Continuance and innovation: A study of Chinese character variants in late modern Vietnam’s village customs texts (original) (raw)

Some Variant Characters in a Traditional Zhuang Manuscript: A New Angle on the Chinese Script

Bulletin Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 2006

My concern in this paper is with the variant characters (yitizi 異體字) and vernacular characters (tusuzi 土俗字) found in Zhuang manuscripts. It can be demonstrated that most of the variant characters have direct antecedents elsewhere in China, often dating back to Tang times or even earlier. My argument here turns out to have a wider dimension, which has to do with the nature of the Chinese character script of which the Zhuang script was a part. On the one hand, the Chinese script is a unified script, standardised by government decree first during the Qin and then by subsequent dynasties; one in which, for the most part, one morpheme has a standardised graphic representation throughout the empire, north and south. On the other hand-and this is my point here-such is the graphic nature of the script itself and the inheritance from the pre-Qin classical past that this strong tendency toward government-imposed orthography coexisted in creative tension with centripetal tendencies leading to the retention and recreation of graphic variation, right up to the present. In fact, when viewed from another angle, it can be shown that even the forced imposition of orthography by the Qin did not succeed in imposing total uniformity of the script, and that precursors of many variant graphs found in later centuries can also be found in pre-Qin documents. Both variant characters and vernacular characters are terms used in contradistinction to orthodox characters (or "correct characters," zhengzi 正字). It is commonly said, and oft repeated, that the Chinese script has been unified since the time of the First Emperor of Qin, who instigated a policy of "unifying the script" (shu tong wenzi 書同文字). Successive Chinese imperial administrations, particularly powerful and energetic administrations like the Tang that have come after periods of political disunity, have sought to re-establish a unified and orthodox script that could be used for communication within the imperial bureaucracy and was also orthodox in the sense that it was based on the script in which the ancient classics of the Confucian canon were written. Broadly speaking, variant characters (yitizi) were variants of character graphs found in the Confucian classics as the text of these had been transmitted. 2 "Vernacular characters" (tusuzi), by contrast, was the term for variant characters that were unofficial and were widely used among literate people and scribes, either for everyday use or for unofficial purposes. Both yitizi and tusuzi represented the same morphemes and were pronounced in the same way as zhengzi. Historically, graphic variants tended to proliferate in times of political disunity. Which characters were defined as orthodox and which were defined as vernacular or variant was something that varied from dynasty to dynasty, and sometimes from reign to reign. In many cases, characters which were adjudged to be vernacular characters in one dynasty were later accepted as variant or orthodox characters. Graphic variation in the use of the Chinese script has always attracted official disapproval, when it has not simply been ignored. Even now, variation is seen as a sign of disunity, and hence as a potential threat to national-level communication and national unity.

From missionary scripts to national scripts: the cases of Vietnam and Taiwan

2024

Both Vietnam and Taiwan were introduced to the Romanized writing systems in the 17th century by Western missionaries. In Vietnam, Alexandre de Rhodes is usually referred to as the missionary who provided the first systematic work of Vietnamese Romanization. In 1651, Alexandre de Rhodes published the first Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary, Dictionarivm Annamiticvm, Lusitanvm et Latinvum, and a Vietnamese catechism Cathechismus. In 1865, Gia Dinh Bao (Gia Định Báo 1865-1910), the first Romanized Vietnamese newspaper was founded by Truong Vinh Ky (Trưong Vĩnh Ký1837-1898) in Saigon. The Romanized chữ Quốc ngữ system eventually replaced the traditional chữ Nôm and Han characters and became the official national scripts in 1945. However, its counterpart in Taiwan, the Romanized Taiwanese Pe̍h-ōe-jī still has not yet become widespread. In 1885, the first Romanized Taiwanese newspaper Tâi-oân-hú-siân Kàu-hōe-pò (Taiwan Prefectural City Church News) was founded by missionary Reverend Thomas Barclay. Nevertheless, the later imported Han writing system is used much more widely and has obtained the dominant status in contemporary Taiwan’s society. This paper examines the missionary scripts in Vietnam and Taiwan from the perspectives of linguistics and sociolinguistics. The orthographic schemas of Vietnamese and Taiwanese Roman scripts were analyzed. The author finds that what have prevented the Han characters from being replaced by Romanization are socio-political factors, rather than linguistics factors.

