General history Chữ Hán (Chinese characters), also known as
chữ nho (Confucian script), were introduced to Vietnam during the thousand year period of
Chinese rule from 111 BC to 939 AD. Although the earliest extant texts written in chữ Hán appeared in Vietnam by the 10th century, chữ Hán was the only known writing system in Vietnam at the time, and had likely been used in prior times. Chữ Hán continued to be used in Vietnam after the end of Chinese rule in the 10th century and was instated as the official court script in 1010 and 1174. The
Confucian examination system in Vietnam was written in chữ Hán. It remained the official writing system of Vietnam until the 19th century with the exception of two brief periods under the
Hồ (1400–1407) and
Tây Sơn (1778–1802) dynasties when chữ Nôm gained ascendance.
Chữ Nôm is the adaptation of chữ Hán and creation of unique Vietnamese characters to transcribe the Vietnamese language based on approximations of
Middle Chinese pronunciations. It is speculated that chữ Nôm appeared as early as the 8th century using chữ Hán to record elements of the Vietnamese language, however the earliest extant textual evidence of chữ Nôm dates to the 13th century. Chữ Nôm includes thousands of characters unique to Vietnamese not found in Chinese. Due to social circumstances and linguistic inefficiencies, chữ Nôm never replaced chữ Hán as the primary writing system in Vietnam and was only promoted during the short-lived Hồ (1400–1407) and Tây Sơn (1778–1802) dynasties. Less than five percent of the Vietnamese population used chữ Nôm and only did so as a learning aid for chữ Hán or writing folk literature. As a result of its marginalized nature and lack of institutional backing, chữ Nôm was used as a medium for social protest during the
Lê dynasty (1428–1789), leading to its ban in 1663, 1718, and 1760.
Gia Long, founder of the
Nguyễn dynasty (1802–1945), supported chữ Nôm until he became emperor and immediately reverted to chữ Hán. Despite its limited usage, a sizable body of literature in chữ Nôm had accumulated by the 19th century, and served as a written medium for oral dissemination by individuals in villages. The two concurrent scripts existed until the era of
French Indochina when
chữ Quốc ngữ, the Latin alphabet, gradually became the current written medium of literature. In the past, Sanskrit and Indic texts also contributed to Vietnamese literature either from religious ideas from
Mahayana Buddhism, or from historical influence of
Champa and
Khmer.
Pre-writing During ancient times, the ancestors of the
Vietnamese were considered to have been
Proto-Austroasiatic (also called
Proto-Mon–Khmer) speaking people, possibly traced to the ancient
Dong Son culture. Modern linguists describe Vietnamese as having lost some Proto-Austroasiatic phonological and morphological features that the original
Vietnamese language had. This was noted in the linguistic separation of Vietnamese from Vietnamese-Muong roughly one thousand years ago.
Chữ Hán Chinese characters are specifically called (), () or (, ) in Vietnamese. or is commonly used to describe
Mandarin Chinese, as well as for Chinese in general. Possibly even a thousand years earlier, in the late first millennium BC,
Yuè elites in what is now southern China may have already adopted a form of writing based on Chinese characters to record terms from their own languages. During Chinese rule from 111 BC to 905 AD, Chinese characters were used as the official writing system of the region. Local texts written in Chinese probably also included some characters adapted to represent Proto-Viet-
Mường sounds, usually personal names or
Vietic toponyms that had no Chinese equivalent. Even after the invention of
chữ Nôm, the adaptation of chữ Hán to write vernacular Vietnamese, educated men were still expected to have a good understanding of chữ Hán and to be able to compose poetry in it.
Nguyễn Trãi (1380–1442) composed poetry in both writing systems. This familiarity with poetry in chữ Hán enabled Vietnamese envoys to communicate with envoys from as far away as Korea. became the official writing script of the court in 1010 and 1174. It was mainly used by the administration and literati. It continued to serve this role until the mid-19th century during French colonial rule when the traditional writing system was abolished in favour of transliterated .
