what was the vietnamese alphabet like before the french came in and romanized it?

just curious

My name -

Also, it was a grouping of several missionaries (French, Portugese) & scholars (Vietnamese) that contributed to the development of the present day writing system - chữ Quốc Ngữ, in the 17th century (prior to French colonization).

Although the person who invented was a frenchman, while "Vietnamese" people only "reform" it to be "more fitted"

Before the alphabet, well, there was no alphabet.
What were YOU, before you are YOU?

Before the turn of the 20th century the Vietnamese language was spoken by about 20 millions Vietnamese, more or less half that number living in the North and the other half living in the South.

There was the beautiful, but complicated Chinese writing, which the Vietnamese scholars had already ingeniously started reforming as early as in the 13th century (remember the Chinese Empire was invaded and completely submitted by the Mongolians since that far back, in the 13th century? China was ruled by Mongolian Dynasties until the beginning of the 20th century; and she became wholly communist only in 1949!).

So what happened with the Vietnamese writing system?

The French scholars only tried to transcribe in a different way the existing Vietnamese language phonetics, using for that task the existing roman alphabet. The Vietnamese thus escaped the clumpsy writing that still make so many millions of illiterate ...but in China?

Many today's scholars are wondering whether China also can give up her writing?

What? Please tell me you are joking...

Mongols only ruled China for less than 200 years. The Yuan dynasty didn't last long at all.

After the fall of the Yuan dynasty, Han Chinese took back China and established the Ming dynasty. Ming dynasty was when Admiral Zheng He sailed around the world with his Treasure Fleet.

After Ming dynasty was the Qing dynasty in which the Manchus ruled. The Qing dynasty was important for at least two main reasons: 1.) It established the modern Chinese borders today, 2.) it established the modern Chinese (Zhonghua) identity. Prior to Qing dynasty Chinese 中國人 (People of Middle Kingdom) = Han Chinese. But the ruling Manchus wanted to unify the major ethnic groups in China so they reformed the Chinese identity to include Han, Manchu, Mongol, Hui, and Tibetan.

After the Qing dynasty was the Republican era. Dr. Sun Yatsen and the Nationalist party overthrown the Qing dynasty to establish the Republic of China. In 1949, the Chinese civil war broke out and the Communist party defeated the Nationalist party and forced them to retreat to the island of Taiwan. The Nationalists relocated the Republic of China to the island of Taiwan while the Communists ruled mainland China.

You skipped about 4 different eras and over 700 years of history there bud!

Regarding the Vietnamese writing before Chu Quoc Ngu, it was called Chữ-nôm. Check out this site.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/chunom.htm

I agree - Chu nom is overly pretentious. Just checked CIA Factbook - 14% of the Chinese population is illiterate - that's just freaking high...imagine if China was a democratic nation, and imagine those 14% being able to vote.

Chu quoc ngu seems more intuitive and practical, not just because I grew up with the Latin alphabets. My minor complaint about the Vietnamese language is the different dialects and pronunciations...the interchangeable sounds, depending on whether you're from the N/S/or Central, for d r g y is confusing. Then there's the true Hue accent that no one else can understand - but diversity is nice.

Yea, and look at Japanese, they use 3 writing systems, Chinese characters (kanji), harigana, takakana. Their literacy rate is 99% almost perfect.

Every nation has its heritage of language development.

CÓ ...ĐỨNG NÚI NÀY MỚI NHÌN ĐƯỢC NÚI KIA !!!
you must always remember this.

NHÌN NGƯỜI TA ĐÃ ĐI TRƯỚC, ĐỂ TỰ MÌNH TÌM HIỂU,
ĐỂ TỰ MÌNH QUYẾT ĐỊNH CÁI TƯƠNG LAI CỦA CHÍNH MÌNH...

Sure, Japanese is near-perfect. 99% of literacy rate for a population that is if NOT YET DYING (oh! sorry) BUT VERY OLD in average...

Compare this to 99% of literacy rate in a Vietnamese population with so many millions of still poor-perhaps but so-happy literate little kiddies... (I promise to find that recent OECD report stating how Vietnamese pupils literacy achievements now outpasses that of German and Japanese pupils).

Like Germany, Japan after World War II was occupied and not allowed to have an army, that was why Germany and Japan used that money and energy into developping their economy instead... for these two countries, losing the war and being submitted and stomped by foreign military powers was finally an industrial and/or economic salvation...

