Xin cha`o ca'c ba.n !
Introducing Vietnamese
By:
Serry Chris
Edited by: JW Lee
Vietnamese was created only about four century ago (from 18th
century). It was invented by some Western and
Vietnamese missionaries and it was called, ¡°Romanized Vietnamese language¡± then. It is
called Vietnamese now. Vietnamese
is based on ¡°Han-Yue¡± (Chinese-Vietnamese) language and Latin characters. In
another word, Vietnamese may be considered as ¡°Han-Yue language¡± written in Latin characters or one often
calls it, ¡°Han yu (Chinese) transcribe phonetically¡±. The marks above
the characters you often see are deviated from
Latin characters: ` ¡¯ . ?
^ or ~ These
marks are very important as they are the decisive factors, which has the most influence on the meaning of the word. E.g: ¡° To^I ¡±
means ¡°I¡± but if it has the "grave accent", the
meaning is: ¡° To^`I ¡±
means ¡°bad¡±. The way of using these marks is a little similar with the marks in
Chinese transcribe phonetically, only with slight differences
on the shapes.
In fact, Vietnamese
has more similarities to Chinese than
French. If you¡¯re good in Chinese, learning Vietnamese is easy.
I shall emphasize that it is easier for the
Chinese to learn Vietnamese language than the Vietnamese to learn Chinese language as the Han-zi (Chinese Characters) are too hard to learn, whereas the
Vietnamese characters are easy to read and learn by heart. In
modern context, 3/4 of the Vietnamese words
are "Han-Yue" words (language used before the Romanized Vietnamese
language was invented). This "Han-Yue" language is essentially based
on Cantonese rather than Traditional
Chinese (we call Cantonese as "Guan Huo yu"). I
have
realized that I can listen and
understand Cantonese easier than Traditional
Chinese though I¡¯ve not learned it yet. J *Just
kidding*. However, in fact, the Vietnamese used to speak Cantonese
more than Traditional Chinese. Maybe
the Chinese who lives at the boundary between Vietnam and China speak
Cantonese?? E.g: formerly the
Vietnamese said "Ngo^?" instead of "wo" and
"Ngo^?" is Cantonese (means "I"). "Nei" was used
to express "you" instead of "ni". I think it¡¯s easy for
Cantonese speaking people to read the Vietnamese words aloud, but difficult
for you to understand them as they have many different meanings. This is
similar with Chinese, but more complex. In Chinese, you can understand the
meaning if you see the word, but in Vietnamese even when you see the character
together with its mark, you may still misinterpreted the meaning. E.g:
in Chinese "Huang" if written as »»Æ
is "yellow", if written as 䨺(Traditional Chinese) is¡± lake¡±. But in Vietnamese "Hua`ng" is both ¡°yellow¡±
and ¡°King¡±. It would be very hard for you to understand if the document is in ¡°Han-Yue¡± such as *Du
Fu or Li Bai poems (translated into Han-Yue). I often misinterpret the meaning
of the words when I read too many
Han-Yue characters. The best method of learning Vietnamese is being in touch
with the Vietnamese. You¡¯ll be able to
learn and respect many useful things.
*Du Fu and Li Bai are famous Tang poets. Tang Dynasty is the golden age
of China and the period where poetry was flourish greatly. Many people still
enjoy reading Tang Poetry (ÌÆÊ«) today.
Footnote
from JW: I am really grateful to Serry; my sweet Vietnamese friend who has
given such a short yet detailed explanation of Vietnamese. I decided to put it
up to share this interesting language with interested people whereby I have
asked her consent to do so. J Communicating with Vietnamese is a wonderful
experience¡
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