Chinese Speakers 𡦂喃- Understanding The Magic of Vietnamese Chữ Nôm Chinese Characters 越南 漢字 

It's fascinating to see a Westerner taking interest in, and studying this deep about Chữ Nôm.

Vietnamese is fascinating and allows you to get a glimpse of classic Chinese sounds. Study (學）is “học”, pretty much the same sound in Cantonese, Korean and Japanese. However, it has morphed into “Xue” in Mandarin Chinese, far away from its root.

I am a vietnamese, I can read Chữ Nôm and when I see this video, I say wow. You learned Vietnamese so deep

I’m a chinese indonesian and my family speaks Hakka which is one of the more conservative of chinese dialects. I’ve stayed in japan, vietnam and thailand and it’s wonderful to be able to see links in all these languages, it made it far easier for me to learn them. I wish my Hakka were better, i think it would be even easier.

I'm a native Vietnamese, and frankly, after studying Japanese (with kanji), I've got to know more about my own language. In fact, whenever I see a new Japanese word with kanji, I always try to figure out the Hán-Việt pronunciation based on the parts of the characters. That's why sometimes although I can read and understand certain Japanese words, I don't even know how to pronounce those in Japanese lol. For example (taken from a Twitter post of a Japanese celebrity): "【伊達さゆりの伊達ちゃんは伊達じゃない！！！】 *現在、第6回*を配信中です！" I would read this as "Date Sayuri no Date-chan wa Date janai!! *Hiện tại, đệ sáu hồi* wo haishinchuu desu". It came out of my mind quite "natively" right after my eye scanned through the "現在、第6回" [hiện tại, đệ 6 hồi // kenzai, dai-6-kai] because I didn't quite remember the Japanese pronunciation of this part, but I did read the "配信中" [phối tín trung // haishinchuu] which came later, in Japanese (because I had seen it a lot and I knew its pronunciation). I don't know how this even works lol.

I hope one day they will bring back Hán-Nôm in the education system of Vietnam as a optional side subject of literature. We shouldn't forget our roots.

Quick note about moon and flesh radicals: you notice that for the words that mean something related to flesh, the two strokes in the middle are tilted (at least in handwriting, kinda like ">". The flesh radical actually comes from 肉 and not 月.

As a Vietnamese, learning both Mandarin and Thai I'm really impressed with how you really dig deep down into these parts of our language that even natives might not even know. Btw there's this interesting part that it seems your Vietnamese pronunciation is all based on the Northern accent, which was where Vietnam was based, and then expand but there was also Nom based on Southern Vietnamese pronunciation which shifts some of the word based on how the Southerner pronounced it (like V -> D) during Nguyen Dynasty. And also a lot of Nom words are not standardized so different people can have different uses of the same character or different characters for the same words. Also, the Nom words also reflect the pronunciation of Middle Vietnamese for both Vietnamese or even Chinese, so it can be used to reconstruct Middle Vietnamese or even Middle Chinese, which I think shows how Vietnamese retain much of the old Chinese phonetic that is not disappeared or shifted in Mandarin. Btw, one thought, have you ever tried to write Vietnamese in the Thai alphabet because as I think this is phonetically possible right? Or maybe Thai in Chinese-make script that is similar to how Nom work?

This guy is a genius! I can speak and understand Cantonese, Mandarin. But his pronunciations and writings are way above me. Hats off to you!

I'm so happy i got to see this video! Really impressive, and I especially appreciate tons of Vietnamese in the comments speaking of their experience. Good job.

Knowing Japanese has made learning Vietnamese so much better for me. It's so interesting to learn the chữ nôm characters when studying new vocabulary and it makes memorizing it so much easier.

Congratulations on such an excellent video. I grew up speaking Vietnamese and Cantonese and this is the best explanation I have seen. I also learnt a few things I didn't know and it confirmed some vague theories I had. As far as I can tell from 1 video, your knowledge is impressively vast.

Wow This is amazing! Thank you for uploading this video. As a native Cantonese speaker, I've learned a lot, including the sound shifts through time and that Vietnamese actually has such delicate relationships with Chinese. This inspires me to learn some Vietnamese, thanks again.