Like Vietnam today, Japan used to copy everything. In ship making, for instance. Japan bought one ship from the British naval construction, and desassemble it and copied how to build a ship piece by piece. In photography, Japan also ingeniously copied Leitz, Leica, Kodak, until she had her own brands Nikon, Canon, Pentax cameras and lenses... she copied UHER until she had her own AKAI or SONY reel band recorders...

Truly, Vietnam was lucky with the magnificent Mongols invading the "Empire of the Middle" at the right time in history. Before that, we were just too close to China, and we were risking being bothered by her all the time.

After the Mongols took hold everywhere in old-time China, as nobody was afraid of the Mongols in the North any more, the Mongols moved China's capital from Nam King to Bắc King... And that was it! [Bye bye, so long old friend!]

Vietnam then lived her own civilisation and tried her hands at developing her own beautiful arts and literature, and (with the help of the Cham warriors) even could try her new feet at kicking the Mongols themselves out of Đại Nam borders.

In fact, the Vietnamese language phonetic scripting modern Quốc Ngữ benefited of all the best of linguistic techniques: from Nôm, a very distinctive sound set (more distinctive than in Cantonese), the simplest of all grammars (the Chinese grammar!), and an easy-to-master Vietnamized roman alphabet scripting...

In the mean time, the Japanese language has adopted more-sophisticate-but-not-at-all useful conjugation (like in more-ancient-latinized complicate grammars: French, German, English, Spanish...).

Just consider how China and Japan are still trying hard to reform their own ways to get out of trouble... how the French have so much troubles in teaching French sophisticated-but-not-so-logical orthography and grammar to younger growing-illiterate generations.

SO, LET US, VIETNAMESE, CONTINUE TO ALWAYS DISCARD THE BAD EXAMPLES.

SO, LET US, VIETNAMESE, BE PROUD OF OUR HERITAGE.

SO, LET US, VIETNAMESE, FEEL HAPPY FOR OUR YOUNGER GENERATIONS.
At age 8 or 9, Vietnamese kids can already enjoy reading, directly out the school books, their country glorious epic history...

At age 10 and 11, they can already start playing with the words, writing their own poetry with our beautiful but easy "lục bát", "thất tuyệt", "song thất lục bát" metrics...

Of course they will weep at sad stories sometimes - how families are decimated, how true love stories are splitted because of stupid cupidity and hatred, they also will sigh at the endless war times - but, and that's more of their age, they can laugh at many crazier funny stories they read.

At age 12 on, they can teach writing and reading to their younger sisters and brothers, or they can also start learning the foreign languages of their choice... So, aren't they happier that way?
Aren't we, Vietnamese, happier, when all the small children, even in poor and far-off villages, can read and write? Hey? Are you there?

SO, LET US, VIETNAMESE, JOIN IN BUILDING A MORE PEACEFUL VIETNAM.

"I have a dream!..." (Dr. Martin Luther King)

The word here is "innovate". Japanese people are famous for going out to learn people's technology, and reinnovate to its best such as Chinese culture, later the Western's technology. Japanese cars and technologies has invaded American and Western hemisphere since 1970.
Again, what's really "copy"? I could just say guns are just copied of the Chinese gunpowder.


Ahem, we were later invaded by the Ming dynasty for 20 years. This only 20 years marked the significance of re-sinocized by the force of Chinese Emperor. Documents, clothes, names, customs of the later Chinese dynasties were forced upon the Vietnamese.

I think you might imply that while using "chuquocngu", we fortunately did get out of the influences of Chinese? Then we're now in French's colonization's influence sphere? Besides, many modern words like Kinh Te, Chinh Tri, and such are imported from China and Japan in the 19th to 20th century constantly.


Yea and how about the "tones", not a lot of countries around the world actually have tonal languages. There are so many things that consider "un-useful" about Vietnamese, same as Chinese, French, English. It depends on what your native language, and the environment that affected on your perception of which features of Vietnamese that are "not beneficial".

OF course the Latinized Portugese Chuquocngu writing is more "efficient" than Chu-nho and Chuquocngu in some way, but that doesn't mean that Chunom and Chu-nho will increase the illiteracy rate higher. The fact is economy DOES play a major role in literacy.
Also by learning Chunho and chunom, Vietnamese kids have better understanding of Vietnamese past literature such as Truyen Kieu (written in chu nom), Binh Ngo Dai Cao, Nam Quoc Son Ha poem, Chinh Phụ Ngâm Khúc, and anymore. By using chunom and chunho, Vietnamese peopel also acknowledge many current faults now when speaking like the word thuychung instead of chungthuy (Thuy means beginning, Chung means end ->Beginning-End-> Loyal, not End-Beginning) and many more.



