The new biography of Jin Yunqiao published in the 19th year of Si De of Vietnam (1866) is the earliest version of “The New Jin Yun Qiao Biography” discovered at present. The text of “The New Jin Yun Qiao Biography” is divided into two columns, the upper column is a six-character poem, and the lower column is an eight-character poem, with a total of 2390 sentences and 16724 muttering words. The relationship between Nom characters in the book and Vietnamese recorded is complex. Through investigation, there are three situations: one word with many words, one word with many words and one word with one word. There are many words in a word, which can be subdivided into homophones, near sounds and different meanings, and near sounds and near meanings according to the sound and meaning relationship between words. According to the relationship between characters and their use functions, the word multi-character can be subdivided into “native use-native use”, “native use-borrowing” and “borrowing use-borrowing”. Word by word, according to the different use attributes, can be divided into two categories: “original use” and “borrowing”. The reason for the complex relationship between words and characters is related to the low standardization of Nom and Vietnamese. A Nom has many written variants, and a Vietnamese vocabulary has many phonetic expressions.

In recent years, many Vietnamese and International researchers have been interested in two aspects of Vienamese variant Chinese charaters – International variants and national variants. International variant characters here are Chinese characters originating from China. National variant characters are Chinese characters created by each country under the Chinese cultural influence, such as Vietnam, Korea and Japan. In order to clarify the charateristics of Vienamese unique variant Chinese charaters (national variants), we analyzed two Buddhist texts: The first one is Chư phẩm kinh 諸品經 (there are 187 variant Chinese charaters correspond to 183 standard charaters with total number of appearance is 1,697); the second one is Thích thị bảo dỉnh hành trì bí chỉ toàn chương 釋氏寶鼎行持秘旨全章 (there are 56 variant Chinese characters correspond to 41 standard characters with total number of appearance is 243).

Based on the preface to the Dictionary of Vietnamese Chinese characters and the relevant documents, this paper looks at nine aspects of the origins of Chinese characters, the introduction of Chinese characters to Vietnam, the morphological and phonological meanings of Chinese characters, the development of Chinese characters, the limitations of the use of Chinese characters, erroneous Chinese characters, the question of the survival of Chinese characters, the evolution of Chinese names, and the relationship between Chinese characters and Nom characters. A comprehensive overview of the Vietnamese view of Chinese characters, comparing it with the Chinese view of Chinese characters and pointing out the similarities and differences between the two, thus summarising the transmission and variation of the Chinese view of characters in Vietnam, in an attempt to provide a new perspective for studies related to the history of the development of Vietnamese characters and the spread of Chinese characters.

Variant Hán characters (hereinafter referred to as variants) are a common phenomenon in various types of Hán-Nôm cultural materials, including Confucian documents. This article studies the variants in Confucian works through the case of the book Hồ thượng thư gia lễ/胡尚書家禮/Family rituals by Minister Hồ (printed in 1739). The author chooses this text because of the following factors: First, the content of this work, which might be described as Confucian in nature, is about Confucian rituals; Second, the text printed in 1739 is associated with clearly identified dates of production and chief commissioner, so variants found in this text have historical value; Third, this is a printed text, so its variants must have attained a degree of common usage. On that basis, the objectives of this article are: First, to provide statistics on variants, to classify their structures and to analyze some variation rules of this type of characters; Second, to provide preliminary comments (relying upon the above-mentioned data and analysis) on the flexible use of Hán characters by Vietnamese Confucian scholars in the 18th century.

The study of Chinese vulgar characters is one of the important contents in the study of modern Chinese characters, and it is also one of the important contents in the study of the dissemination of Chinese characters. Based on the 81 poems and more than 300 folk characters in the Vietnamese Chinese document “Giới Hiên Collected Poems”, this paper explores the nature of Chinese vulgar characters and related issues. The nature of Chinese vulgar characters can be characterized from the perspective of Chinese character shape, structure and function: Vulgar characters are used by the civil community, with different forms of different forms, different components of the composition of the word, often used to record and correspond to the orthography of the Chinese character. Clarifying the nature of “vulgar characters” is of great significance to its ontology research, modern Chinese research, and Chinese character dissemination research.

Chinese folk characters have appeared in Vietnam for a long time, no later than the 12th century. During the period of independence, Chinese characters were popular in Vietnam. Vietnamese literati often used common words when using Chinese to create works, especially in books such as folk sacrifice and folk novels. However, Vietnam’s research results in this area are very limited. This paper investigates the common characters in the Chinese novels of JinYunqiaoLu, and tries to summarize the structural law and writing habits of common characters of Vietnamese Chinese characters so as to make up for the shortcomings of the study of Vietnamese Chinese characters and enrich the common character library of Chinese characters. At the same time,this paper，from the perspective of Vietnamese people, makes an textual research on the words “de” so as to debate the differences between them and their predecessors.

