Chữ Nôm ( 𡨸喃 , IPA: [t͡ɕɨ˦ˀ˥ nom˧˧] ) is a logographic writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language . It uses Chinese characters to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, with other words represented by new characters created using a variety of methods, including phono-semantic compounds . This composite script was therefore highly complex and was accessible to less than five percent of the Vietnamese population who had mastered written Chinese.
51-504: Vương or Vuong ( Chữ Nôm : 王 ) is a Vietnamese surname , meaning King. In the United States, Vuong was the 7,635th most common surname during the 1990 census and the 4,556th most common during the 2000 census . Ch%E1%BB%AF N%C3%B4m Although all formal writing in Vietnam was done in classical Chinese until the early 20th century (except for two brief interludes), chữ Nôm
102-573: A Vietnamese Jesuit priest who spent his final years in Lisbon, provided additional important information about Maiorica's works. Apart from this, no new details emerged from then until the mid-20th century. A major milestone in research on Maiorica occurred in 1951 when Jesuit historian Georg Schurhammer published an article regarding three early Christian authors in Vietnam: Maiorica, João Ketlâm (Gioan Thanh Minh), and Felippe do Rosario. However, he
153-474: A diacritic at the upper right corner. Other alternate reading diacritical marks include tháu đấm ( 草𢶸 ) where a character is represented by a simplified variant with two points on either side of the character. In contrast to the few hundred Japanese kokuji ( 国字 ) and handful of Korean gukja ( 국자 , 國字 ), which are mostly rarely used characters for indigenous natural phenomena, Vietnamese scribes created thousands of new characters, used throughout
204-667: A form of Yue Chinese and Vietnamese, but their priests use songbooks and scriptures written in chữ Nôm in their ceremonies. Here is a line in Tam tự kinh lục bát diễn âm ( 三字經六八演音 ), a Vietnamese translation of the Three Character Classic . It features the original text on the top of the page and the Vietnamese translation on the bottom. 人不𭓇不知理 (Nhân bất học bất tri lý) 𠊚空𭓇別𨤰夷麻推 (Người không học biết nhẽ gì mà suy) Without learning, one does not understand reason. Vietnamese
255-467: A phonetic transcription, via their Middle Chinese pronunciations bu kaj , of a Vietnamese phrase, either vua cái 'great king', or bố cái 'father and mother' (of the people). After Vietnam established its independence from China in the 10th century, Đinh Bộ Lĩnh (r. 968–979), the founder of the Đinh dynasty , named the country Đại Cồ Việt 大 瞿 越 . The first and third Chinese characters mean 'great' and 'Viet'. The second character
306-415: A section entitled Xin khoan dung quốc âm ('Please tolerate the national voice'). He proposed to replace classical Chinese with Vietnamese written using a script based on Chinese characters that he called Quốc âm Hán tự ( 國音漢字 'Han characters with national pronunciations'), though he described this as a new creation, and did not mention chữ Nôm. From the latter half of the 19th century onwards,
357-426: A semantic-phonetic structure, the difference being the phonetic indicator ( 守 vs. 字 ). Another example of a Vietnamese word that is represented by several Nôm characters is the word for moon, trăng . It can be represented by a Chinese character that is phonetically similar to trăng, 菱 (lăng), a chữ Nôm character, 𢁋 ( ⿱巴陵 ) which is composed of two phonetic components 巴 (ba) and 陵 (lăng) for
408-680: A variety of sources: official Church documents (such as the Vulgate and Roman Missal ), writings by Church Fathers , Thomas Aquinas ' Summa Theologica , works by fellow Jesuits, and hagiographical books and lore. Today, only 15 of Maiorica's works remain, totalling 4,200 pages and 1.2 million Nôm characters. A majority is archived in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. Most of Maiorica's works are titled in Literary Chinese, even though
459-585: A vital resource for research into chữ Nôm, as well as historical dialects, vocabulary, and phonology of Vietnamese. To translate Catholic theological concepts, Maiorica favored plain, commonly understood vocabulary over Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary , even in cases where the latter would have been consistent with the terms used by his Jesuit colleagues in China. For example, he referred to God as Đức Chúa Trời Đất (literally, "Virtuous Lord of Heaven and Earth"; 德主𡗶坦 ) instead of Thiên Địa Chân Chúa 天地眞主 and to
510-518: Is a tonal language , like Chinese, and has nearly 5,000 distinct syllables. In chữ Nôm, each monosyllabic word of Vietnamese was represented by a character, either borrowed from Chinese or locally created. The resulting system was even more difficult to use than the Chinese script. As an analytic language , Vietnamese was a better fit for a character-based script than Japanese and Korean, with their agglutinative morphology. Partly for this reason, there
