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[[File:Vietnamese wedding decoration.JPG|thumb|Although Vietnamese no longer read or write Sino-Vietnamese characters, such characters are still common in wedding decorations.]]
#REDIRECT[[Chữ nôm]]
'''Sino-Vietnamese characters''' were part of a writing system formerly used in Vietnam. The characters, called {{lang|vi|'''''Hán Nôm'''''}} in Vietnamese,<ref name="Terrell" /> were used to write two distinct languages: [[Classical Chinese]] ({{lang|vi|''Hán văn''}}), and a form of Vietnamese called [[Nôm]] ({{lang|vi|''chữ Nôm''}}).{{sfn|Hoang|2012}}<ref name="Noboyuki" /> Both forms of writing fell out of common use in the 1920s. [[Unicode]], an international electronic encoding standard, includes the “Nôm Ideographs,” a set of 9,299 characters assembled by the [[Han-Nom Research Institute]] in Hanoi. Nearly half of these characters are specific to Vietnam.

Classical Chinese was used by the royal court and for other official purposes. The [[Temple of Literature, Hanoi|Temple of Literature]] in Hanoi was the best-known school for the study of Chinese. Students who passed the [[Confucian examination system in Vietnam|civil service examinations]] could go on to become magistrates. Confucian scholars saw Chinese as the language of education and looked down on Nôm, while popular opinion favored Nôm. Only a small percentage of the population was literate in any language, but nearly every village had at least one person who could read Nôm.{{sfn|Marr|1984|p=142}}

In Nôm, Chinese characters are used to write Vietnamese. A Vietnamese word can be written using a Chinese character for a word with a similar meaning or pronunciation. Each character represents an idea, so the script is partly [[ideographic]]. In addition, each character represents a syllable, and therefore a sound. Because traditional characters have this dual property, nearly every syllable in modern Vietnamese has acquired a semantic meaning.<ref name="Hanna77" /> Like Chinese, Vietnamese is a tonal language. Since the issue of tone does not arise for Japanese or Korean, native phonetic scripts could develop for these languages without this complicating factor.
{{TOC left}}
Sino-Vietnamese characters were eventually displaced by the [[Vietnamese alphabet]], a Latin-based script that indicates tone. Unlike South Korea and Japan, modern Vietnam does not require students to study the traditional characters.{{sfn|Hoang|2012}} Fewer than 100 scholars worldwide can read Nôm.<ref name="whatisnom" /> Vietnamese literature written in Nôm, including classics like ''[[Tale of Kieu]]'' and the poetry of [[Ho Xuan Huong]], can now be read only in translation. However, character calligraphy remains popular as a home decoration and as a symbol of good luck.{{sfn|Hoang|2012}} The Han-Nom Institute, founded in 1970, collects and studies relevant manuscripts.<ref name="Noboyuki" />

==Language issues ==
[[Chinese characters]] are used to write various languages in China and elsewhere, including [[Mandarin]], the most widely spoken language in China, [[Cantonese]], spoken in Hong Kong and southern China, and [[Classical Chinese]], traditionally used for formal writing. The characters were formerly used in Korea and in Vietnam. Japan uses a mix of Chinese characters and native phonetic script. Even characters that retain their original meaning in all languages may be read in various ways. The character {{linktext|十}} is given as ''shí'' in Chinese romanization ([[pinyin]]), ''jū'' in Japanese romanization ([[Hepburn romanization|Hepburn]]), ''sip'' in Korean romanization ([[Revised Romanization]]), and ''thập'' in the [[Han-Viet]] system used in Vietnam. In all these languages, the meaning of the character is “ten.”

===Syntax===
{{Infobox Chinese
|qn= chữ Hán Nôm
|hn= <span style="font-size:140%;">{{vi-nom|{{linktext|𡨸|漢|喃}}}}</span>
}}
Modifiers normally come before the noun in Chinese, but follow the noun in vernacular Vietnamese. Chinese texts published in Vietnam often included a line-by-line translation into Nôm.{{efn-ua|Of the 366 medical references listed in {{harvnb|Trần Nghĩa|Gros|1993}}, 186 are in Chinese, 50 in Nôm, and 130 in a mixture of the two scripts. {{harv|Khắc Mạnh Trịnh|2006}} Such bilingual material can be compared to [[kanbun]], used in Japan.}} Even when the same characters appear in both languages, the order is different. Many Chinese phrases gained currency as loan words. Later, the word order could be reversed to correspond to Vietnamese syntax. The word "Vietnam" is from Chinese ''Nányuè'' ({{linktext|南|越}}), meaning “Southern [[Baiyue|Yue]]”. In Han-Viet, the same characters are read as {{lang|vi|''Nam Việt''}}. The word order was reversed in modern times. In Chinese, the phrase “Chinese characters” is written {{linktext|漢|字}}. This is romanized as ''hànzì'' in pinyin, [[kanji]] in Japanese, [[hanja]] in Korean, and {{lang|vi|''Hán tự''}} in Han-Viet. In modern Vietnamese, they are {{lang|vi|''chữ Hán''}}.

===Character construction===
The majority of the characters used in Nôm are of Chinese origin, selected because they have an appropriate pronunciation or meaning. For example, the character used to write the word "Nôm" is pronounced ''nán'' in Chinese and means “chattering.”{{efn-ua|This character ({{lang|vi|''Nôm''}}, {{vi-nom|{{linktext|喃}}}}) is identical to the character for “chattering” and is derived from it. {{harv|Lê Quý Ngưu|Trương Đình Tín|2007|loc=Vol. 1, p. 1406.}} So Nôm does not mean “southern" (''nam'', {{linktext|南}}), as sometimes claimed.}} The fit between the Chinese character and the Vietnamese word is not always exact. The word "Nôm" does not have any negative connotation in Vietnamese, but rather suggests plain talk, something easy to understand.<ref name="LacViet" />

Nôm includes thousands of characters not found in Chinese. In contrast, Japan developed only a few hundred [[kokuji]], Korea just a handful of rarely used [[gukja]]. These characters were created by authors who combined pre-existing elements. One element, called the radical, indicates the character's meaning, or at least a semantic category. The other element, called the remainder, gives pronunciation. For example, the reading ''ba'' is indicated by the character {{vi-nom|{{linktext|巴}}}}. In Chinese, this character indicates the same sound as in Vietnamese, but it's meaning is unrelated: "to long for." For the character {{vi-nom|{{linktext|𠀧}}}} (⿺{{linktext|巴|三}}), horizontal lines are added to indicate that the meaning is "three." "Father" is also ''ba'', but written as {{vi-nom|{{linktext|爸}}}} (⿰{{linktext|父|巴}}). "Turtle" is ''con ba ba'' ({{vi-nom|{{linktext|昆|蚆|蚆}}}}; ⿰{{linktext|虫|巴}}). Most Chinese characters were created the same method. As the correspondence between sound and meaning is different in Vietnamese than it is Chinese, the same approach resulted in two quite different character sets.{{sfn|Hanna|1997|pp=78–79, 82}}

When a character is read as Vietnamese, it is romanized according to its Nôm reading. When it is read as Chinese, it can be romanized into Vietnamese as Han-Viet, or into English as pinyin.

