Nha Nuoc or Quoc Gia

State = nhà nước or quốc gia ?

Dear List,

If I may, I'd like to have a rather simple question:

According to "Montevideo Convention" Article 1, a "state" is defined as:

*"The state as a person of international law should possess the following

qualifications: a ) a permanent population; b ) a defined territory; c )

government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states."*

http://www.cfr.org/sovereignty/montevideo-convention-rights-duties-states/p15897

According to "Vienna Convention on Succession of States in Respect of

Treaties Vienna, 23 August 1978", Article 2.(b), "succession of States" is

defined as:

*""succession of States" means the replacement of one State by another in

the responsibility for the international relations of territory;" *

http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/vcssrt/vcssrt.html

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/drwcasebook/files/vienna_convention_on_succession_of_states_in_respect_of_treaties.pdf

In these definitions, a state should be translated as "nhà nước" or "quốc

gia" ?

Thanks,

Calvin Thai

DEAR ANH CALVIN THAI,

"Nhà nước" in Vietnamese is only for element "(c ) government" in the definition of "state" in customanty international law summarized in Montivideo Convention.; and can be used to translate the title of a book by Lenin, NHA NUOC VA CACH MANG

Quốc gia should be the translation for "State" in international law. or "Nation-State" in political science term. THE VERNACULAR AND POPULAR WORD of the ordinary Vietnamese IS 'nuoc nha' which has more connotation of nation, home country.

I HAVE SOME WRITING WITH ANOTHER AUTHOR I WANT TO SHARE AN Ä‚BSTRACT WITH YOU

Ý nghĩa từ Quốc gia trong tiếng Việt

Trong

tiếng Anh, hai từ Nation và State không hoà n toà n đồng

nghĩa với nhau. Nation nói lên một tập hợp lớn dân có

cùng nguồn gốc, lịch sử, văn hóa và sống trong một

State hay một vùng địa lý nà o đó lớn hơn một State.

State là một khái niệm pháp lý quốc tế như đã nói

trong bà i là gồm một chính phủ, một tập hợp dân, một

lãnh thổ và có khả năng thiết lập bang giao với nước

khác. Tại Âu châu, vì có những states nhỏ hơn một

nation trong lịch sử, như city-state tại Hy Lạp thời

Thượnc Cổ , cho nên về sau nà y có loại quôc gia tập

hợp trong một vùng đất đai một dân tộc với văn hóa

riêng, người ta đã dùng danh từ nation-state, và chữ

nationalism để chỉ chủ nghĩa quốc gia của dân tộc quy

tụ trong nation-state.

On Behalf Of Tai VanTa

I remember checking this long ago, but do Japan, China and Korea also use the Kanji equivalent of Quốc Gia to translate `State’?

David Marr

ANU

Chinese - guojia....

Mark Sidel

University of Wisconsin-Madison

In Korean, it is 국가 (kukka) which is a hanja (korean chinese word). In Japanese, I think it is 国 (kuni)

Đinh Lư Giang

TUFS

国家 (kokka - characters for country & family) is, I am fairly sure, the

cognate for quốc già (state). Pre WW II, 国体 (kokutai -- national essence)

may also have been used.

In ordinary conversation, 国 (kuni) is, as Giang says, the ordinary way to

refer to 'the country.' However, the on-yomi (Chinese loanwords) koku- or

kokka- are used to form compounds, e.g., state budget, state institutions .

. .

As for distinguishing between State and Nation -- I can't recall how that

might be done in Japanese. Do you know the answer, Giang?

David Brown

Independent researcher/writer

California

Who said it is a rather simple question? It is very complicated

The term state has several meanings even within politics and more outside it.

It has its origins in the premodern political system of Europe. At base, it was the idea of the king's two bodies (hence the idea of "the body politic"). The state could mean the machinery of government, the restricted meaning, or the whole kingdom as when Louis XIV said, "L'etat, c'est moi." So, when states committed themselves to a certain course of action internationally, they committed the whole country, not just the current government. This is still the meaning in international treaties.

In ancient China, guo (国 pretty much meant the same thing. The character then had the character for king in the middle (nowadays, it has the character for "I", for phonetic reasons ).So "wo guo" would have meant "my court, my government" and by extension "my empire."

I suspect that nha nuoc is a neologismm as is chinh phu (which I believe is of Japanese origin).

