The Term Quoc Ngu
From: Nu-Anh Tran
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 5:19 AM
To: vsg vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
One of my students recently asked me a question about the origin of the term “quoc ngu” for the modern, Romanized script. I have been unable to find the answer in any of the books I have with me. Does anyone know who coined the term and when it was coined?
Any help would be much appreciated!
Cheers,
Nu-Anh Tran
Assistant Professor
Asian University for Women
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 5:29 AM
To: Nu-Anh Tran <tran_n_a@yahoo.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I don't know the exact date when the term was coined, but it may be useful to compare with the Chinese situation. Guoyu is one of the terms used for what we call Mandarin and is still used in Taiwan, as opposed to Putonghua. Would de Francis have the answer?
Hue Tam
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From: Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 6:11 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I don't know the answer to Nu-Anh's very interesting question, but I distinctly remember coming across nineteenth century references to "quoc ngu" where "quoc ngu" actually meant "chu nom" as opposed to "chu han," and was not being used to refer to the romanized script. If that's the case, I wonder whether "quoc ngu" originated as a term to describe the Vietnamese in general, and gradually became a specialized term for romanized Vietnamese?
Wynn
Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox
Associate Professor and Co-Chair
Department of History and Non-Western Cultures
Western Connecticut State University
181 White Street
Danbury, CT 06810
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From: Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 6:16 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Just to clarify, the previous message's last sentence should have read:
If that's the case, I wonder whether "quoc ngu" originated as a term to describe the Vietnamese LANGUAGE in general, and gradually became a specialized term for romanized Vietnamese?
Ah , the benefits of proofreading. My apologies.
Best,
Wynn
Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox
Associate Professor and Co-Chair
Department of History and Non-Western Cultures
Western Connecticut State University
181 White Street
Danbury, CT 06810
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 6:20 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Interesting, because "chu ta" used to mean Chinese!
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Kenneth T. Young Professor
of Sino-Vietnamese History
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From: Liam Kelley
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 9:38 AM
To: Nu-Anh Tran <tran_n_a@yahoo.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Hi Nu-Anh and list,
It was the early twentieth century. This 1915 work here, the Tam thiên t? gi?i d?ch qu?c ng?, shows it well:
http://lib.nomfoundation.org/collection/1/volume/610/
It has an introduction in Hán followed by a Vietnamese translation using qu?c ng?. It says that in the past the Three Character Classic was annotated in Nôm, but that this was insufficient as each Nôm character can have multiple translations. “Since having qu?c ng?” writings have become more precise.
This text doesn’t say exactly when this happened, but I think this text itself is pretty good evidence that it was around the time it was published in the early twentieth century. 1) It has a preface in Hán which is promoting the use of qu?c ng? - that’s a sign to me that this is a “transitional text” (and I've seen similar texts from this period) and 2) I’ve never come across a Three Character Classic with qu?c ng? before this time.
Finally, while the term qu?c ng? was occasionally used prior to the twentieth century to refer to Nôm, the more common term was qu?c âm.
Liam Kelley
University of Hawaii
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From: Ngô Thanh Nhàn
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 10:44 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear all,
There's a small book called "Nhu~ng trang su? cuô´i cu`ng cu?a
chu~ Ha´n Nôm" by Triê`u Anh, Nxb Ðô`ng Nai, 1999. It has
an account of how the term "quô´c ngu~" changed from
the national Ha´n Nôm script to the latin-based script by
a series of the French decisions to ban the ideographic
script and replace it with the latin script, The story was
not that simple.
Earlier, the term "quô´c ngu~" and "quô´c âm" usually
meant the Ha´n Nôm script.
Thanks to Liem Kelly, the introduction of the book
"Tam thiên tu? gia?i di?ch quô´c ngu~" 1915 (VHN Nc 0320,
National Library of Vietnam HN R.1667) wrote:
"... nho´ khi chuo´c chua ba`ng chu~ nôm, mô?t chu~ ma`
hai ba tiê´ng, không biê´t dâu la`m ba`ng cu´. Tu` khi
chua ba`ng chu~ quô´c ngu~ [reads, latin Vietnamese
script], chu~ na`o riêng chu~ â´y, tiê´ng na`o riêng tiê´ng
â´y, da`nh da`nh, không co´ lâ~n lô?n. Hay thay chu~
quô´c-ngu~..." ;-)
Best,
Nha`n
--
Ngô Thanh Nhàn, Ph.D.
