Rebooting the Vernacular in 17th-century Vietnam (original) (raw)
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The Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Volume 8, #1, pp. 1-133., 2013
The early modern Sino-Vietnamese dictionary known as the Chỉ Nam Ngọc Âm Giải Nghĩa contains two prefaces: one written in Literary Sinitic, using Sinitic characters, and one written in Vietnamese, using the “vernacular” script called Chữ Nôm. If read separately, each preface makes independent arguments in favor of “semantosyllabic” graphemes (characters that encode information for both meaning and pronunciation). However, when read as a single, continuous text, the prefaces combine to present a defense of Chữ Nôm—not as a vernacular alternative to Sinitic characters—but as a legitimate augmentation of the intellectual technology they represent, and thus capable of “taming” southern culture and intellectuality into literate civilization
Sesquisyllabicity, Chữ Nôm, and the Early Modern embrace of vernacular writing in Vietnam
Journal of Chinese Writing Systems, 2020
In East Asia, the relationship between script and language is determined to a great extent by the typological character of the languages involved. This is particularly so because sinographic writing generally relies on the syllable as the smallest unit of sound expressible. However, many languages that have adapted Sinitic writing throughout history display complex syllable structure not easily expressible by the monosyllabically inclined sinograph. Moreover, some languages have even displayed changing syllable structure throughout documented history. This article examines the so-called "monosyllabicization" of the Vietnamese language, and its impact on the history of the sinographic vernacular script known as Chữ Nôm. I argue that by the 17th century, the emergent monosyllabic character of Vietnamese was remarked upon by elites as a new justification for embracing vernacular writing, previously considered uncouth.
Chữ Nôm and the cradle of Vietnamese poetry
Journal of Chinese Writing Systems, 2019
The recent study by Trần Trọng Dương (2018) of graphemic borrowing in the transcription to chữ Nôm of Sinitic loanwords called our attention because of the importance of this work for research on broader questions. These are questions of language contact, in history and in the modern day, informed by linguistic theory and cognitive science approaches to the study of writing and literacy. Taking its sample from the Quốc Âm Thi Tập [Poetry Collection in the National Language], the framework of the study is centered on the Sinitic lexicon, divided between loanwords read in Sino-Vietnamese (SV) pronunciation and loanwords read in Non-Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation (NSV). The overarching purpose is to analyze the functional structure of the Nôm characters that transcribed them, emerging over many years. Within the corpus of Sinitic loanwords from the source text, the analysis centers on the design features, the “functional structure,” of the self-generated Nôm characters and how they compare to the larger set that borrows Sinitic graphic forms exactly. As researchers from outside of the field of Nôm Studies we are calling attention to this type of work in the hope that qualified scholars might give these works a proper review, the reason being the unique opportunity for cross-discipline discussion that all of this represent.
Translators' Note to Nguy�n Ng?c's "An Exciting Period for Vietnamese Prose
Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 2008
Born in Đà Nẵng in 1932, Nguyên Ngọc has been a leading figure in the literary and intellectual life of Vietnam for over fifty years. He joined the Resistance after the August Revolution in 1945, when he was thirteen years, old and served as both soldier and battlefield correspondent first in the war against the French and later in the American War. He is one of a group of writers from central and southern Vietnam who, after participating in the first Indochina war against the French, were "relocated" [tập kết] to Hanoi after the Geneva Accords. When the American War began these writers were sent back to the South to continue the political and military struggle for independence. 1 During both wars Nguyên Ngọc spent a great deal of time in the Central Highlands where he developed a deep affection for the ethnic minority people living in this region. His first novel, The Nation Rises Up [Đất nước đứng lên] (1955), 2 describes the heroic exploits of a local guerilla leader who was a member of the Bahnar ethnic group. Two collections of short stories followed, both also set in the mountains of central Vietnam: Highland [Rẻo cao] (1961) and The Forest of Xa nu Trees [Rừng Xà nu]. 3 In 1970 he published Land of Quảng [Đất Quảng], 4 a novel based on his experiences as the leader of a guerilla unit in the Đà Nẵng area in the 1960s. The above works are all fictionalized accounts of the exploits of revolutionary heroes. Nguyên Ngọc's style can be engagingly straightforward and unpretentious, but it is still what he now calls the "old war epic style." In these works we hear distinctly that "loud heroic song" that
This article examines David Damrosch’s notion of “scriptworlds”—spheres of cultural and intellectual transfusion, defined by a shared script—as it pertains to early modern Vietnam’s abandonment of sinographic writing in favor of a latinized alphabet. The Vietnamese case demonstrates a surprisingly rapid readjustment of deeply held attitudes concerning the nature of writing, in the wake of the alphabet’s meteoric successes. The fluidity of “language ethics” in early modern Vietnam (a society that had long since developed vernacular writing out of an earlier experience of diglossic literacy) suggests that the durability of a “scriptworld” depends on the nature and history of literacy in the societies under question.
Re-Imagining “Annam”: A New Analysis of Sino–Viet– Muong Linguistic Contact
China Southern Diaspora Studies, Volume 4, pp. 3-24., 2010
This article examines the linguistic boundaries that separated (or united) Medieval China’s southern territories and the river plains of northern Vietnam at the end of the first millennium C.E. New evidence from Sino–Vietnamese vocabulary demonstrates the existence of a regional dialect of Middle Chinese, spoken in the Ma, Ca, and Red River plains. Preliminary analysis suggests that a “language shift” away from this “Annamese Middle Chinese” in favor of the local, non-Chinese language, was largely responsible for the highly sinicized lexicon of modern Vietnamese. This theory, which challenges the tradition of an essentially literary source for Sino–Vietnamese, may help to explain some of the sinicized features of Vietnamese phonology and syntax as well. The last section of the article presents a tentative hypothesis for the formal emergence of Vietnamese contra its closest relative, Muong. These hypotheses require further testing, and are presented here as a first look at the history of the languages of “Annam”.
Scripts, Signs, and Swords: the Việt Peoples and the Origins of Nôm
2000
www.sino-platonic.org SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS is an occasional series edited by Victor H. Mair. The purpose of the series is to make available to specialists and the interested public the results of research that, because of its unconventional or controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished. The editor actively encourages younger, not yet well established, scholars and independent authors to submit manuscripts for consideration. Contributions in any of the major scholarly languages of the world, including Romanized Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) and Japanese, are acceptable. In special circumstances, papers written in one of the Sinitic topolects (fangyan) may be considered for publication. Although the chief focus of Sino-Platonic Papers is on the intercultural relations of China with other peoples, challenging and creative studies on a wide variety of philological subjects will be entertained. This series is not the place for safe, sober, and stodgy presentations. Sino-Platon...
History and postmemory in contemporary Vietnamese writing
Text, 2011
In this paper we argue that there are many ways in which history is embedded in a country's fiction-many of them offering questions rather than answers about a country's creative practices. In Vietnam it seems inevitable that the war against America and her allies would shape the nation's creative writing. But is this the case? And what of the ways in which later generations have reacted to the war? In Vietnam and Australia this shared history has played out differently, not least in a postmemory dialogue between a generation who ...