Great video! As a native Cantonese speaker I have always wanted to learn Vietnamese (as well as Korean) with my knowledge of Chinese characters but I never find any good resources online and offline. It would be great if there is a table of characters that summarize their connections to Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese and it would make speakers of these four languages easier to learn the other three languages.

That’s awesome. You were pretty much in a candy shop. What an incredible experience walking and seeing all the Vietnamese words in Vietnam. Thanks for this lesson Stuart! 👍🏽🙏🏼❤️

WOW!! I think I found an amazing channel here!! I know Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and some Vietnamese learnt before too. 11:52 17:00 I really like the way you analyse languages and link different languages together. 25:09 I feel same feeling as you do now🤣

I'm learning Chinese(for fun) as a Northern Vietnamese and i gotta say, Cantonese is so much easier for me. Only after a few times looking at characters and hearing the sounds, i'm now able to understand some simple product labels and catch lots of words when watching Chinese shows. The reason why i got into learning it was because there are a tons Vietnamese poems that are literally just old Chinese but got written down as Hán Việt by later generations. I just find it fascinating, how the language i was born speaking can help me learn other languages so easily

Very impressive your knowledge of these languages. I speak Xiang dialect of China. It’s disappearing and I studied my own language just to better understand it. Your work is definitely inspiring to me.

Good stuff, mate. As a Cantonese and Hokkien speaker, props to you for trying to explain something complex pretty well. Keep it up.

As a Vietnamese teacher, I admire you made this video to help people have some positive look abt learning Vietnamese, especially Chinese speakers and Japanese speakers.

18:22 you can basically just extend the "ng" sound from "bring, sing, ring, cling" and use it as a starter. A lot of people have trouble starting a word with "ng" but once I told them this, it's much easier for them.

wow this channel is my treasure discovery, your explanation blowing my mind, my family is overseas hakka descendant, when my grandpa still alive, he always talked to me in hakka, and what I found later, it turned out that the Hakka language has a lot of similar sounds to Japanese and Korean vocabularies, thank you very much for your comprehensive explanation

你比大多数中国人都精通汉语。 还有也精通越语，日语，韩语，泰语。 非常厉害！

Thanks alot for your dedication! Yes! I consider your video as a dedication to promoting Nom script! I am also a Nom learner, although I know that there will be no chance for Nom to replace Quoc Ngu, but I still hope that it will come back to life and become a part of Vietnamese culture. Thank you again!

It's funny that modern English is so similarly estranged from its historical roots as Mandarin is from old Chinese. So completely and utterly different, but we're both lumbered with a writing system that has inexplicably eccentric quirks until you go back a thousand years to trace the reasons why. And we are both disconnected from our sibling and neighbours languages as a result. Really nice in depth video, thanks for shining a light on this subject.

I’m Vietnamese learning English and Chinese. It’s so interesting to know your channel.

Here are more things to indicate to the convo in this very 'dead' script at 21:50 Back in the day, the written form of the language is known as「文」is tends to be formal no matter what the writer's background is. To be more subtle, informal, he would use 'simpler', more familiar common words instead of kings' or 'Shakespeare' words. 「𣋚𠉞」totally consists of 26 strokes and there's no way this considered as familiar words for 'writing' to some Viet back in the 19th century. To compare, the modern usages of the word in Chinese「今天」and Japanese「今日」each of both only consists of 8 strokes. The Nôm was considered as a vulgar unofficial script in poetry in order to create the closest phonetic way to express an idea. Some Nôm is adopted widely in both poet and popular demand. Some Nôm is just one-time-only usage by an exact author meanwhile others just created parallels of it. Some Nôm is specially created to record some Vietnamese swear or taboo words, or to mimic some 'weirdo' sound like the sound of urine, the sound of fart. Not to create the 'new' clear meaningful notations that can be written in full「文」form a.k.a common Hanzi. Some tried but failed every time they started. The very case 'Hôm nay' is pretty a modern thing. Back then, lords and kings were to use「今余」in 1284, and 「肆今」in 1850 to indicate king-James-like thing as 'In this sacred/leisured/very day, I be with Ye to talk..'. Then the YY/MM/DD written as the year is the year of the reign of the king and sealed by him as the signature and no more idea of the 'Today' notation. Then I doubt the both formal and informal writing the word 'Hôm nay' by Hán/Nôm is just「今」pronounced like 'Nay'/'Kim' depending on the context, On/Kunyomi likewise. Yes, both of「𣋚」and「𠉞」appear on the dictionary but no clue someone did use this combination in the past, just the Nôm with extra steps 🤯🤯🤯! Even if someday Viet tried to restore Hán/Nôm in daily life, It still more likely for them to put「今」or anything other than「𣋚𠉞」, which totally consists of 26 strokes, in some text message. If you have Viet friends, you prob know Vietnamese are already lazy with their version 'Romanji' already. (Vietnamese be like the deep-south 'y'all' people of the States who want to simplify the language the most. 🙉🙉🙉)