561-581: Is a copy of an earlier original, perhaps as early as the 12th century. During the seven years of the Hồ dynasty (1400–07) Classical Chinese was discouraged in favor of vernacular Vietnamese written in Nôm, which became the official script. The emperor Hồ Quý Ly even ordered the translation of the Book of Documents into Nôm and pushed for reinterpretation of Confucian thoughts in his book Minh đạo . These efforts were reversed with
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#1732845040278612-739: Is composed of 天 ('sky') and 上 ('upper'). A few characters were obtained by modifying Chinese characters related either semantically or phonetically to the word to be represented. For example, As an example of the way chữ Nôm was used to record Vietnamese, the first two lines of the Tale of Kiều (1871 edition), written in the traditional six-eight form of Vietnamese verse, consist of 14 characters: 𤾓 Trăm hundred 𢆥 năm year 𥪞 Girolamo Maiorica Girolamo Maiorica ( Portuguese : Jerónimo Majorica ; chữ Nôm : 支由尼模 梅烏栘𰙔 , chữ Hán : 梅烏理哥 ; Vietnamese alphabet : Giê-rô-ni-mô Mai-ô-ri-ca / Mai Ô Lý Ca ; 1591–1656)
663-515: Is derived from the Middle Chinese word dzi 字 , meaning '[Chinese] character'. The word Nôm 'Southern' is derived from the Middle Chinese word nom 南 , meaning 'south'. It could also be based on the dialectal pronunciation from the South Central dialects (most notably in the name of province of Quảng Nam , known locally as Quảng Nôm ). There are many ways to write
714-451: The Eucharist as Mình Thánh ("Holy Body"; 命聖 ) instead of Thánh Thể 聖體 . Today, Thiên Chúa 天主 and Thánh Thể 聖體 are the preferred terms, respectively. Many of the terms he coined would later become popular, such as sự thương khó 事傷𧁷 ( passion ), rỗi linh hồn 磊靈魂 (salvation of souls), tin kính 信敬 (to believe, appearing in
765-541: The French colonial authorities discouraged or simply banned the use of classical Chinese, and promoted the use of the Vietnamese alphabet, which they viewed as a stepping stone toward learning French. Language reform movements in other Asian nations stimulated Vietnamese interest in the subject. Following the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, Japan was increasingly cited as a model for modernization. The Confucian education system
816-580: The Hồ dynasty (1400–1407) and under the Tây Sơn (1778–1802), but in both cases this was swiftly reversed. The use of Chinese characters to transcribe the Vietnamese language can be traced to an inscription with the two characters " 布 蓋 ", as part of the posthumous title of Phùng Hưng , a national hero who succeeded in briefly expelling the Chinese in the late 8th century. The two characters have literal Chinese meanings 'cloth' and 'cover', which make no sense in this context. They have thus been interpreted as
867-760: The Jesuit order on 19 May 1605. He was ordained a priest by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine in Rome before heading to Lisbon en route to the Far East in 1619. Maiorica initially stopped in Goa , then arrived in Macau , intending to proselytize in Japan . However, by 1619, Japan had begun persecuting Christians, so he went instead to Makassar and remained there for a year. Afterwards, he returned to Macau and traveled to Fai-Fo (present-day Hội An ) in 1624 in
918-454: The Man'yōgana script that became the origin of hiragana and katakana . When a character would have two readings, a diacritic may be added to the character to indicate the "indigenous" reading. The two most common alternate reading diacritical marks are cá ( 𖿰 ), (a variant form of 个 ) and nháy ( 𖿱 ). Thus when 本 is meant to be read as vốn , it is written as 本 , with
969-715: The Tonkin missionary region. In 1653, he was promoted to provincial of the Jesuits' Japan Province (which included Tonkin, Đàng Trong, Makassar, Cambodia, and Hainan island). Although this province was officially based out of Macau, Maiorica administered it from Thăng Long. In January 1656, he fell ill in Thanh Hóa and died on 27 January 1656 in Thăng Long. All but one of the extant, 17th-century Christian works written in chữ Nôm can be positively attributed to Maiorica. These works are seen as
1020-575: The Vietnamese alphabet in current use, but was used to refer to chữ Nôm before the Vietnamese alphabet was widely used. Chinese characters were introduced to Vietnam after the Han dynasty conquered Nanyue in 111 BC. Independence was achieved after the Battle of Bạch Đằng in 938, but Literary Chinese was adopted for official purposes in 1010. For most of the period up to the early 20th century, formal writing
