Couple weeks ago, I meet one chinese tourist. he is very good looking man, but his mind is unacceptable. During conversation in chinese. He said.... why vietnamese adapted latin writing sytem to be the national official writing. This latin system is from european invaders. I said that is history, like chinese and vietnamese, you guy tried out 2000 years to assimilate vietnamese to become chinese then what? the same with european invaders they can not..just latin writing system is good for international communication protocal that is why vietnamese used it. He said... Vietnamese used " Nom" script or Han Scripts all most 2000 years but now why you guy stop... I said..because we are scare we are chinese again.... we can use Han, or Nom in festival or communicate with chinese but not official country national language... his face turned red...hahahaha

Is Nom's script really that difficult to use internationally?

No... Nom script is inherited from Han scripts, it is the same traditional chinese writing but not simplified chinese writing. Nom scripts like old style of cantonese writing. we can use it and publish it for nationwide but.... it is not good for vietnamese security for many reasons. That is why we stop use it and use " Latin Quoc Ngu as national writing system"
To compare Nom and Han it is 60 to 70 percent the same meaning of each character however some words the same writing with Han scripts but different mean in Nom scripts.

What do you mean by "security reasons"?

And the Chinese were what exactly?

If we use Nom scripts again. It is not good for vietnam security because Nom script was inherited from old chinese style writing. can you imagine if all vietnamese writing system was chineselike then chinese can read, can communicate and vietnamese will be assimilated in the future and become chinese. secondly, they can claimed vietnamese are chinese then they can have right to invade vietnam without reasons and vietnam will be their province like 2000 years ago. if vietnamese have millitary force like US or Russia... yes we can use vietnamse Nom scripts again and chinese don't dare to touch our ball but our military force are 35 % to compare with chinese force in power then what happen we use the writing system chineselike? Anyway, latin writing system is the official writing, but concurrently we also use our tradition Nom scripts in the Festival and in Temples in Han-Nom scripts. Hopefully, we can balance it in Latin and Han-Nom traditional characters.

But still, i don't see it as a national threat. Anybody in their right minds knows Vietnamese and Chinese are to different countries, with different political views. Other then that we're of the same origin! Its wouldn't be hard for them to hired someone who's literacy to our culture and use it to spy on us. Seem kind of a lame excuse for not going back to using Chu Nom script.

i think all Viets should be able to understand Han and Nom together; yet still use Quoc Ngu as the national language.

I think we should learn chu Khoa Dau instead. At least it's more useful in daily life. Nom and Nho is only good for understanding more of our history (temple writings and old books etc.). We can learn chu Khoa Dau much faster and have something to pride about cause its actually something we created.

why does a jong jong jing like him like to put his nose into Viet business?
piss off

i honestly think that it was a lose to the vietnamese that they do not have the nom scripts anymore...

i truly think that quoc ngu and nom should be written together. As in, writing in quoc ngu and using characters to represent names, countries, and very common words. characters are fast to write down but quoc ngu advantage is that its pronounceable. so why not both?

look at the japanese, they use both janji and hirokana and katakana together....

more in the past look at south korea, they use hangul and characters together.

vietnamese should not lose any more of its east asian traits, as this is what make vietnam unique in sea.

Viet is Viet
jing is jing
stop trying to link us with them
i am sick of you monkeys trying to do so

Seem like a good idea. Maybe they should integrate both.

not only is it a good idea, but very logical. My theory is that nom will only replace the the the most symbolic words in vietnamese. take example a name, structure, animal.....while the rest will be written in quoc ngu. If chinese, japanese, maybe korean, visits vietnam they can easily read these nom thus promote unity. and even the other way around if a vietnamese were to go to china or japan, they will be able to interact better with the surondings. in addition, the culture of nom will not be lost, all in the act of preservation.

If i were to walk down a street and saw a pho resturant in saigon, take "nha hang pho 101" meaning "pho 101 resturant" well if they were to incorporate nom and ngu it would be "[] [] pho 101" ....[] meaning a character related to nha hang. so a japanese tourist would wlk around and say "hey theres a pho resturant" by looking at the characters and not "wtf is nha hang?".

You do realize the chinese will still use its ecnomoic, political, and miltary might to influence viet and the SEA area regardless of what langurage u speak. If viet use more Han charaters like the koreans and the Japanese, then at the very least it will help promote cultural exhange, and better trade and relations. If viet decided to promote an-anti china tone, then it will only hurt viets interest. Lets face it, there is a few countires in asia in which viet shouldnt dare challege; 1)china, 2)india, 3)russia, 4)japan, and to a certain extand 5)SK and NK.

haha So what you're saying is we would be unique by being just like the Chinese and Japanese. We would pride ourselves
of being one of the countries influenced by China. That we are like eachother or that we ARE eachother. Yay for a sense of belonging . -

Logical my a-hole.

