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Vietnamese Chữ Nôm Resources | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| BiaHuda Triglot Groupie Vietnam Joined 5365 days ago 97 posts - 127 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Vietnamese Studies: Cantonese | Message 1 of 11 13 July 2010 at 7:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Does anyone know of any resources for Chữ Nôm? I understand that is derived from Classical Chinese but there seems to be major differences. There are alot of Chinese resources but I am not sure if this would be helpful, do the characters translate into the same words?
Any help would be welcomed. Thanks. Edited by BiaHuda on 13 July 2010 at 7:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ichiro Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6211 days ago 111 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Malay | Message 2 of 11 13 July 2010 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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This site's great for character lookup!
http://www.nomfoundation.org/index.php?IDcat=51 I don't know much about it, but I believe that as well as using the Chinese character set, the Vietnamese also invented a whole lot of new characters on the Chinese model to represent their own Vietnamese words. So you have plenty of characters to learn which are nowhere found in China. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6296 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 3 of 11 13 July 2010 at 3:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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My stuff is in storage since I'm in the process of moving but I was able to find a ton of great stuff in bookstores in
Hanoi a few years ago. The stuff I found was mostly based on old books (I guess stuff at least 100 years old. Probably older) aimed at teaching Chinese characters to Vietnamese people using Chữ Nôm and modern Vietnamese vocabulary gloss. The books I'm referring to were called "1000 Characters", "5000 Characters", etc. They would list a standard Chinese character, have the Chữ Nôm to one side and the Vietnamese pronunciation under the word. Working through this is on my to-do list but since I've just moved to Hong Kong, I have the opportunity to learn Cantonese first. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BiaHuda Triglot Groupie Vietnam Joined 5365 days ago 97 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Vietnamese Studies: Cantonese | Message 5 of 11 13 July 2010 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the info so far! The Nom Preservation Foundation looks great! I will try to look for the book titles also! I have tried to find something in the local bookshop. So far all the stuff I have come up is mainly about learning English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Chữ Nôm seems to have gone out of favour in Vietnam and I believe only a handful of scholars here can decipher it. Sadly, but understandably business related language seems to be the order of the day.
Thanks again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6296 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 6 of 11 14 July 2010 at 12:22am | IP Logged | ||
Not until I find a place to live and get my stuff out of boxes.... The books were incredibly cheap and mailing them to myself from Vietnam was really cheap too. After which, sadly, they just sat on my bookshelf until a friend of mine started studying Vietnamese and some of them found a new home. Surely one of this board's members can be persuaded to track a couple of books down in exchange for pizza or something. Either that, or Pay Pal. I found the same books at several bookshops so that should not be a concern. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CobaltDragon Groupie United States cobaltdragon.co Joined 5944 days ago 40 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Vietnamese | Message 7 of 11 16 July 2010 at 3:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Nice info, thanks. I've been working at Vietnamese for a couple years now, and this has
always interested me. My tutor (originally from VN) tells me that some of her family is fluent in Nom, but she only knows a little here and there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Qinshi Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5755 days ago 115 posts - 183 votes Speaks: Vietnamese*, English Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 11 17 July 2010 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am learning Nôm, and have been doing so for nearly 2 years now. They are quite easy
