I am just wandering what happened to Vietnamese Ideograms. Since the French occupied Vietnam in the 19th and early 20th century I understand they changed the writing system to the Roman alphabet. I am assuming pre colonisation Vietnamese had their own ideograms do you still use them or have has this style of writing been lost. Pretty sad if yas lost em.

The French didn't change it, but instead Vietnam elected to change it.

Awgh really hope this wasn't a attempt thinking by modernising they had to get rid a part of their culture. Are there any examples of Vietnamese ideograms.

There are very few people who understand the old Chinese-based characters and the students don't have an incentive to study them. The only reason it's not completely dead is because of the huge amount of historical documents and literatures yet to be translated into modern Latin-based Vietnamese. I don't see how it's gonna be resurrected because it's even more complicated than the Chinese and much less efficient than the Latin-based written Vietnanamese. The only people interested in studying it are historians.

The last one in my family who can read Nôm writting is my grandfather, but he passed some years back. In Vietnam there are only a few dozen people left who can read Nôm writting. Just to show you all how fast it's gone in just 2 generations.

After we finish building up a full dictionary of Chu Nom script (an eletronic dictionary perhaps) in order to translate old writings into our current Roman writing system, we can say goodbye with the Chu Nom once for all... I just don't like it, and it's not necessary anymore.

During the war I think some newspapers in northern Vietnam were published in Nom. Personally, I think we shouldn't abandon Nom completely because its the language of our ancestors. My idea is, to preserve as much of the Vietnamese culture as possible, before our own culture is completely lost as a result of westernisation.

Nom is such a chinese-based script so whether it is lost or not it really doesn't matter to us Vietnamese at all. Estimate that there are less than 30 people who know Chu Nom so it tells you a lot about our interest in preserving this form of writing. 2

On the other hand, Chu Quoc Ngu has boosted the literacy rate greatly since its adoption. You can virtually read and write Vietnamese perfectlly after 2nd grade with Chu quoc ngu.

^ Well....Nom is based on Chinese and the current "Quoc ngu" is based on Latin, so whether Vietnamese is good at it or not is just dosen't matter because its all foreign-based.

^^ I agree haha

I disagree.

Viets throughout the history have always adapted and applied foreign knowledge for their convenience's sake. Although both Chu Nom and Quoc Ngu are based on foreign scripts, Quoc Ngu is much simpler and therefore more convenience for us.

I suppose will should get rid of Chu Nom, not because it's Chinese-based (Vietnamese are much influenced by Chinese culture and it's no humiliation about that fact), but just because Quoc Ngu is more convenience. We all know that Quoc Ngu script derived from the Portuguese language, and we use it just because it's a convenience solution for now, not because of any special relation with the Portuguese. Viets were, are, and will be always flexible and adaptable.

About the preservation of Vietnam's old cultural treasures, I think it will be enough if some scholars and professional translator know Chu Nom to translate it into Quoc Ngu. Moreover, the publication of a detailed Chu Nom - Quoc Ngu dictionary will ensure that the cultural treasures in Chu Nom will not be lost, since any Chu Nom text (that can be discovered in the future) can be translated easily. We ordinary people don't need to take care for those difficult hierographs...