If a Japanese doesn't know "wtf is nha hang?" tell them to go and learn it. What makes them so special out of all the other
nationalities of the world?

What's logical about spending soo much time trying to master a way of writing when you can learn an easier way and use it to learn and master new things? Nom is more hard than Han because it needs Han characters for both pronunciation and meaning. Meaning you have to first learn Han characters then learn to manipulate it's characters in order to write out Vietnamese words.

It'd be more logical to use chu khoa dau.
1. it was made for our language.
2. we made it.
3. only takes 7-10 days to learn.
4. it's alphabetical.
5. it's unique.
Not saying we should but if you're going to use this Nom argument i'd rather stick to khoa dau.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in for preservation but incorporation is a no-no.

If it's ain't broken don't fix it.

Damn attention whores....

When i read what you said, instantly i thought of just hot gas. let me tell you something. Vietnamese are extremely smart and more so clever clever people, but you tell me why to this day vietnam could not have developed their own way of writing their own script ( nom and quoc ngu were borrowed)? like the korean's and less prominently the japanese, they have a very effiecint writing system all of which where influenced from china yet they've managed to create an alphabet that is distinct. Dose this mean that the vietnamese scholars were lazy @$$ ppl who never cared to bring mass literacy even though education is highly regard of in this country? what pride can be pulled from this????TRY ANSWERING THAT.....it would be a vague answer.

i NEVER SAID that we are unique by being just like chinese, and we would pride ourselves of being one of the countries influenced by China. AND I NEVER INTENDED ANYONE TO THINK THIS WAY EITHER! but then agian, you know all to well hopefully, that vietnam is deeply influence by the chinese culture. Your telling me that we shouldn't be proud of that??? look at japan and korea....they are very very influenced by the chinese culture. Yet i know the japanese and korean are very nationalistic and proud of their country. yes vietnamese have pride, but not as much as the unity that south koreans and japanese have. AND THESE CONTRIES ARE AGAIN INFLUENCED BY CHINA!!!!! BULL.$hit...and don't telling me vietnam have champa and indian influences. i already know this, but it not that prominent in the vietnamese everyday culture!

WE ARE ASIAN HELLO!!!!!!!i don;t care what ppl say but VIETNAMESE ARE E.A. IN THE NORTH, S.E.A IN THE SOUTH. never less we are asian and we need to need to embrace this and what asia has brought to us....not what the west has brought to us. quoc ngu is good, but why should the vietnamese "embrace" what the west has created. all this means is we are western c@ck suckers and inferior to them (sorry i'm mad but generally the idea lol). Asian are not inferior to westerners! when the Portuguese not the french, created quoc ngu, it was never intended for vietnamese ppl but for the convience of the portugese missionary. Remember one thing, and always remember this. Vietnamese were forced to convert religions and adopt quoc ngu! you dont follow the rules, dead meat buddy. who had a choice now? the history is brutal with the adoption of quoc ngu. remember nom was created gradually, ngu was implemented. whihch you think caused more conflict?

i said for the convienece, of the japanese, chinese, korean, ect. if you like, go yourself and tell the Japanese to learn what nha hang is by themselves. next thing you know your mouth will swell up like coconuts before you can say hang. plus japanese will thing that vietnamese are individualistic and rude.

you don;t know whether nom is hard or not. why? cuase you've never learned it. sure lets use chu khoa dau! sure lets use chu nom. sure lets use both, everything we could think of.....

its was only my suggestion that would never happen anyways. thus if my logic should belong in your dirty @$$ hole, sure! i'm fine cause all other opinion belong in your hole anyways..

i think i will stop now.



oh yeah how are we supposed to use chu khao dau if we haven figured out its full alphabet?? and when 80% of vietnamese ppl have never even heard or seen it? lmao

kkk now i will stop.

holy $hit i can't stop!!

what is that anyways???

stop.....yeah i'll just stop, dis is scary $hit!

Wow what insecurity.

Excuse my ignorance in the matter, but what is chữ Khao Dau .....it sounds interesting, where can I read more about it?

^You posted a blog on it by Doremon. Haha


http://hodovietnam.vn/index.php?option=com...7&Itemid=32

Just have to implement it in the education system. 20 yrs later, we will have a new generation of vietnamese using chu nom. Though, there will be people using quoc ngu and chu nom, but eventually chu nom will replace quoc ngu if the government really wanted to.

Why waste time arguing with these americans, canadians, europeans, where you know they are not the ones who are deciding.

Unless you are arguing what it SHOULD BE.

Maybe 100 yrs from now, China might move from characters to pinyin. Never say never.

