The origin of Vietnamese
(A) the emergence of Chinese characters
Anyone who has studied Vietnamese knows that there are many Chinese words in Vietnamese. What is the proportion of Chinese words in Vietnamese? Many linguists at home and abroad are paying attention to this problem and have made more accurate statistics. Some people think that at least 75% of Vietnamese vocabulary is borrowed from Chinese vocabulary, while others think that Chinese vocabulary accounts for at least 80% of Vietnamese vocabulary. In any case, it is an indisputable fact that Chinese is widely used in Vietnamese. Moreover, every word in Vietnamese has a corresponding pinyin word. Vietnamese with a little culture will understand the meaning of saying or writing a sentence with Chinese phonetic characters. So, what is the relationship between Vietnamese and Chinese? This is a problem that people pay attention to, and it is also a long-term research topic for historians and linguists at home and abroad.
As early as the end of the Qin Dynasty, in 207 BC, Zhao Tuo, the magistrate of Guangzhou, broke away from the regime of the Qin Dynasty and established the "Nanyue State", which governed Guilin County, Elephant County and Jiaotoe County, and the jurisdiction area was about from today's Lingnan area to the Red River Delta area in Hanoi. The area under the jurisdiction of Jiaozhi County is in the Red River Delta. After the establishment of "Nanyue State", the imperial court sent officials to serve in various counties and established local political power. At the same time, it also brought advanced Central Plains culture and mode of production to Xiang Jun and Jiaodong County. At that time, Jiaozhi County (now Vietnam) was at the end of primitive society and the beginning of slave society. Vietnamese historiography called that period the "Wang Xiong" era. At that time, the Red River Delta in the "Wang Xiong" era had not yet formed a written language-that is, the local language. Therefore, it is difficult for officials sent by the imperial court to communicate with local people in language. This phenomenon is called "nine translations are the same" in history books. It can be seen that the languages of the two sides were indeed very different at that time. Later, due to the increasingly frequent exchanges between the two sides, politics, economy and culture from the northern region had a great influence on the local area. Gradually, the Red River Delta region accepted the culture from the north, that is, Chinese culture. The cultures (including language) of both sides gradually merged into one. Since then, the official written language of Jiaozhi County is Chinese characters, while the daily spoken language is: Han people speak Chinese, Vietnamese people speak Vietnamese, the communication between China and Vietnam is mainly Chinese, and Chinese is used in formal occasions. Even Vietnamese names are written in Chinese characters, and it has become fashionable to speak Chinese in Chinese characters. /kloc-Before the 9th century, Zhao Tuo was regarded as the founding emperor of Vietnam in many Vietnamese history books.
Studies by historians and linguists have confirmed that before13rd century, the characters used in Vietnamese history books were all Chinese characters, and so were the characters used in historical sites. It was not until the13rd century that Vietnam created a character-Nan Zi. Vietnamese historians regard it as an epoch-making beginning-Vietnam finally has its own national language.
(B) the emergence of "Nanzi"
/kloc-In the 3rd century, the word "Nan" appeared in Vietnam, and it was in this historical background that the word "Nan" appeared.
According to historical records, in August of the fourth year of Shao Bao (1282), "Crocodiles come to Hujiang from time to time. The emperor ordered Ruanquan, the minister of punishments, to be the literary input river. Crocodiles walk by themselves. The emperor gave him the surname Han Yu because of his class. Translate and write poems in Mandarin. In our country, poetry is written in Mandarin, which is the beginning. " Hujiang is the Red River. According to this record, people think Ruanquan is the founder of Nanzi, which has existed since this year. Later, a tablet was found in Tamiao Township, Anlang County, Yongfu Province, Vietnam. The tablet was written in Chinese characters, including 24 "southern characters". This physical object really shows that "Nanzi" appeared 73 years earlier than recorded in history books. Before the Thanksgiving Monument appeared, there was bound to be a budding process. Ruan Quan was the first person to write poems with "Nan". Thanks to this.
The composition of Nanzi is as follows:
(1) Chinese characters are composed of two Chinese characters, expressing a concept, such as: master, meaning first person, master, servant: servant, servant.
(2) False confession, borrowing a Chinese character to read archaic sounds or Chinese-Vietnamese sounds, which have the same meaning as Chinese characters, such as age and death.
(3) Pictophonetic characters are composed of two Chinese characters, one for pronunciation and the other for meaning. For example, the word "Nan" means pronunciation and the word "Nian" means meaning.
"Nanzi" is also called Mandarin or Mandarin characters in Vietnamese history. Sometimes called Chinese. After the appearance of "Nan Zi" in Vietnam, it was used in parallel with Chinese characters.
During the Chen Dynasty in Vietnam (1225-1399), the word "nan" was used in imperial edicts, and Ruan Shigu, a famous poet with the word "nan", appeared. Hu Chaoshi (1400- 1406) also used the word "nan" to write letters, and translated China's Wuyi and The Book of Songs as teaching materials. In the Li Dynasty (1418-1526), the word "nan" was still used, especially in the Hongde period (1470-1497), and many poems were written in "nan". "Tiannan Leisure Collection" 100 volume, including the poem "Nanzi". In the pre-Mohist period (1527- 1599) and the post-Li period (1522- 1789), it was still very popular to write poems with "Nanzi". Ruan You (1765-1820) wrote The Legend of the Golden with "Nan", which is a well-known masterpiece in Vietnam. However, "Nanzi" is not a Chinese character used in imperial examinations, but a Chinese character used in imperial examinations. Most of Nanzi's works are concerned about the country and the people, and have the ideological tendency to offend the emperor. After the Li Dynasty, Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty banned the use of Nanzi in 1662, and burned many books about Nanzi. It has caused great losses to Vietnamese culture. In the early period of Xishan Dynasty (1778- 1802) and Ruan Dynasty (1802- 1945), the word "nan" was used again. At present, the Vietnam National Center for Humanities and Social Sciences has a research institute of Han Nanzi, which contains 1 186 works of Nan Zi.