<center>
{| class="wikitable"
|- style="color:#fcf;"|
!Character!!Radical!!Remainder!!Nôm!!Han-Viet!!Pinyin!!English!!Code point!!V Source!!Status in China
|-style="background:#E6EAFF; text-align:center;"
||<span style="font-size:140%;">{{vi-nom|{{linktext|𤤰}}}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|王}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|布}}</span>||vua||bố||bù||king{{efn-ua|The remainder 布 (father) suggests that a king was viewed as a father figure for the nation.}}||U+24930||V0-3D5C||None
|-style="background:#E6EAFF; text-align:center;"
|<span style="font-size:140%;">{{vi-nom|{{linktext|𠊚}}}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|人}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|㝵}}</span>||người||ngại{{efn-ua|The remainder is an obsolete character whose correct pronunciation is not known. The Han-Viet reading is based on {{linktext|碍}}, a character thought to look similar.}}||dé <small>or</small> ài ||people||U+2029B||V0-3032||None
|-style="background:#CED4F2; text-align:center;"
||<span style="font-size:140%;">{{vi-nom|{{linktext|妖}}}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%; text-align:center;">{{linktext|女}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|夭}}</span>||yêu||yêu||yāo||to love{{efn-ua|女 means "woman," so this character specifies romantic love.}}||U+5996||V1-5165||GB 2312
|-style="background:#CED4F2; text-align:center;"
||<span style="font-size:140%;">{{vi-nom|{{linktext|越}}}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%; text-align:center;">{{linktext|走}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;text-align:center;">{{linktext|戉}}</span>||Việt||việt||yuè||Vietnamese||U+8D8A||V1-6846||GB 2312
|-style="background:#E6EAFF; text-align:center;"
||<span style="font-size:140%;">{{vi-nom|{{linktext|𠶡}}}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%; text-align:center;">{{linktext|口}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;text-align:center;">{{linktext|磊}}</span>||trối||lối||lĕi||sky||U+20DA1||V2-704A||None
|-style="background:#E6EAFF; text-align:center;"
||<span style="font-size:140%;">{{vi-nom|{{linktext|㐱}}}}</span>||{{linktext|人}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|彡}}</span>||chỉn <small>or</small> xỉn||chẩn||zhěn||Used in ''bủn xỉn'' (stingy)||U+3431||V2-8875||HDZ, Kangxi
|-style="background:#CED4F2; text-align:center;"
||<span style="font-size:140%;">{{vi-nom|{{linktext|𧹼}}}}</span>{{efn-ua|The dictionary character for "red" is {{vi-nom|{{linktext|𧺃}}}} (''đỏ''). This is a manuscript variant.}}||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|赤}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|都}}</span>||đỏ||đô||dū||red||U+27E7C||V3-3836||None
|-style="background:#f9f9f9; text-align:center;"
||<span style="font-size:140%;">{{vi-nom|{{linktext|𫋙}}}}</span>{{efn-ua|This is a manuscript variant of {{vi-nom|{{linktext|強}}}} (''càng'').}}||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|虫}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|強}}</span>||càng||cường||jiàng||more, less||U+2B2D9||V4-536F||None
|-style="background:#f9f9f9; text-align:center;"
||<span style="font-size:140%;">[[File:Nom Character V04-405E.svg|20px]]</span>{{efn-ua|This character is specific to the [[Tay people]] of northern Vietnam {{harv|Hoàng Triều Ân|p=178}}. It is a variation of {{vi-nom|朝}}, the corresponding character in Vietnamese.<ref name="NomFoundation" />}}||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|乙}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|朝}}</span>||giàu||triêu||cháo||wealthy||Not assigned||V04-405E||None
|-style="background:#f9f9f9; text-align:center;"
||<span style="font-size:140%;">[[File:Nom Character V04-5055.svg|20px]]</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|米}}</span>||<span style="font-size:130%;">{{linktext|頗}}</span>||[[pho|phở]]||pha||pō||noodle soup||Not assigned||V04-5055||None
|-style="background:#CEF2E0;"
| colspan="10"|'''Key''': [[GB 2312]]-80 is the basic character set for Chinese; HDZ= ''[[Hanyu Da Zidian]]''; Kangxi= ''[[Kangxi Dictionary]]''.<br />
'''Sources''': {{harvnb|The Unicode Consortium|1991-2013}}, {{harvnb|The Unicode Consortium|2012}}. The Nôm readings are from the [http://nomfoundation.org/ Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation], Han-Viet is from ''[http://www.hanviet.org/ Hán Việt Từ Điển]'', and pinyin is from [http://www.purpleculture.net/chinese-pinyin-converter/ Purple Culture].</small>
|}
</center>

==Encoding==
In 1994, the [[Ideographic Rapporteur Group]] agreed to include Sino-Vietnamese characters in Unicode.<ref name="Unicode" /> The Han-Nom Institute extracted 9,299 characters from two references published in the 1970s, {{harvnb|Vũ Văn Kính|Nguyễn Quang Xỷ|1971}} and {{harvnb|Hồ Lê|1976}}.{{sfn|Nguyễn Quang Hồng|2008}} This collection, called the "Nôm Ideographs", was submitted to Unicode in 2001. V Source annotations were attached to the glyphs that were already encoded, and the rest were added to [[CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B|Extension B]].<ref name="Unibook" /> The institute has proposed two extensions to the Nôm character set.{{efn-ua|The characters in V4 and V04 were extracted from various sources, including {{harvnb|Vũ Văn Kính|1994}}, which supplements the author’s 1971 dictionary; {{harvnb|Hoàng Triều Ân|2003}}, a dictionary of characters formerly used by the [[Tay people]] of northern Vietnam; {{harvnb|Trần Văn Kiệm|2004}}, which presents the research of the Nôm Foundation; and {{harvnb|Nguyễn Quang Hồng|2006}}, which presents the research of the Han-Nom Institute.}} Unicode recognizes 11,110 V Source characters, both published and scheduled. In addition, there is a set of about 900 characters that the institute regards as Nôm, but which Unicode has declined to annotate.{{sfn|Nguyễn Quang Hồng|2008}}

<center>
{| class="wikitable"
|- style="color:#fcf;"|
!Code!!Characters!!Unicode block!!Standard!!Date!!V Source!!Sources
|- style="background:#E6EAFF;"
| style="text-align:center;"|V0||2,246||Basic Block (593), A (138), B (1,515)||TCVN 5773:1993||2001||V0-3021 to V0-4927||{{harvnb|Vũ Văn Kính|Nguyễn Quang Xỷ|1971}}
|- style="background:#CED4F2;"
| style="text-align:center;"|V1||3,311||Basic Block (3,110), C (1)||TCVN 6056:1995||1999||V1-4A21 to V1-6D35||Vũ Văn Kính & Nguyễn Quang Xỷ 1971, {{harvnb|Hồ Lê|1976}}
|- style="background:#E6EAFF;"
| style="text-align:center;"|V2||3,205||Basic Block (763), A (151), B (2,291)||VHN 01:1998||2001||V2-6E21 to V2-9171||Vũ Văn Kính & Nguyễn Quang Xỷ 1971, Hồ Lê 1976
|- style="background:#CED4F2;"
| style="text-align:center;"|V3||535||Basic Block (91), A (19), B (425)||VHN 02:1998||2001||V3-3021 to V3-3644||Manuscripts
|- style="background:#f9f9f9;"
| style="text-align:center;"|V4||785 <small>(encoded)</small>||Extension C||Defined in terms of the sources given||2009||V4-4021 to V4-4B2F||{{harvnb|Vũ Văn Kính|1994}}, {{harvnb|Hoàng Triều Ân|2003}}, {{harvnb|Nguyễn Quang Hồng|2006}}
|- style="background:#f9f9f9;"
| style="text-align:center;"|V04||1,028||Extension E||Unencoded V4 and V6 characters||Projected||V04-4022 to V04-583E||Vũ Văn Kính 1994, Hoàng Triều Ân 2003, {{harvnb|Trần Văn Kiệm|2004}}, Nguyễn Quang Hồng 2006, manuscripts
|- style="background:#f9f9f9;"
| style="text-align:center;"|V5||~900||colspan="2"|Proposed in 2001, but already encoded. No V Source code added.||2001||None||Vũ Văn Kính & Nguyễn Quang Xỷ 1971, Hồ Lê 1976
|- style="background:#CEF2E0;"
| colspan="7"|<small>'''Sources''': {{harvnb|Nguyễn Quang Hồng|2008}}, {{harvnb|The Unicode Consortium|1995-2013}}, and {{harvnb|The Unicode Consortium|2012}}</small>
|}
</center>

A proposed Nôm character is first assigned a V Source code, and later a [[code point]]. The code point is used to transmit and store the character electronically, and an appropriate font must be installed to render them. Characters in the basic block and [[CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A|Extension A]] were assigned four-digit hexadecimal code points, while those assigned later received five-digit hex. ''The Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire'' (2008) integrates the work of the Han-Nom Institute with that of the U.S.-based Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation.{{sfn|Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies|Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation|2008}} The book lists 19,981 Sino-Vietnamese characters. The is includes the 12,000 Nôm characters, as well as other characters that have Han-Viet readings, but necessarily Nôm readings.{{sfn|Nguyễn Quang Hồng|2008}}

