Talk:Vietnamese alphabet

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hey. i'm vietnamesse.but i do not know how 2 read vietnamesse.that is the main reason.so could u give me a free trial?????

Done. Your free trial of Wikipedia is active. We'll let you know when the free trial expires. Tempshill 16:04, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Reason for literacy rate 2 Reforming the Vietnamese Alphabet 3 Pinyin comparison 4 Main Vowel? 4.1 Translation 4.1.1 Definitions 4.1.2 Rules 5 Requested move 5.1 Survey 5.2 Discussion

[edit] Reason for literacy rate

Because the period of education necessary to gain initial literacy is considerably less for the largely phonetic Latin-based script compared to the several years necessary to master the full range of Chinese characters, the adoption of the Vietnamese alphabet also facilitated widespread literacy among Vietnamese speakers—in fact, whereas a majority of Vietnamese in Vietnam could not read or write prior to the 20th century, the population is now almost universally literate.

This paragraph implies pretty strongly that the core reason for the current high literacy rate is the switch to the current alphabet. I assume that at some point Vietnam mandated education? Would be nice if someone knowing the history could add a couple of other reasons that the literacy rate is now high. Tempshill 16:04, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Vietnam, like other countries influenced by Confucianism, placed strong emphasis on education. DHN 19:42, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

And not only is Vietnam a Confucian society, it being ruled by a socialist-communist regime (who always have the highest literacy rates in the developing world, except for China) has also contributed to its high literacy rate of at the very least 95% (references in CIA WorldFactbook). User:Le Anh-Huy.

I disagree with this analysis. I think the improvement in literacy rate in Vietnam is not due to the adoption of the Latin alphabet. It is not logical to use the adoption of the Latin alphabet as an explanation for the fact that literacy in Vietnam improved, because it is not a "fair experiment". The only logical reason for one to attribute the increase in literacy to the adoption of the alphabet would be if another country with a similar socio-economical condition and political system also tried to improve literacy, but failed due to its use of logographic characters. However, in this case this is clearly false. Mainland China, with a literacy that was just as low as that of Vietnam, a similar economical level, and a similar political system (one-party communist state), also managed to improve its literacy dramatically in the last few decades despite the fact that it still used a logographic script. This is in fact proof that the increase in literacy in Vietnam is not due to the adoption of the Latin alphabet, but other political, cultural and socio-economical factors. In addition, if it is really the case that high literacy is correlated with the Latin alphabet and low literacy with the logographic script, then why is it that some of the most literate, advanced and wealthy countries in the world, such as Japan and Taiwan, actually use non-alphabetical scripts? - cyl

Have you read John DeFrancis' The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy? It depends on what you define "success". If you lower the requirement to a thousand characters, then everyone can be "literate". You can also read this doctoral thesis comparing learning efficiencies between Quoc ngu and Traditional Chinese [1]. In Japan, hardly anyone know more than 2000 Hanji characters (they learn about 1900 in school and forget all but about 500) and they had to use Hiragana and Katakana to show the pronunciation of many Hanji characters. Hiragana and Katakana are syllabaries and there are only 46 of each. [2]. DHN 00:05, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

"Success" is determined by many things, in this case let us just focus on the practical and empirical results. The fact remains that Japan and Taiwan which use a non-alphabetical script is much more literate, advanced and wealthy than India which uses an alphabetical script. It simply isn't factually true to correlate high literacy with alphabetical scripts, and low literacy with logographic and logophonetic scripts, neither in the present world nor historically. In ancient times, literacy was simply low everywhere, regardless of which type of script is used. Ancient nations which used logographic and logophonetic scripts such as Ancient China, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Sumer, Assyria and Babylon, Korea and Japan, certainly did not have lower rates of literacy than nations which used alphabetical scripts, such as Europe and India. On the contrary, nations that used logographic and logophonetic scripts, such as China, Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia, created some of the greatest and most splendid civilisations of the ancient world. Most of our modern-day cultural elements are still ultimately derived from nations and civilisations using logographic and logophonetic scripts. A statistically significant correlation simply does not exist in this case.