Awesome intro explaining Vietnamese. With this knowledge, it makes sense for them to reverse back using chu nom

I have a youtube channel comparing sinoxenic pronunciations of Chinese characters and i've included hokkien and cantonese into the comparison as well. I appreciate the similarities but I didn't really know much about why they sounded so similar. But your video has taught me so much. Very insightful video!

I speak Cantonese and Mandarin and also know some Korean from kpop. I have always been fascinated by the sound evolution of Hanja and how these Chinese loanwords shaped the Korean culture. Your video is absolutely brilliant -- with my knowledge in Canto+Mando+a bit Korean, I can understand everything you said even though I don't know any Vietnamese (and Thai, since you mentioned it). It's laying the first bit of foundation for my understanding of these two languages. Sometimes I look at Vietnamese words and try to guess what Chunom it represents and what it means; with your explanation the guessing is going to be easier, hopefully. Thank you!

Man, you’re freaking amazing! 真令人惊讶与佩服

Chữ Nôm is also the intermediate way that I used to study Chinese. I consider it is the easy path. Chữ Nôm is very useful.

非常有啟發性，謝謝你讓我認識字喃的基本原則。 六書的會意，不是會議。 其他的解說都很精彩。 希望你能弄個手寫筆，示範出來的字會比用滑鼠的順眼八百倍。

Thank you for this lesson. You are very knowledgable and I had to replay it 3x to understand. My father grew up in Hanoi and can read Chu Nom and Cantonese and this will give us another topic to discuss and be closer! :)

Wow, thank you Stuart.. you’re basically a Asian languages ambassador

Chinese family of scripts is such an interesting and complex topic. Except for those studying or interested in history and languages, even most Chinese native speakers are unaware of the diverse range of scripts, which had been created based on core principles of Hanzi and had historically been used by many living and extinct non-Chinese languages. These living languages include Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and much lesser know languages spoken by ethnic minorities living in modern PRC, such as Zhuang (Sawndip script), most of which, except for Japanese, later switched to a full phonetic script. However, you can still see the influence of Hanzi in non-Latin phonetic writing systems like Hangul in terms of its distinct way of stacking phonetic components within a square field in comparison to the purely horizontal or vertical patterns often seen in most other writing systems originating outside of East Asia. The extinct languages having adopted a Hanzi-based script include Khitan and Tanghut languages. Jurchen had also adopted a script based on the Khitan large script until its descendent, the Manchu language, adopted a script based on the old Mongolian alphabet (whose origin can be traced back to the Aramaic alphabet) in the sixteen century. The influence of Hanzi in East Asia is beyond the scope of Chinese languages themselves in a similar way to the legacy left by the Latin script in Europe, which extends beyond the scope of modern Romance languages. The adoption of the nation-state form of government in East Asia based on the idea of “one people, one state and one language” in response to western colonialism and the gradual collapse of the Chinese Imperial system (or the “tributary” system of multiethnic East Asia Central Empires, more accurately) in the early modern period have created the current circumstance in which Hanzi is viewed in East Asia through a more nationalistic lens.