== History ==
[[File:Nhật dụng thường đàm, p. 38.jpg|thumb|A page from the bilingual dictionary ''Nhật dụng thường đàm'' (1851). Characters representing Chinese words are explained in Nôm.]]
Chinese characters were introduced to Vietnam after the [[Han Empire]] conquered the country in 111 BC. Independence was achieved in 939, but the Chinese writing system was adopted for official purposes in 1010.{{sfn|Hanna|1997|pp=78–79, 82}} The Van Ban bell, engraved in 1076, is the earliest known example of a Nôm inscription.<ref name="CPV" /> [[Nguyen Thuyen]], who composed poetry in the 13th century, was traditionally given credit as the creator of Nôm. However, none of his work has survived.{{sfn|Hanna|1997|pp=78–79, 82}} The oldest surviving Nôm text is the collected poetry of King [[Tran Nhan Tong]], written in the 13th century.<ref name="Tong" /> Many Nôm documents were destroyed during the Ming occupation of 1407-1428.{{sfn|McLeod|Thi Dieu Nguyen|2001|p=68}} [[Nguyen Trai]] (1380–1442) wrote both Chinese and Nôm literature in the 15th century.{{sfn|McLeod|Thi Dieu Nguyen|2001|p=68}} Trinh Thi Ngoc Truc, consort of King [[Le Than Tong]], is credited with a 24,000 character bilingual Chinese-to-Vietnamese dictionary written in the 17th century.{{sfn|Viết Luân Chu|2003|p=52}}

Unlike Chinese, Nôm was not studied or classified systematically for most of its history.<ref name="Marr141-1" /> Vietnamese authors who had studied Chinese applied the principles of Chinese writing to their native language. Although official records were generally kept in Chinese, Nôm was used under two short-lived dynasties, the [[Ho dynasty]] (1400-1407) and the [[Tay Son]] (1778–1802). In 1838, [[Jean-Louis Taberd]] wrote a Nôm dictionary that eventually gained general acceptance and wide circulation.<ref name="Taberd" /> In 1867, Catholic scholar [[Nguyen Truong To]] petitioned King [[Tu Duc]] to replace Classical Chinese with Nôm in official usage. The king did not consent to this, but he did respond with various efforts to promote Nôm. A decree was issued entitled "Please respect ''quốc âm'' [the national voice]."{{efn-ua|Nguyen Trai also referred to Nôm as ''quốc âm.'' His collected poetry is entitled, "Quốc âm thi tập" (Quoc Am Anthology)}}<ref name="Dinh" />

In the 19th century, there was a flowering of popular literature written in Nôm, including such classics as [[Nguyen Du]]'s ''[[The Tale of Kieu]]'' and the poetry of [[Ho Xuan Huong]]. Although only 3 to 5 percent of the population was literate,{{sfn|Hanna|1997|p=78}} nearly every village had someone who could read Nôm aloud for the benefit of other villagers.{{sfn|Marr|1984|p=142}}

In Korea and Japan, the traditional writing system was simplified so it could be taught to the general public.<ref name="Marr141-2" /> These nations created only a few hundred original characters.{{sfn|Hanna|1997|pp=78–79, 82}} Vietnam's educated class looked down on Nôm as inferior to Chinese, so it was not interested in doing the work required to turn Nôm into a form of writing suitable for mass communication.<ref name="Marr142-2" />

Like Chinese, Vietnamese is a tonal language. It has nearly 5,000 distinct syllables, far more than other East Asian language do.{{sfn|Hanna|1997|pp=78–79, 82}} Phonetic scripts used elsewhere, including [[hangul]] in Korea and [[kana]] in Japan, do not indicate tone, so they cannot be applied to the Vietnamese language.<ref name="Marr141-1" /> As in Chinese, a semantic meaning is attributed to every syllable. This characteristic of the language may be can considered a result of the traditional writing system.<ref name="Hanna77" />

[[File:Han-nom parallel-2.svg|thumb|left|upright=1.5|The blue script is modern Vietnamese, while the characters in brown and green are Nôm. Characters that are also used in Chinese are shown in green, while those specific to Vietnam are in brown. It says, "My mother eats vegetarian food at the temple every Sunday."{{efn-ua|A diacritic is off. It should be, ''Mẹ tôi thường ăn chay ở chùa '''mỗi''' chủ Nhật.''}}]]

Beginning in the late 19th century, the French colonial authorities promoted the use of the Vietnamese alphabet, which they viewed as a stepping stone toward learning French. Language reform in other Asian nations stimulated Vietnamese interest in the subject. Following the [[Russo-Japanese War]] of 1905, Japan was often cited as a model for Asian modernization. Nationalists embraced the alphabet as ''quốc ngữ'' (the national language), and as a tool for promoting literacy. The Confucian education system was compared unfavorably to the Japanese system of public education. Nationalist writer [[Phan Boi Chau]] encouraged the young to "[[Đông Du|study in the East]]," meaning Japan.

The popularity of Hanoi's short-lived [[Tonkin Free School]] suggested that broad reform was possible. In 1910, the colonial school system adopted a "Franco-Vietnamese curriculum", which emphasized French and alphabetic Vietnamese. The teaching of Sino-Vietnamese characters was discontinued in 1917.<ref name="Chung" /> On December 28, 1918, King [[Khai Dinh]] declared that the traditional writing system no longer had official status.<ref name="Chung" /> The civil service exam, which emphasized command of Classical Chinese, was given for the last time at the imperial capital of [[Huế|Hue]] on January 4, 1919.<ref name="Chung" /> The examination system, and the education system based on it, had been in effect for almost 900 years.<ref name="Chung" /> China itself abandoned Classical Chinese soon afterward as part of the [[May Fourth Movement]].

In the 1920s, the Vietnamese alphabet became the country’s dominant writing system. By the 1930s, the use of Sino-Vietnamese characters was largely restricted to books with limited woodbock printings intended for the Buddhist clergy. In more recent times, Sino-Vietnamese characters have been used mainly in calligraphy, such as wedding decorations.<ref name="HoiAn" /> In 2012, manuscripts in Classical Chinese were translated to support Vietnam's claim to the [[Paracel Islands]].<ref name="VNN" />

==Most common characters==
The following are the twenty five most common characters in Nôm literature.<ref name="chunom" /> The modern spelling is given in italics.

{{div col|colwidth=15em}}
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|羅}}}}</big> ''là'' to be
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|吧}}}}</big> ''và'' and
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|各}}}}</big> ''các'' each; every
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|没}}}}</big> ''một'' one
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|固}}}}</big> ''có'' there is
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|𧵑}}}}</big> ''của'' of
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|得}}}}</big> ''được'' to get
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|𥪝}}}}</big> ''trong'' in
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|𤄯}}}}</big> ''trong'' clear
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|𠊛}} <small>or</small> {{linktext|𠊚}}}}</big> ''người'' people
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|忍}}}}</big> ''những'' (plural marker)
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|學}}}}</big> ''học'' to learn
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|如}}}}</big> ''như'' as
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|詞}}}}</big> ''từ'' word
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|會}}}}</big> ''hội'' to meet
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|咍}}}}</big> ''hay'' or; good
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|空}}}}</big> ''không'' not
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|体}}}}</big> ''thể'' body
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|四}}}}</big> ''tư'' four
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|拱}}}}</big> ''cũng'' also
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|𠇍}}}}</big> ''với'' with
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|朱}}}}</big> ''cho'' to give
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|社}}}}</big> ''xã'' society, company
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|尼}}}}</big> ''này, nơi'' place
* <big>{{vi-nom|{{linktext|底}}}}</big> ''để'' to place
{{div col end}}

Here are the twenty five most common characters in Chinese.<ref name="Zein" /> Where more than one character is given, the first one is the simplified variant, followed by traditional variants. Han-Viet is in italics, pinyin in parenthesis.