Missionary Scripts in Vietnam and Taiwan

Journal of Taiwanese Vernacular, 2013

Both Vietnam and Taiwan were introduced to the Romanized writing systems in the 17th century by Western missionaries. In Vietnam, the Romanized chữ Quốc ngữ system eventually replaced the traditional chữ Nôm and Han characters and became the official national orthography in 1945. However, its counterpart in Taiwan, the Pe̍h-ōe-jī, (Romanized Taiwanese) still has not yet become widespread. Moreover, the later imported Han writing system is used much more widely and has obtained the dominant status in contemporary Taiwan's society. This paper examines the missionary scripts in Vietnam and Taiwan from the persepectives of linguistics and sociolinguistics. The authors finds that what have prevented the Han characters from being replaced by Romanization are socio-political factors, rather than linguistics factors.

Rebooting the Vernacular in 17th-century Vietnam

2014

The history of vernacular writing in Vietnam describes an intimate and evolving relationship with Literary Sinitic. As with other nascent vernacular forms in East Asia, the practice of composing in Vietnamese was long held to be inferior to or unnecessary in the face of Literary Sinitic; at best it was viewed as a pedagogical crutch for learning the classical language. Nevertheless—while Vietnamese did not truly eclipse Literary Sinitic until the twentieth century—vernacular language did experience a rapid ascent after the seventeenth century, when Vietnamese-language works rendered in the morphographic character system known as Chữ Nôm burst into popularity. The relatively dramatic escalation in Nôm composition over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries suggests an equally dramatic shift in the cultural and intellectual attitudes of the literati who practiced it. Vernacular writing had to be reinvented, however, before it could be used for the kind of intellectual and imaginative tasks exemplified by later literature. Remarkably, just such a reinvention is articulated in the prefatory material of a seventeenth-century Sino-Vietnamese dictionary called the Chỉ nam ngọc âm giải nghĩa (Explication of the Guide to Jeweled Sounds 指南語音解義). The Chỉ nam bears two prefaces: one in Literary Sinitic (written in Sinitic characters) and one in Vietnamese (written in Chữ Nôm). Though usually read separately, they in fact combine to form an interlocking argument that redefines Nôm, not as a crude or simplistic facsimile of Sinitic writing, but as a legitimate and authentic extension of the sagely and civilizing technology that Han characters represented. The bilingual prefaces seek to dissolve the linguistic and cultural barriers separating the vernacular from the classical mode and to render Vietnamese intelligible in terms of Literary Sinitic intellectuality. The Chỉ nam was produced at a crossroads in the history of Vietnamese vernacular writing. Although Nôm had gained some momentum as a pedagogical tool over the fourteenth century, the ascent of Neo-Confucianism following the Ming occupation of 1407–1427 led to a revival of classical education that disrupted or even reversed the course of vernacularization. The Chỉ nam therefore represents a “rebooting” of vernacular practices, fueled by a new perception of its place, nature, and function. Its production in the mid-seventeenth century marks a watershed in the evolution of the Vietnamese vernacular—between the limited and proscribed forms of vernacular literature found in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the flourishing traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Chinese Script in the Chinese Scriptworld: Chinese Characters in Native and Borrowed Traditions