Visiting Research Fellow
Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture & Society
Temple University
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From: Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 11:16 AM
To: "nhan@temple.edu" <nhan@temple.edu>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Along the lines of Liam's helpful reference to "Tam thiên t? gi?i d?ch qu?c ng?", many years ago I made use the text "T? Hàn c? ngung d?ch qu?c ng?" (1907), published in Phat Diem. It describes the necessity of having certain important public documents collected in one place in both chu nom and quoc ngu so that people could clearly understand them and they could be found in one place.
Phat Diem is probably a special case, as more people would have known quoc ngu earlier there, I suspect. But the document would be useful in understanding this transitional period, and it does show that by 1907 "quoc ngu" clearly meant romanized Vietnamese.
This text is also available online via the Vietnamese Nom Preservation Foundation: http://lib.nomfoundation.org/collection/1/volume/564/page/1
Best,
Wynn
Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox
Associate Professor and Co-Chair
Department of History and Non-Western Cultures
Western Connecticut State University
181 White Street
Danbury, CT 06810
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From: Hoang t. Dieu-Hien
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 11:24 AM
To: nhan@temple.edu, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thank you all for this interesting topic, and anh Ngo Thanh Nhan for the quote.
Please forgive the inability to write proper Vietnamese. I am at a computer where that is not possible. I need a little help with the quote. I figured out "khi chuoc" means "khi truoc" an "danh danh" means "ranh ranh" in modern writing. I cannot figure out what "chua," in "nho khi chuoc chua bang chu nom," is.
The other question I have is that how did quoc ngu come to its present form? In other words, who decided how to represent certain pronunciations using certain sets of letters? Where do these people live in the country? I understand that Truong Vinh Ky played an important part in it, but he is from the South. How did "the Northern" way pronouncing the current quoc ngu become the "correct" or "standard" way of speaking Vietnamese when in fact nearly no one in the country speaks in this "correct" or "standard" way naturally, for example the differences between pronouncing certain beginning consonants such as "d," "gi," and "r."
Many thanks in advance,
Hie^`n
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 11:32 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I think "chua" means "insert"; here it just means "write."
Usually, the pronunciation used in the capital of a country is considered the official pronunciation.
Hue Tam Ho Tai
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From: Ngô Thanh Nhàn
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 11:33 AM
To: Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox <WilcoxW@wcsu.edu>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks, Wynn,
On "qu?c ng?" to mean "the ideographic Nôm script", one can
refer to titles such as Chân Nguyên 1754 "Yên t? son Tr?n tri?u
Thi?n tông ch? nam truy?n tâm qu?c ng? h?nh" (Vi?n Hán
Nôm Nc 0291)... There was no Vietnamese latin script printed
there.
The Vietnamese authors also use the term "qu?c âm" to mean
Vietnamese spoken language proper, as in Nguy?n Trãi
"Qu?c âm thi t?p".
Best,
Nhàn
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From: Hoang t. Dieu-Hien
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 11:39 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thank you, chi Hue Tam.
When quoc ngu became more popularized, Hue^' would have been the capital city though, would it not?
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From: Hoang t. Dieu-Hien
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 11:40 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Oops. I meant "Hue^' was the capital city, was it not?" My apology.
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 12:07 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Quoc ngu became the official language only during the colonial period.
At the time, Hue was only the capital of Annam, not of Vietnam --which had ceased to exist officially.
Although quoc ngu is "phonetic," there are many local divergences from the written language. Northerners,
for instance often say "gioi" for troi; they confound chung and trung. And of course, Bac Ninh people
reverse "l" and "n." Southerners do not distinguish between words that end with or without a "g" and so
on.
Quoc ngu in fact seems to be an amalgam of different regional pronunciations.