南 國 山 河 南 帝 居 Nam quốc sơn hà nam đế cư
截 然 定 分 在 天 書 Tiệt nhiên định phận tại thiên thư
如 何 逆 虜 來 侵 犯 Như hà nghịch lỗ lai xâm phạm?
汝 等 行 看 取 敗 虛 Nhữ đẳng hành khan thủ bại hư!

李 常 杰 Lý Thường Kiệt
What's the point of reading, if you don't even understand parts of it



Fun stuff
Do you wonder why we say rectangle as "Hinh Chu Nhat", well because Rectangle does look like this 日. 日is pronounced Nhat if you haven't figure out.

This also goes here.

INOVATION AS UNDERSTOOD BY THE JAPANESE MIND.



The Japanese know this well!
So, is Japan a pale yellow copy of a cheap Western country???

Why does Japan have so few Nobel Laureates?

Japan has had 12 Nobel Prize Laureates. By way of comparison, the other G7 countries line up as follows (all categories):

US 270
UK 100
Germany 77
France 49
Italy 14
Canada 10

Everybody knows French are "artists" and Italians are lazy people...
and even Canada has only 24 million inhabitants!
If you look at it on a per capita basis below,
Japan ranks 25th in the world (27th if you rank per $GDP.)

People always go on about how the Japanese education system
does not promote creativeness !!!


1. Iceland 3.56 per 1 million people
2. Sweden 3.37 per 1 million people
3. Switzerland 3.00 per 1 million people
4. Denmark 2.41 per 1 million people
5. Norway 1.75 per 1 million people
6. United Kingdom 1.66 per 1 million people
7. Austria 1.34 per 1 million people
8. Ireland 1.27 per 1 million people
9. Germany 0.93 per 1 million people
10. United States 0.92 per 1 million people
11. Netherlands 0.92 per 1 million people
12. Belgium 0.87 per 1 million people
13. France 0.81 per 1 million people
14. Finland 0.38 per 1 million people
15. Slovakia 0.36 per 1 million people
16. Canada 0.31 per 1 million people
17. Australia 0.30 per 1 million people
18. Hungary 0.29 per 1 million people
19. Italy 0.24 per 1 million people
20. Portugal 0.19 per 1 million people
21. Czech Republic 0.19 per 1 million people
22. Greece 0.18 per 1 million people
23. Spain 0.14 per 1 million people
24. Poland 0.12 per 1 million people
25. Japan 0.09 per 1 million people

No need to Harakiri !!!
I agree they should get an additionnal Nobel prize for copying?

Uhm What does per GDP capita got to do anything with creativity. If you count GDP overall, Japan ranks 3.

Do you agree though, that one of the best or popular technology right now is produced by Japanese (and Korean) people?

It's just like Western culture copied from the Greek and Minor Asia

You are going out of topic anyway

Oh please. That's 1,118,000,000 out of 1,300,000,000 who ARE literate. That is no easy feat considering the PRC is still a third world country.

If you take a look at the more developed Chinese nations/regions like Taiwan and Hong Kong, you't notice that the literacy rate is much higher nearing 99% like Japan.

Those who are illterate in PRC can't afford education, not because they aren't capable of learning Hanzi.

It's funny how some Viets can't talk about themselves without always dragging China and bashing her in the process.


Or you can simply say that the Nobel Prize is nothing more than a "white man's club"

Only an Asian self-proclaimed linguist can say this, I'm sorry!

As for Hán Nôm and Hán Việt (that's our heritage oldies!), we Vietnamese will have all the leisure-time to play with them.

For the time being, let us leave them to old chaps finishing their time...

Uhh.. I don't get what are you saying..

1°) 1 300 000 000 X 14% = only 182 000 000 people...!!!
For OECD comparisons, literacy means Read, Write AND capacity to Understand a short text of about 100 words.

2°) in more developped areas, do you include English for literacy ?

3°) France has one of its academician who is a Chinese refugee, Gao Xingjian, who has won a Nobel Prize in Litterature in 2000 for France. Too bad for China...

4°) We all love China in France.

Read it again, that's 14% who are ILLITERATE, meaning 86% of China's population are literate.


What are you talking about...


How does that prove or disprove, or even relevant to your faulted arguement that the Japanese education system isn't "creative"? Stick to the arguement instead of trying to create flame wars please.


