Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations are the way Vietnamese people read Chinese characters. Going through the process of formation and development, they have become an important part of the Vietnamese language. In the field of literature, Sino-Vietnamese sounds are closely related to Tang poetry in China and Tang poetry in Vietnam. Tang poetry is a Chinese literary achievement consisting of systems of authors and works with strong influences on Sinosphere countries in medieval time such as Vietnam, Japan, and Korea. In Vietnam, Tang poems are read by Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations, which ensure tonal harmony. Scholars in China, Vietnam, and other countries have studied Tang poetry in terms of phases, authors, styles, and ideologies. However, there has been no attempt to investigate the characteristics and functions of Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations in Tang poetry. In this paper, we study the characteristics and functions of Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations in Tang poetry in China and Vietnam based on the comparison of similarities and differences of reading Tang poems by Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations and by contemporary Chinese by means of surveying 133 poems in Three hundred Tang poems. Comparative data on the ability to keep Tang poetry’s same tone rules and Tang poetry’s rules of Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations and contemporary Chinese show that both types of reading can either remain or break the rules of this poetry type, but their proportions are different. 54% of poems by Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations keep Tang poetry’s same tone rules and Tang poetry’s rules while the rate of poems by contemporary Chinese reading is 34%. The number of poems in which Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations can keep the rules while contemporary Chinese cannot is 28 (accounting for 21%). The number of poems in which contemporary Chinese can keep the rules while Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations cannot is 1 (accounting for 1%). The survey results show the remarkable advantages of Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations regarding the ability to keep Tang poetry’s same tone rules and Tang poetry’s rules compared to the contemporary language used by Chinese people. This is attributed to the fact that Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations are close to the sounds of Tang poetry and still preserve the tone patterns. With such a characteristic, in the process of cultural adaptation, Vietnamese people use Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations to compose, translate, as well as appreciate and study Tang poems. There were thousands of authors, and there were poetry collections of thousands of Tang poems written in Sino-Chinese in medieval time. The similarities and differences between Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations and contemporary Chinese in Tang poems prove cultural adaptation among nations, contributing to preserving the diverse beauty of valuable literary works of humankind.