My two cents, late.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Kenneth T. Young Professor

of Sino-Vietnamese History

________________________________

To David and List,

To be honest, my Japanese is not good enough to answer David's question.

As far as I know:

国家 (kukka) is usually translated as both "quốc gia" and "nhà nước", ex:

国家公務員 (kukka komuin): nhân viên nhà nước (government official), or 国家安全保障

(kukka ansen hoshou): bảo vệ an ninh quốc gia (national security)政府 (seifu)

is "chính phủ".

Sometimes, "nation" or "country" are also translated as 民族主義 (Minzoku

shugi): chủ nghĩa dân tộc (nationalism).

David is right about the kuni in on-yomi: such as 国民 (kokumin): people,

citizen; 国大 (kokudai): national university, 国防 (kokubo): national defense

etc.

That is all I know :-)

Dinh Lu Giang

TUFS

Dear List,

Thank you all for answering my question on nhà nước vs quốc gia.

I had a chance to look the term up in Huình-Tịnh Paulus Của's Đại Nam Quấc

âm Tự vị last night.

According to him, these two terms are synonyms.

Calvin Thai

Calvin,

I seem to remember we had a discussion on this on VSG some time ago, but

perhaps I am wrong. Into the 20s and 30s, "quốc gia" was used for state and

nation, and "nhà nước" was not used. But particularly since the 1940s, the

term "nhà nước" has come to be used, and the use of the term "quốc gia" has

declined.

But I think there are some interesting distinctions that perhaps others on

the list could clarify. "Nhà nước" seems to be used when discussing the

state in the sense of the state apparatus, and has a domestic orientation.

"Quốc gia" seems to have the traditional sense of state in relation to the

community of nation-states, and this has an outward orientation, not a

domestic one. Thus, the Vietnamese customs speaks of "liên hệ hai quốc gia

Việt Nam và Trung Quốc," and "quốc gia" is used when talking about

sovereignty in the international realm -- "chủ quyền guốc gia."

There are some interesting exceptions, however, and others can explain

them: we speak of the National Library as "thư viện quốc gia" and the

national university as "Đại Học Quốc Gia."

That's my sense. Criticisms welcome!

Shawn McHale

George Washington University

I remember hearing jokes about bad French in the early 60s, among which

was Leo Leo maison d'eau for hoc tro nha nuoc. This is to suggest that nha

nuoc meaning government was a term used during colonial times, at least in

the South.

Hue Tam Ho Tai

The term "Nhà nước Bảo hộ" was used constantly to refer to the French

colonial administration in documents and publications originating from HÃ

Ná»™i, such as Nam Phong.

Public schools were called ""trường nhà nước".

Nguyễn Điền

Independent Researcher

Canberra

Dear list,

For someone who still have somewhat clear memory of high school in Vietnam

(although it has been 6 years), this is how the terms were used, at least

the way I was taught at Trần Đại Nghĩa high school in Sà i Gòn:

"Nhà nước" was definitely used interchangeably with "Quốc gia", however,

they did have distinct connotation. "Nhà nước" had the connotation of,

similar to Prof. Shawn said, the government, governance or governmentality,

so it is used more in a political setting.

"Quốc gia" is a Hán Việt vocab, literally translates into "Nước nhà ", so

you can see how they can be used interchangeably. I do not know any Chinese

but would anyone know if the character for "Nhà nước" is also an inverse of

"Quốc gia"?

That said, I believe "Quốc gia" is used more akin to Hegel's Zeitgeist, in

that it had a transcendental quality and can be used to fuse all Vietnamese

into one identity. Please correct me if i am wrong, which I believe has

been proven more often than not on the list, but I think in Communist

propagandas they used "Nhà nước" more in commanding statements, while "Quốc

gia" was used to invoke patriotism/nationalism, which in this case "Tổ

Quốc" is used synonymously with "Quốc gia".

Khoa Nguyen

BA in Business Administration/International Affair at Northeastern

University

Student of JD/MA in International Law/Political Theory at Boston College

Professional Consultant at IHRDC, Boston

No, they cannot be used interchangeably. Nha nuoc means government, nuoc nha means country. In that sense, it is the equivalent of quoc gia (guojia). Country and government are different concepts.