Sino-Vietnamese readings of In Vietnam, texts were read with the vocalization of Chinese text, called (), similar to Chinese
on-yomi in
Japanese (), or the assimilated vocalizations in
Korean (/). This occurred alongside the diffusion of
Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary into vernacular Vietnamese, and created a
Sinoxenic dialect. The Sinologist
Edwin G. Pulleyblank was one of the first linguists to actively employ "Sino-Vietnamese" to recover the earlier history of Chinese language.
Chữ Nôm From the 13th century, the dominance of Chinese characters began to be challenged by
chữ Nôm, a different writing system based on the Chinese script to transcribe native Vietnamese words. These were even more difficult than Chinese characters themselves. Nôm script borrowed Chinese characters in their phonetic and semantic values to create new characters. Whilst designed for native Vietnamese words, Nôm required the user to have a fair knowledge of chữ Hán, and thus Nôm was used primarily for popular literature such as the poetry of
Nguyễn Du and
Hồ Xuân Hương, while almost all other official writings and documents continued to be written in Classical Chinese until the 20th century. According to language researcher Nguyen Thuy Dan, the majority of the Vietnamese elite up to the 19th century seem to have never written in anything but Classical Chinese and even criticized the use of Nôm. While chữ Nôm had emerged by the 13th century, very few extant vernacular texts in Nôm predate the 15th century, and even many later texts in Nôm were translations or rewritings of works in chữ Hán. During the 15th and 16th centuries, reformist governments translated
Chinese Classics into Nôm, but these translations have not survived due to being seen as subversive by successive governments. The
Tây Sơn dynasty (1778–1802) mandated the use of Nôm in both government business and civil service examinations but their policy was reverted after the dynasty's collapse. In contrast,
Minh Mạng (r. 1820–1841), the second emperor of the
Nguyễn dynasty (1802–1945), prohibited the use of Nôm in both areas. Poetry in Nôm was pioneered by
Nguyễn Trãi (1380–1442). He wrote Vietnamese poetry in Nôm using the Chinese seven-syllable pattern. Later in the 17th century, Vietnamese poetry shifted towards a native pattern of alternating lines in six and eight syllables. The epic poem,
The Tale of Kieu by
Nguyễn Du (1765–1820), was written in Nôm. While Nôm never replaced chữ Hán as the primary writing system, a growing number of Buddhist, Confucian, and moral texts had added vernacular explanations in Nôm by the 17th century. Some 19th century editions of Chinese classics also included translations in Nôm, later editions of Chinese fiction started including notes or translations in Nôm, while medical writers had to use Nôm to describe local plants not found in China. As a result of its marginalized nature and lack of institutional backing, chữ Nôm was used as a medium for social protest during the
Lê dynasty (1428–1789), leading to its ban in 1663, 1718, and 1760.
Gia Long (r. 1802–1820), founder of the Nguyễn dynasty, supported chữ Nôm until he became emperor and immediately reverted to chữ Hán. Despite its limited usage, a sizable body of literature in chữ Nôm had accumulated by the 19th century, and served as a written medium for oral dissemination by individuals in villages.
Quốc âm tân tự Quốc âm tân tự (
chữ Hán: 國音新字), literally 'new script of national sound (language)', was a writing system for Vietnamese proposed in the mid-19th century. Two documents written on this type of script (four pages each) are kept at the Institute for the Study of Hán-Nôm: An older unnamed manuscript, and a more recent copy called Quốc âm tân tự (國音新字). There is no information in the text of the Quốc âm tân tự that indicates the specific date and year this work was written. Based on the fact that in the preface of the work the last stroke of the character "華" (Hoa) has been omitted due to
naming taboo, it can be guessed that this text was written during the reign of Emperor
Thiệu Trị (whose mother's name was "Hồ Thị Hoa" 胡氏華). At the end of the text's preface, there is a line "五星聚斗，南城居士阮子書" (Ngũ tinh tụ đẩu, Nam thành cư sĩ Nguyễn Tử thư; Written by Nguyễn Tử, a scholar of the Southern Citiadel, on the Conjunction of the Five Planets). Quốc âm tân tự is a type of phonetic syllabary script made from the strokes of chữ Hán and chữ Nôm, similar to
Hiragana and
Katakana of Japanese or
Bopomofo in Chinese. Based on the pronunciation of Vietnamese, there are 22
cán tự (幹字) and 110
chi tự (枝字) ("cán" means trunk, "chi" means branches, "tự" means character).