Hue Tam
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From: Rie Nakamura
Date: Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 9:44 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I am not sure if this has any relationship to quoc ngu, but one of the
school subjects we studied in Japan is called kokugo (??). Kokugo
means Japanese language . Besides Kokugo we also studied Kango (??)
which is studying Chinese poetry (mostly from Tang dynasty) and Eigo
(??), which is English. I believe Kokugo was one of those newly
created terms after the Meiji restoration when Japan was hurry to
transform to a modern nation-state.
Rie Nakamura
--
Rie Nakamura, Ph.D.
Visiting Lecturer
College of Law, Government and International Studies
Universiti Utara Malaysia
Sintok 06010 Kedah, Malaysia
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From: lawrence driscoll
Date: Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 5:59 PM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
I am coming to this discussion late, but after reading Rie's input allow me to offer the following website:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%9C%8B%E8%AA%9E
Kindly disregard if the content is irrelevant, or if it has already been considered.
Lawrence Driscoll
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From: Hiep Duc
Date: Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 8:10 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Hi Liam et al,
Etienne Aymonier in his book “La langue francaise et l’enseignement en Indo-Chine” in 1890 has already talked of language policy on using “quoc ngu”. So the term “quoc ngu” must already have been used before 1890.
Aymonier was a promoter of using directly French to teach natives and his enthusiasm of its future on Indochina. Later on he attacked Paul Bert successful policy of using “quoc ngu” to wean the “Annamese” of their attachment to sinitic influence via “Han and Nom” characters. He cited as proof that in Cochinchina, “quoc ngu” was so widespread that French could not compete and has no hope of supplement it. He showed that French was introduced faster and took firmer root in Tonkin in the early 1910s as “quoc ngu” was not yet widely known in Tonkin.
My hunch is that “quoc ngu” was coined in Cochinchina not long after the first “Gia Dinh Bao” was published with the editorialship of Truong Vinh Ky, probably in the 1870s.
Cheers
Hiep
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From: Liam Kelley
Date: Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 8:32 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
oh, this is a good point.
I think Nu-Anh's original question was something like "when did the term 'quoc ngu' first start to be used"? But in reality we probably need to specify in "which Vietnam" we're talking about. Or which Vietnamese audience we mean. We all know that it was first used by missionaries. So Catholics would have understood the term first (is that what it was called when it was created?). Then of course it was used in Cochinchina (does the term appear in the Gia Dinh Bao?) Then it's part of French policy. Then reformist intellectuals pick it up in the early 20th century. Meanwhile there is a parallel development and discourse about guoyu in China which I'm sure at least the reformist intellectuals were aware of.
Liam Kelley
University of Hawaii
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From: Ngô Thanh Nhàn
Date: Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 9:14 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Liam and Hiep,
In his paper entitled "Did No^m Script Play Any Role in the Dissemination
of Qu?c ng?? A Reappraisal of the role of No^m characters during the scriptural
transitional period from Ha´n and No^m to Qu?c ng?, cf.
http://www.temple.edu/vietnamese_center/nomstudies/NgNam_NomQuocNguProposal.pdf,
Nguyen Nam, while showing that the French had to use Nôm to teach
qu?c ng? late XIXth and early XXth centuries, he mentioned two
books, Manuel Militaire Franco-Tonkinois by G. Dumoutier (French-Tonkinese
Military Manual, 1888) and the Abe´ce´daire – Me´thode d’e´criture et lecture du
qu?c ng? et du Franc¸ais (Abe´ce´daire – Method of Writing and Reading quoc
ngu and French, 1912). Both used "qu?c ng?" to mean the latin script.
Note that the last imperial examination in Hán Nôm occurred in 1919...
and the reprint of Chân Nguyên's Thi?n Tông b?n h?nh in 1932 under B?o
Ð?i (using the term "qu?c ng?" to mean ch? Hán Nôm) seem to confirm
different policies in different parts of Vietnam then.
Of course, one will find
that it took the French a long time to institute latin qu?c ng? (while fighting
C?n Vuong and supporters), see the French colonial statements and
decisions quoted in Tri?u Anh's book, Nh?ng trang s? cu?i cùng c?a ch?
Hán Nôm.
On the other hand, I have seen a marriage certificate around 1945 using
both Nôm and latin script.
