Chữ nôm

Chu Nom ( 𡦂 喃, also 𡨸 喃/字 喃, literally " marble font " ) is the classic signature of the Vietnamese language. It is based on Chinese characters ( Vietnamese Hán tự ). The Vietnamese term for Chinese writing is known as tự Hán (汉字), which was the only available way to express his language until the 14th century, and was almost exclusively used by Chinese trained, Vietnamese elites. Vietnamese was written sporadically from the 14th to the late 19th century with Chu Nom, which is a modified Chinese script was, the sounds and syllables involved, the Vietnamese - speaking were her own. This was (国语) later replaced completely by Quoc Ngu, the current writing system in Vietnam. Quoc Ngu was of Portuguese and French missionaries ( who had an extensive linguistic training ) designed to capture the Vietnamese. Quoc Ngu, a system of diacritical marks to indicate tones, as well as modified vowels.

Origin

It is believed that Chu Nom, formerly Quốc âm (国 音) was to the 10th century. The old name of Vietnam, Dai Co Việt (939 ) (大 瞿 越) used Quốc âm. The earliest written material in Chu Nom, which has survived to this day, from 1209, was found on a carrier of a temple in Bảo Ân (保 恩). Another chu- nom - inscription was on a bronze tube in the Vân Bản (云 岅) pagoda in DJO Sơn (徒 山) found. It dates from 1076, but there are doubts about the correctness of the date.

After the Vietnamese independence from China 939 scholars began with the development of Chu Nom, a logographic script that represents Vietnamese. For the next almost 1000 years - from the 10th to the 20th century - 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 (西山) rulers ( 1788-1802 ) were written all the administrative documents in Chu Nom. In the 18th century many famous Vietnamese writers and poets wrote their works in Chu Nom, among others Nguyễn Du (阮 攸) and Hồ Xuân Hương (胡春香). With the arrival of Quoc Ngu in the 17th century - the modern Roman font - chu nom died out gradually. 1920 the colonial government decided against its use. Today, fewer than 100 scholars chu nom can actually read. Much of Vietnam's history is written beyond the reach of 80 million speakers of this language. A few Buddhist monks and the Jing (京), living in China Vietnamese Chu Nom can read up to a certain extent.

There are efforts by the Vietnamese government to incorporate Chu Nom in the education system. Chu Nom characters were encoded in Unicode. It was developed to make the writing system available by computer software, and computer fonts that contain Chu Nom characters were developed more recently.

Writing System

In Vietnam, Chinese characters were originally only used to chu nho ( 𡦂 儒) to write ( classical Chinese). In Chu Nom the use of these characters has been extended in many ways. In addition, a large number of new characters by Vietnamese writers was invented.

Affinities

There are many classical Chinese words that have made ​​their way into the Vietnamese language by borrowing. These loan words are written with the original Chinese characters (Han tự ). Examples: Vi (味) "taste" ( Mandarin: wèi ), Nien (年) "Year" ( Mandarin: nián ). In addition, many naturalized Chinese words can be found in Vietnam, for example, words that were borrowed from the Chinese, before Chinese characters were introduced in Vietnam, and who therefore preserved a different pronunciation. These words are also designed on the basis of the corresponding characters of the classic Chinese. Examples: MUI (味) (equivalent to VI, taste), NAM ( or 𢆥年) (synonymous with Spain, year). Often both versions with the same characters are written, which greatly reduces the amount of writing and the number of characters required. So there is no Chu nom, that would allow a distinction to normal Chinese borrowing for many vietnamisierte Chinese words. How the label must be read, is then obvious from the context. So you would字read in字 喃as Chu, in喃 字one would read it tự. In Vietnamese compound words usually appear upside: adjectives are appended to the noun and not go on these forward as in Chinese.

Phonetic borrowing of characters

Many genuinely Vietnamese words are written by the use of characters with no meaning ( Chu GIA tá ( 𡦂 假借), false loan words ). Such a character is re-used exclusively for its pronunciation. Its original meaning is discarded. Thus, the character receives a second meaning. Often a character will take a wide variety of meaning by the phonetic borrowing.

Invention of characters

Many new characters were invented for genuine Vietnamese words ( chu nom Thuan ( 𡦂 纯 喃), called short NOM). These new characters are based on the phonetic borrowing and add a semantic component that points to the new meaning, which leads to a new, separate characters. In some cases, a resulting character looks like an already existing Chinese, but with a different meaning.

Standardization

1867 intended Nguyen Truong To (阮长祚) standardization of Chu nom, but the new system ( Quốc AM Hán Tự (国 音 汉字) ) was rejected by Emperor Tự Đức (嗣 德). Until that time, Chu Nom was never officially standardized. As a result, there are many different characters for original Vietnamese words. As the writer of texts in Nom but you always pursues certain choice principles.

Chu Nom software

There are a number of software tools that produce Chu Nom characters by simply writes Vietnamese Quoc Ngu in words.

• Vietnamese Keyboard Set allows you to write Chu Nom in Mac OS X.
• WinVNKey is a Windows-based Vietnamese Keyboard driver that supports Chu Nom.