Original Vietnam
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010How did the Vietnamese written language look b4 the French Colony came to Vietnam?
Originally, Vietnam had its own distinct written language which began in the 13th century.
However, when the French Colony came into Vietnam, their culture heavily influenced Vietnamese written language, thus it became popular and the original became less.
So does anyone have any links that show this original written language? I have never seen it and am interested.
According to wikipedia, the writings looked that of Japan or China, but of course it was different in its own way.
Hey goat,
I'm not sure of this but...
I thought that before the phonetic writing of Viet Namese, it was written using Chinese Characters, but using the meaning of the Chinese characters (like Japanese using Chinese characters as Kanji) and using the word order and word choice of spoken Viet Namese. Then when it was read, the Chinese character's meaning was read aloud as the Viet Namese word.
From a Chinese perspective, that is what happens when Japanese kanji is read.
I think this is the way; Korean was written until the present phonetic characters were adopted.