{{div col|colwidth=15em}}
* <big>{{linktext|的}}</big> ''đích, để'' (de) [grammatical particle]
* <big>{{linktext|一}}</big> ''nhất'' (yī) one
* <big>{{linktext|是}}</big> ''thị'' (shì) to be
* <big>{{linktext|不}}</big> ''bất, phầu, phủ, phi'' (bù) not
* <big>{{linktext|了}}</big> ''liễu'' (le) [verb particle]
* <big>{{linktext|人}}</big> ''nhân'' (rén) person
* <big>{{linktext|我}}</big> ''ngã'' (wǒ) I, me, my
* <big>{{linktext|在}}</big> ''tại'' (zài) at
* <big>{{linktext|有}}</big> ''hữu, dựu'' (yǒu) have
* <big>{{linktext|他}}</big> ''tha'' (tā) he, him, his
* <big>{{linktext|这}} <small>or</small> {{linktext|這}}</big> ''giá, nghiện'' (zhè) this
* <big>{{linktext|中}}</big> ''trung, trúng'' (zhōng) middle
* <big>{{linktext|大}}</big> ''đại, thái'' (dà) big
* <big>{{linktext|来}} <small>or</small> {{linktext|來}}</big> ''lai, lãi'' (lái) come
* <big>{{linktext|上}}</big> ''thượng, thướng'' (shàng) above
* <big>{{linktext|国}} <small>or</small> {{linktext|國}}</big> ''quốc'' (guó) country
* <big>{{linktext|个}}, {{linktext|個}} <small>or</small> {{linktext|箇}}</big> ''cá'' (gè) [nonspecific classifier]
* <big>{{linktext|到}}</big> ''dào'' to, towards,
* <big>{{linktext|说}} <small>or</small> {{linktext|說}}</big> ''đáo'' (shuō) explain; scold
* <big>{{linktext|们}} <small>or</small> {{linktext|們}}</big> ''thuyết, duyệt, thuế'' (men) [plural marker]
* <big>{{linktext|为}} <small>or</small> {{linktext|為}}</big> ''môn'' (wèi) for
* <big>{{linktext|子}}</big> ''vi, vị'' (zǐ) child
* <big>{{linktext|和}}</big> ''tử, tí'' (hé) together
* <big>{{linktext|你}}</big> ''hòa, họa'' (nǐ) you
* <big>{{linktext|地}}</big> ''nhĩ, nễ'' (dì) earth, ground, soil
{{div col end}}

==Notes==
{{notelist-ua}}

==Citations==
{{reflist|2|refs=

<ref name=Chung>{{harvnb|Phùng Thành Chủng|2009}}</ref>

<ref name=chunom>{{citation
|url= http://www.chunom.org/charsets/ |title= Comparison of Character Sets |publisher= Chunom.org}}</ref>

<ref name=CPV>{{citation
|author= CPV/ VietnamNet |url= http://www.cpv.org.vn/cpv/Modules/News_English/News_Detail_E.aspx?CN_ID=211994&CO_ID=10048 |title= International seminar on Nom script |date= Nov. 11, 2004}}</ref>

<ref name=Dinh>Quyen Vuong Dinh, p. 50. In Vietnamese, the title of the decree is, ''Xin khoan dung Quốc Âm'' ("Please respect the national voice.").</ref>

<ref name=Hanna77>{{harvnb|Hanna|1997|p=77}}: "As a matter of fact, Vietnamese is no more monosyllabic than Chinese or other languages....What Vietnamese does share with Chinese is a monosyllabic morphology that, in my view, evolved in both languages under the influence of Chinese characters."</ref>

<ref name=HoiAn>VietnamNet (July 18, 2011), "Hoi An, a central ancient city recognized as UNESCO’s World Heritage site, will hold free monthly classes on Han – Nom calligraphy to promote its cultural root."</ref>

<ref name=LacViet>Nguyễn Phương Mỹ, chief content developer, "mtd9 EVA, Version 5," LacViet Computing Corp. 1994-2009. See entries for “nôm” (“simple, easy to understand") and “nôm na” (“in simple terms”).</ref>

<ref name=Marr141-1>{{harvnb|Marr|1984|p= 141}}: "Some of the problem lay in the tonal and nonagglutinative nature of Vietnamese as contrasted with Japanese or Korean."</ref>

<ref name=Marr141-2>{{harvnb|Marr|1984|pp=141–142}}: "Known subsequently as ''nom'', this unique Vietnamese script unfortunately remained even more unwieldy than the Chinese from which it was spawned. Unlike Japanese ''kana'' or Korean ''hangul'', there was no process of character simplification that resulted in a basic set of phonemes or syllables."</ref>

<ref name=Marr142-2>{{harvnb|Marr|1984|p=142}}: "More important, however, was the attitude of most Vietnamese literati, who continued to regard Chinese as the ultimate in civilized communication and thus considered ''nom'' a form of recreation...Meanwhile, the minority of the literati who took ''nom'' writing seriously had to be careful not to offend the fraternity or be accused of subversion through circulating 'vulgar' texts."</ref>

<ref name=Noboyuki>{{harvnb|Noboyuki|1998}}: "Most of the source materials from premodern Vietnam are written in Chinese, obviously using Chinese characters; however, a portion of the literary genre is written in Vietnamese, using ''chu nom''. Therefore, ''han nom'' is the term designating the whole body of premodern written materials."</ref>

<ref name=NomFoundation>Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation, "[http://nomfoundation.org/common/nom_details.php?codepoint=63830&img=1 Detailed information: V+63830]."
<br/>VNPF, "[http://nomfoundation.org/common/show_radical.php?radical=0005&img=1 List of Unicode Radicals]".
<br/>{{harvnb|Trần Văn Kiệm|2004|loc=p. 424, "giàu."}}<br/>"[http://vdict.com/gi%C3%A0u,2,0,0.html giàu]", VDict.com.</ref>

<ref name=Taberd>{{harvnb|Taberd|1838}}: This is a revision of an unpublished dictionary Pierre-Joseph Pigneau de Béhain wrote in 1772-1773. A reprint in 1884 was quite successful.</ref>

<ref name=Terrell>{{harvnb|Terrell|p=126}}: "'''Hán Nôm''' Sino-Vietnamese characters."</ref>

<ref name=Tong>{{vi}} Trần Nhân Tông, ''[[s:vi:Cư trần lạc đạo phú|Cư trần lạc đạo phú]]''</ref>

<ref name=Unibook>{{harvnb|The Unicode Consortium|1995-2013}}</ref>

<ref name=Unicode>{{harvnb|The Unicode Consortium|2006}}</ref>

<ref name=VNN>''Viet Nam News'' (Sept. 27, 2012). "Da Nang's Study Encouragement Association introduced ancient documents translated from Han Chinese script into Vietnamese at their new Han Nom centre on Monday."</ref>

<ref name=whatisnom>{{citation
|author= Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation |title= What is Nôm? |url= http://www.nomfoundation.org/nom-script/What-is-Nom- |year= 1999 - 2013}}</ref>

<ref name=Zein>{{cite web |author= Zein, Patrick Hassel |title= The most common Chinese characters in order of frequency |url= http://www.zein.se/patrick/3000char.html}}</ref>
}}