Best,
Nhan
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From: Hiep Duc
Date: Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 9:31 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Aymonier used the term “quoc ngu” to refer to latin-alphabet sound-based words throughout his 1890 book.
Aymonier and others (such as Shreider) used these terms (“quoc ngu”) means that they must follow the Vietnamese usage before.
Let ‘s see some of the book titles published by Truong Vinh Ky in reverse chronological order to see when was the first time that the term “quoc ngu” was used:
- Alphabet qu?c ng?, Saigon, Impr. Nouvelle, 1895
- So h?c tân van qu?c ng? di?n ca, Répertoire pour les nouveaux étudiants, Saigon, Guillaud et Martinon, in-8, 1884 (caractères chinois)
- Tam Tu Kinh qu?c ng? di?n ca, transcrit et traduit en prose et en vers annamites, Saigon, Guillaud et Martinon, in-8, 1884
- Petit Dictionary francais-annamite, Saigon, Impr. De la Mission Tan Dinh, pet. In 8, 1884 (qu?c ng?)
- Dai-Nam cu?c s? di?n ca, transcript en qu?c ng?, Saigon, Ban in nhà Nu?c, pet.in-8, 1875 (transcription d’une Hist. Annamite en vers écrite en 1860, par le mandarin LÊ-NGO-CAT charge’ de la rédaction des Annales de l’Annam, sous le re`gne de TU DUC)
So far we can trace the earliest use of the term “quoc ngu” is in 1875.
Truong Minh Ky (a student of Truong Vinh Ky) also published a few books. One of these books is:
- Chuyen Phangsa Tien ra quoc ngu (trad. De 16 fables de La Fontaine), Saigon, Guillaud et Martinon, in-8, 1884
But I believe the term “quoc ngu” was used even before 1875.
To find the time when it was first used requires a bit more research. We would not be strayed much away if we focused on the period just after the publication of “Gia Dinh Báo” published in 1865.
Cheers
Nguy?n Ð?c Hi?p
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From: Ngô Thanh Nhàn
Date: Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 10:15 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Hiep,
Could it be 1862 when the French first colonized Cochinchina?
it will be interesting to find out "qu?c ng?" was used to mean latin
based script even before this?
Interestingly, the French minted a copper coin with both
Hán on one side "Ð?i Pháp qu?c chi An Nam" and French
on the other side "Cochinchine Française 1879". See
http://www.worldofcoins.eu/forum/index.php?topic=8746.0.
Best,
Nhan
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From: Hiep Duc
Date: Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 6:44 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Nhan,
I doubt that the term “quoc ngu” was used before or immediately after the French capture of Saigon, My Tho and Bien Hoa resulting in the treaty to annex the 3 provinces of Cochinchina in 1862. But I may be wrong.
In 1862, after Saigon fell to the French, the immediate task of Admiral Charner was to govern and administrate the new gain. He ordered in haste a compilation of a Vietnamese-French vocabulary with latin-based characters. But this kind of characters print was not yet available in Saigon, and hence the book had to be printed in India. A school was also formed to produce French interpreters. This school was run by a French priest P. Croc who knew the Vietnamese language well. Later on Admiral Bonnard appointed Truong Vinh Ky as the director of “collège des interprètes”
(Alfred Schreiner, Abrégé histoire d’Annam, 1909)
Only during the time of Admiral de La Grandiere (from 1863) that the use of latin-based language was promoted throughout the population in Cochinchina. The formation of “Gia Ð?nh Báo” in 1865 was part of this policy. So a coinage of the term “quoc ngu” was probably invented around this time (after 1865). Han-Nom was still used to let others (especially in many villages in Cochinchina) to know about the official lines via village heads or “doc phu” for many years until 6 April 1878 when an official decree by Admiral Lafont to declare that by the 1 January 1882 that all official acts would be exclusively written in French and “quoc ngu” .
Cheers
Hiep
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From: Nu-Anh Tran
Date: Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 11:15 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
I'd like to thank the many people who responded to my query for their contributions. It has been fascinating and enlightening. I'm sure my student will appreciate it.
Cheers,
Nu-Anh Tran
Asian University for Women