1071-607: The creeds ), khiêm nhường chịu lụy 謙讓召累 (humility and submission), hằng sống 恒𤯩 ( eternal life ), cả sáng 奇創 ( hallowed , appearing in the Lord's Prayer ), etc. Historians made reference to Maiorica's works as early as the mid-17th century. Not long after he died, two official Jesuit publications, one published circa 1660–1673 and the other in 1676, also listed manuscripts under his name. For nearly three centuries after that, Western scholars paid very little attention to him. Philipphê Bỉnh (Felippe do Rosario),
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#17328450402781122-505: The 15th and 18th centuries, most likely in 1641 or 1761. While almost all official writings and documents continued to be written in classical Chinese until the early 20th century, Nôm was the preferred script for literary compositions of the cultural elites. Nôm reached its golden period with the Nguyễn dynasty in the 19th century as it became a vehicle for diverse genres, from novels to theatrical pieces, and instructional manuals. Although it
1173-651: The Buddha on the Great Repayment of the Heavy Debt to Parents') was printed around 1730, but conspicuously avoids the character 利 lợi , suggesting that it was written (or copied) during the reign of Lê Lợi (1428–1433). Based on archaic features of the text compared with the Tran dynasty poems, including an exceptional number of words with initial consonant clusters written with pairs of characters, some scholars suggest that it
1224-496: The Lord of Heaven , as well as a defense of the faith by Francesco Buzomi . The press was destroyed within several months. Maiorica left Thăng Long for Kẻ Rum, in Nghệ country ( xứ Nghệ , present-day Nghệ An ), to seek converts in the hinterlands. He stopped writing in the early 1640s to focus on his pastoral duties. In the early 1650s, he returned to Thăng Long to serve as the superior of
1275-508: The Middle Vietnamese blăng , or a chữ Nôm character, 𦝄 ( ⿰月夌 ) composed of a phonetic component 夌 (lăng) and a semantic component meaning 月 ('moon'). Unmodified Chinese characters were used in chữ Nôm in three different ways. The first two categories are similar to the on and kun readings of Japanese kanji respectively. The third is similar to ateji , in which characters are used only for their sound value, or
1326-509: The Vietnamese alphabet grew more and popular. In an article published in 1935 (based on a lecture given in 1925), Georges Cordier estimated that 70% of literate persons knew the alphabet, 20% knew chữ Nôm and 10% knew Chinese characters. However, estimates of the rate of literacy in the late 1930s range from 5% to 20%. By 1953, literacy (using the alphabet) had risen to 70%. The Gin people , descendants of 16th-century migrants from Vietnam to islands off Dongxing in southern China , now speak
1377-505: The assistance of Vietnamese converts. Almost all of these contributors were catechists (called thầy giảng ); they were literate and were usually esteemed members of the community before they converted to Christianity. Maiorica's works can be divided into four basic genres: hagiographies , stories adapted from scripture, sermons, and catechetical writings. These works were generally written in prose, except for some prayers written in verse. He translated, adapted, or composed works based on
1428-429: The connection with Confucianism ) and uncommonly as Hán tự ( 漢字 'Han characters'). Hán văn ( 漢文 ) refers literature written in Literary Chinese. The term Hán Nôm ( 漢 喃 'Han and chữ Nôm characters') in Vietnamese designates the whole body of premodern written materials from Vietnam, either written in Chinese ( chữ Hán ) or in Vietnamese ( chữ Nôm ). Hán and Nôm could also be found in
1479-410: The contents are written in chữ Nôm. This was a common practice for many chữ Nôm works where the title was formally written in Literary Chinese, but the text is written in Vietnamese. Some texts that were attributed to Maiorica were identified by a phrase that appears in the beginning of some texts, Giê-su hội sĩ Giê-rô-ni-mô Mai-ô-ri-ca thuật 支秋㑹士支由尼模梅烏移𰙔述 (As narrated by Geronimo Maiorica, scholar of
1530-497: The fall of the Hồ and Chinese conquest of 1407 , lasting twenty years, during which use of the vernacular language and demotic script were suppressed. During the Ming dynasty occupation of Vietnam , chữ Nôm printing blocks, texts and inscriptions were thoroughly destroyed; as a result the earliest surviving texts of chữ Nôm post-date the occupation. Among the earlier works in Nôm of this era are