==Bibliography==
{{refbegin|60em}}

* {{citation
|last= Hanna |first= William C. |title= Asia's orthographic dilemma |url= http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=aJfv8Iyd2m4C&source=gbs_navlinks_s
|publisher= University of Hawaii Press |location= Honolulu |year=1997 |isbn= 978-0824818920}}
* {{vi}} {{citation
|editor= Hồ Lê|title= Bảng tra chữ Nôm |trans-title= Nôm Index
|url= http://www.thuvienphatgiao.com/buddhistbook/detail/book-631/Bang-tra-chu-Nom-.html |publisher= Institute of Linguistics, Social Sciences Publishing House |location= Hanoi |year= 1976 |isbn= }}. This books lists 8,187 Nom characters.
* {{citation
|author= Hoang Trang-Lan Nguyen |article= Vietnamese neglect Han-Nom heritage |url= http://vietnamnews.vn/Sunday/Features/220749/vietnamese-neglect-han-nom-heritage.html |journal= Viet Nam News |location= Hanoi |date= Feb. 14., 2012}}
* {{citation
|author= Hoàng Triều Ân |title= Tự điển chữ Nôm Tày |trans-title= Nom of the Tay People |publisher= Social Sciences Publishing House |location= Hanoi |year= 2003 |isbn= }}
* {{citation
|author1= Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies |author2= Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation |title= Kho Chữ Hán Nôm Mã Hoá
|trans-title= Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire |url=http://nomfoundation.org/nom-tools/Nom-Books/54-Han_Nom_Coded_Character_Repertoire |publisher= Social Sciences Publishing House |location= Hanoi |year= 2008 |isbn= }}
* {{vi}} {{citation
|author= Khắc Mạnh Trịnh |title= Nghiên cứu chữ Nôm: Kỷ yếu Hội nghị Quốc tế về chữ Nôm |publisher= Institute of Han-Nom Studies, Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation |year= 2006}}
* {{vi}} {{citation
|author1= Lê Quý Ngưu |author2= Trương Đình Tín |title= Đại Tự Điển Chữ Nôm |trans-title= The Great Nôm Dictionary |publisher= Hứa Tuấn |location= Ho Chi Minh City |year= 2007 |isbn= }}. This is the most comprehensive Nôm dictionary with over 19,000 characters.
* {{citation
|author= Ngô Thanh Nhàn |title= Nôm Proper Code Table: Version 2.1 |url= http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~nhan/npct-2.1.pdf}} This includes the character list for V0, the original 1993 Nôm standard.
* {{vi}} {{citation
|author= Nguyễn Hữu Vinh |title= Tự điển chữ Nôm trích dẫn |trans-title= Dictionary of Nôm Characters with Excerpts |publisher= Institute of Vietnamese Studies |location= Westminster, Calif. |year= 2009}}
* {{vi}} {{citation
|editor= Nguyễn Quang Hồng |title= Tự điển chữ Nôm |trans-title= Nôm Dictionary |publisher= Education Publishing House |location= Hanoi |year= 2006 |isbn= }}. Hồng was the leader of the Nôm encoding project. This dictionary contains 12,000 entries.
* {{vi}} {{citation
|author= Nguyễn Quang Hồng |title= Giới thiệu Kho chữ Hán Nôm mã hoá |trans-title= Encoding of Han-Nom Fonts |url= http://nomfoundation.org/vn/du-an-nom/Kho-chu-Han-Nom-ma-hoa/Gioi-thieu-Kho-chu-Han-Nom-ma-hoa |publisher= Social Sciences Publishing House |location= Hanoi |year= 2008 |isbn= }}
* {{vi}} {{citation
|author= Nhóm Nôm Na |article= Quy trình Nôm Na: ''Giúp đọc Nôm và Hán Việt'' và chữ Nôm trên mạng |url= http://www.tapchithoidai.org/ThoiDai5/200505_NhomNomNa.pdf Quy trình |title= Tạp chí Nghiên cứu và Thảo luận |date= 5 July 2005}}. This article tells how the Nom Na Tong font was created.
* {{citation
|last= Noboyuki |first= Matsuo |article= The Han Nom Institute, Hanoi |title= Asian Research Trends: a Humanities and Social Science Review |url= http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=HtZVAAAAYAAJ&q= |publisher= Yunesuko Higashi Ajia Bunka Kenkyū Sentā |location= Tokyo |page= No. 8–10, p. 140 |year= 1998}}
* {{citation
|last= Marr |first= David G. |title= Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945 |url= http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=FkcZ_nGkW-oC |publisher= University of California Press |location= Berkeley |year= 1984 |isbn= 978-0520050815}}
* {{citation
|last= McLeod |first= Mark W |author2= Thi Dieu Nguyen |title= Culture and Customs of Vietnam |url= http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=a2TerRF1j74C&dq= |publisher= Greenwood Publishing Group |location= Westport, Connecticut |year= 2001 |isbn= 978-0313361135}}
* {{vi}} {{citation
|author= Phùng Thành Chủng |title= Hướng tới 1000 năm Thăng Long-Hà Nội |url= http://damau.org/archives/10281 |year= 2009}}
* {{citation
|author= Đình Quyền Vương |title= Văn bản quản lý nhà nước và công tác công văn, giấy tờ thời phong kiến Việt Nam |url= http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=uB2OAAAAMAAJ&q= |publisher= National Political Publishing House |location= Hanoi |year= 2002}}
* {{la icon}} {{citation
|last= Taberd |first= A. J. L. |title= Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum |url= http://staging.nomfoundation.org/taberd/ |publisher= J. Marshnam |location= Bengal, India |year=1838 |isbn= }}
* {{citation
|last= Terrell |first= Peter |title= Langenscheidt's Pocket Dictionary Vietnamese |url= http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=pyOzf86iZNUC |publisher= Langenscheidt Publishing Group |location= Berlin, Munich |year= 2002 |isbn= 9781585730599 }}
* {{citation
|author= Thanh Nhàn Ngô |title= Manual, the Nôm Na Coded Character Set |url= http://books.google.com.vn/books/about/Manual_the_N%C3%B4m_Na_Coded_Character_Set.html?id=YyIOHAAACAAJ |publisher= Nôm Na Group |location= Hanoi |year=2005 |isbn= }} Ngô's group was sponsored by the Nôm Foundation. This work was later integrated into the ''Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire'' (2008).
*{{citation
|author1= Trần Nghĩa |last2= Gros |first2=Franỗois |article= Di sản Hán Nôm Việt Nam [The Han-Nom literary heritage of Vietnam] |journal= Tạp chí Hán Nôm ''[Journal of Han-Nom Studies]'' |number= 1 (14) |year= 1993}}
* {{citation
|author=Trần Văn Kiệm |title= Giúp đọc Nôm và Hán Việt |trans-title= Help with Nôm and Han-Viet |url= http://nomfoundation.org/nom-tools/Nom-Dictionary |year= 2004 |publisher= Đà Nẵng Publishing House, Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation}}. This book contains 17,761 Sino-Vietnamese characters. {{harv|Nhóm Nôm Na|2005}}
* {{citation
|author= The Unicode Consortium |title= Unihan Database |url= http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl? |year=1991-2013}}
* {{citation
|author= The Unicode Consortium |title= Unibook Character Browser |url= http://www.unicode.org/unibook/ |year= 1995-2013}}
* {{citation
|author= The Unicode Consortium |title= The Unicode Standard, Version 5.0 |chapter= Han Unification History |url= http://www.unicode.org/uni2book/appA.pdf |year= 2006}}
* {{citation
|author= The Unicode Consortium |title= CJK E V8.1 M Set |url= http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n4358-A.pdf|date= Aug. 12, 2012}}
* {{citation
|author= Viết Luân Chu |title= Thanh Hóa, thế và lực mới trong thế kỷ XXI |url= http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=-XZuAAAAMAAJ&q= |publisher= National Political Publishing House |location= Hanoi |year= 2003 |isbn= }}
* {{citation
|title= Ancient Han documents on Hoang Sa Islands translated |url= http://vietnamnews.vn/life-style/230658/ancient-han-documents-on-hoang-sa-islands-translated.html |journal= Viet Nam News |date= Sept. 27, 2012}}
* {{citation
|title= Hoi An to teach calligraphy for free |url= http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/art-entertainment/10538/art---entertainment-in-brief-18-7.html |journal= VietnamNet |location= Hanoi |date= July 18, 2011}}
*{{citation
|author= Vũ Văn Kính |title= Bảng tra chữ Nôm miền Nam |trans-title= Table of Nôm in the South |year= 1994}}
* {{citation
|author= Vũ Văn Kính |title= Đại tự chữ Nôm |trans_title= Great Nôm Dictionary
|publisher= Trung tâm Học liệu |year= 1999 |isbn= }} This is the most widely available Nôm reference. It is an updated version of Vũ Văn Kính’s 1971 work.
* {{citation
|author1= Vũ Văn Kính |author2= Nguyễn Quang Xỷ |title= Tự điển chữ Nôm |trans_title= Nôm Dictionary |location= Saigon |year= 1971 |isbn= }}

==Fonts==
Some characters in this article may require the installation of an additional font to display properly:
* [http://sourceforge.jp/projects/hanazono-font/releases/ Hanamin B] &nbsp;– This Japanese font supports nearly 90,000 characters, including those in Unicode CJK Extension C.
* Nom Na Tong “Nôm Na Tống Light” – created by the [http://nomfoundation.org/ Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation]. It is based on characters found in ''Thiền Tông Bản Hạnh'' (The Origin of Buddhist Meditation, 1933) by Thanh Tu Thich. {{harv|Nhóm Nôm Na|2005}}.
* [http://nomfoundation.org/nom-tools/Nom-Font NomNaTongLight]&nbsp;– This font, created by the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation, is based on characters found in traditional Vietnamese woodblock prints.
* [http://vietunicode.sourceforge.net/fonts/fonts_hannom.html Han Nom Font Set] &nbsp;– This open source font supports over 70,000 Unicode CJK code points.
* [http://www.chunom.org/pages/fonts/ Fonts for Chu Nom]. How to display and use Han-Nom characters.