Very interesting video about the etymology of Vietnamese words. I am of Sino vietnamese background and I do speak Cantonese and Vietnamese. I can also read and write Chinese. I agree with you that if you know Chinese characters, understanding Vietnamese is very easy, especially reading the Chu Nom. Thanks for the great video!

Don't forget many French words also came into the Vietnamese language as well.

That’s awesome work! I have Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese lined-up for me to grapple with them… I’ll remember your insights! 😉👍🏼

I don't know how much you know about the subject but I study an archaic form of Mandarin called 中州音 from the Ming dynasty as detailed in the 洪武正韻 and it really shows the development between middle Chinese spoken during the Sui and Tang in the Central Plains and the early Mandarin spoken during the late Song all the way till now, I speak Yunnanese which is a regional topolect variety of Ming Dynasty Mandarin brought in during the Yuan and Ming conquests of Yunnan in the Middle Ages and by converting Standard Mandarin into 中州音 of the Ming Dynasty which preserves many archaic features not found in modern day Mandarin I find it is easier to understand Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese or Sino-japanese words because many of the sounds are more similar and the vocabulary more archaic with similar meanings. For example the word for gold in Classical Mandarin is pronounced at least in the literary form /kim/ or /kin/ which is closer to the way the word was pronounced during the Middle Chinese period without palatisation and with a bilabial /m/ depending on the reconstruction also other palatisations that hadn't occured yet also help bridge the gap the word 元 was pronounced with a Velar Nasal Initial consonant /Ngyuen/ and also the distinctions between /w/ and /v/ also helped the word for Night 晚 was pronounced with a initial /v/ whilst the word for play 玩 was followed by a higher back vowel after a /w/ being rendered as /won/. These are just a few examples of how I personally use my knowledge of Chinese linguistics to understand Sino-Korean, Japanese or Vietnamese loanwords as 中州音 is relatively archaic and preserves many pronunciations of words that are closer to the Middle Chinese words of the Tang and Suei Dynasties.

Vietnamese has more similarities to Southern Chinese languages than Mandarin. Cantonese and Vietnamese are my native languages. They're are so many words that sound like Vietnamese when I speak Cantonese.

It is so interesting to learn more about my mother tongue. Thank you for this video

Wow! This is absolutely fascinating!

Thanks for interesting video. As my being Japanese, I feel I can read chu nom. It looks very similar to JP pronounciation. In JP, 文字 sounds "mo ji". 文言 sounds "mon gon". Very similar to "mot" 文' (1) of VN. In JP, 障碍(impedance) sounds "shou gai". "gai" sounds similar to "nguoi" 㝵人(person) of VN. I got to know for the first time today!

I'm Korean with some knowledge of Chinese character. It is pity that Koreans doesn't learn Chinese characters anymore. And there seems so many possibility for Korean speakers learn Vietnamese vocabulary with Chu Nom. Especially since sound of Chinese character in Korean is more closer to Cantonese than Mandarin.

Thanks for the great video~ I'm from Hong Kong speaking Cantonese ~ I always find cantonese resembles sounds of vietnamnese. Mind opening to learn the basic of Chu Nom that is so so so similar to Chinese will sound similar to Cantonese. Keep up the work!

You are amazing... 🙏🏻😅 +1 new fan.

Odd thing is that I feel a lot of the characters invented specifically for Vietnamese seem very similar to simplified Chinese characters.

Totally support your ideas. I also want that my country will teach Chu Nom at school.

Very insightful explanation!

9:30 as a native mandarin and shanghai-dialect speaker, i must say, your observation on the pronunciation shift is really so insightful. In Wu-Dialect (one of the major subbranch of Chinese), the character '江‘ is pronounced as 'gang'. Even many native speakers may never realize how things work like that.

