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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The paper is the research on variants in the block-printed literature written in Chinese character during the Chinese domination, related the recognition and definition of variants, the analysis of character variants, i v vi g h g s i th st k s, mp ts, wh h t s’ dditi d subtraction, summarizes the variation characteristics and explores the character relationship between Vietnam and China. the statistics of the number of characters and their variants in order to seek the character variants frequency in the block-printed literature written in Chinese character during the Chinese domination in Vietnam history.