Don't be stupid! Look at Korea and Japan, they are like slaves of China. They have to study Chinese script sometimes to understad their languages, what pathetic. For the evolutions, Human stop use picture script and use sound script. I love Quoc Ngu and I think that is so beautiful compare to Chinese, Japanese or some countries around us.

keep dreaming...

some chinese may prefer VN to keep Nom because they could read it or at leats guess the meanings. It's not like they care how difficult or easy for vietnamese people to learn. Besides, it makes them feel good that other peopl use or copy their writing system. You know it's flattering.

people in china rarely brought Vietnam into their conversation. They don't really care what kind of writing system you guys using. Well it is quite pity that modern vietnamese writing do look quite ugly. I am just being honest.

^ and you think that we care whether you care or not? You think that we care what your opinion about us is?

being honest and probably ignorant at the sametime. It wasnt created to look good. It's just simply pratical. I have nothing against chinese characters. I think they're very interesting and of course meaningful.

I keep the opinion that I said a long time ago:

The whole point of a writing system is to non-verbally communicate with other people. So the more practical and understandable the system is, the more effective and successful it is.
With that being said, Quốc Ngữ win over Chữ Nôm for me.

for vietnam best interest right now ..... it is best to keep quoc ngu right now because it takes money and times to educated most of viet how to read/write in chu nom

yep. Think about it. It takes years for an average Chinese student to be able to read a newspapers in Chinese. For an average Vietnamese student it only takes a few months. I'll rather go with the more practical and effective writing system.

It is good to be honest. But honest people will still need to go to school just like everyone else
Of course, you are entitled to your opinion just like those people who think Michelangelo's works are too shabby

Hum in china a kid start learning to read at 7 and is able to read some of the newspaper about 10, you say a vietnamese kid can read newspaper about several months of learning ?

We don't care what vietnamese want to use for writing, it''s your own history you are throwing away, you can't read what your ancestors wrote, why should we care ?

What is 'Norm' script ? I have to admit I never heard it before, that one 'chinese tourist' must be very special, because I am pretty sure most of chinese have no idea what that is.

actually during cultural revolution, mao zedong tried to adopt latin alphabet in our language but because of tradition and a mass protest from nationalists, he abored that idea. thanks god he did! otherwise our next generations will lose everything that make China so special! lol i believe we are the only survival ethnic who still haven't adopt alphabetical language.

to singocongchu - hmm you are just making excuses ... if chinese people literacy level is the same, if not, better than vietnamese despite we use character while vietnamese use latin alphabet representation, the comparison is very slim.lol if vietnamese still use hanzi , i don't believe that will slow down vietnamese literacy level. it is all about hard work and what you put into learning.

o. i think any non-chinese or non-vietanmese will find either of our languages hard to learn.

also the op is exagerating. it doesn't matter which language vietnamese are using. i don't think we see it as inferior or superior.

why not? 7 may be a little bit soon for "some" student to understand some more sophisticated words on the newspapers but I don't see how an 8-year-old (3rd grade) Viet kid can't pick up a newspapers to read (if they really care about the stuff on the newspapers).

you say a chinese kid can read a newspapers at the age of 10, and I'm assuming this is 5th grade in China...as I remember, when I was in 5th grade, I could already read hundred-page-long novels like "Kính Vạn Hoa". Oh I started to read some Viet history books I found on my dad's bookshelf since 4th grade ~ that partly explains why I know so much about the history of Vietnam, because I didn't just learn it in class but I also read more about it at home.

By 6th grade, reading and dictation were kids' stuff for us, we started to care more about advanced writing and analyzing skill. I left Vietnam at the age of 12 and see how good my Vietnamese is I can even write some 2000-word analytical essay in Vietnamese

yeah vietnamese is easy to write too you just have to sound it out and right it the way it sounds

^ actually if you're Southern Vietnamese, spelling can be a bit hard for you because you don't distinguish the tones of hỏi and ngã, the sounds of oi and ôi, au and ao, ai and ay, ăm and âm, [d] and [v], [d] and [gi], [-n] ending and [-ng] ending, [-t] ending and [-c] ending, ấp and ắp, ong and ông, and heaps of other sounds.

It was pretty tough indeed, at least for me. There was no other way you could do except memorizing the words, which ones go with hỏi, which go with ngã, which ones are spelled with oi and which ones are spelled with ôi

Spelling is much easier for Northern Vietnamese since they speak the more standard and accurate Vietnamese.

^yeup this is especially noticeable if you speak to southerners on some sort of messenger application.
bay dat with bay dac de~ with de? muon with muong. Lol.

It's like when people type lyke dis. Except not purposely.

Ban nay noi chuyen dzui ghe, tui dau co danh' dang` sai gi dau?

