
On Vietnamese Writing - luu
http://limdauto.github.io/posts/2015-11-15-on-vietnamese-writing.html
======
cageface
I've been living here in Vietnam for five years now and read & write
Vietnamese pretty well. Written Vietnamese may not be as elegant as Chinese
but it's very practical and I think it gives the Vietnamese a huge leg up in
learning Western languages and dealing with the Western world. For any
Westerner, learning to read & write the language is _vastly_ easier than
Chinese, Khmer, or Thai. Which is a good thing since mastering the tones is
quite difficult.

In a lot of casual conversation people don't even bother to write the accents
and tones out because it's a bit of a hassle on a mobile phone, which makes it
look even plainer.

As another commenter said, the plainness of a lot of everyday written
Vietnamese has more to do with utilitarian fonts and poor typography than the
language itself.

~~~
geomark
I found writing Thai to be not so difficult to learn. It uses an alphabet,
although it does have more letters than English and some tone marks. But it is
very regular and pronunciation is consistent. I haven't studied Vietnamese but
at first glance it seems not much easier than learning the Thai alphabet.
Learning tones is difficult, as you said. I couldn't even hear them at first -
the words for "news", "rice" and the color "white" all sounded the same to me.
Trying to put together sentences resulted in some hilarity when I mixed up
tones for words that differ only in tone like "dog", "horse" and "come here".

Question: How many consonants, vowels and tone marks in Vietnamese?

~~~
wingerlang
Hope I'm not too off topic, but what/where did you use to learn the alphabet?
Each time I try, I am overwhelmed and I can't seem to find some good starting
point.

~~~
geomark
I had a tutor I met once a week for 3 months. We studied one page, a page that
listed all the letters in their tone groups plus the diacritic marks. She
would give me homework of vocabulary words that I had to look up in a Thai-
English dictionary which forced me to learn the alphabetical order. I would
also practice writing them. We would work on pronunciation at our weekly
sessions. It was the tones that were tough for me, thought I'd never get them
because I just could not hear the difference.

~~~
wingerlang
Okay, thanks.

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achamayou
It's unfortunate that the article does not provide any source for its central
claim. All references in western literature point to quốc ngữ being by far the
most widespread script by the beginning of the 1920s, largely owing to the
colonial administration pushing for it aggressively.

There was no choice to make by 1945, and indeed none was made.

The population of Vietnam in 1945 wasn't anywhere near 45 million, instead it
was a bit under 25 million. This article seems to have been written by someone
who only has a strenuous grasp of Vietnam's history, and is very likely
confusing the declaration of independence in 1945 with the reunification in
1975.

~~~
quan
In addition, I find the claim crediting the Communist government for adopting
Latin character to be bogus. If this is true, then south Vietnam would be a
lot more illiterate than the north and not the thriving commercial and
research center it is today, simply because these government-sponsored
programs would be most effective in the northern part where the central
government is. In fact, the Communist government was driven out into hiding in
rural area as soon as they declared independence. So they wouldn't have the
time or mean to implement country-wide education reforms. As one data point,
my grandma, who did not come from privileged background and was born in 1920
and like most of her peers spoke and wrote French and Vietnamese fluently,
received all her education prior to 1945. I'm pretty sure the Latin writing
adoption was started much earlier and it was more natural simply because it's
closest to French, which was the official language at the time

~~~
zhte415
I know nothing about Vietnam. But a trend in centrally controlled countries is
often the further near the center one is, the more dependent on being fed they
are.

The further away, the more they get used to feeding themselves, so when the
state takes a reduced role in daily economic life, for example partially
deregulating industries, as they have in Vietnam, those that were feeding
themselves are now able to flourish, and where government subsidies are taken
away, areas turn into comparative rust-buckets.

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amake
A lovely article. I highly recommend this ebook on Vietnamese typography for
anyone interested in learning more about the modern writing system:
[https://vietnamesetypography.com/](https://vietnamesetypography.com/)

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ethana
It's aesthetically unpleasing because most of the default fonts on OSes
weren't designed for vietnamese writing. Add on to that, a bigger line height
is also important to not make paragraphs look all cramped up because of the
accent marks taking up vertical space.

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vlehto
This goes to bit of tangent:

"In my opinion, we are, unfortunately, a people who define ourselves not by
who we are but by who we are not."

That's the only recipe of identity that I'm aware of. Personal identity seems
to be just bunch of descriptions you assume. For you to be "good at math"
someone has to be bad at math, or the description is meaningless. National
identity is just some approximate lowest common denominator of similar sort.

The best we can do is to avoid putting ourselves on good - bad axle and try to
find descriptions that are different and neutral.

~~~
minhanoi
I agree that the expression is confusing. It looks like they are unable to
define themselves.

~~~
vlehto
I'd like to respectfully disagree. Statements like that do come from lack of
conscious definition of identity. Which for a nation is only possible if there
is very strong emotional identity. Then there is no need.

About 86% of Vietnamese are ethnic Vietnamese. I come from similar country and
recently visited JFK airport. The fuss Americans have with the flag seems like
compensating for something nations like mine have naturally. It's probably
manifesting the difference between civic state and nation state.

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wodenokoto
I tried to google translate the poem. It's far from perfect, but it gives you
a good idea about what it conveys and makes the rest of the article easier to
understand:

    
    
        i, t hook both.
        short i dotted, t long horizontal;
        e, f, l also a species.
        ê cone hats, long l more body;
        o rounded like an egg.
        cell, hat, beard Matt extra time

