Writing in Vietnam 

I sincerely apologize for my butchering of Vietnamese pronunciation.

Imagine if Chu Han and Chu Nom have been preserved and still being used in Vietnam today. Vietnamese language would have been the most unique among the CJKV languages for having invented their own set of characters which look like Chinese but dont exist in Chinese vocabulary, and not like Hangul, Katakana and Hiragana which have been invented from scratch. There is a handwriting of revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh displayed in a museum in Hanoi where he used a unique mixed script writing combining the modern Chu Quoc Ngu and Chu Han and Chu Nom. Imagine if this form is used in Vietnam today. This would have been more complicated than the Japanese mixed script of Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji.

Never thought that Chu Nom was a mixed script system. I felt that Chu Nom characters are unnecessarily complicated due to their structure but now I've come to appreciate them more. This is by far the best video that explains Vietnamese characters I've ever seen.

Interesting video. I think why Chu Quoc Ngu was readily embraced because it does a much better job in capturing native Vietnamese as a spoken language with a system that is more comprehensive and consistent. I moved to the US when I was 7. After I self taught myself how the alphabet and the basic writing work, I was able to write and read Vietnamese easily. I listened to a lecture given by a Vietnamese linguist researcher and at pne point he said that Vietnamese had to somewhat sacrifice some of the actual spoken sound even when using Chu Nom because the characters simply couldn't capture it which actually led to quite a bit of changes in native spoken language. Words with two sounds often simplified down to one. I think an example used was something like Trời (sky/heaven) was originally more like Blời. The "B" and "L" making the "Buh" "Luh" sound. Another reason is that Vietnamese has been fighting for complete independence from China from up north for millennium now which sought to assimilate and erase Vietnamese cultural identity. There are historical records of Vietnamese kings and emperors in the past banning certain things they deemed Chinese in attempt to regain cultural distinction. So I think when Chu Quoc Ngu was developed, the elites pushed for the adoption of CQG not only because it better capture the spoken language but also that it would be one very significant thing in their effort to be recognized as a distinct culture from China. That and I think it helps improve literacy to the mass.

Regarding why Vietnamese was able to adopt Latin alphabet and totally replace Chinese-based scripts, I think the 2 main reasons are: -Vietnam was the only Sinosphere country whose territory was entirely conquered by a Western power, so naturally the French needed to force the Latin script upon Vietnamese and abolish Chinese based script in order to better keep such a large territory under control. -Vietnamese has a much more diverse phonological system, which means much fewer homophones than Chinese and Japanese so using a purely phonetic writing system works just fine in Vietnamese, unlike most of the other Sinosphere languages where logographic script is needed to distinguish between homophones.

This has become my new favourite channel, I've been looking for a video on Vietnamese linguistics and this had explanations for so many things I was wondering about. Really looking forward to future videos

been waiting for this video since I watched the one about hanja/kanji, as I love the vietnamese language. keep up the great work, man.

Amazing, you made it sound understandable and interesting, without being overly complex. Thks a lot!

Finally your new linguistic video! The content is so fascinating and well explained! Btw the method used for creating Chu Nom characters for words with consonant clusters in Vietnamese looks somehow like the Chinese 反切 spelling from their ancient rhyme books. Now you covered the whole East Asia except China, so maybe you will also talk about history of writing in China in a future video?

Super interesting! I’m sure you’d love Tangut characters too, as well as the Khitan script. Truly interesting stuff!

It's also going to be a pushback from phonetic writing when the idea that "if you write these languages phonetically, due to homophones, things will be ambiguous", which doesn't make sense, since then people can't speak with eachother, since that is ambiguous. Another stupid reason is "you can't write tones in Latin script", which is also false.

Hasn't Korea moved away from Chinese characters completely, or near-completely by this point?

Your video presentation and voice over are very similar to the ones on a RU-vid channel called “Keith”, which confused me both of you might the same 😊❤ Thanks for the work

2:48 just some minor correction here. cat small ate apple red แมว ตัวเล็ก กิน แอปเปิ้ล​ แดง แล้ว แล้ว basically it is '了' ได้ came form '得'

I think an interesting video would be explaining how even though Vietnamese and Khmer are in the same language family and are pretty close, why Khmer created a writing script similar in style to Lao or Thai.

You should have mentioned that chữ Quốc ngữ uses Portuguese spelling conventions, not French spelling conventions. The French would have used 'gn' instead of 'nh', for example. Also - why didn't Cambodia and Laos, which were also under French rule, adopt the Latin alphabet?

