#chu nom

[treethymes]

Japanese era name Reiwa 令和 rendered in Chữ Nôm (left, read as Lành dịu) and Sawndip (right, read as Ndei-onj)

[treethymes]

This website has developed so much since I first found it several years ago. The database has grown and the interface evolved so you can type diacritics and chữ Nôm in-site; it’s easy to search for characters and there’s more information on them. They also have scans of three (3) whole dictionaries (granted, two of them are French ones from the cusp of the 20th century). I wish my Vietnamese was better so I could properly study this. Though I’m not sure what I would do with this knowledge even if I had it...

Chữ Nôm (the archaic Vietnamese writing system based on Chinese characters) is so interesting. It was created to record native Vietnamese language and mostly used for literature and poetry (in contrast to Classical Chinese which was Vietnam’s official writing system and used for official documents and such). 

As a random example, this Chinese phrase, 天地有情, means “Heaven and Earth have feelings” (apparently it was something, according to Hirokazu Kore-eda, that Hou Hsiao-hsien had written down often). I can roughly translate this to Vietnamese as trời đất cớ tình which is written in chữ Nôm like this: 𡗶坦固情. 

Now this is all educated-guesswork more or less but it seems like chữ Nôm is variations on the original Chinese characters by basically mixing and slapping them together to distinguish them from Classical Chinese. So 𡗶 means the same as 天 (sky, heavens) it’s just that it denotes a native Vietnamese word trời and not the Chinese word tiān (in Mandarin pinyin) (which is pronounced thiên in Vietnamese), so the character 上 (up, above) is added. 天 and 上 are very basic, very commonly used characters but the combination of the two seems unique to Vietnamese chữ Nôm. 

The rest of the characters in the phrase are not unique to Vietnam. Both 地 and 坦 (earth) exist in both Chinese and Vietnamese contexts but they have different meanings. In Vietnamese, đất 坦 is the native word to refer to “earth;” in Chinese, tǎn 坦 means “flat, level, smooth.” 地 (dì in Mandarin) refers to the earth in Chinese but in the Vietnamese context it is a Chinese loan word (pronounced địa) used mostly in compound words so it has a more formal tone.

Cớ 固 is taken for its phonetic value. In Chinese, 固 means “solid, firm, strong” and is pronounced gù (in Mandarin) which becomes cớ in Vietnamese pronunciation (for comparison, in Japanese it becomes ko). So in chữ Nôm 固 denotes cớ (which means ”to have” in native Vietnamese) rather than the Chinese character for the same meaning 有 (yǒu in Mandarin). A variation of 固 in chữ Nôm is the combination of 固 and 有: 𣎏, which I imagine is how it was originally conceived; 固 to dictate pronunciation, 有 for meaning. Since it’s such a commonly used word, the 有 radical was probably dropped for convenience.

情 (feelings, emotion: tình in Vietnamese, qíng in Mandarin) remains the same because I believe it is a commonly used loan word, though I wonder if tình is the best translation and how the nuance differs in Vietnamese. I also wonder how 情 becomes jou and sei in Japanese. In Korean, 情 is 정 jeong so maybe the origins of jou are related to that. Some characters developed multiple Sino-Japanese/Korean readings just over time/space.

I don’t know Korean so I don’t know much about the role of Chinese characters in Korean. I just know that they’re not used as often as in Japanese and usually only denote the Sino-Korean reading (as opposed to the native reading; in Japanese the characters just usually have multiple ways to read them depending on context [one or two Sino-Japanese readings, one or two native Japanese readings, plus more rare or obscure usages]). As a result, I’d imagine using Chinese characters in Korean stands out more than it does in Japanese. A Korean friend of mine told me that the character for “north” 北 on its own unmistakably refers to North Korea nowadays.

I specified above that I was using the Mandarin readings because these Sino-Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese pronunciations are based on Classical Chinese which apparently sounded closer to modern-day Cantonese than Mandarin. Cantonese generally also sounds more like Vietnamese than Mandarin does. It reminds me, I think I read once that the Southern American accent is supposedly closer to Shakespeare’s English than the modern-day British accent. Something about southern places, it seems.

[kafechewcom]

Learn Chu Nom - Học Chữ Nôm - Số

Learn Chu Nom (old Vietnamese script) number characters.

If we understand clearly Han Nom script, we will be more aware of the beauty and quintessence of Vietnamese language. Consequently, Han Nom is a tool for studying history and cultural values. Moreover, it will help purify the Vietnamese language.

Nowadays, people rush for learning foreign languages. Some of them can speak up to 5 languages. However, amid the hurried circle of modern life, there are still many people who are loyal to brush and ink pot in studying Han-Nom (Chinese – Vietnamese Script) inherited from our forefathers. Not only old people but also many young generations have passion for it. No one tells somebody to do so, but all people in a village participate in studying Han Nom. The phenomenon happens in an ordinary village in the North of Vietnam.