==External links==
{{Portal|Vietnam|Languages}}
* [http://www.chunom.org/ Chunom.org] "This site is about Chu Nom, the old writing system of Vietnam."
* [http://nomfoundation.org/ Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation]. Features a dictionary with the complete set of Sino-Vietnamese characters.
* [http://nlv.gov.vn/ef/en/han-nom-collection.html Han-Nom Collection], digitized manuscripts held by the National Library of Vietnam.
*{{vi}} [http://www.hannom.org.vn/ Han-Nom Research Institute]
*{{vi}} ''[http://www.hannom.org.vn/web/tapchi.asp Tạp chí Hán Nôm]'' [Journal of Han-Nom Studies]
*{{vi}} [http://tuyensinh.ussh.edu.vn/program/han-nom Ngành Hán Nôm]. A four-year program in Han-Nom is offered at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities of Ho Chi Minh City.
*{{vi}} [http://winvnkey.sourceforge.net/hannom/SoLuocCachNhapChuHanNom-toanbo.htm Cách Gõ Chữ Hán Nôm - WinVNKey] Software to allow the entry of Han-Nom characters by reading.
*{{zh icon}} [http://www.chinesecj.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=2596&extra=page%3D1 倉頡之友《倉頡平台2012》] [[Cangjie input method]] for Windows that allows keyboard entry of all Unicode CJK characters by character shape. Supports over 70,000 characters. Users may add their own characters and character combinations.
{{Writing systems}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sino-Vietnamese characters}}
[[Category:Chinese characters]]

Revision as of 11:19, 14 December 2013

Although Vietnamese no longer read or write Sino-Vietnamese characters, such characters are still common in wedding decorations.

Sino-Vietnamese characters were part of a writing system formerly used in Vietnam. The characters, called [Hán Nôm] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Vietnamese,[1] were used to write two distinct languages: Classical Chinese ([Hán văn] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)), and a form of Vietnamese called Nôm ([chữ Nôm] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)).[2][3] Both forms of writing fell out of common use in the 1920s. Unicode, an international electronic encoding standard, includes the “Nôm Ideographs,” a set of 9,299 characters assembled by the Han-Nom Research Institute in Hanoi. Nearly half of these characters are specific to Vietnam.

Classical Chinese was used by the royal court and for other official purposes. The Temple of Literature in Hanoi was the best-known school for the study of Chinese. Students who passed the civil service examinations could go on to become magistrates. Confucian scholars saw Chinese as the language of education and looked down on Nôm, while popular opinion favored Nôm. Only a small percentage of the population was literate in any language, but nearly every village had at least one person who could read Nôm.[4]

In Nôm, Chinese characters are used to write Vietnamese. A Vietnamese word can be written using a Chinese character for a word with a similar meaning or pronunciation. Each character represents an idea, so the script is partly ideographic. In addition, each character represents a syllable, and therefore a sound. Because traditional characters have this dual property, nearly every syllable in modern Vietnamese has acquired a semantic meaning.[5] Like Chinese, Vietnamese is a tonal language. Since the issue of tone does not arise for Japanese or Korean, native phonetic scripts could develop for these languages without this complicating factor.

Sino-Vietnamese characters were eventually displaced by the Vietnamese alphabet, a Latin-based script that indicates tone. Unlike South Korea and Japan, modern Vietnam does not require students to study the traditional characters.[2] Fewer than 100 scholars worldwide can read Nôm.[6] Vietnamese literature written in Nôm, including classics like Tale of Kieu and the poetry of Ho Xuan Huong, can now be read only in translation. However, character calligraphy remains popular as a home decoration and as a symbol of good luck.[2] The Han-Nom Institute, founded in 1970, collects and studies relevant manuscripts.[3]

Language issues

Chinese characters are used to write various languages in China and elsewhere, including Mandarin, the most widely spoken language in China, Cantonese, spoken in Hong Kong and southern China, and Classical Chinese, traditionally used for formal writing. The characters were formerly used in Korea and in Vietnam. Japan uses a mix of Chinese characters and native phonetic script. Even characters that retain their original meaning in all languages may be read in various ways. The character is given as shí in Chinese romanization (pinyin), in Japanese romanization (Hepburn), sip in Korean romanization (Revised Romanization), and thập in the Han-Viet system used in Vietnam. In all these languages, the meaning of the character is “ten.”

Syntax

Sino-Vietnamese characters
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese alphabetchữ Hán Nôm
Hán-Nôm𡨸

Modifiers normally come before the noun in Chinese, but follow the noun in vernacular Vietnamese. Chinese texts published in Vietnam often included a line-by-line translation into Nôm.[A] Even when the same characters appear in both languages, the order is different. Many Chinese phrases gained currency as loan words. Later, the word order could be reversed to correspond to Vietnamese syntax. The word "Vietnam" is from Chinese Nányuè (), meaning “Southern Yue”. In Han-Viet, the same characters are read as [Nam Việt] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help). The word order was reversed in modern times. In Chinese, the phrase “Chinese characters” is written . This is romanized as hànzì in pinyin, kanji in Japanese, hanja in Korean, and [Hán tự] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Han-Viet. In modern Vietnamese, they are [chữ Hán] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help).

Character construction

The majority of the characters used in Nôm are of Chinese origin, selected because they have an appropriate pronunciation or meaning. For example, the character used to write the word "Nôm" is pronounced nán in Chinese and means “chattering.”[B] The fit between the Chinese character and the Vietnamese word is not always exact. The word "Nôm" does not have any negative connotation in Vietnamese, but rather suggests plain talk, something easy to understand.[7]

Nôm includes thousands of characters not found in Chinese. In contrast, Japan developed only a few hundred kokuji, Korea just a handful of rarely used gukja. These characters were created by authors who combined pre-existing elements. One element, called the radical, indicates the character's meaning, or at least a semantic category. The other element, called the remainder, gives pronunciation. For example, the reading ba is indicated by the character . In Chinese, this character indicates the same sound as in Vietnamese, but it's meaning is unrelated: "to long for." For the character 𠀧 (⿺), horizontal lines are added to indicate that the meaning is "three." "Father" is also ba, but written as (⿰). "Turtle" is con ba ba (; ⿰). Most Chinese characters were created the same method. As the correspondence between sound and meaning is different in Vietnamese than it is Chinese, the same approach resulted in two quite different character sets.[8]

When a character is read as Vietnamese, it is romanized according to its Nôm reading. When it is read as Chinese, it can be romanized into Vietnamese as Han-Viet, or into English as pinyin.

