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Chữ Hán

Chữ Hán (𡨸漢, literally 'Han characters', Vietnamese pronunciation: [t͡ɕɨ˦ˀ˥ haːn˧˦])[1] is the term for Chinese characters in Vietnamese. Chữ Hán are used to write Literary Chinese (Hán văn; 漢文) and Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in the Vietnamese language. They were officially used in Vietnam after the Red River Delta region was incorporated into the Han dynasty and continued to be used until the early 20th century (111 BC – 1919 AD) where usage of Literary Chinese was abolished alongside the Confucian court examinations causing chữ Hán to fall into obscurity.

Chữ Hán
Chữ Nho

  • 3rd century BC – 20th century AD
  • Limited present use

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Names[edit]

In Vietnamese, the main term used for Chinese characters is chữ Hán, but other terms exist. Such as chữ Nho (𡨸儒, literally "Confucian characters") or Hán tự[a] (漢字). Terms used to refer to Classical Chinese are Hán văn (漢文) and Văn ngôn (文言).

Chữ chỉ sự (𡨸指事) – Ideogram, an example would be (thượng, “above”) and (hạ, “below”).

[41]

Chữ tượng hình (𡨸象形) – Pictogram, an example would be (nhật, "sun") and (mộc, "tree").

[42]

Chữ hình thanh (𡨸形聲) – Phono-semantic compound, an example would be (đồng, "copper"; "currency") which is made up of semantic [] (kim, "metal) and phonetic (đồng).[f]

[43]

Chữ hội ý (𡨸會意) – Compound ideographs, an example would be (vũ [võ], "military"; "martial") which is made up of 戈 (qua, "dagger-axe") and (chỉ, “foot”; "to walk").

[44]

Chữ chuyển chú (𡨸轉注) – Derivative cognates, characters that were derived from other characters with similar meaning, an example would that (lão, "old") is a cognate of (khảo, "to examine").

[45]

Chữ giả tá (𡨸假借) – Phonetic loan, an example would be (Pháp, "France") is used for the name of France. Other European countries are also referred by a chữ giả tá like (Đức, "Germany") and (Ý, "Italy").

[46]

Chữ Hán can be classified into the traditional classification for Chinese characters, this is called lục thư[39] (六書, Chinese: liùshū), meaning six types of Chinese characters. The characters are largely based on 214 radicals set by the Kangxi Dictionary.[40]

The word la is simplified into in Chinese, but it is different in Vietnamese, 𱺵 (⿱𪜀). Other variants include 𦉼 (⿱罒大) and 𪜀 (⿻十ㄣ).

[g]

Another example would be the character một which is simplified into in Chinese and was simplified from to 𱥺 (⿰𠬠), then finally, 𠬠 (⿱丷又).

The word lạm was simplified into in Chinese, but was simplified from to to 𪵯 (⿰𫜵) to 𫜵 (⿴𰀪⺀) in Vietnamese.

[48]

Some chữ Hán characters were simplified into variants of characters that were easier to write, but they are not the same simplified characters used by current-day Chinese. According to Trịnh Khắc Mạnh, when he analysed the early 13th century book, 釋氏寶鼎行持秘旨全章 (Thích thị Bảo đỉnh hành trì bí chỉ toàn chương). He found that the number of character variants is double the number of variants borrowed from China.[47] This means that Vietnamese variant characters may differ from Chinese variants and simplified characters, for example:


Some characters matching Simplified Chinese do exist, but these characters are rare in Vietnamese literature.


There are other variants such as 𭓇 học (variant of ; ⿳⿰〢⿻𰀪冖子) and 𱻊 nghĩa (variant of ; ⿱𦍌).[49]


Another prominent example is the character, 𫢋 phật (⿰亻天) which is a common variant of the character meaning 'Buddha'. It is composed of the radicals, nhân [] and thiên, all together to mean 'heavenly person'.[50][51]

Chữ Nôm

Literary Chinese in Vietnam

History of writing in Vietnam

Chinese characters

East Asian cultural sphere

– Japanese equivalent of Chinese characters

Kanji

– Korean equivalent of Chinese characters

Hanja

Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary

- Literary Chinese - Vietnamese dictionary

Tự Đức thánh chế tự học giải nghĩa ca