4:28 i think bahasa melayu, which is part of Austroasiatic lang, is bulan too

Chữ Nôm is very difficult for people to learn chữ Quốc Ngữ is easy for people to learn

If you visit Hanoi, you will find a small monument dedicated to 2 decades of anti-American resistance. Nearby, you will find a slightly larger monument dedicated to 2 centuries of anti-French resistance. And close to that, you will find a massive monument dedicated to 2 millennia of anti-Chinese resistance. It is hard to state how much disdain there is for China in Vietnam. Abandoning Chinese characters as soon as a viable alternative presented itself was an obvious choice.

0:12 it’s worth keeping in mind that most of the history of anything actually happened way before modern country borders took form.

Really interesting. You might want to look up the pronunciation of "psyche", I think I heard you pronounce it as a monosyllabic. Maybe that was just a nod to these monosyllabic languages of east Asia.

I forgot that Mongol joke existed. I haven't heard it in so long. Gave me a good laugh :P

因为使用象形文字，所以口语也会跟随文字变成单音节，因为语音很少有变换，所以现在我们如果用表音文字，那么所有的字都会变成一个样子，难以阅读识别。越南能改成拼音文字真是不能理解。

Vietnamese Latin alphabets have nothing to do with french nor colonialism, it was created long before any french soldiers set foot in Vietnam, by Portuguese and Vietnamese christians. Im a Viet Christian and gladly Vietnam got rid of its reactionary Confucian, colonial Chinese and French pasts.

IMHO what they did to vietnamese orthography was perhaps the worst colonial crime france ever commited

2:02 How the HELL is there a JJK reference here??? (That's Todo's quote)

İ believe a Perso-Arabic based script for Vietnamese would look really nice.

I'm Vietnamese with knowledge on these developments in Vietnamese language. The reason why Vietnam adopted Chữ Nôm because fundamentally, Chinese writing doesn't make sense for the average person. Think about Cantonese where they write one way (according to Mandarin speaking language) and speak another way that is totally different from the writing system. It's like speaking Welsch but using latin in your writing before English writing system was developed. There just aren't any "regular"spoken words that Vietnamese people use in daily life reflected in the writing. Therefore the development of Chữ Nôm, which was meant to reflect the spoken language in writing. When the French introduced the alphabet and phonetics system (Alexander de Rhodes), the elites in Vietnam embraced it for three reasons: 1) easier to promote universal literacy 2) the new writing system better reflect what is spoken 3) Independence of culture from thousands of years of Chinese rule. Although the new phonetic writing system is based on French/Latin alphabet, that is the only similarity, it is nothing like any of the European language in usage. It still has Chinese influences embued with Vietnamese culture context. Vietnam history is plagued with constantly repelling invaders from the north, 4000 years of culture and war/colonial history. Unlike Koread, Vietnamese kings often claimed independence from China, not as a vassal (thus the Vietnamese emperors wore yellow robes unlike Korean kings). Vietnam was more concerned with the Chinese invading them and making them a province than the French colonial rule. The French wants Vietnam's natural resources, leaving puppet kings and much of the culture intact. The Chinese, often erases all the cultural aspect and tries to assimilate Vietnam into the larger whole. It's often mentioned in Vietnamese history books that everytime the Chinese conquered Vietnam, they enslaved the men and make babies with women. It's ethnic cleansing. That is why many Vietnamese last names can be written in Chinese and exist in Chinese language, because they're Chinese last names. As a child growing up in Vietnam, by grade two, after learning the phonetic system, I could read adult books (sounding out all the words) which I might not know what it meant. So learning the language was super fast because it is inline with what is used daily. So with a grade 4 education, I basically taught myself vietnamese after moving to Canada by reading more books and talking to elders. I now write and read vietnamese fluently at the university level.

The Mongols! 🏇🐎🏇🐎🏇

nice mongoltage reference

It sucks that they adopted the latin alphabet. They should create a new writing system and create something unique.

The butchering of the pronunciation is rough.

At first neither I should praise nor thank op to make a video on topic like this. just rushing into every piece of the video,. and it seems that it won't deserve anything better noteworthy but look at it, typical reddit wojak nerd trash white supremacist misinterpretations of Asian aspects of history. At least to say, switching eurocentric to sinocentric view doesn't help it balance but brings more biases. Why didn't Vietnamese write Chinese characters anymore? Well its because two reasons, Vietnamese is an Austroasiatic language probably originated from northeast India and so incompatible to an writing system of a completely different language family , and while China and Vietnam weren't the exact same ethnicity nor nation on maps throughout history, implying that China speaks Chinese and Vietnam speaks Vietnamese are bs. Also many Vietnamese perceive Chinese characters as remnants of Chinese colonialism imposed onto during Chinese rules

propaganda

Great video. Just stop using the absurd politically correct and meaningless "BCE". It's BC. Before Christ. There's no such thing as a "common era". Round 8:47 I assume you meant to write "national script" rather than "natial script". And a bit later Portuguese, not Protuguese and propaganda, not propganda. Maybe you should call in a proof-reader before publishing?