Chữ Hán
Chữ Hán, literally "Han characters," denotes the logographic script of Chinese origin utilized in Vietnam to compose Hán văn, or Classical Chinese, which functioned as the lingua franca for administration, scholarship, and literature from the era of Chinese imperial rule commencing in 111 BCE until its gradual displacement by the Latin-based Quốc ngữ in the early twentieth century.[1] Introduced during the millennium of direct Chinese domination over northern Vietnam, Chữ Hán persisted post-independence in 939 CE as the obligatory medium for imperial examinations, legal codes, and elite correspondence, embedding a vast Sino-Vietnamese lexicon into the vernacular language while confining native expression largely to the derivative Chữ Nôm system until modern reforms.[2][3] This script's dominance reflected Vietnam's adaptation of Confucian bureaucracy and Sinocentric cultural paradigms, fostering a scholarly class proficient in its thousands of characters despite the phonetic disparities with tonal Vietnamese phonology.[4] By the nineteenth century, colonial influences and literacy drives accelerated its obsolescence, yet remnants endure in historical texts, place names, and cultural artifacts, underscoring its foundational role in Vietnamese intellectual heritage.[1][5]Definition and Terminology
Core Definitions and Distinctions
Chữ Hán refers to the corpus of Chinese characters employed in Vietnam to compose Hán văn, or Literary Chinese, which functioned as the primary medium for official administration, scholarship, and elite literature from the period of Chinese domination beginning in 111 BC until the early 20th century.[6][1] This script consists of logographic sinographs borrowed directly from Chinese orthography, used to encode classical texts and Sino-Vietnamese lexical items—vocabulary of Sinitic origin comprising approximately 70% of modern Vietnamese word stock—without adaptation for native phonetic or semantic nuances of spoken Vietnamese.[7] A key distinction lies in its separation from Chữ Nôm, the vernacular script developed from the 10th century onward, which repurposed existing Chinese characters (often for phonetic approximation via similar-sounding Sino-Vietnamese readings) and invented new compound forms to transcribe indigenous Vietnamese words and syntax, enabling expression of colloquial literature and poetry.[6][1] Whereas Chữ Hán adhered to Classical Chinese grammar—featuring topic-comment structures, modifier-head word order, and elliptical phrasing—Chữ Nôm mirrored vernacular Vietnamese traits, such as head-modifier ordering and fuller syntactic elaboration, rendering it unsuitable for mutual intelligibility with standard Chinese texts.[6] This duality persisted in Vietnamese writing traditions, with Hán-Nôm denoting integrated texts blending both for hybrid compositions.[6] Chữ Nho serves as a synonym for Chữ Hán, emphasizing its role as the "scholars' script" (chữ of Confucian literati), mandatory for civil service examinations and imperial edicts through the Nguyễn dynasty's end in 1945.[1][8] Unlike phonetic alphabets, both Chữ Hán and its derivative Chữ Nôm operate logographically, where characters primarily signify morphemes or ideas rather than sounds, though Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations facilitated reading aloud in a Vietnamese-inflected manner.Relation to Classical Chinese and Vietnamese Adaptations
Chữ Hán constituted the orthographic system for Hán văn, Vietnam's term for Literary Chinese, the canonical written standard employed in administrative, scholarly, and literary contexts from the onset of Chinese imperial rule in 111 BC through the early 20th century. This usage mirrored the application of hanzi in China for classical texts, enabling Vietnamese literati to author works in a syntactically terse, disyllabic-avoidant prose akin to that of Confucian canon and Tang-Song historiography. Official documents, imperial edicts, and civil service examinations adhered to Hán văn conventions until the 1919 abolition of the traditional examination system under French colonial influence, preserving a shared East Asian literary tradition despite Vietnam's linguistic divergence as an Austroasiatic tongue.[9] Vietnamese adaptations of Chữ Hán diverged principally in phonology and lexical extension, with Sino-Vietnamese readings systematized from Late Middle Chinese pronunciations (circa 618–907 CE) but reshaped by native sound patterns, including tone mergers and consonant shifts absent in modern Mandarin. Early borrowings from the Han era (221 BC–220 CE) exhibit archaic retentions, such as mù for 霧 'fog' versus later vụ, reflecting layered assimilation over centuries of cultural exchange and migration. This resulted in Sino-Vietnamese morphemes comprising 50–70% of the modern lexicon, often compounded in manners paralleling Classical Chinese morphology, yet integrated into vernacular syntax for terms like chính trị (from Middle Chinese *tʂiajŋ trɦi 'politics').[9][10]
A key innovation was the semantic and phonetic repurposing of characters in Chữ Nôm, an indigenous extension of Chữ Hán for rendering native vocabulary, employing techniques like jiǎjiè (phonetic loans) or xíngshēng (phono-semantic compounds) to transcribe words lacking direct Sinitic equivalents, as in trái 'fruit' via 巴頼 (ba lại). Post-independence from 939 AD, while Hán văn dominated formal spheres, Nôm facilitated vernacular literature, such as Nguyễn Du's Truyện Kiều (completed circa 1820), blending Sino-Vietnamese elements with Austroasiatic roots to express distinctly Vietnamese idioms without altering core character forms. These adaptations underscored causal influences from prolonged Sinic governance and elite literacy, prioritizing functional utility over fidelity to Chinese vernacular evolutions.[9]