for me as I already know a lot of Chinese characters. The best option is to first understand Chinese characters and their formation principles. The majority of Nôm characters combine a semantic (meaningful) and phonetic (sound) element. There are various dictionaries to buy, just search them online although to me the best one so far is the Tự Điển Chữ Nôm Trích Dẫn. Learning Nôm characters also means you have to learn Hán characters as Vietnamese uses a lot of Hán words. Once you have a solid understanding of how the characters are formed, use the lookup tools at either the Nom Preservation Foundation or at Nôm Na. IMO these two sites have the best lookup tools for Hán and Nôm at once. They also give the Mandarin and Cantonese readings as well as meanings and sometimes the context. IMO, since Chữ Nôm has never officially been standardised, me and some others are doing our own little standardising, where we use certain principles such as: 1. Choose the character with the least readings. 2. Prefer traditional over simplified (but there are some exceptions). 3. Avoid corrupted characters. 4. Choose the character with the best (semantic) meaningful element. 5. Avoid unbalanced characters. As a bonus, I would like to introduce some Chữ Nôm characters to you. I will give some examples of each of the types of characters used in Hán Nôm writing. In order to properly view Nôm characters, you will need to have Hán Nôm A & B fonts installed. 1. Hán Việt - These characters and as such, words, were directly borrowed during the Tang Dynasty of China. The majority of them have remarkably been quite stable in terms of pronunciation. Of course, the readings have been Vietnamised just like they have been Koreanised or Japanicised in those respective countries. Because they are etymologically (originally) borrowed directly with a similar meaning and slightly nativised pronunciation, the original character is used. eg. 中國 [Trung Quốc] 言語 [ngôn ngữ] 學生 [học sinh] 大學 [đại học] 專業 [chuyên nghiệp] 公司 [công ty] 社會 [xã hội] 意義 [ý nghĩa] etc. Obviously some of these terms are quite modern but nonetheless came via either China or Japan! There are literally thousands of words and terms borrowed from Chinese (or by extension Japanese). 2. Nativised Hán Việt #1 - these are most probably (although not always the case) words which were borrowed at a much earlier date from Chinese and as such been more nativised in pronunciation. They often have the same meaning and similar pronunciation as the younger Hán Việt borrowings. These words are generally only slightly different to the Hán Việt words. As a result, many of these words take the original Hán character. eg. 味 [mùi = vị] 信 [tin = tín] 二 [nhì = nhị] 四 [tư = tứ] 用 [dùng = dụng] 類 [loài = loại]. The first one is an exception as the pronunciation is a tad more different than the rest are concerned. 3. Nativised Hán Việt #2 - these are similar to number 2. however the pronunciations are quite different from the more recent Hán Việt loanwords. Despite this, you will still be able to see some resemblances - hopefully! For these particular words, a different character is used as opposed to number 2 type characters. eg. 𢆥 = 南+年 [năm = niên] 𡦂 = 字+字 [chữ = tự] 4. Double semantic - this class of characters in Nôm is quite rare. They combine two meaningful elements to form a character. eg. 𡗶 = 天+上 [sky, heaven + above = trời (sky)] 𠆳 = 人+上 [person + above = trùm (boss)] 5. Phonetic Loanwords - these are basically existing characters borrowed simply for their sound, disregarding the actual meaning. eg. 沒 [một (one) borrows một (don't have)] 羅 [là (to be) borrows la (a net for catching birds)]. Interestingly the character 沒's original meaning was to drown, and then was borrowed in Chinese to mean not have and further borrowed into Nôm for the meaning of one. 6. Semantic-Phonetic - these are by far the most common characters in both Hán and Nôm writing. They constitute as much as 80-90% of all Nôm and are formed by combining a meaningful and sound element. eg. 𩛖 = 食+安 [thực (to eat) + an (peace) = ăn (to eat)] 𠴝 = 口+汪 [khẩu (mouth) + uông (deep) = uống (to drink)] 𠫾 = 去+多 [khứ (to go) + đa (many) = đi (to go)] 𦤾 = 至+旦 [chi (to arrive) + đán (dawn) = đến (to arrive)] 𥪞 = 竜＋内 [long (dragon) + nội (interior) = trong (inside)] etc... Notice that the last character's phonetic is actually the left component as opposed to all the others. This is quite a frequent occurrence! This last character looks a bit odd for a few reasons. Firstly, it uses an old simplified form of dragon 竜 = 龍 (we generally should use traditional but not always the case), secondly the phonetic is on the left - but this is quite a common occurrence. However, the main thing is if you look at the phonetic, it is long whereas the word is trong! How come? Actually I would like to inform you that a lot of words were pronounced quite differently back then as evidenced in the Nôm characters themselves! There is also a 7th character group where existing characters are used simply for their meanings, disregarding the pronunciation element. The old pronunciation of trong was tlong. The older readings of the following: trời/giời, trăng, trái and trăm were respectively blời/tlời, blăng/tlăng blái/tlái and klăm/tlăm. I hope that gives you a rough idea of what to expect. Good luck! ~ Chúc bạn may mắn! ~  Edited by Qinshi on 17 July 2010 at 10:48pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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