Literary Chinese in Vietnam

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Wondrous Tales of Lĩnh Nam
, a 14th-century collection of stories of Vietnamese history, written in Chinese

Chinese characters
. It was used for official business, historical annals, fiction, verse, scholarship, and even for declarations of Vietnamese determination to resist Chinese invaders.

Literary Chinese

Literary Chinese was a style of writing modelled on the classics of the

Latin in Europe.[3]

Literary Chinese as written in Vietnam used the same characters and outward form as in China. Although Literary Chinese was used only for written communication, each

Chinese character could be read aloud in a Vietnamese approximation of the Middle Chinese pronunciation.[4] For example, the term for Chinese characters, 漢字 (Hànzì in Modern Standard Chinese) has a Sino-Vietnamese reading of Hán tự. With these pronunciations, Chinese words were imported wholesale into the Vietnamese language. The resulting Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary makes up over half of the Vietnamese lexicon.[5]

The Vietnamese terms for writing in Chinese are chữ Hán ('Han characters') or chữ Nho ('Scholars' characters') in contrast to chữ Nôm ('Southern script'), a script for the Vietnamese language.[6][7] The Nôm script, using a mixture of Chinese characters and locally created characters, became the vehicle for a flourishing vernacular literature, peaking in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. However, Literary Chinese remained the medium of scholarship and administration for almost all of the period until the early 20th century.[8]

History

See also: History of writing in Vietnam
An 1814 printing of the preserved compliance note titled "Đỗi trực ngôn cực gián", written by Jiang Gongfu in 758
Xá Lợi Buddhist temple stele, erected in 601
Stelae at the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, recording the names of doctoral graduates in the civil service examinations

The northern part of Vietnam (down to about the 17th parallel) was incorporated into the

millennium of Chinese rule, interrupted only by two short-lived revolts.[9] At first, the empire sought to rule their new possession indirectly through the Vietnamese nobility, but after an influx of refugees fleeing the takeover of Wang Mang (9–23 AD), policy shifted to assimilation, contributing to the revolt of the Trưng sisters (39–43). After the suppression of the revolt, Chinese authorities stepped up assimilation, destroying the estates of Vietnamese nobles, but also opening Chinese education to the Vietnamese. A few rose through the civil service to senior positions in the province and elsewhere in the empire.[10]
As in any other part of the empire, the administrative language of Vietnam was Chinese.

After the country achieved independence in 938, it continued to use

Literary Chinese. At first, Buddhist monks dominated government and scholarship in the country.[11] The next extant writings by Vietnamese authors are poems from the late 10th century, in Chinese, by the Buddhist monks Lạc Thuận and Khuông Việt.[12]

After three short-lived dynasties, the

Confucian classics.[11]

When the Chinese

Mountains and rivers of the Southern country. His poem was the first of a series of statements expressing Vietnamese determination to resist northern invaders, all written in Literary Chinese. Later examples include:[13][14]

The influence of Confucian literati grew in the following

Wondrous Tales of Lĩnh Nam, parts of which were also incorporated into the Complete Annals.[16]

The Vietnamese nationalist Phan Bội Châu (1867–1940), wrote in Literary Chinese.

Literary Chinese remained the language of administration throughout the traditional period, except during two short-lived reformist regimes. When

Nguyễn Huệ from 1788, but were again reversed at the beginning of the succeeding Nguyễn dynasty (1802–1945).[18]

The shared written language made it possible for Vietnamese scholars to communicate with literate Chinese and Koreans, but only in writing. They required interpreters for verbal communication.

a history of Vietnam, collected essays on a wide variety of topics, anthologies of verse, and commentaries on the classics.[21]

Chinese characters used for decorative purposes in modern Vietnam

Vietnamese intellectuals continued to write in Chinese until the early decades of the 20th century. For example, the nationalist Phan Bội Châu (1867–1940) wrote his History of the Loss of Vietnam (1905) and other tracts in Literary Chinese, and also used it to communicate when in Japan and China, as he spoke neither Japanese nor Chinese.[3] Writers such as Phan Bội Châu, Phan Châu Trinh, and the principal of the Tonkin Free School even used Chinese to write their attacks on education in Chinese and the examination system.[22] On the other side, the French colonial authorities were also opposed to Chinese, both because it made administration more difficult for them, and because of the nationalist literature being circulated in the language.[23] The French abolished the examination system in 1913, and both Literary Chinese and chữ Nôm were swiftly replaced by the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet in the early 20th century.[24] In modern Vietnam, Chinese characters are seen only singly or in stock phrases written by calligraphers.

References

  1. ^ Nguyễn, Tri Tài (2002). Giáo trình tiếng Hán. Tập I: Cơ sở. Nhà xuất bản Đại học Quốc gia Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. p. 5.
  2. ^ Norman (1988), p. 83.
  3. ^ a b Kornicki (2011), p. 67.
  4. ^ a b DeFrancis (1977), p. 16.
  5. ^ Alves (2009), p. 623.
  6. ^ DeFrancis (1977), pp. 26–27.
  7. ^ Nguyen (1990), p. 383.
  8. ^ DeFrancis (1977), pp. 31–32, 40–44.
  9. ^ DeFrancis (1977), p. 3.
  10. ^ DeFrancis (1977), p. 10.
  11. ^ a b c DeFrancis (1977), p. 14.
  12. ^ Coedès (1966), p. 87.
  13. ^ DeFrancis (1977), p. 16, 18.
  14. ^ Nguyen (1981).
  15. ^ Taylor (1983), pp. 350–359.
  16. ^ Taylor (1983), pp. 352–357.
  17. ^ DeFrancis (1977), pp. 31–32.
  18. ^ DeFrancis (1977), pp. 40–44.
  19. ^ DeFrancis (1977), p. 35.
  20. ^ Woodside (1971), pp. 114–115.
  21. ^ DeFrancis (1977), p. 36.
  22. ^ DeFrancis (1977), p. 178.
  23. ^ DeFrancis (1977), pp. 178–179.
  24. ^ Hannas (1997), pp. 84–90.

Cited books and articles
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Literary_Chinese_in_Vietnam&oldid=1216222619"