Dots Lines and Squiggles

I have begun studying Vietnamese. The people who first wrote Vietnamese down in Latin letters were Portuguese, and some French. So, you have all kinds of variations of what we know as english letters - an 'a' and 'o' with a 'hook' on the top right corner, then you have the 'hat' and 'smile' (those are thoroughly unofficial names) above some vowels like in french, only they really change the way you say them, plus tone marks above that. They have six tones, Chinese has four, and the way you mark them is pretty funny - one is a dot underneath the word, then you have a couple that are lines above the word like when writing Chinese in pinyin, then you have something that looks like a tilda in spanish, and you have to kind of make your voice do a little dip, then actually stop the sound for a tiny bit, and go up at the end... (it's not quite as hard as that makes it sound, but takes some getting used to) and another tone with a question mark looking thing (only smaller) above the vowel. Thus most Vietnamese words are surounded by various dots lines and squiggles!