Who cares.

Japan has jumped from Middle Age to post modern times, in just about 150 years. Japanese society is sick. Yong Japanese are suicidal.

2004 is "The Official Year of China" in France.

no flame war. I only try to give Vietnamese young people arguments to be so proud of their history.

"Jumped"? How much of Japanese history do you actually know? Heck, how much about Japanese culture, whether it's historical or modern, do you know? Are you saying that American youths don't commit suicide? How about all those American teen pregnancies?


Hahaha judging by the attitude of some Viet members here, I wouldn't worry about that

I said I, not them

WTF? This is just pure flame?

I'm proud of Chunom, not proud of Chuquocngu. That's all I have to say

Well no. I think for myself this is pure truth. It seems all the girls who come to France with a tourist visa all want to stay put here (by getting married with any Frenchman! most street "garçons de café" have their chance).

And Chũ Nôm is still there, and still ours to study, to play with... Let's think of the children first and above all consideration.

Uhm again WTF? Sorry, but you're talking nonsense right now, or maybe I'm just stupid.



There are less than 100 people actually know how to read Chunom (officially), and the field of studying Chunom in Saigon had closed for many years.

Just we stick on Nôm only:

It can't be lost. It is taken into account in Unicode universal font set creation.

We have the internet to store/publish our studies, to be accessed worlwide.

I'm more concerned with normalizing Vietnamese syntagmatique (is there no English word for this?) - set of rules used in new word creation...

@supernovasp - about chung thuy, ive heard it being explained like you have stated, but i have also heard it explained like this

chung=together
thuy=beginning

chung thuy= together from the beginning

chung thuy=loyalty

also about chu quoc ngu and chu nom (hey supernovasp - why do you combine the words together?) we shouldn't hate one or the other because our people has made great achievements using both. if we scrap chu nom, then we cut-off many works in viet history and literature, if we cut-out chu quoc ngu, then we lose its streamlined nature for learning ease

we shouldn't argue which is better or worse - granted they have influential roots, but they have been việt hóa

when we consider the rough time our ancestors had through history - you can't expect them to develop their own language. way back before the 1000 years of occupation, our people did have a distinct language. it was almost totally wiped out, thus reconstruction of that language is immensely difficult. the basis of my conclusion follows that of a historical book im reading which states that historical records that pertain and mention of the work Viêt Ca contains grammatical structures unlike that of Chinese. (my source is: Khương Tăng Hội Tòan Tập: Lê Mạnh Thát: Page 147)

from what our ancestor went through - time and energy to construct or reconstruct our root language was almost not an option

so the way and method that im proud is: im proud of both chu nom and chu quoc ngu - but i understand their origins and i don't become a nô lệ văn hóa

supernovasp is right.

thuy = origin of time (as in nguyen thuy)

chung = resulting time (as in chung cuoc, or chung ket)

chung thuy = FIDELITY

not loyalty.

LOYALTY = trung thành.

Chung you're talking about is more of pure viet. However, the compound "Thuychung" is a direct borrow of Chinese 始終, which means from beginning to an end.

About our own writing, maybe there was and maybe there wasn't. I would be interested to see how those artifacts.
Also remember not to only read one book. There's a saying (which I forgot) that Rather not reading at all, then read the same book.

of course - remember i said i did learn the definition you and supernovasp posted, but i said i "also" learned this view on it

i looked up the word fidelity (websters) and in the definition it said "loyalty"

n.
[L. fidelitas: cf. F. ]
Faithfulness; adherence to right; careful and exact observance of
duty, or discharge of obligations. Especially: (a)
Adherence to a person or party to which one is bound; loyalty.

so im not too concerned about the loyalty/fidelity

but it does show that the field of scope for vietnamese distinguishment among concepts is nicely wide and dynamic

i understand supernovasp is right - i never said he was wrong

but what i said was that a nother look at it is possible because perhaps the word thuy chung was việt hóa into chung thuy

this is similar to the debate we had with: xích quỷ
it had a bad meaning in Chinese, but when thrown into Viet thinking (even though those are still hán-việt words) there is a different meaning






















__________________________
EDit - yes thank you supernovasp - i am aware that reading one book is not a gurantee of the truth, but readin many books isn't either

im not stating anything - but that is my opinion - i agree with this book becuase i am sure there was a language before the 1000 years rule (how would we communicate back then if we didn't have a language?)

i myself am also waiting for more discoveries into this matter of our ancient language and i hope we can dig up more artifacts - but they are hard to come by when most are destroyed by man, by war, by nature, or simply by time - but this information adds to my knowledge base

about thuy chung - yeas i know it was rooted in hán, but like i said - perhaps it was việt hóa and become chung thuy - back in the old days our ancestors made a lot of việt hóa for strategic purposes

It's pure inncorrect, not viethoa, because it's used as a compund. Usually, viethoa often occurs on single words, or compounds that have different meaning (chungthuy and thuychung means the same).