Cán tự is used to record the first consonant, and the
chi tự is used to write the rhyme. Each character is named with a word that rhymes "ông" with the first consonant being the first consonant that the character signifies, for example, the word "đ" denotes the consonant "đ" is named "đông" (similar to today, the Vietnamese call the consonant "đ" the sound "đờ"). Quốc âm tân tự does not distinguish between "d" and "gi" as in the Vietnamese alphabet due to orthographic differences. There is a shank used to record the initial consonant /ʔ/, which is named "ông". The author of Quốc âm tân tự used four stroke types: (一), (丨), (丶), (丿) (also including "㇏" as a variant of "丶") to create the characters. Every character (including all "trunk" and "branch" characters) has a total of four strokes. Most of the characters only use two or three stroke types, but the total number of strokes is exactly four. Quốc âm tân tự uses the traditional "tone" division, the tones are divided into four categories: "bình" (平), "thượng" (上), "khứ" (去), "nhập" (入). Each type is further divided into two degrees, " âm" (陰) and "dương" (陽). The tones in the old classification were called
âm bình 陰平 (
ngang),
dương bình 陽平 (
huyền),
âm thượng 陰上 (
hỏi),
dương thượng 陽上 (
ngã),
âm khứ 陰去 (
sắc; for words that do not end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/),
dương khứ 陽去 (
nặng; for words that do not end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/),
âm nhập 陰入 (
sắc; for words that do end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/), and
dương nhập 陽入 (
nặng; for words that do end in /p/, /t/, /c/ and /k/). Tones of âm 陰 degree are marked with a small semi-circle, and tones of dương 陽 degree are marked with a small circle mark. For example, đông 東 is marked with a small semi-circle on the bottom-left as (1) it is a tone of âm degree which then is marked with a semi-circle (2) it is marked on the bottom left as the
bình 平 tone is typically marked at the bottom-left of a character. Another example would be độc 獨 which is marked with a small circle on the bottom-right as (1) it is a tone of dương degree which then is marked with a circle (2) it is marked on the bottom-right as it is a
nhập 入 tone. Quốc âm tân tự can be written vertically or horizontally like chữ Hán and chữ Nôm, and is a set of phonetic scripts created by the Vietnamese themselves (when
chữ Nôm is a logographic system created by the Vietnamese,
Quốc Ngữ is a phonetic script created by
Francisco de Pina). When Quốc âm tân tự was created, it did not gain any widespread usage due to it just being a proposal, and because the political and social situation of Vietnam was too complicated at that time due to the gradual weakening of Nguyễn rule and the beginning of the French invasion.
Chữ Quốc ngữ Vietnamese in
Latin script, called
chữ Quốc ngữ, is the currently used script. It was first developed by Portuguese missionaries in the 17th century, based on the
pronunciation of
Portuguese language and
alphabet. For 200 years, chữ Quốc ngữ was mainly used within the Catholic community. However it was mainly used a tool for missionaries to learn Vietnamese. The main script for Vietnamese Catholic texts was chữ Nôm. During
French administration, the alphabet was further modified and then later made a part of compulsory education in 1910. Meanwhile, the use of chu Hán and chữ Nôm started to decline. At this time there were briefly four competing writing systems in Vietnam;
chữ Hán,
chữ Nôm,
chữ Quốc ngữ, and French. Although
Gia Định Báo, the first Vietnamese newspaper in
chữ Quốc ngữ, was founded in 1865, Vietnamese nationalists continued to use chữ Nôm until after the
First World War. After French rule,
chữ Quốc ngữ became the favored
written language of the Vietnamese independence movement.
