The Way to Write and Use Caodian Fuhao in Ancient Nom Culture of Tay Ethnic Group in Vietnam: the Case Study of the Work “Han Vuong Luu Bang” Currently Kept at the Institute of Sino Nom Studies
The Tay people are the ethnic minority with the largest population in Viet Nam. Over the long history of their development, along with the development and improvement of their language, the Tay people have gradually created a type of writing system using the graphic, phonetic, and semantic elements of Chinese characters in combination with indigenous phonetic and linguistic elements, to create the system that is called the Nom-Tay script or the Nom script of the Tay ethnic group. Traditional Tay literature is mainly recorded in this Nom - Tay script. The article is based on the text of the work “Han vuong Luu Bang” written in Nom - Tay script currently archived at the Institute of Sino Nom Studies (Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences) to survey and analyze types of writing and understand the “caodian fuhao” ( ) used to write Chinese and Nom characters in these documents. Thereby, the article tries to affirm the important role and rich appearance of Chinese characters and Chinese character units in Vietnamese Nom-Tay texts.