Try thinking of a sentence such as "the government recently issued a new law." Nha nuoc would work. Nuoc nha would not. Quoc gia would not, either.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Kenneth T. Young Professor

of Sino-Vietnamese History

This exchange once again shows the need for a contemporary Vietnamese etymological dictionary. I don’t understand why the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences has never sponsored such a project, perhaps working with scholars in Japan, Korea… Maybe is has to do with questions of language `purity’, which I notice is getting another run in China. Pham Van Dong sounded off on purity long ago. Any recent discourse?

David Marr

ANU

While this may not be important but "nha nuoc" is a southern term for government, northerners do not use "nha nuoc"; they use "chinh phu", which some times is interchangeable with "chinh quyen" - government law is "luat chinh phu" for northerners while it is "luat nha nuoc" for southerners.

Kimloan

Dear Prof Loan,

Thank you for the distinction, I think it is an important one. However, I

don't think it is simply a matter of North vs South. "Nha nuoc" can be

translated into "government", as in the whole of the political machine,

whereas "chinh phu" should be translated into the specific "Cabinet",

because for "Chinh phu" I usually see it goes with "lam thoi" (current) to

form "Chinh phu lam thoi" (current Cabinet). What would be more interesting

to scrutinize is whether or not when one refers to "Chinh phu", do they

include the Communist Party? The term "Cabinet" in politics does not cover

the in-power party, but merely the office of the Prime Minister/President.

As for "Chinh quyen", I think it means "Power of the Government".

Khoa Nguyen

BA in Business Administration/International Affair at Northeastern

University

Candidate of JD/MA in International Law/Political Theory at Boston College

Professional Consultant at IHRDC, Boston

Reflecting on a real life example from Tuổi Trẻ, *Tổng bí thư Nguyễn Phú

Trọng .. . "khẳng định chính sách nhất quán của Đảng, Nhà nước và nhân dân

Việt Nam luôn coi trọng quan hệ hữu nghị, hợp tác với Trung Quốc. . . , *I'd

say ít's quite evident in this instance that 'nhà nước' refers to the

apparatus or institutions of government, and not to 'the nation' in a

conceptual, emotive sense. One would never say, for example, Đảng, quốc

gia va nhân dân, because nhân dân, at least, are a basic constituent of the

notion quốc gia.

David Brown

Independent analyst/journalist

Fresno, California USA

I suppose it may be some time before the distinction between Nhà nước (state) and Chinh Phu (government) becomes part of public discourse in VN.

If Adam Fforde were still here he’d have lots to say about the way foreigners have confused ‘Chinh Sach’ (government document) with ‘policy’ or ‘line’ (đường?) – leading them to the mistaken conclusion that because the government says something on a piece of paper, the Party actually believes it.

Bill Hayton

Amateur observer

Hi --

For what it's worth -- most of my time was spent in the northern part of

Viet Nam, where I certainly heard a lot of "nha nuoc" -- in fact, I've been

wondering if it is more a matter of difference in linguistic register

(formal vs informal) than of difference in meaning. In my memory (which is

vague on this, which is why I've been silent.... but maybe someone else can

support or refute this), people would use nha nuoc in more informal

conversations, referring to more of an abstract idea, less to the machinery

of government -- something more in the realm of "dong bao", with more

affection for the idea than, perhaps, for its concrete realization.

Well -- a wild thought, perhaps -- but at least I can say that nha nuoc is

certainly used by people in the north.

Diane

Dear Diane and Khoa and all,

Thank you for your input. You have valid points. I brought it up just as a matter of linguistic interest. I should have a deeper discussion.

I am not trying to be stubborn here, I recalled that after my family migrated to South Vietnam, there are a lot distinctions in language between North and South. I forgot to take into my consideration that after 1975, linguistically, those distinctions are blurred. I remember that in 1994 when I returned to Vietnam the first time after fleeing it in early 1977 to do my research in Ha Noi. Although people recognized that I speak Vietnamese with Hanoian accent, they "knew" that I was from Saigon just from the words I used.

Anyway, language evolves with changes with living environment (that is why we call it sinh ngu) and the matter I brought up is no longer valid, just a matter of interest.

Thanks,

Kimloan

___________________________________________

Kimloan Hill, Ph. D

Lecturer, Vietnamese Heritage Language Program

3256 AP & M Building

Department of Linguistics

University of California, San Diego

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