Philosophically speaking, remember that I have the "default" position. My position is not that the logographic or logophonetic scripts are intrinsically superior to alphabetical scripts, but that both are just as good as each other, and different scripts are probably suited for different languages. It is those who think the alphabetical scripts are intrinsically superior who need to prove that is really the case. I think there is insufficient justification for their claim. Neither from a practical/historical perspective nor from an a priori perspective can they say that the alphabetical script is superior. Why should logographic/logophonetic scripts, with both semantic and phonetic elements, be intrinsically inferior to alphabetical scripts with only phonetic elements? Many modern scholars no longer believe in the idea that alphabetical scripts are intrinsically superior, see for example:

"Furthermore, the concept of "evolved-ness" prevalent in the monogenesis theory is refuted in the modern view. No type of writing system is superior or inferior to another, as the type is often dependent on the language they represent. For example, the syllabary works perfectly fine in Japanese because it can reproduce all Japanese words, but it wouldn't work with English because the English language has a lot of consonant clusters that a syllabary will have trouble to spell out. The pretense that the alphabet is more "efficient" is also flawed. Yes, the number of letters is smaller, but when you read a sentence in English, do you really spell individual letters to form a word? The answer is no. You scan the entire word as if it is a logogram."

http://www.ancientscripts.com/ws_origins.html

Also, the claim that "since most nations in the modern world uses alphabetical scripts, therefore alphabetical scripts must be intrinsically superior" is illogical and unduly linguistically deterministic. Which type of script is most dominant is due to socio-economical and geo-political factors, not the intrinsic "inferiority" or "superiority" of the scripts themselves. Alphabetical scripts are most used simply because nations using alphabets have become politically, economically and culturally dominant. Suppose the Ancient Babylonian empire survived to the present-day and dominated the world, then we would all be typing in the Babylonian logophonetic cuneiform script now.

You might say "well surely the success of nations using alphabetical scripts is proof that alphabetical scripts are intrinsically superior? After all, most dominant nations in the world today uses alphabetical scripts?" However, such a simplistic and superficial linguistically determinist deduction is clearly illogical. In fact, logically speaking it is no better than racism, because a racist might similarly say "well surely the success of non-black peoples is proof that peoples with non-black skin colours are intrinsically superior? After all, most dominant nations in the world today are non-black?" Both smack of 19th century colonial imperialism.

My position, which is the most logical, is that it is simply a matter of pure chance that most dominant nations in the world today also happen to use alphabetical scripts, just as it is a matter of pure chance that most dominant nations in the world today are non-black.

By the way, according to modern statistics, to read on average about 89% of all standard modern Chinese texts one only need to know the 1000 most commonly used logographs. - cyl

The paragraph you removed did not assert that the Latin script is superior to Chinese characters. It simply implies that the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet is more suited for the Vietnamese language than the (rather clumsy) Chinese-character based writing system previously in use. The writing system did not follow Vietnamese syntax and did not have native Vietnamese words (the much less popular chu Nom system attempted to create new characters representing native words but only created more confusion). Documents written by Vietnamese in Classical Chinese now have to be translated like any other Chinese-language document in order to be understood. DHN 00:50, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reforming the Vietnamese Alphabet

I'm Vietnamese and I was wondering if there are any efforts by Vietnamese linguists to reform the writing systems. It is extremely cumbersome in the computer age with all the markings. Also, it was created by non-Vietnamese.

See the proposal here, which IMO, is horrible. DHN 06:26, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pinyin comparison

Following the Chữ nôm and Vietnamese language articles, writing Chinese characters has been replaced by writing chữ quốc ngữ. Understanding a Chinese text written in Pinyin (which I compare to the Vietnamese alphabet, as it is some form of romanization/latin script replacer) can be difficult to impossible, as Chinese has many homophones. Does this hold true with the "current" Vietnamese alphabet as well? --Abdull 19:06, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

See the discussion in Sino-Vietnamese#Usage. The problem exists, but is very minor, usually having to do with etymology. DHN 19:08, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi DHN, thank you very much for your help - the link given by you helped me a lot. Unfortunately, it is quite hidden right now (... i didn't expect to find the answer to my question in the Sino-Vietnamese article). Bye, --Abdull 23:55, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. Feel free to add what you learned there to this article. DHN 00:26, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the most important difference is that written Vietnamese is an accurate transcription of spoken Vietnamese while written Chinese is not an accurate transcription of spoken Chinese. Thus a written Vietnamese text is not harder to understand than a conversation between two people (even easier to understand). If written Chinese is the same as spoken Chinese, then how the heck do they talk to each other?! DHN 21:27, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, it is like the case with English "to", "too", and "two". If we were to write English phonetically, the three words would be the same. Then some sentences that are unambiguous in writing, like "I want to fish" and "I want two fish" would be written the same. Except that in Chinese the peoblem is much more pervasive because there are more homonyms. In speech (English or Chinese) there are usually clues of timing and stress that resolve any ambiguities that are not resolved by context ("I want to-FISH" vs "I want TWO fish"); but those clues are not recorded in pinyin. Makes sense? Jorge Stolfi 22:16, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