The biggest disadvantage of Nanzijing is that strokes are more complicated than Chinese characters. There are more than 20 strokes in a word, which is not easy to write and wastes a lot of time. Secondly, only by learning Chinese can we master "Nan Zi", but only a few people understand Chinese, which limits the popularization and promotion of "Nan Zi" and replaces it with a simple and easy-to-learn Latin phonetic symbol-Vietnamese today.
(c) the formation and use of Latin phonetic characters
/kloc-From the middle of the 6th century, European missionaries came to the Far East to preach, and the number has increased year by year since then. Most of these missionaries are Portuguese, Italian and French. To preach, they must use the local language, which requires them to learn Vietnamese first.
Foreign missionaries come from different countries. They want to recite Vietnamese and distribute Catholic materials, so it is very inconsistent to recite and write religious materials with their own pronunciation. Later, the French missionary Alessandro unified different recording methods. 165 1 year, a Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary and a biography were published in Rome, Italy. These two books are considered to be the earliest books written in Vietnamese (this dictionary is still preserved today). Since then, Portuguese missionary Massan Fisichella has written the Portuguese-Vietnamese Dictionary, but it has been lost. Italian missionary Feliciano-Aronso compiled a Latin-Vietnamese dictionary in 1783, which is a handwritten version and is now kept in the library of the Roman Ministry of Missionary. In addition, some dictionaries, such as the Vietnamese-Spanish dictionary and the Vietnamese-Latin dictionary, are kept in the museum of the Foreign Missionary Association in Paris. From the above situation, from 17 and 18 century to the beginning of 19 century, the spelling of Vietnamese in Alessandro's Yue-Portuguese-Latin Dictionary is still the main basis for Catholic missionaries to learn, study and use Vietnamese. This group of words is very similar to Vietnamese today. From this point of view, Vietnamese with Latin letters was jointly created by Portuguese, French and Italian missionaries, and Alessandro was a master who laid the foundation for this set of words.
1820- 1833, French priest Darby compiled a Vietnamese-Latin, Latin-Vietnamese dictionary, which was published in 1838 in Surenpo. The written Mandarin characters are basically the same as those in Vietnamese today, and nothing has changed since then. /kloc-After the middle of the 0/9th century, the teaching of Catholicism used Albert's writing method.
However, the implementation of Vietnamese Latin has gone through a rather difficult and long process. In the 1960s, Vietnamese national characters (Latin, the same below) were only used within Catholicism to print missionary books. After the French invaded Vietnam, they felt that Chinese characters were a very favorable tool for their colonial rule. 1878, the Governor of South Vietnam decided to use Mandarin characters. He believes that "Mandarin Chinese characters are much easier to learn than Chinese characters. It makes the relationship between ruling officials and local people more direct. " Therefore, the colonists actively encouraged the Vietnamese to learn Chinese characters. 1865, Jiading newspaper, the first newspaper written in Mandarin, was published. This is the communique of the French government in Nanqi, 1897 closed. The Governor of South Vietnam signed a decision to prepare and create conditions to make Mandarin the official language of Vietnam. Government, county, township and village officials are especially encouraged to learn Mandarin, and those who can't learn Mandarin can't be promoted. At the same time, Mandarin characters are also used in school education. 1882, the governor of Nanqi signed another decision, ordering the use of Mandarin characters in various official documents. Nanqi was the first to use Mandarin. French colonists used the same method to promote national languages after they occupied the Central Flag and the Northern Flag. The difference is that in Northern Qi and Central Qi, Mandarin characters can be used side by side with Chinese characters. 19 10, the governor of Beiqi said: "The popularity of Mandarin Chinese characters makes it easier for us to expand our relationship with local people." In the same year, he also issued a notice: "In all official documents, administrative certificates and identity cards, Mandarin learning and Chinese characters should be used in parallel. Chinese characters can't be abolished, but can only be replaced by Putonghua characters. Because Chinese characters are necessary at all times, they are used to maintain family, society and administrative organizations, especially customs and beliefs, and to maintain the spiritual life and morality of the Vietnamese people. "
After the popularization of Putonghua, French colonists were worried that it would become a tool to spread patriotism and revolutionary ideas, so they restricted it in many ways. Although Mandarin Chinese characters are easy to learn and can be learned in ten days, before the August Revolution of 1945, more than 90% of Vietnamese were illiterate.
After the August Revolution, especially after the liberation of northern Vietnam in 1954, Mandarin Chinese characters gained unprecedented popularity. Because Chinese characters are easy to learn and can be spelled as long as they can speak, it takes only ten days and a half months to complete literacy in Vietnam.
Now Vietnamese is Latin spelling, with 29 letters, 149 phonemes and 6 tones.