1581-411: The half century since then, progress has been made in verifying the authenticity of, preserving, transliterating, and publishing Maiorica's works, which once were assumed to be completely lost. Maiorica "left a significant body of writings", being credited as the main author of 45 or 48 Nôm works. Exchanges of letters between Jesuits and from the text itself make clear that the works were written with
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1632-472: The language. As in the Chinese writing system, the most common kind of invented character in Nôm is the phono-semantic compound, made by combining two characters or components, one suggesting the word's meaning and the other its approximate sound. For example, A smaller group consists of semantic compound characters, which are composed of two Chinese characters representing words of similar meaning. For example, 𡗶 ( giời or trời 'sky', 'heaven')
1683-688: The name chữ Nôm in chữ Nôm characters. The word chữ may be written as 字 , 𫳘(⿰字宁) , 𡨸 , 𫿰(⿰字文) , 𡦂(⿰字字) , 𲂯(⿰貝字) , 𱚂(⿱字渚) , or 宁 , while Nôm is written as 喃 . Chữ Nôm is the logographic writing system of the Vietnamese language. It is based on the Chinese writing system but adds a large number of new characters to make it fit the Vietnamese language. Common historical terms for chữ Nôm were Quốc Âm ( 國音 , 'national sound') and Quốc ngữ ( 國語 , 'national language'). In Vietnamese, Chinese characters are called chữ Hán ( 𡨸 漢 'Han characters'), chữ Nho ( 𡨸儒 'Confucian characters', due to
1734-618: The people. The first literary writing in Vietnamese is said to have been an incantation in verse composed in 1282 by the Minister of Justice Nguyễn Thuyên and thrown into the Red River to expel a menacing crocodile . Four poems written in Nom from the Tran dynasty, two by Trần Nhân Tông and one each by Huyền Quang and Mạc Đĩnh Chi , were collected and published in 1805. The Nôm text Phật thuyết Đại báo phụ mẫu ân trọng kinh ('Sūtra explained by
1785-627: The preferred way to record Vietnamese literature from the 1920s. While Chinese characters are still used for decorative, historic and ceremonial value, chữ Nôm has fallen out of mainstream use in modern Vietnam. In the 21st century, chữ Nôm is being used in Vietnam for historical and liturgical purposes. The Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies at Hanoi is the main research centre for pre-modern texts from Vietnam, both Chinese-language texts written in Chinese characters ( chữ Hán ) and Vietnamese-language texts in chữ Nôm. The Vietnamese word chữ 'character'
1836-571: The same boat as Alexandre de Rhodes , João Cabral , and two or three other Jesuits. Whereas de Rhodes studied Vietnamese under Francisco de Pina (1585–1625), Maiorica studied Vietnamese at the Jesuit residence in Nước Mặn (today An Nhơn District , Bình Định Province ). He proselytized in Đàng Trong ( Cochinchina ) from 1628, when his superiors sent him back to Macau en route to a new assignment in Japan. He
1887-493: The same document side by side, for example, in the case of translations of books on Chinese medicine . The Buddhist history Cổ Châu Pháp Vân phật bản hạnh ngữ lục (1752) gives the story of early Buddhism in Vietnam both in Hán script and in a parallel Nôm translation. The Jesuit Girolamo Maiorica (1605–1656) had also used parallel Hán and Nôm texts. The term chữ Quốc ngữ ( 𡨸 國 語 'national language script') refers to
1938-413: The very word chữ ('character', 'script'), a Chinese loanword, can be written as either 字 (Chinese character), 𡦂 (Vietnamese-only compound-semantic character) or 𡨸 (Vietnamese-only semantic-phonetic character). For another example, the word giữa ('middle'; 'in between') can be written either as 𡨌 ( ⿰守中 ) or 𫡉 ( ⿰字中 ). Both characters were invented for Vietnamese and have
1989-738: The villages, making it accessible even to the illiterates. Chữ Nôm was the dominant script in Vietnamese Catholic literature until the late 19th century. In 1838, Jean-Louis Taberd compiled a Nôm dictionary, helping with the standardization of the script. The reformist Catholic scholar Nguyễn Trường Tộ presented the Emperor Tự Đức with a series of unsuccessful petitions (written in classical Chinese, like all court documents) proposing reforms in several areas of government and society. His petition Tế cấp bát điều ( 濟急八條 'Eight urgent matters', 1867), includes proposals on education, including
2040-447: The writings of Nguyễn Trãi (1380–1442). The corpus of Nôm writings grew over time as did more scholarly compilations of the script itself. Trịnh Thị Ngọc Trúc [ vi ] , consort of King Lê Thần Tông , is generally given credit for Chỉ nam ngọc âm giải nghĩa [ vi ] (指南玉音解義; 'guide to Southern Jade sounds: explanations and meanings'), a 24,000-character bilingual Hán-to-Nôm dictionary compiled between