Why did we flip this?
Simply it's just for the tones pattern. Chungthuy ( from flat to rising then falling) is more "easy" on the ear and speak then using "thuychung". (rising-falling-then flat)

Unless like the word "Yeudiem" means essential points, while diemyeu means weakness.

I wouldn't like to be taken too far into the subject of borrowings from Hán Việt here.

In contemporary times, Fidelity or faithfulness are more used to state the relations between husband and wife, or 2 lovers. Loyalty is used in friendship, or employee (a subordinate) + employer (a superior), comradeship.

trung thành = trung trực + thành tựu = long time relationship = confidence (in friendship).

Beware the "Webster" is for all Americanisms only. Prefer something like "The American Heritage of English"? which is more comprehensive.

American English can be a real mess! I use limited technical American English terminology only.

trung thành.

thành here is thanhthat, not thanhtuu, because it's written 誠 , and means to be honest.
thành tuu is written 成. Thanh in thanhtuu means to become, to achieve

thanh that = trung truc already?

I should think of an additional meaning, "gained thru a long relationship"

OK. Thanks.

I figured you'd get all pissy. CALM THE FVCK DOWN. The thread was about the two writing systems in Viet Nam - one of Chinese origins the other of Latin origins - so of goddamn course the words "Chinese" and "Latin" or their country of origins were going to somehow be used in this thread. I was stating how I like Chu Quoc Ngu better because it's easier to learn and is more practical....and to back up my claim, I used China as an example. Both VN and China are third world countries and VN isn't all that far behind in terms of population; yet, VN enjoys nearly 10% higher literacy rate. Comparing VN to China makes more sense than comparing it to a first world country like Japan. That's it - I brought China in to back up a claim because it provided the most logical analogy.



It's funny how some chinese always feel so victimized and offended for every little thing. Yes, I'm annoyed as hell with your incessant whining - get the hell over yourself you overly sensitive prick.

It's funny how you seem to know exactly how I feel

I am not "pissy" at all. I am merely somewhat annoyed by your ignorance.

I agree with most of your arguement except for that you seem to think it's "impossible" to achieve near-complete literacy rate with Hanzi-based writings, which just isn't true. All we have to do is look at the more developed nations that use Hanzi-based writings. A couple of Viet members and I have already discussed this issue and came to the conclusion that the economical situation of a country plays an important part in literacy rate.

I am not saying whether or not VN should use Chu Quoc Ngu as I don't really care what VN uses.

I shouldn't get into this discussion.
But alright I just state my understanding in this case only. There's a second possible use of Thủy chung :

Thủy chung vẫn... = all-in-all, globally...
= từ đầu [đến cuối] vẫn..., [từ] trước [đến]sau vẫn...
whereas Chung thủy only = faithful.

EDIT: [] means optional. I thought this second possible use already was in Vietnamese dictionaries!? Is it NOT ?

about - chung thuy - remember im not arguing with you guys - im not stupid - i know chung thuy means faithful - im just giving a little self made theory - so don't go into a flame war - its a waste of time

vn1234: I'm sorry. I mean, do excuse-me formally. I was only incidentally answering an incidental statement/wondering by supernovasp, in which you were incidentally quoted!!!

no problem - nothing directed towards you personall or anyone - just a precaution statement because someone might not understand my posts

same here!!!

Way to draw ridiculous conclusions. My argument was using Quoc Ngu is more practical because it's easier to learn...not quite the same as "it's "impossible" to achieve near-complete literacy rate with Hanzi-based writings." When I searched VN's and China's literacy rate, I also made sure to check Japan's and S. Korea's - the latter two are more developed nation which explains the higher literacy rate. I thought it's already common sense that a country that spends a lot of money in educating its people is going to have a higher literacy rate...guess not. If China wants to do things the inefficient way, it doesn't matter to me, but don't go whining to me again about "dragging China down and bashing it" when I was merely using it as support for my argument.