As a native teochew and cantonese speaker, I would say middle Chinese influenced many modern Asian Languages, like Japanese and Vietnamese. Traveling to Pho Hue its like living in the past for me. A lots things , especially culture are shared by both the local people and me , just that you have to study a bit history and old Chinese Language in order to have this feeling of connection

形声 type is indeed the most common type of Chinese characters formed. It's not just Vietnamese Chu Nom that invents such characters, but all Chinese vernacular languages in their written form. Do note that even for Chinese language, the modern written language is somewhat recent invention. In the past (over centuries ago), most Chinese in ancient China were illiterate. The elites were however literate in Classical Chinese. However, the spoken language (vernacular) is different from written language (classical Chinese). It's only recently when Mandarin is adopted as the common language that the modern written Chinese is based on vernacular (spoken) Mandarin. Even Mandarin itself also coins many characters that aren't found in Classical Chinese (as in you won't find these characters in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese or other Chinese language). For instance, 哪 (which, where) as opposed to classical Chinese 何, question particle 吗 is also coined up using 马 for its sound, which has got nothing to do with horse. 爸妈 is also modern term coined by using 巴 马 for their sound, as opposed to classical Chinese 父母 or 爹娘. In fact, simplified Chinese itself is based heavily on sound radical, as such 認 becomes 认 and 讓 becomes 让.

As a Filipino Chinese that speaks Hokkien this is an amazing video man! You're really smart!

Thank you for pointing this out.

Not sure if it’s true but Cantonese preserves more archaic feature of middle chinese comparing to mandarin (because of its long history) so it’s normal that Cantonese sounds more similar to Vietnamese than Mandarin.

this is such a great watch. I just wanna add a little bit about the vietnamese vocabulary. A lot of words in vietnamese have two versions: chữ nôm version and a chinese pinyin version. For example, the word "person" is "người" most of the time but in some use cases it will be "nhân" which sounds similar to 人 "rén". For "superman", vietnamese will say "siêu nhân" (超人 chaorén) instead of "siêu người".

My best friend Nguyễn Việt Khôi added the Nom characters in that learning document you mention.

Bạn thật giỏi khi hiểu biết được ngôn ngử cổ xưa của chúng tôi, cám ơn bạn, thật hỗ thẹn khi ko hiểu hết được các văn tự của tổ tiên chúng tôi,

That's very interesting! That a westerner can detect these relationship between the sounds of middle Chinese and the logic of behind the construction of the Vietnamese Chu Nom, that not even a native Chinese speaker would know. You're a pro!

Unrelated to the point of this video, but I see your voice healed completely! IM THRILLED!

Oh if only your video had been around when I started to learn Chử Nôm! Learning Chử Nôm has been quite a fascinating journey for me, as it's given me insights into the language and ended up making me develop an interest in history and linguistics as I looked into words I never payed that much attention to before, learning their etymologies, and seeing their counterparts in Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese.

哇!這洋哥們児比漢字文化圈的和、韓、漢、越人都瞭解漢學

Great clip! Just one thing the left part of 脂 (flesh) is not 月. For the flesh, the inside part is a point and a up-lifting stroke; for the moon, it’s two horizontal strokes. Maybe you have already know, just wanna point that out.

So cool…great video.

I've often wondered about this.... Fascinating!

I'm a native Cantonese speaker, i've learned Vietnamese(Northern)by myself in 3 months, although i can't really speak this language, but i can understand about 80% of the speaking. Because the pronunciations between the two are very similar.

When they met in Peiking, understanding letters eventhough don't speak their languages about 100 years ago. It was very easy things. Korean soldiers don't speak Vietnam language but can use Chinese letters to Vietnam old people in Vietnam War time. There was no difficulty to communicate each other. It's 1965~1974. Nowadays Vietnam old people generally don't know Chinese letters if he is not scholar. Moreover if you learn Japanese languages, there are many Chinese letters in it. Some Japanese dictionary consist of only Chinese letters. I don't speak Japanese language but no difficulty to read and understanding. Speaking is always very difficult. I don't understanding even Korean in my University days. What do you mean by that? I'm Korean. I don't understand rural Korean dialect. Some students don't pronounced exactly. There is a intonation in Words and stences. I suggest it's a song 🎵. Languages is a song.

