On 19-sep-02, Scott wrote:
> I was speaking with Vietnamese gentalman the other day. He was telling me
> about the history (in brief) of the Vietnamese witten language. He said
> that the language was romanized by a Frenchman in the 1600 and that the
> Vietnamese, prior to that used a character system similar to Chinese. I
> was wondering if anyone had any knowledge of this or, especially, any
> examples.
Well, it's fisrt time I post on this very interesting ML.
So, about ancient vietnamese, I can say, according to:
_ Histoire de l'ecriture, from Jean-Louis Calvet, 1999 (in French), p.
110
_ Histoire de l'ecriture, from James Fevrier, 1948, (In French, and
old, but still the best reference available in France about history of
writings,
reprinted in 1995 ), p. 558
_ The World writing systems, from Peter T. Daniels and William Bright,
1996
(in English and the best of all), p. 189 and 691
The romanisation system for Vietnamese you're speaking about is called
QUOC-NGU (sorry I haven't Vienamese tones). It was invented by Alexandre de
Rhodes, French missionary. In fact, his work was continuing what had begun
other catholic missionaries (especially from Portugal), in order to help
newly converts to christianity.
But, his system was still of marginal use in Vietnam, unitl the French
colonisation from 1880.
The two previous systems derived from Chinese, used by Vietnamese
scholars were still in use until the first decades of twentieth century
(maybe 1920). But the "World writing systems" says this replacement occured
in the 17th century (which seems very early to me, considering the very
strong Chinese influence at this period)
These systems:
_ CHU NOM ("square script")
_ CHU HAN or CHU NHO HAN (Scholar script")
These systems are quite like the one used by Koreans before the
invention of Hangul. Some Chinese characters were used to write just a
sound of Vietnamese (or Annamese if you prefer), some were used to write an
idea, and some were used with the two uses. It was very difficult to
utilise and lead to ambiguities.
Other characters were invented for special use only inside Annam, like
other were used just by Koreans.
The problem is this system was far too be perfect, and so the
romanization was an easy answer to the difficulties brought by Chinese
characters.
Well, that's all I can say. I you have any other question about the
Chinese characters used in Korean before Hangul, Perhaps I can answer you
too.
One last word, visit www.omniglot.com, as mention before. Its author is
very nice.
David.
________________________________________________________________
Etudiant: Wanadoo t'offre le Pack eXtense Haut D�bit soit 150,92 euros d'�conomies !
Et pour 1 euro de plus, re�ois le CD-ROM du jeu Dark Age of Camelot
+ 1 mois de jeu en r�seau offert !
Clique ici : http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/mail.etudiant