Chữ nho

Chu nho ( chữ nho , pronunciation: cɨ̰₃₅ ɲɔ₃₃ , Hanzi: 字儒; significance: “writing érudite”) is the Vietnamese term for the traditional Chinese which was used with the Vietnam. It was one of the official written forms of old Vietnam. It is called also chu han ( chữ hán : " writing of the Hans). The writing uses Chinese characters and one cannot distinguish it from the traditional Chinese who was used in China, in Korea and with the Japan. The original pronunciation of the characters was that of the former Chinese. Today, nobody any more knows this pronunciation and the texts written in traditional Chinese are read with the pronunciation of the reader, namely in Chinese, Korean, Japanese or - in the case of the chu nho - in Vietnamese.

History

Before the Chinese writing is not introduced in Vietnam, the Vietnameses did not have a writing, only the oral language.

The Chinese writing arrived to Vietnam about the 1st century, after the Chinese army had invaded the country. During the next millenium - 1st century until the year 938, Vietnam was dominated by China and Vietnamese, consequently, was influenced much by Chinese. During this time of sinicization of the policy, Chinese became the language of teaching and the Vietnameses used it together with their native tongue. Many Chinese words “were thus vietnamisés” ( từ Hán-Việt : " word sino-vietnamien") and found themselves in the Vietnamese vocabulary.

In 938, Vietnam obtained her independence, but the Chinese influence will perdura. Chinese remained the official language, but it did not evolve/move in the same way as Chinese of China, which gave rise to the pronunciation sino-Vietnamese.

Meanwhile, the need to write Vietnamese with a clean writing was felt. However, this language being a austroasiatic language, it differs considerably from the Chinese Langues. Thus, Vietnamese cannot be written with Chinese characters without that not implying complications. The Vietnameses consequently deformed the Chinese characters in order to more easily be able to express their own language, which gave the Chữ name ( chữ name : “demotic writing”).

Later, the missionary S Portuguese developed a system to write Vietnamese with the Latin alphabet. That led to the appearance of the Quoc ngu ( quốc ngữ : “national language”). Today, one does not use any more Chinese characters to write Vietnamese, the quoc ngu having become the only writing.

See too

Hanzi
Chữ name
Quoc ngu

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