THIS IS AMAZING

研究得很深入，厲害！！！

As a Japanese who has learned Mandarin Chinese, I wish people still used Chinese characters in Vietnam and Korea so we can understand each other more. Our cultures and values must be similar.

Another etymological explanation of the Vietnamese 𠬠 is that it derived from the right part of 沒, which was also written like ⿰氵 𠬠 in the past.

Awesome video. It’s like the Matrix. You can see the code behind those languages.

The word "Quoc Ngu" is surprisingly the same as saying "国语" in my hometown Cantonese dialect

please more about vietnamese

Very interesting video. As a Cantonese native speaker I have always know we share a lot of pronunciation characteristics with Vietnamese (and perhaps Thai as well?). I imagine Vietnamese and Thai would have the same feeling hearing Cantonese: it's like my language but in gibberish. Seeing the comparison in action is just more intriguing. I wonder how Hokkien or Min is compared to Vietnamese and Thai. They branch off even earlier than Cantonese from the mordern northern Chinese language.

I admire your knowledge :)

Wow you’re so incredible.

Only very few Vietnamese knows (Chữ Nôm) now.

16:20 actually một is the simplified form of 沒 một, it didn't derive from 文 Though characters that created from slight sound shift did exist, but they were usually written like 字 + a small diacritic that looks like く on the right

I could see myself learning this

Your approach to learning Vietnamese through chu nom is similar to my approach to learning Korean as a Japanese speaker. The problem I have with mainland Chinese characters is that they’re too simplified. I found that the HK and Taiwanese characters were much easier to read as they’re similar to the Japanese forms. I had fun in Korea communicating in kanji without knowing how to speak it the first time I went.

It's interesting that most Vietnamese nowadays don't understand even a single Chu Nom character. This way of learning the Vietnamese language only works for learners who have some background in Chinese characters.

Chữ Nôm is similar to Sawndip (สือดิบ) used in Old Zhuang language. I find some Sawndip in CJK unicode, e.g. 岜 (bya) and 崬 (ndoeng) meaning mountain and forest, equivalent to ผา/ຜາ (pha) and ดง/ດົງ (dong) in Thai/Lao respectively.

Wow, great opportunities for proto mon-khmer "renaissance fair" style meet ups in SEA.

Very good episode, got a little typo in (Huiyi), Should be 會意, 會議 means meeting.

15:44 ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌThat is the symbols people in Taiwan use to spell the sound of Chinese characters. Also a lot of people use these symbols to type Chinese.

If you know both Vietnamese and Cantonese, you will see these 2 languages have the most common vocabularies (compares to mandarin or other Chinese dialects)

Wow I like the ncurses-based tool😀😀

Amazing!!!

Well done man! i really don't understand for a long time why "𠬠" is một? you are right, we must pronouce the character by Cantonese, yes, the cantonese is more nearly the ancient Chinese, and the Beijing language is a new language actully it fused ancient chinese and Manchu language. BTW, you guy can speak and write chinese, cantonese, vietnamese, it's Awsome!

Korean is actually derived their modern language quite different from Chinese character. While Japanese and Chu Nom- Vietnamese are still borrowing a lot of Chinese. Like you mentioned Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese have lot of common words and similar sound. You are right!

Great video

Chữ Nôm was created by mandarins in ancient time whose qualifications for the job were to be proficient in the Four Books and the Five Classics so it's no surprise it requires the user to have a thorough grasp of the Han scripts.

江 in Cantonese is pronounced gong，with ong as in Hong Kong

this is super interesting

Just mind blowing

Giải thích dễ hiểu: Chữ Nôm vốn là chữ Hán, nhưng vì chữ Hán nguyên bản không đủ khả năng đáp ứng đầy đủ các từ ngữ của người Việt, nên người Việt đã cải tiến nó theo cách của mình nhằm dễ phiên âm hơn

If only the Nguyen dynasty never fell to the French, instead Westernising the way the Japanese did, then we'll see an interesting outcome with Chu Nom

Wow, in my language khawng means freeze..we mostly referred to a cold freeze. My language is part of proto Sino-tibetan