Vietnamese people can use English, Quoc Ngu, Han-Nom. But Han-Nom is not for NationWide, use it as preserving cultures only. Students can have 2 hours a week to study Han-Nom scripts in Temples... it is also good for their mentalities and moral. if reading more buddism bible.

"Chinese Characters in the Vietnamese Language

For almost millennium (111BC to 938AD), Vietnam was under the direct rule of China. Classical Chinese (chu nho or chu han in Vietnamese) was the official written language of the country and even after its dependence from China. As the result of such massive Chinese influence, there are a large number of Sinitic words in the Vietnamese vocabulary.


After Vietnam gained its independence from China, scholars began to develop a logographic script, known as chu nom (southern script) to represent Vietnamese speech. It is a classical vernacular script based on orthodox Chinese characters supplemented by a set of new characters specifically devised to write Vietnamese words. These modified Chinese characters usually consist of a phonetic element and a semantic component, both based on Chinese. The resulting look-alike Chinese characters, completely unintelligible to people from China itself, are considerably more complex than the originals and have never been considered as part of the greater family of Chinese characters. For nearly 1000 years after independence, the chu nom script became widely used in daily lives and Vietnamese literature before the French colonial government decreed against its use in 1920. It is estimated that nowadays fewer than 100 scholars worldwide can read chu nom.


Today, the Vietnamese use quoc ngu (national language), an alphabet based on the Latin one with some digraphs and diacritics. Based on a form developed earlier by Portuguese missionaries, quoc ngu was developed by French Jesuit missionaries who came to Vietnam in the 17th cenutry. By the 18th century, quoc ngu had more or less acquired the form used today.
...

By the same token, alarmed by the fact that Vietnam’s written history is virtually inaccessible to 80 million speakers of the language, the Vietnamese government is also reassessing the role of Chinese script in preserving cultural traditions. As a result, an Institute of Sino-Nom Studies has been established to pursue research in this area.
...
At the practical level, there is also an increasing need for countries that use or have used Chinese characters to standardize these characters for informational interchange and to conform to the Unicode Standard, a process known as “Han unification” (Figure 3). The Ideographic Rapporteur Group (IRG) responsible for this process comprises experts from Chinese-speaking countries, Japan, North and South Korea, and Vietnam. Processes like this could pave way for even more future cultural and technological exchanges within the sinitic sphere. "

Source: http://www.allempires.com/article/index.ph...chinese_letters

So, the government is considering reviving chu nom?!?! Maybe, the idea of using both Chu nom and qouc in a literature context isn't a bad idea. I'm telling you its a brilliant!

Well, XuanZang... reading more and more. I know mostly Chinese think that Vietnamese used Han scripts and speak chinese almost 2000 years as official language cuz you guys see the history books and buddism bible. But the realities is not.. Viet used Han for 1300 years only and create New Scripts called Nom Scripts, Nom = Nam = South. Ok This scripts are chineselike around 60-70 percents, but 30 percents is added in the scripts by Viet and it become Nom. Although, Chinese can read it as well.
For Vietnamese security reason after defeating Manchu army invading then we have to think about using Quoc Ngu, Latin scripts to change the identity to avoid chinese assimilation becauze in 17-18 centuries who is bigger who have right to control the powers people have to listen
But today 21 century, we start to use it again..... but not for Nationwide. just preserve the cultures.
1]Quoc Ngu
2]English
3]Han-Nom
4]French
5] Han
6]Russia
7] Japan
8] Korea
9] German
10] Spanish
Vietnamese majority decisions language important levels.

Yeah you can read more about it here http://www.nomfoundation.org/

"On April 11, 2007, the Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Library of Vietnam in Hanoi to create a digital library of the National Library’s ancient script holdings in Hán and Nôm. This three-year project will open to the world a 4000-item cultural heritage of books, woodblocks, manuscripts, maps, and other materials on paper. For the first time, anyone with a computer, anywhere in the world, will be able to access this collection...with a click of mouse. This is a three-year project with an expected completion in 2010. For further information please contact us at info@nomfoundation.org"

there. It's supposed to be "vui" (not dzui), "toi" (not tui), and "van" (not dang)

i know u did that purposely.

Actually we have no idea how long vietnamese used Han scripts, most people know hardly anything about vietnam at all, general we know you have used Han scripts before and some people think you are still using it, while other people think you have stopped using it long time ago. What most people know about vietnam are limited to Hu chi ming, vietname independance from france, vietnam war against americans, then border disputes between china and vietnam, hardly anyone know much about the vietnam before the time of hu chi ming.

yes they have no idea and they assume and most of their assumption are pretty ignorant. I used to have some classmates from China and to my surprise they thought we still write like Chinese.

Thank you, Xigon.

Thank god that we write Quoc Ngu or Vietnam become a part of Holy China right now .