese encountered Western civilization for the first time; an encounter which added yet another dimension to Vietnamese civilization and literature. Today, Vietnamese is a vibrant language spoken among 80 million people.

The Vietnamese Language Program is part of a much broader range of courses focusing on Southeast Asia in general and (at times) Vietnam in particular that are offered in Asian Studies.

Since 1994, more than 30 officials from the Vietnamese Ministries of Foreign Affairs, National Defense, Public Security, and staff of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party have studied at SAIS for the two-year M.A. or one-year mid-career M.I.P.P. program. This focus is funded by the Ford Foundation and the Fulbright Program.