Maybe we can see this scene just only in Hoai Thuong Commune. No one knows the reason why a 70-year-old woman has such a great passion for the ancient script. It is said that Han Nom is very difficult to learn and remember because it has many characters. And this is the most effective way for the woman to remember Han Nom script. Summer is a meaningful period for Hoai Thuong’s children. Not like many other countryside regions where children go to extra-class or gather in recreation facilities, the children here all focus on learning the ancient script. How could they love it so much?

In many regions, people think that it is to lag behind the trend if someone cannot speak at least one foreign language fluently. But in Hoai Thuong, it is backward if someone doesn’t know a little bit of Han Nom. The class has many aged student some of whom are already 90 years old. Everyone shows their high concentration on the lesson as if they were immersed with in new words. All of them desire to return to history and touch the national traditional value. That is the reason why the class has never been interrupted in the past 10 years.

Both teachers and students are at the autumnal age, and most of them are retirees. The class is conducted at the communal house of the village without any fee. The reward for both teachers and students here is the knowledge of Han Nom, hence, they can pass the knowledge to their descendants. Therefore, Hoai Thuong is also called with a chummy, simple name – “Han Nom Village”.

Learning Han Nom is a special attraction to a group of people in Thuan Thanh district, Bac Ninh province, especially, in Hoai Thuong commune. It’s likely that everyone feels uneasy if they don’t know about the value lying in the ancient script. Therefore, the movement of learning Han Nom has spread quickly with more than 10 classes. Students aging from 20 to 90 with various careers. But most of them are former teachers or retirees. There is a question “why does everyone love Han Nom so much in Hoai Thuong?”

In fact, our forefathers left to us a huge treasure of materials in Han Nom script written down on carved stone and bronzes, paper and wooden pads, etc. Various fields of history, politics, culture, religion, economics, military, science, technique were written with Han Nom characters. Han Nom script appears everywhere, on parallel verses, bell, stele, family history book, history documents, etc. However, few young people can read and understand these documents. Recently, there have been more and more people attending Han Nom classes.

They have thousand of different reasons such as: learning for career purpose, for entertainment, for the passion of historical value…Some people come to pagodas, temples and feel very curious about what are written on them. Meanwhile, some other people feel very uneasy because they are the posterity of famous historical persons but don’t know any word of Han Nom. Han Nom heritage is an important part of the valuable cultural heritage system of Vietnam and the world. Han Nom materials are not only the connection between the past and the present but also an invaluable treasure of knowledge of nation history and culture.

In Hoai Thuong, each parentage has at least one person who masters Han Nom. This is considered a great achievement. The person will become a teacher that reminds many young generations of the traditional culture of the home village and home country. Han Nom logographic script was used in Vietnam before it was replaced by Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet in the 20th century. Han Nom literature includes works written in literary Chinese script as well as works written in mixed Vietnamese and Chinese ones. Because Chinese script cannot satisfy the demand in both vocabulary and grammar of Vietnamese, many local words (or Nom words) were created by combining syllables, letters…

Hoai Thuong was famous for its traditional fondness of studying and competition – examination and women also had good reputation for weaving since 19th century. A lot of successful people originate in this village. Since then, Hoai Thuong has been one of the leading localities in Vietnam in terms of education, especially the Han Nom movement. For the villagers in Hoai Thuong, there are 2 purposes of learning Han Nom: to be a good person and to reserve the country’s traditional quintessence.

Practical method of learning arouses a lot of interest; hence, it is very effective. The old pagodas, temples stand for history. And the ancient script carved on them is the valuable materials for us to study our nation’s ancient culture. Ancient scholar with an ink pot and a brush is a familiar image to all Vietnamese people. However, amid the current hurry pace of life, we just caught the image in the spring festivals.

With a view to preserving this traditional feature, Hoai Thuong people have successfully conducted Han Nom classes by themselves for many years. They all want to reserve the ancient script as a key to open into Vietnamese traditional culture. Nowadays, Han Nom script is still an important factor that affects many different sectors. Therefore, there is no doubt that Hoai Thuong has done an honorable job. It is a respectful behavior toward Vietnam’s traditional quintessence which was accumulated from thousands of years.

Source: VTC10 - NETVIET

[herandthesea]

30/4/2014:

30/4/2014: (from the other shore)

April 30th/May 1st, 2014 — I am in a hotel room in Hanoi, Vietnam. Drove down from the mountain area of Tam Dao National Park yesterday on the 30th, entered the bustling Hanoi streets to be met by the sight of red flags with single yellow stars hanging in front of most shops… The taxi driver who took us from Tam Dao to Hanoi had a tattoo on his arm: it said “1975.”

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