Character Radical Remainder Nôm Han-Viet Pinyin English Code point V Source Status in China
𤤰 vua bố king[C] U+24930 V0-3D5C None
𠊚 người ngại[D] or ài people U+2029B V0-3032 None
yêu yêu yāo to love[E] U+5996 V1-5165 GB 2312
Việt việt yuè Vietnamese U+8D8A V1-6846 GB 2312
𠶡 trối lối lĕi sky U+20DA1 V2-704A None
chỉn or xỉn chẩn zhěn Used in bủn xỉn (stingy) U+3431 V2-8875 HDZ, Kangxi
𧹼[F] đỏ đô red U+27E7C V3-3836 None
𫋙[G] càng cường jiàng more, less U+2B2D9 V4-536F None
[H] giàu triêu cháo wealthy Not assigned V04-405E None
phở pha noodle soup Not assigned V04-5055 None
Key: GB 2312-80 is the basic character set for Chinese; HDZ= Hanyu Da Zidian; Kangxi= Kangxi Dictionary.

Sources: The Unicode Consortium & 1991-2013, The Unicode Consortium 2012. The Nôm readings are from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation, Han-Viet is from Hán Việt Từ Điển, and pinyin is from Purple Culture.

Encoding

In 1994, the Ideographic Rapporteur Group agreed to include Sino-Vietnamese characters in Unicode.[10] The Han-Nom Institute extracted 9,299 characters from two references published in the 1970s, Vũ Văn Kính & Nguyễn Quang Xỷ 1971 and Hồ Lê 1976.[11] This collection, called the "Nôm Ideographs", was submitted to Unicode in 2001. V Source annotations were attached to the glyphs that were already encoded, and the rest were added to Extension B.[12] The institute has proposed two extensions to the Nôm character set.[I] Unicode recognizes 11,110 V Source characters, both published and scheduled. In addition, there is a set of about 900 characters that the institute regards as Nôm, but which Unicode has declined to annotate.[11]

Code Characters Unicode block Standard Date V Source Sources
V0 2,246 Basic Block (593), A (138), B (1,515) TCVN 5773:1993 2001 V0-3021 to V0-4927 Vũ Văn Kính & Nguyễn Quang Xỷ 1971
V1 3,311 Basic Block (3,110), C (1) TCVN 6056:1995 1999 V1-4A21 to V1-6D35 Vũ Văn Kính & Nguyễn Quang Xỷ 1971, Hồ Lê 1976
V2 3,205 Basic Block (763), A (151), B (2,291) VHN 01:1998 2001 V2-6E21 to V2-9171 Vũ Văn Kính & Nguyễn Quang Xỷ 1971, Hồ Lê 1976
V3 535 Basic Block (91), A (19), B (425) VHN 02:1998 2001 V3-3021 to V3-3644 Manuscripts
V4 785 (encoded) Extension C Defined in terms of the sources given 2009 V4-4021 to V4-4B2F Vũ Văn Kính 1994, Hoàng Triều Ân 2003, Nguyễn Quang Hồng 2006
V04 1,028 Extension E Unencoded V4 and V6 characters Projected V04-4022 to V04-583E Vũ Văn Kính 1994, Hoàng Triều Ân 2003, Trần Văn Kiệm 2004, Nguyễn Quang Hồng 2006, manuscripts
V5 ~900 Proposed in 2001, but already encoded. No V Source code added. 2001 None Vũ Văn Kính & Nguyễn Quang Xỷ 1971, Hồ Lê 1976
Sources: Nguyễn Quang Hồng 2008, The Unicode Consortium & 1995-2013, and The Unicode Consortium 2012

A proposed Nôm character is first assigned a V Source code, and later a code point. The code point is used to transmit and store the character electronically, and an appropriate font must be installed to render them. Characters in the basic block and Extension A were assigned four-digit hexadecimal code points, while those assigned later received five-digit hex. The Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire (2008) integrates the work of the Han-Nom Institute with that of the U.S.-based Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation.[13] The book lists 19,981 Sino-Vietnamese characters. The is includes the 12,000 Nôm characters, as well as other characters that have Han-Viet readings, but necessarily Nôm readings.[11]

History

A page from the bilingual dictionary Nhật dụng thường đàm (1851). Characters representing Chinese words are explained in Nôm.

Chinese characters were introduced to Vietnam after the Han Empire conquered the country in 111 BC. Independence was achieved in 939, but the Chinese writing system was adopted for official purposes in 1010.[8] The Van Ban bell, engraved in 1076, is the earliest known example of a Nôm inscription.[14] Nguyen Thuyen, who composed poetry in the 13th century, was traditionally given credit as the creator of Nôm. However, none of his work has survived.[8] The oldest surviving Nôm text is the collected poetry of King Tran Nhan Tong, written in the 13th century.[15] Many Nôm documents were destroyed during the Ming occupation of 1407-1428.[16] Nguyen Trai (1380–1442) wrote both Chinese and Nôm literature in the 15th century.[16] Trinh Thi Ngoc Truc, consort of King Le Than Tong, is credited with a 24,000 character bilingual Chinese-to-Vietnamese dictionary written in the 17th century.[17]

Unlike Chinese, Nôm was not studied or classified systematically for most of its history.[18] Vietnamese authors who had studied Chinese applied the principles of Chinese writing to their native language. Although official records were generally kept in Chinese, Nôm was used under two short-lived dynasties, the Ho dynasty (1400-1407) and the Tay Son (1778–1802). In 1838, Jean-Louis Taberd wrote a Nôm dictionary that eventually gained general acceptance and wide circulation.[19] In 1867, Catholic scholar Nguyen Truong To petitioned King Tu Duc to replace Classical Chinese with Nôm in official usage. The king did not consent to this, but he did respond with various efforts to promote Nôm. A decree was issued entitled "Please respect quốc âm [the national voice]."[J][20]

In the 19th century, there was a flowering of popular literature written in Nôm, including such classics as Nguyen Du's The Tale of Kieu and the poetry of Ho Xuan Huong. Although only 3 to 5 percent of the population was literate,[21] nearly every village had someone who could read Nôm aloud for the benefit of other villagers.[4]

In Korea and Japan, the traditional writing system was simplified so it could be taught to the general public.[22] These nations created only a few hundred original characters.[8] Vietnam's educated class looked down on Nôm as inferior to Chinese, so it was not interested in doing the work required to turn Nôm into a form of writing suitable for mass communication.[23]

Like Chinese, Vietnamese is a tonal language. It has nearly 5,000 distinct syllables, far more than other East Asian language do.[8] Phonetic scripts used elsewhere, including hangul in Korea and kana in Japan, do not indicate tone, so they cannot be applied to the Vietnamese language.[18] As in Chinese, a semantic meaning is attributed to every syllable. This characteristic of the language may be can considered a result of the traditional writing system.[5]

The blue script is modern Vietnamese, while the characters in brown and green are Nôm. Characters that are also used in Chinese are shown in green, while those specific to Vietnam are in brown. It says, "My mother eats vegetarian food at the temple every Sunday."[K]

Beginning in the late 19th century, the French colonial authorities promoted the use of the Vietnamese alphabet, which they viewed as a stepping stone toward learning French. Language reform in other Asian nations stimulated Vietnamese interest in the subject. Following the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, Japan was often cited as a model for Asian modernization. Nationalists embraced the alphabet as quốc ngữ (the national language), and as a tool for promoting literacy. The Confucian education system was compared unfavorably to the Japanese system of public education. Nationalist writer Phan Boi Chau encouraged the young to "study in the East," meaning Japan.

The popularity of Hanoi's short-lived Tonkin Free School suggested that broad reform was possible. In 1910, the colonial school system adopted a "Franco-Vietnamese curriculum", which emphasized French and alphabetic Vietnamese. The teaching of Sino-Vietnamese characters was discontinued in 1917.[24] On December 28, 1918, King Khai Dinh declared that the traditional writing system no longer had official status.[24] The civil service exam, which emphasized command of Classical Chinese, was given for the last time at the imperial capital of Hue on January 4, 1919.[24] The examination system, and the education system based on it, had been in effect for almost 900 years.[24] China itself abandoned Classical Chinese soon afterward as part of the May Fourth Movement.

In the 1920s, the Vietnamese alphabet became the country’s dominant writing system. By the 1930s, the use of Sino-Vietnamese characters was largely restricted to books with limited woodbock printings intended for the Buddhist clergy. In more recent times, Sino-Vietnamese characters have been used mainly in calligraphy, such as wedding decorations.[25] In 2012, manuscripts in Classical Chinese were translated to support Vietnam's claim to the Paracel Islands.[26]

Most common characters

The following are the twenty five most common characters in Nôm literature.[27] The modern spelling is given in italics.

