JackFrost wrote:The thing is, why Vietnamese needs a new writing system when Quoc Ngu is just doing fine?
lichtrausch wrote:As a literary language Quoc Ngu isn't doing well at all. Interesting how the two most successful East Asian literary languages both use Chinese characters.
lichtrausch wrote:As a literary language Quoc Ngu isn't doing well at all.
Draven wrote:You mean script. And I can only hope you're not completely ignorant about the tremendous contribution of Quốc Ngữ literature in the late 19th and early 20th century to the Vietnamese language. It's a whole classical era on its own.
lichtrausch wrote:The last piece of Vietnam literature to make a splash on the international scene was Truyen Kieu.
lichtrausch wrote:Could you name a few of the main works from this classical era you mentioned? I might be interested in reading them.
Draven wrote:Sit through Vietnamese highschool and you should have a copious amount of them deep-bored into your brains, then have them liquefied and pouring back out through the hole after you're done with highschool. My long-term memory is able to retain some of the more prominent names, mostly in the poetry realm, like Xuân Diệu, Hàn Mặc Tử, the fuzz about Thơ Mới ("New Poetry") Movement or that Tự Lực Văn Đoàn society, etc., etc. But my favorite author's got to be Chế Lan Viên with his gotho-tastic collection Điêu Tàn ("In Ruins"), on whom there's sadly no Wikipedia article yet. Communist/revolutionary poetry is pretty impressive as well, with authors like Tố Hữu.
Nôm literature, needless to say, does not limit itself to Nguyễn Du. The other wonder of Nôm poetry is none other than Hồ Xuân Hương, whose mind was dirtier and more subversive than any 21st century teenage boy.
After that little showcasing, I feel obliged to add that it will be hard to find translated Vietnamese poetry on the internet.
Pangu wrote: Also at the end of the day, Quoc Ngu is written with Roman letters, not exactly very "Vietnamese".
Draven wrote:Pangu wrote: Also at the end of the day, Quoc Ngu is written with Roman letters, not exactly very "Vietnamese".
The Vietnamese alphabet has been Vietnamese for four centuries.
Chữ Nôm was derived from the Chinese script, just like the current alphabet is an adaptation of the Roman alphabet. Chữ Nho was plain Chinese. I don't see any ground for the argument that the older scripts are somehow "more Vietnamese". They were simply... earlier.
Pangu wrote:However, the immediate second thought is that I feel sorry Vietnamese don't have their own script. Koreans have Hangul, Japanese have their mix usage of Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, why not Vietnamese?
Draven wrote:I'd be cynical and say that the Vietnamese as a people are creatively stifled.
Draven wrote:But then, should we be sorry for all other non-Italian ethnicities who are using the Roman alphabet instead of a writing system indigenously invented? hould we be sorry for those that have never invented any script?
Draven wrote:Inventions like Hangul only come once in a while, and the propagation of ideas is subjected to the unforgiving wheel of history - to be concise, it's too random so don't be disappointed if your native language doesn't have an indigenous script. You're lucky that it is written down at all.
Rumpetroll wrote:I don't get it. What's the big deal with language having a script of its own? Does it make the language better?
Rumpetroll wrote:It's the same bloody language, it doesn't matter what script you use nor does it matter who invented that script.
Pangu wrote:There are plenty of reasons why having your own script is better[.]
Pangu wrote:Rumpetroll wrote:It's the same bloody language, it doesn't matter what script you use nor does it matter who invented that script.
Do you seriously believe using different scripts will not cause change in the language and the culture?
Rumpetroll wrote:Compare the cultures of the Philippines, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Peru and Norway. Are they the same because they all write in Latin script?
Come now, that's just gratuitous.I guess, though, we've got something of a real-life Gedankenexperiment
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