So is the stress part of Mandarin as well as the tones? I thought that in Chinese, like in Vietnamese, each syllable is distinct and can not affect the other syllables. DHN 06:00, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, Mandarin does not have the conspicuous lexically-signifcant stress like Indo-European. I was thinking of stress/timing clues that could be useful to the listener but too subtle to be recorded in any writing system. Even in the "to fish"/"two fish" example, methinks that such clues would not be noticeable in IPA, or are they? Jorge Stolfi 06:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

As for the other point, Mandarin Chinese has a thing called "tone sandhi" meaning that the tone of one syllable can cause changes in the tone of the following one. But this practically exhausts my knowledge of Chinese... Jorge Stolfi 06:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

There is an article about tone sandhi, thank you for this hint. What I learned in my Chinese class yet (one semester), sentence stress is not so important in Mandarin as it is in European languages. Yet it is used to emphasize a particular meaning. With the words we have already learnt, all tone changes happen with the preceding word (not the following one). For example 不 (not) is usually pronounced bù, but when it is followed by the fourth tone (falling tone), it changes to bú, as in 不要 (do not want): bú yào. Bye, --Abdull 11:31, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Modern Standard Mandarin has made the distinction of character (Zi 字) and word (Ci 词). Characters are always mono-syllable, whereas words are always multi-syllable. Multi-syllable words even existed in Shang Dynasty (1700 BCE to 1100 BCE). For speakers of European languages, characters correlated to stems, and words to words. For example, the word for telephone is Dian Hua (电话), which consists of two characters Dian meaning eletricity and Hua meaning conversation. The European words formation is two stems, tele and phono.

By the way, we have been speaking Chinese for over 6000 years now and have been writting in characters in 4000 years, and we never got confused so no worry, it is very unlikely that we will got confused in the next 2000 years.

Karolus 2006/10/11

[edit] Main Vowel?

Hi, I am wondering if anybody can provide more detailed information about the main vowel? I am interested in the placement of the tone mark using the new style which emphasizes linguistic principles. Is there any reference about how to determine which is the main vowel and where to put the tone mark? I heard that the government has some newer official regulation on tone marks based on the linguistic principles. But since I can't read Vietanamese, it is difficult for me to dig thos document out. The reason I want to know more detail is that I would like to see if a similar scheme can be implemented for Taiwanese written in Pe̍h-ōe-jī. I would really apprecaite if anybody can provide some information. Thanks! pektiong 12:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

A good source is [3]. Below is my translation. DHN 16:04, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Translation

[edit] Definitions

1. syllable: the basic unit of sound. In Vietnamese, a syllable is always pronounced with a tone, and different syllables are separated by a space. In writing, each syllable is written as a "word". E.g: “hoa hồng bạch” consists of 3 words or 3 syllables.
2. vowel letter: letters used to write vowels, i.e. a, ă, â, e, ê, i, o, ô, ơ, u, ư, y.

   Note: In Vietnamese o and u are also sometimes used as a semivowel for w ...

3. consonant letter: letters used to write consonants, i.e. b, c, d, đ, (f), g, h, (j), k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, (w), x, (z).
4. consonant combination: groups of consonants used as digraph or trigraphs, i.e. ch, gh, kh, ng, ngh, nh, ph, th, tr, gi, qu.

   Note: In the case of gi and qu, u and i are not used to represent any vowel, so they are also considered consonant combinations

[edit] Rules

1. With syllables containing only one vowel, the tone mark must be placed on that vowel. Examples: á à, ì ạch, ọ ẹ, ủ rũ, ọp ẹp, ục ịch, hà, lán, giá, giục, quả, quỹ, quỵt... (in the case of gi and qu see definition 4)
2. If the syllable has only one vowel with a quality mark (i.e. Ă, Â, Ê, Ô, Ơ, Ư), then the tone mark must be placed on that vowel (in the case of ƯƠ, the tone mark lies on the Ơ). Examples: ế ẩm, ồ ề, ở rể, ứ ừchiền chiện, cuội, cừu, duệ, duềnh, giội, giường, ngoằng, quyệt, ruỗng, rượu, siết, suyển, tuẫn tiết, tiến triển...
3. With syllables that has two vowels and ends with a consonant or a consonant combination, then the tone mark is placed on the last vowel. Examples: choàng, hoạch, loét, quẹt, suýt, thoát, xoèn xoẹt...
4. With syllables ending with oa, oe, or uy, then the tone mark is placed on the last vowel. Examples: hoạ, hoè, huỷ, loà xoà, loé, suý, thuỷ...
5. With syllables ending with two or three vowels that are not oa, oe, or uy, then the tone mark is placed on the next-to-last vowel. Examples: bài, bảy, chĩa, chịu, của, đào hào, giúi, hoại, mía, ngoáy, ngoáo, quạu, quẹo, ngoẻo, chịu, chĩa...