BBC journalist
Nguyễn Giang noted that while the early Christian missionaries are credited with creating the Vietnamese alphabet, what they did was not unique or difficult and would have been done later without them had they not created it. Giang further stated that the main reason for the popularisation of the Latin alphabet in the
Nguyễn dynasty (the
French protectorates of Annam and
Tonkin) was because of the pioneering efforts by intellectuals from
French Cochinchina combined with the progressive and scientific policies of the French government in French Indochina, that created the momentum for the usage of
chữ Quốc ngữ to spread. The
Võ Cạnh inscription is also the oldest
Sanskrit inscription ever found in
Southeast Asia, a legacy of
Lâm Ấp,
Champa, and
Funan kingdoms. The most well-known modern Vietnamese phrase with Sanskrit phrase is from common religious Buddhist mantra नमोऽमिताभाय/ Namo Amitābhāya
(Nam mô A Di Đà Phật / 南無阿彌陀佛), meaning, "Hail
Buddha of Infinite Light" (translated directly from Sanskrit) or "I pay homage to the Enlightened One immeasurable" / "I turn to rely on the Enlightened One immeasurable". Additionally, many sites in Vietnam have names that are Khmer in origin, from when the land was under Funan and
Chenla reign, etc. For example, ស្រុកឃ្លាំង
Srok Khleang is written as
Sóc Trăng in Vietnamese. Hence, there is some Khmer influence in
Mekong Delta, Vietnam.
Tai Dam script The
Tai Viet script is the abugida used by the
Tai Dam people and other Southwest Tai-speaking peoples in Northern Vietnam, from 16th century to present-day, derived from the
Fakkham script of Tai
Lanna people.
Jawi script From the onset of the 18th century, Cham communities in the
Mekong Delta began adopting the Arabic-derived
Jawi script. Today, the Western Cham (Cambodian and Mekong Delta Cham whom majority are Sunni Muslims) use both Jawi and Latin alphabets to write their language, compared to the Eastern Cham who are mostly Bani Muslims and Balamon and still using Akhar Thrah (traditional) script and Latin alphabets.
Modern usage of chữ Hán and chữ Nôm (2011) Individual
chữ Hán are still written by
calligraphers for special occasions such as the Vietnamese New Year,
Tết. They are still present outside Buddhist temples and are still studied for scholarly and religious purposes.
Vietnamese calligraphy (
Thư pháp chữ Việt) has enjoyed tremendous success at the expense of
chữ Hán calligraphy since its introduction in the 1950s. Since the mid-1990s there has been a noticeable resurgence in the teaching of Chinese characters, both for
chữ Hán and the additional characters used in
chữ Nôm. This is to enable the study of Vietnam's long history as well as cultural synthesis and unification. For linguists, the
Sino-Vietnamese readings of Chinese characters provide data for the study of
historical Chinese phonology and
reconstruction of the Old Chinese language. Additionally, many Vietnamese may study Chinese characters as part of learning Chinese, Japanese, or Korean (since Japanese and Korean have a high concentration of Chinese-cognate words). In the process, they also end up with some measure of fluency with
Hán–Nôm characters. The significance of
chữ Hán and
chữ Nôm has occasionally entered
Western depiction of Vietnam, especially since French rule. Novelist E. M. Nathanson, for example, mentions
chu Hán in
A Dirty Distant War (1987).
Mixed script It is known that
Ho Chi Minh wrote in a mixed Vietnamese Latin–Hán-Nôm script. == See also ==