The characters for Chữ Nôm written in Khải thư style. A variant is: 字喃

Chữ nôm (字喃 lit. "southern script") is a classical vernacular script of the Vietnamese language that makes use of Chinese characters (Vietnamese hán tự). The Vietnamese term for Chinese writing is known as Hán Tự, which was the only available form to express the language until the 14th century, used almost exclusively by Chinese-educated Vietnamese elites. Vietnamese was, from the 14th century to the end of the 19th century, written sporadically with Chu Nom, which was a modified Chinese script that incorporated sounds and syllables appropriate for native Vietnamese speakers. However, this has now been completely replaced by Quoc Ngu, the current writing system of Vietnam. Quoc Ngu was developed by Portuguese and French missionaries,who had extensive linguistic training, to record the Vietnamese language. Quoc Ngu incorporates a system of diacritical marks to indicate the tones, as well as modified vowels. The Vietnamese word Chu Nom written in Chu Nom characters File links The following pages link to this file: Chu nom User:Retval ... Calligraphy in the Kaishu style The Regular Script, or in Chinese Kaishu (楷書 Pinyin: kǎishū) and Japanese Kaisho, also commonly known as Standard Regular (正楷), is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy style (peaked at the 7th century), hence most common in modern writings and publications (after the non-calligraphy... The vernacular is the native language of a country or locality. ... A writing system, also called a script, is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language. ... Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ), formerly known under the French colonization as Annamite (see Annam) is the national and official language of Vietnam. ... Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Hán tá»± (漢字, lit. ... This 14th-century statue from south India depicts the gods Shiva (on the left) and Uma (on the right). ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Origin

Chu nom, in earlier times known as Quốc Âm (lit. national pronunciation), is supposed to have originated around the 10th century. The old name of Vietnam, Đại Cồ Việt (939), makes use of Quốc Âm. The earliest written material of Chu nom that has survived until present was found on a stele at a temple at Bảo Ân dating 1209. Another Chu nom inscription was found on a bronze bell at the Vân Bản pagoda in Đồ Sơn. It is dated 1076, but there is uncertainty about the correctness of this date. As a means of recording the passage of time, the 10th century was that century which lasted from 901 to 1000. ... The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a country in Southeast Asia. ... Events Vietnam became a tributary kingdom to China. ... Events Albigensian Crusade against Cathars (1209-1218) the Franciscans are founded. ... Events All year - People fucked each other ALOT! February 14 - Pope Gregory VII excommunicates Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. ...

After Vietnamese independence from China in 939 CE, scholars began their creation of chữ nôm, a logographic script that represents Vietnamese speech. For nearly the next 1,000 years — from the 10th century and into the 20th — much of Vietnamese literature, philosophy, history, law, medicine, religion, and government policy was written in Nom script. During the 14 years of the Tây Sơn emperors (1788-1802), all administrative documents were written in chữ nôm. In the 18th century, many notable Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in chữ nôm, among them Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương. With the 17th century advent of quốc ngữ — the modern roman-style script — Chữ nôm literacy gradually died out. In 1920, the colonial government decreed against its use. Today, fewer than 100 scholars world-wide can read Chữ nôm effectively. Much of Vietnam's written history is inaccessible to the 80 million speakers of the language. A few Buddhist monks and the Jing, the Vietnamese living in China, can read Chữ nôm to some extent. (Original text provided by the Nom Preservation Foundation, with permission granted to publish this text under the GNU Free Documentation License.) Events Vietnam became a tributary kingdom to China. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... Vietnamese literature is literature, both oral and written, created by Vietnamese-speaking people. ... Tay Son Dynasty Origin of the Tay Son The name of Tay Son is used in many ways referring back to the period of peasant rebellions and decentralized dynasty established between the eras of the Le and Nguyen dynasties. ... 1788 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... --69. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... Nguyễn Du, 阮攸 (1766–1820), penname Tố Như and Thanh Hi n is a celebrated Vietnamese poet who wrote in Chữ N m, the ancient writing script of Vietnam. ... Hồ Xuân Hương (胡春香) was a Vietnamese poet born at the end of the Lê Dynasty who wrote poetry in the Confucian tradition. ... (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ... 1920 (MCMXX) is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January January 7 - Forces of Russian White admiral Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk. ... A replica of an ancient statue of Gautama Buddha, found from Sarnath, near Varanasi Buddhism, a religion and philosophy from ancient India, is based on the teachings of the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, of the Shakyas. ... Gin, or Jing Nationality (京族) in Mandarin Chinese, is the name given to ethnic Vietnamese living in China. ...

There are efforts by the Vietnamese government to integrate Chu nom into the educational system. Chu nom characters have been codified in the Unicode standard. Software has been developed to make the writing system computationally accessible, and fonts that contain Chu nom characters have been created only recently. Unicode is an industry standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ...