2091-504: Was a 17th-century Italian Jesuit missionary to Vietnam . He is known for compiling numerous Roman Catholic works written in the Vietnamese language 's demotic chữ Nôm script, both on his own and with assistance from local converts. Maiorica was one of the first authors of original Nôm prose. His works are seen as a milestone in the history of Vietnamese literature. Maiorica was born in Naples , either in 1581, 1589, or 1591. He entered
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2142-458: Was again unable to make the journey, this time due to poor weather. In 1630, he traveled to Champa , where he was quickly imprisoned. After a Portuguese merchant ransomed him, Maiorica made his way to Cửa Hàn ( Danang ) via Cambodia . On 19 October 1631, he went to Thăng Long ( Hanoi ) with Bernardino Reggio. The next year, Maiorica and Reggio started a printing press to print copies of Matteo Ricci 's Chinese-language work, The True Meaning of
2193-519: Was compared unfavourably to the Japanese system of public education. According to a polemic by writer Phan Châu Trinh , "so-called Confucian scholars" lacked knowledge of the modern world, as well as real understanding of Han literature. Their degrees showed only that they had learned how to write characters, he claimed. The popularity of Hanoi's short-lived Tonkin Free School suggested that broad reform
2244-479: Was dismantled in 1915 in Tonkin and was given for the last time at the imperial capital of Huế on January 4, 1919. The examination system, and the education system based on it, had been in effect for almost 900 years. The decline of the Chinese script also led to the decline of chữ Nôm given that Nôm and Chinese characters are so intimately connected. After the First World War, chữ Nôm gradually died out as
2295-478: Was indistinguishable from contemporaneous classical Chinese works produced in China, Korea, and Japan. Vietnamese scholars were thus intimately familiar with Chinese writing. In order to record their native language, they applied the structural principles of Chinese characters to develop chữ Nôm . The new script was mostly used to record folk songs and for other popular literature. Vietnamese written in chữ Nôm briefly replaced Chinese for official purposes under
2346-514: Was no development of a phonetic system that could be taught to the general public, like Japanese kana syllabary or the Korean hangul alphabet. Moreover, most Vietnamese literati viewed Chinese as the proper medium of civilized writing, and had no interest in turning Nôm into a form of writing suitable for mass communication. Chữ Nôm has never been standardized. As a result, a Vietnamese word could be represented by several Nôm characters. For example,
2397-668: Was often used to transcribe non-Chinese terms and names phonetically. In this context, cồ is an obsolete Vietnamese word for 'big'. The oldest surviving Nom inscription, dating from 1210, is a list naming 21 people and villages on a stele at the Tự Già Báo Ân pagoda in Tháp Miếu village ( Mê Linh District , Hanoi). Another stele at Hộ Thành Sơn in Ninh Bình Province (1343) lists 20 villages. Trần Nhân Tông (r. 1278–1293) ordered that Nôm be used to communicate his proclamations to
2448-417: Was possible. In 1910, the colonial school system adopted a "Franco-Vietnamese curriculum", which emphasized French and alphabetic Vietnamese. The teaching of Chinese characters was discontinued in 1917. On December 28, 1918, Emperor Khải Định declared that the traditional writing system no longer had official status. The traditional Civil Service Examination, which emphasized the command of classical Chinese,
2499-403: Was prohibited during the reign of Minh Mạng (1820–1840), apogees of Vietnamese literature emerged with Nguyễn Du 's The Tale of Kiều and Hồ Xuân Hương 's poetry. Although literacy in premodern Vietnam was limited to just 3 to 5 percent of the population, nearly every village had someone who could read Nôm aloud for the benefit of other villagers. Thus these Nôm works circulated orally in
2550-492: Was unaware that copies of Maiorica's works remain. Schurhammer's investigation was of interest to researcher Hoàng Xuân Hãn , who was in Europe at the time and read the article. He coincidentally encountered a set of manuscripts that he considered very likely to have been written by Maiorica. This discovery elicited excitement among Vietnamese historians, and several individuals published transliterated reproductions of these works. In
2601-408: Was widely used between the 15th and 19th centuries by the Vietnamese cultured elite for popular works in the vernacular, many in verse. One of the best-known pieces of Vietnamese literature , The Tale of Kiều , was written in chữ Nôm by Nguyễn Du . The Vietnamese alphabet created by Portuguese Jesuit missionaries, with the earliest known usage occurring in the 17th century, replaced chữ Nôm as
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