The exclusivist ideology characterizing the Chinese writing system as " ideographs " was constructed in the West, and later reimported into China where it influenced popular and nationalistic understandings of the characters. For the West, the Chinese script held out the promise, embraced particularly eagerly by the literary and artistic worlds, of a visual language not complicated by questions of sound, and thus by the arbitrary impositions of individual languages (Bush). For China, the Chinese script came to function as one of the key cultural characteristics marking the Chinese off from the rest of the world (Shen). This paper will attempt to provide some conceptual groundwork for understanding these complex and overlapping discourses, and set out the fundamental graphological basis through which the differing functions of Chinese characters in both the historical and the contemporary Chinese Scriptworld (Handel) can be understood. Keywords Chinese characters – ideograph – graphological – linguistic sign Orientation Cultural evolution is multi-dimensional and unpredictable. Cultural practices, like material objects, can be passed on from culture to culture and take on completely new meanings in new contexts. The modern academy tends to val-orize this process as one of " hybridity " , but whether this should be celebrated as a good in itself, or to what extent the competing pull of native and borrowing cultures should be acknowledged, is perhaps still problematic. The script

2010-korea journal-the introduction of chinese characters.pdf

Korea Journal, 2010

This paper discusses the role of the Lelang commandery in the process of introducing Chinese characters into Korea. In the Lelang commandery, native populations of non-Han origin would have been put into the "documentary administration," under situations similar to such frontier regions as Juyan and Dunhuang, in the process of which Chinese characters were most likely accepted on an extensive scale. The use of Chinese characters in the Lelang commandery was not limited to a group of Han people, as has been traditionally understood. Those Chinese characters introduced at that time would not necessarily have to be so-called genuine Chinese characters. Particular examples of Chinese characters that developed later into Korean idu are confirmed in official Qin and Han documents. The population native to the Lelang com-mandery maintained contact with various usages in the document-based administrative system for over 400 years and the usages suited to the linguistic behavior of the population on the Korean peninsula was naturally selected. It is to be noted that the process of introducing Chinese characters into Korea is best explained by the long-lasting linguistic contact and the resultant transformation .

Language Modernization in the Chinese Character Cultural Sphere

The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization

The study of sociolinguistics, including that of language standardization, has largely been built on cases from the West. Hence, languages, societies and historical experiences in Western, industrialized and rich democracies have disproportionately contributed to the formation of models and theories. Cases outside of Europe and North America are predestined to test, challenge and expand sociolinguistic theory and methodology (Smakman & Heinrich 2015). In this chapter, I explore how modern vocabulary was coined and shared in the Chinese Character Cultural Sphere (China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam). This case shows that language modernization in this part of the world had very strong transcultural aspects, largely due to Japan's pioneering role in language modernization in Asia and to the shared Chinese writing system. The topic discussed in this chapter has a twofold implication for our understanding of language standardization. First, standardization is not limited to linguistically separated and geographically demarcated states, but may occur across languages and states. Second, the writing system has an influence on the standardization process. With the onset of East Asian modernization in the mid-nineteenth century, Japan eclipsed for several decades China's position as the cultural centre of the Chinese Character Cultural Sphere. Japan now coined a large number of Sino-Japanese words itself-these types of Sino-Japanese words I am grateful to Richard Quang-Anh Tran for checking the Vietnamese transcriptions and to two anonymous readers for helping me better develop the subject at hand and avoid some mistakes. All remaining errors and inadequacies are mine. 9781108471817c21_p576-596.indd 576 24/09/20 9:55 PM 1 Sino-Xenic (China + foreign) refers to the systems according to which Chinese characters are read in Japan (Sino-Japanese), Korea (Sino-Korean) and Vietnam (Sino-Vietnamese). 2 In Japan and Korea, an immense number of predominantly English loanwords has been borrowed directly since 1945, and in China, new terms have been created independent of Japanese influence. In Vietnam, French terms were directly incorporated during the French colonial period, and recently English has provided loanwords.

Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts

Exploring Written Artefacts: Objects, Methods, and Concepts, 2021

This paper compares variant characters in large-scale dictionaries from the pre-modern period with actual writing habits using a special subset of variants known as 'semantic compounds' (huiyi 會意) as a case study. The results show that despite their prominent presence in traditional dictionaries, only a fraction of such variants were in everyday use. Most of the forms recorded in dictionaries were preserved and handed down as part of the lexicographic tradition, to some extent irrespective of genuine writing habits. Going one step beyond recognising that only some of the documented forms were at any given time in common use, the analysis presented here measures the discrepancy between dictionaries and manuscripts as a percentage.