본 논문은 베트남 중국어 학습자의 중국어 학습 코퍼스를 이용하여, 베트남 학습자의 복합추 향보어 인신의의 습득 현황을 파악하고자 하였다. 연구를 통해 베트남 학습자들의 모델은 “U형 태의 행위모델”임을 알 수 있었다. 습득과정에서의 오류 유형은 다양한 형태로 분석되었으나, 복합추향보어 “冗余”의 인신의의 경우 모든 학습 단계에서 주요한 오류로 파악되었다. 이는 모어의 전이과정과 몾적어의 규칙의 변화로 인한 것으로 이해할 수 있다. 중국어를 모국어로 사용하는 화자들과 비교해 볼 때 베트남 중국어 학습자의 복합추향보어인신의를 더 적게 사용하 려는 경향이 있었다. 이러한 분석을 토대로 본고에서 보충적 학습 방법을 제안하였다.

The Tay people are the ethnic minorities with the largest population in Viet Nam, mainly distributed in the Northern Uplands and Midlands, mostly concentrated in the provinces of Cao Bang, Lang Son, Tuyen Quang and Ha Giang. Over the long history of 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 meaning elements of Chinese characters in combination with indigenous phonetic and linguistic elements, to create the system that is called the Nom-Tay scripts or the Nom script of the Tay ethnic group. Traditional Tay literature is mainly recorded in this Nom - Tay script. The article reliesupon the texts that belong to the genre of narrative poetry (in this genre, a story is written as a long poem) written in Nom - Tay- the most significant part of the written classical folk literature of the Tay ethnic group. Materials from the texts, currently stored at the Institute of Sino - Nom Studies (Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences), will be used to conduct an analysis of the usage and the method of writing of the Chinese characters in these texts. Thereby, the article strives to confirm the important role and the ample appearance of the Chinese characters in VietnameseNom- Tay texts.

“Thien tu van” is one of the most classic books about learning Chinese in the primary stage in China. Since Chinese was promulgated through neighborhood including Vietnam, “Thien tu van” was popularized and became one of the important learning Chinese books for Vietnamese in the ancient times. From the view of writing identity, the writing is about initially researching and finding out popularization situation and “Thien tu van” usage in Vietnam by analyzing writing quantity and writing form popularization in order to reflect aspect of learning Chinese situation of Vietnamese in ancient times as well as contribute reference value for learning Chinese approach of Vietnamese in modern times.

There are five main types of Vietnamese orthographic texts among the extant Chinese literature. This paper introduces these five types of orthographic literature and summarizes their main contents as orthographic forms, orthographic sounds, and orthographic meanings to regulate the use of Chinese characters, thus deriving the orthographic criteria reflected in these five types of Vietnamese orthographic literature. In addition, we explore the background of the formation of Vietnamese orthography in relation to the ecology and actual use of Chinese characters in Vietnam at that time, thus revealing the value of Vietnamese orthography to theoretical studies of orthography, to the study on the spreading value of Chinese characters, and to the compilation of dictionaries.

Vietnam is a multi-ethnic country with many cultures, languages, and forms of texts that coexist independently and interactively. Among the Vietnamese ethnic minorities is the Tay, the most primarily populated one. Before the use of the Latinized script, the Tay people used to use Nom which is made up of the graphic, phonetic and semantic elements of Han characters. Currently, the cultural source of the Tay is one of the most precious cultural heritages of Vietnam. If we want to decode, research, explore and promote the values of this heritage, it is impossible not to have a good set of reference books, which are Nom-Tay (word-based and character-based) dictionaries. It is undeniable that the compilation of Tay-language dictionaries and texts has attracted interest, and been in implementation for about half a century, thanks especially to the government, research institutions, and generations of Vietnamese scholars. However, the achievements have not met the needs and utilization potential of the explored materials. With the extremely abundant resources of ancient Nom-Tay texts, with the proper attention and investment of the state and investment funds, and with researchers’ enthusiasm, the compilation of the Nom-Tay (word-based and character-based) dictionaries will, to be sure, attain remarkable achievements.

This research examines the Ấu học ngũ ngôn thi (幼學五言詩: Pentasyllabic Poetry for Primary Learning) written in Sinographs and Nôm script in Vietnam as a case study of the textbooks in pre-20th century primary education. This paper claims, based on Chinese-origined East Asian Sinological primers of the Shentong Shi (神童詩: Progidy Poetry), the Xunmeng Youxue Shi (訓蒙幼學詩 Initial Teaching Poetry for Primary Learning) and the Zhuangyuan Shi (狀元詩: Poetry for the First-ranked Metropolitan Laureate), a certain Vietnamese scholar reconstructed and rewrote these textbooks to become a new textbook of Vietnam with several newly-composed poems. The new textbook was translated from Literary Sinitic into Vietnamese in both prose and poetry, to adapt to the educational context of two languages (Chinese and Vietnamese) and two scripts (Sinographs and Nôm script) in Vietnam. This reconstruction and translation, on one hand, made Vietnamese primary education integrate with the Sinosphere in East Asia, on the other hand defined Vietnamese own characteristics via the localization of this textbook’s formation, language, and script.