  • to be
  • and
  • các each; every
  • một one
  • there is
  • 𧵑 của of
  • được to get
  • 𥪝 trong in
  • 𤄯 trong clear
  • 𠊛 or 𠊚 người people
  • những (plural marker)
  • học to learn
  • như as
  • từ word
  • hội to meet
  • hay or; good
  • không not
  • thể body
  • four
  • cũng also
  • 𠇍 với with
  • cho to give
  • society, company
  • này, nơi place
  • để to place

Here are the twenty five most common characters in Chinese.[28] Where more than one character is given, the first one is the simplified variant, followed by traditional variants. Han-Viet is in italics, pinyin in parenthesis.

  • đích, để (de) [grammatical particle]
  • nhất (yī) one
  • thị (shì) to be
  • bất, phầu, phủ, phi (bù) not
  • liễu (le) [verb particle]
  • nhân (rén) person
  • ngã (wǒ) I, me, my
  • tại (zài) at
  • hữu, dựu (yǒu) have
  • tha (tā) he, him, his
  • or giá, nghiện (zhè) this
  • trung, trúng (zhōng) middle
  • đại, thái (dà) big
  • or lai, lãi (lái) come
  • thượng, thướng (shàng) above
  • or quốc (guó) country
  • , or (gè) [nonspecific classifier]
  • dào to, towards,
  • or đáo (shuō) explain; scold
  • or thuyết, duyệt, thuế (men) [plural marker]
  • or môn (wèi) for
  • vi, vị (zǐ) child
  • tử, tí (hé) together
  • hòa, họa (nǐ) you
  • nhĩ, nễ (dì) earth, ground, soil

Notes

  1. ^ Of the 366 medical references listed in Trần Nghĩa & Gros 1993, 186 are in Chinese, 50 in Nôm, and 130 in a mixture of the two scripts. (Khắc Mạnh Trịnh 2006) Such bilingual material can be compared to kanbun, used in Japan.
  2. ^ This character ([Nôm] Error: [undefined] Error: {{Lang}}: no text (help): text has italic markup (help), ) is identical to the character for “chattering” and is derived from it. (Lê Quý Ngưu & Trương Đình Tín 2007, Vol. 1, p. 1406.) So Nôm does not mean “southern" (nam, ), as sometimes claimed.
  3. ^ The remainder 布 (father) suggests that a king was viewed as a father figure for the nation.
  4. ^ The remainder is an obsolete character whose correct pronunciation is not known. The Han-Viet reading is based on , a character thought to look similar.
  5. ^ 女 means "woman," so this character specifies romantic love.
  6. ^ The dictionary character for "red" is 𧺃 (đỏ). This is a manuscript variant.
  7. ^ This is a manuscript variant of (càng).
  8. ^ This character is specific to the Tay people of northern Vietnam (Hoàng Triều Ân, p. 178). It is a variation of , the corresponding character in Vietnamese.[9]
  9. ^ The characters in V4 and V04 were extracted from various sources, including Vũ Văn Kính 1994, which supplements the author’s 1971 dictionary; Hoàng Triều Ân 2003, a dictionary of characters formerly used by the Tay people of northern Vietnam; Trần Văn Kiệm 2004, which presents the research of the Nôm Foundation; and Nguyễn Quang Hồng 2006, which presents the research of the Han-Nom Institute.
  10. ^ Nguyen Trai also referred to Nôm as quốc âm. His collected poetry is entitled, "Quốc âm thi tập" (Quoc Am Anthology)
  11. ^ A diacritic is off. It should be, Mẹ tôi thường ăn chay ở chùa mỗi chủ Nhật.

Citations

  1. ^ Terrell, p. 126: "Hán Nôm Sino-Vietnamese characters."
  2. ^ a b c Hoang 2012.
  3. ^ a b Noboyuki 1998: "Most of the source materials from premodern Vietnam are written in Chinese, obviously using Chinese characters; however, a portion of the literary genre is written in Vietnamese, using chu nom. Therefore, han nom is the term designating the whole body of premodern written materials."
  4. ^ a b Marr 1984, p. 142.
  5. ^ a b Hanna 1997, p. 77: "As a matter of fact, Vietnamese is no more monosyllabic than Chinese or other languages....What Vietnamese does share with Chinese is a monosyllabic morphology that, in my view, evolved in both languages under the influence of Chinese characters."
  6. ^ Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation (1999 - 2013), What is Nôm? {{citation}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)
  7. ^ Nguyễn Phương Mỹ, chief content developer, "mtd9 EVA, Version 5," LacViet Computing Corp. 1994-2009. See entries for “nôm” (“simple, easy to understand") and “nôm na” (“in simple terms”).
  8. ^ a b c d e Hanna 1997, pp. 78–79, 82.
  9. ^ Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation, "Detailed information: V+63830."
    VNPF, "List of Unicode Radicals".
    Trần Văn Kiệm 2004, p. 424, "giàu."
    "giàu", VDict.com.
  10. ^ The Unicode Consortium 2006
  11. ^ a b c Nguyễn Quang Hồng 2008.
  12. ^ The Unicode Consortium & 1995-2013
  13. ^ Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies & Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation 2008.
  14. ^ CPV/ VietnamNet (Nov. 11, 2004), International seminar on Nom script {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. ^ Template:Vi Trần Nhân Tông, Cư trần lạc đạo phú
  16. ^ a b McLeod & Thi Dieu Nguyen 2001, p. 68.
  17. ^ Viết Luân Chu 2003, p. 52.
  18. ^ a b Marr 1984, p. 141: "Some of the problem lay in the tonal and nonagglutinative nature of Vietnamese as contrasted with Japanese or Korean."
  19. ^ Taberd 1838: This is a revision of an unpublished dictionary Pierre-Joseph Pigneau de Béhain wrote in 1772-1773. A reprint in 1884 was quite successful.
  20. ^ Quyen Vuong Dinh, p. 50. In Vietnamese, the title of the decree is, Xin khoan dung Quốc Âm ("Please respect the national voice.").
  21. ^ Hanna 1997, p. 78.
  22. ^ Marr 1984, pp. 141–142: "Known subsequently as nom, this unique Vietnamese script unfortunately remained even more unwieldy than the Chinese from which it was spawned. Unlike Japanese kana or Korean hangul, there was no process of character simplification that resulted in a basic set of phonemes or syllables."
  23. ^ Marr 1984, p. 142: "More important, however, was the attitude of most Vietnamese literati, who continued to regard Chinese as the ultimate in civilized communication and thus considered nom a form of recreation...Meanwhile, the minority of the literati who took nom writing seriously had to be careful not to offend the fraternity or be accused of subversion through circulating 'vulgar' texts."
  24. ^ a b c d Phùng Thành Chủng 2009
  25. ^ VietnamNet (July 18, 2011), "Hoi An, a central ancient city recognized as UNESCO’s World Heritage site, will hold free monthly classes on Han – Nom calligraphy to promote its cultural root."
  26. ^ Viet Nam News (Sept. 27, 2012). "Da Nang's Study Encouragement Association introduced ancient documents translated from Han Chinese script into Vietnamese at their new Han Nom centre on Monday."
  27. ^ Comparison of Character Sets, Chunom.org
  28. ^ Zein, Patrick Hassel. "The most common Chinese characters in order of frequency".

Bibliography

Fonts

Some characters in this article may require the installation of an additional font to display properly:

  • Hanamin B  – This Japanese font supports nearly 90,000 characters, including those in Unicode CJK Extension C.
  • Nom Na Tong “Nôm Na Tống Light” – created by the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation. It is based on characters found in Thiền Tông Bản Hạnh (The Origin of Buddhist Meditation, 1933) by Thanh Tu Thich. (Nhóm Nôm Na 2005).
  • NomNaTongLight – This font, created by the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation, is based on characters found in traditional Vietnamese woodblock prints.
  • Han Nom Font Set  – This open source font supports over 70,000 Unicode CJK code points.
  • Fonts for Chu Nom. How to display and use Han-Nom characters.