Writing System

In Vietnam Chinese characters were originally used to write Chữ nho (classical Chinese) only. In Chu nom the use of these characters was extended in many ways. Additionally a vast number of new characters have been invented by Vietnamese writers. Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Chữ nho (字儒) is one of the Chinese based scripts used for writing the Vietnamese language. ... Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of very old forms of Chinese , making it very different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. ...

Cognates

There are many classical Chinese words that have found their way into the Vietnamese language by borrowing. These loanwords are written with the original Chinese character (hán tự). Example: 味 vị "flavour" (Mandarin wèi), 年 niên "year" (Mandarin nián). In addition many naturalised Chinese words are found in Vietnamese, i.e. words that have been borrowed from Chinese before Chinese characters were introduced to Vietnam and therefore have preserved a different pronunciation. These words are mapped to the corresponding characters of classical Chinese, too. Example: 味 mùi (equivalent to vị, flavour), 年 năm (equivalent to niên, year). Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of very old forms of Chinese , making it very different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. ... A loanword is a word directly taken into by one language from another with little or no translation. ... Hán tá»± (漢字, lit. ...

Phonetic character borrowing

Many native Vietnamese words are written by using characters emptied of meaning (chữ giả tá, false loan characters). Such a character is reused for its pronunciation only. Its original meaning is ignored. Thus the character gained a second meaning. Often a character gained many different meanings by phonetic borrowing.

Character Invention

Many new characters were invented for native Vietnamese words (called chữ thuần nôm, proper Nom characters). These new characters are based on the phonetic borrowing and add a semantic component that hints at the new meaning resulting in a new distinct character. In some cases a resulting character has an already existing Chinese look-alike, but with a different meaning.

Standardization

In 1867 Nguyễn Trường Tộ proposed a standardization of Chu Nom, but the new system (Quốc Âm Hán Tự, lit. national pronunciation han characters) was refused by emperor Tự Đức. To this date, Chu nom has never been officially standardized. As a result a lot of variant characters exist for native Vietnamese words. Often a native Vietnamese word could be written either with a phonetically borrowed character or with many distinct characters invented by Vietnamese writers. Many characters have been simplified in different ways. A good example is the word Chữ nôm itself. Chữ can be written with 字 (originally pronounced tự) or with the character 𡨸 (⿰宁字; see picture) that is composed of 宁 on the left and 字 on the right. Additionally the position of 宁 and 字 can be switched forming a variant (⿰字宁; see picture). Another variant is 𡦂 (⿰字字; see picture), composed of two 字, one on the left and one on the right. 1867 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Emperor Tá»± Đức Emperor Tá»± Đức was the 4th Emperor of the Nguyá»…n Dynasty of Vietnam and reigned from 1847-1883. ... The Vietnamese word Chu Nom written in Chu Nom characters File links The following pages link to this file: Chu nom User:Retval ...

Free Han Nom Software Tools

There are many free software tools that produce Han Nom characters simply by typing Vietnamese words in Quoc Ngu.

WinVNKey

• WinVNKey is a Windows-based Vietnamese Multilingual Keyboard Driver that supports typing Vietnamse, Han, Nom characters as well as characters from as many as 40 Latin-based languages. It also provides links to download Unicode Han Nom fonts that support about 70 thousand Han and Nom characters. Several Version 4 beta3 packages were released in 2003 for Windows 95, Windows 98/ME, and Windows NT/2K/XP/2003. The latest release is version 5.0 (Feb 2005) running on NT4/2K/XP/2003 only. Version 5 supports smart Vietnamese typing and Han Nom characters in Unicode Extension B (surrogate Han Nom characters). For more information, contact WinVNKey's author Hoc D. Ngo at hoc96@yahoo.com

Related topic

• Vietnamese language
• Chinese character
• Chinese written language
• Mojikyo character database
• Han unification
• Chu nho

Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ), formerly known under the French colonization as Annamite (see Annam) is the national and official language of Vietnam. ... 漢字 hànzì, hanja, kanji… in Traditional Chinese and other languages. ... Various styles of Chinese calligraphy. ... Mojikyo (文字鏡) is a set of computer software and fonts for enhanced ideogram word-processing. ... Han unification is the process used by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. ... Chữ nho (字儒) is one of the Chinese based scripts used for writing the Vietnamese language. ...

External links

• Vấn đề chữ viết nhìn từ góc độ lịch sử tiếng Việt
• Chu nom character index
• Nom Preservation Foundation
• Hanosoft of Vietnam - Han Nom software R&D
• Information about the Chu nom script
• The Vietnamese Writing System
• WinVNKey software and Unicode fonts (Han Nom A/B).
• HÁN VIỆT Glossary
• Hán-việt dictionary