As a bilingual dictionary, Danan Guoyu reflects the difference and integration of Chinese and Vietnamese besides double characters. It adopts a clustering mode to classify the vocabulary. It consists of three types: the same function with the same form; different functions with the same form; new words constructions by conversion. On interpretation, it takes the form of semantic associations, translations from Chinese, and quotations from Chinese classics. The bilingual dictionary records the appearance of Chinese vocabulary in Vietnam and the creation of Vietnamese. It presents the differences and collisions between the two cultures and has multiple academic and practical significances such as lexicology, lexicography and philology.

The development of Nom characters is promoted on the basis of and in attachment with Chinese characters, and in this regard the Phonetic Annotation of the Thousand Character Classic 《千字文解音》 compiled in the late Nguyen Dynasty in Vietnam was a very practical textbook for learning Chinese characters and Nom characters. Based on categorizing Nom characters, the paper intends to clarify several notions on Nom characters of the Phonetic Annotation of the Thousand Character Classic. In the beginning, Nom characters can be divided into two major types: the directly borrowed Chinese characters and the independently invented ones. The former includes borrowing sounds, meanings, and both. The latter, according to the components of Chinese character formations, can be divided into the pictophonetic of Chinese characters and that of Nom characters. In the last part of the article, we summarize the relationship between Chinese characters and Nom characters. It is necessary not merely to consider the relationship but to understand the comparisons between them. With the aid of studying Nom characters, we can find that irrespective of whether they are directly-borrowed from Chinese or independently invented, the sound of Chinese characters is the most important feature for them. But we cannot ignore the ideographic parts of Nom characters because they, on the one hand, make up the phonetic deficiency of Chinese characters while promoting the development of Nom characters on the other. In our modern society, Chinese characters and Nom characters came to drift apart, and the latter especially was withdrawn from the historical stage, but the traditional culture of Vietnam is still recorded in literature both in Chinese characters and Nom characters. Moreover, the Nom character is one of the most important representatives of Vietnam’s traditional culture. For this reason solely, this research shall be a great help to further understanding of significant cross-cultural aspects between China and Vietnam, and more specifically of histories related to the spreading, application, and development of Chinese characters in Vietnam.

Among the Vietnamese customs of early 20th century, besides the documentation written in Sino, there were also not a small number of documentation written in Nôm. To use Nôm script was with a clear purpose for “the ease of the people’s reading and understanding”. Nevertheless, there was a fact that in these documentation written by Nôm, Sinowas also appeared quite a lot. Sino script was used in many levels: word, Phrase, Sentence,Paragraph. Why Sino still appeared in Nôm documentation, while the editors themselves wanted to use Nôm for the readers’ easy understanding, and furthermore in the history context of Vietnamese society, it was the period of Sino declining? In addition to the too great impact of Sino language in Vietnamese language, were there any other reasons for that? Through the studying, the writer has found that the 4 said above levels were not used randomly, instead each level was used in one or some specified cases. The use of Sino in here was formed by 2 reasons: Habit; The fact that Sino was still psychologically more respected than Nôm, this was not erased in the conception of the editors.

Chinese characters are materials of Chinese poems in Vietnam, including three main factors: configuration, sound, and meaning. Among those factors, generally configuration and meaning were borrowed from the Chinese while the Sino-Vietnamese sound has been developed since the linguistic acculturation of Vietnamese to Chinese language. Chinese configuration with cultural insides shown in non-numerical configuration has contributed hidden values to the works. Ideograph characteristic of this writing system generates emblems with deep cultural dimension. Analyzing Chinese character configuration is to get more understanding on the meaning of the word and to understand different hidden meanings of the word. The expressions shown on character configuration become a tightly connected system, increasing expressional value for the work and creating artistic messages. Sino-Vietnamese sound of the Chinese works in Vietnam still preserves the characteristics of similarity, prosody, and rules of ancient poetry. Comparing Sino-Vietnamese sound and Vernacular Chinese sound, we will see that, in many cases, Sino-Vietnamese sound (related to audio-track) preserves the characteristics of similarity, prosody, and rules of ancient poetry but the Vernacular Chinese sound may not. Rules on tone bring up beautiful poetry feelings of an era with distinct features. In understanding the meaning of non-numerical scripts, we care about the synonyms with slightly different meanings, which create specific values for poetry works. Chinese words with the same radical can be connected as far as their meanings go, transferring values that readers can discover based on those connections. Multiple meaning words directly contribute to the multi layers of the different layer of meaning in literature works. In general, readers need to be aware of configuration, sound, and meaning of Chinese characters in order to understand the values of Chinese poems in Vietnam.

Chinese characters in Vietnam have a long history, more than one thousand years. This paper with three main parts is aimed at doing a research overview of Vietnam’s Chinese characters over the years. In the first part, the birth and the usage of Chinese characters will be presented through the analysis of formation circumstances as well as the historical position of the characters in Vietnam. In the second part, the paper will introduce the social, cultural and educational background, the unearthed literature and handed-down literature, and anonymous literature as well as the arrangement and the research of the characters over each period in the history. In the last part, the achievements and the failures of researches on Vietnam’s Chinese characters by far will be pointed out as the foundation of future researches, which are to improve the status of Chinese characters socially.