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Chu Nom is no Chinese Characters, I can't read Cho Noms for example (can read kanji/hanja without any issue), it is more like `Vietnamese` Characters, it is its

Chu Nom is no Chinese Characters, I can't read Cho Noms for example (can read kanji/hanja without any issue), it is more like `Vietnamese` Characters, it is its own set of unique logograms, if that makes sense. It is complex and difficult to use/write, abolishing it really didn't take too much effort, as most of the population is illiterate at the time.

yorwba 3y ago
There's plenty of unmodified Chinese characters in the mix, e.g. in the Tale of Kieu: https://www.nomfoundation.org/nom-project/tale-of-kieu/tale-of-kieu-version-1866?uiLang=en https://www.nomfoundation.org/nom-project/tale-of-kieu/tale-...
- karmasimida 3y ago
  From skimming of it, it seems to be around 50/50. However, this is very different from CJK countries, where the Chinese characters are mostly kept consistent. Cho nom on the other hand, renders almost completely unreadable to me.
  - yorwba 3y ago
    Try reading some Japanese in man'yougana https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%B8%87%E8%91%89%E9%9B%86/%E7%AC%AC%E4%B8%80%E5%B7%BB https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%B8%87%E8%91%89%E9%9B%86/%... and compare to the version where all characters used purely for their sound value have been distorted into squiggly hiragana. I find it much easier to pick out coherent words in the latter because they're clearly visually distinct.
resolutebat 3y ago
Japanese also developed a Chu Nom type system (manyogana) to represent Japanese sounds using Chinese characters, and it was almost as complex, requiring a good understanding of Chinese as a foundation. But manyogana was simplified into the two syllabaries used today, hiragana and katakana.
- karmasimida 3y ago
  Manyogana used existing Chinese Characters for pronunciation. It didn’t create new characters.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    Hiragana and katakana are new characters developed from Chinese characters via manyogana.
    - karmasimida 3y ago
      Hiragana or Katakana are not Chinese characters. They don’t follow the principles of how Chinese characters were developed(六书), nor did they follow the structures. At best they are inspired by Chinese characters. No one in China or Japan will classify kanas as Japanese made Chinese characters, which by itself, meant something different entirely, like 畑/辻/雫
      - yorwba 3y ago
        イ developed from 伊, ク from 久, め from 女 and れ from 礼 in much the same way that 余 developed from 餘, 区 from 區, 汉 from 漢 and 礼 from 禮. Wantonly altering character shapes to make them easier to write quickly may not be a blessed way to create new characters, but it has tradition. It's not like the Oracle Bone Script was passed unchanged from generation to generation and only the moderns dared lay hand to it. Lazy scribes have existed for as long as there have been scribes. That hiragana and katakana are now treated as a completely separate category is more down to them being used very differently than how they were derived.
        karmasimida 3y ago
        Fair, I think the difference here is that by simplifying Chinese characters into Kana, it also removes the semantics from the character completely, but that is also not completely unheard for Chinese either (like 的, for example).
        3y ago
npn 3y ago
It is not that hard. Nom is pretty much Chinese word meaning + Chinese word pronunciation. Though for foreign people it will be a challenge.
- numpad0 3y ago
  > Nom is pretty much Chinese word meaning + Chinese word pronunciation. Hard disagree, from a Japanese speaker standpoint. I suspect it's almost deliberate that any mixtures of Chu Nom and Chinese can be handled natively to Vietnamese speakers, and nobody else. Nothing in it makes sense to me, far less than Chinese text do.
  - npn 3y ago
    > Nothing in it makes sense to me Understandable, because it was based on how it sounded, not based on the meaning of the compound characters. So it only makes sense for Vietnamese people. For example, from this wikipedia image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_vocabulary#/media/File:VietnameseVocabComparsion.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_vocabulary#/me... The first word "núi" (mountain) is made up of 山 and 內, 山 is the meaning of the word, and 內 is how it (mostly) sounds. Without knowing Vietnamese it is impossible to guess the meaning.

yorwba 3y ago

There's plenty of unmodified Chinese characters in the mix, e.g. in the Tale of Kieu: https://www.nomfoundation.org/nom-project/tale-of-kieu/tale-of-kieu-version-1866?uiLang=en https://www.nomfoundation.org/nom-project/tale-of-kieu/tale-...

karmasimida 3y ago
From skimming of it, it seems to be around 50/50. However, this is very different from CJK countries, where the Chinese characters are mostly kept consistent. Cho nom on the other hand, renders almost completely unreadable to me.
- yorwba 3y ago
  Try reading some Japanese in man'yougana https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%B8%87%E8%91%89%E9%9B%86/%E7%AC%AC%E4%B8%80%E5%B7%BB https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%B8%87%E8%91%89%E9%9B%86/%... and compare to the version where all characters used purely for their sound value have been distorted into squiggly hiragana. I find it much easier to pick out coherent words in the latter because they're clearly visually distinct.

resolutebat 3y ago

Japanese also developed a Chu Nom type system (manyogana) to represent Japanese sounds using Chinese characters, and it was almost as complex, requiring a good understanding of Chinese as a foundation. But manyogana was simplified into the two syllabaries used today, hiragana and katakana.

karmasimida 3y ago
Manyogana used existing Chinese Characters for pronunciation. It didn’t create new characters.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Hiragana and katakana are new characters developed from Chinese characters via manyogana.
  - karmasimida 3y ago
    Hiragana or Katakana are not Chinese characters. They don’t follow the principles of how Chinese characters were developed(六书), nor did they follow the structures. At best they are inspired by Chinese characters. No one in China or Japan will classify kanas as Japanese made Chinese characters, which by itself, meant something different entirely, like 畑/辻/雫
    - yorwba 3y ago
      イ developed from 伊, ク from 久, め from 女 and れ from 礼 in much the same way that 余 developed from 餘, 区 from 區, 汉 from 漢 and 礼 from 禮. Wantonly altering character shapes to make them easier to write quickly may not be a blessed way to create new characters, but it has tradition. It's not like the Oracle Bone Script was passed unchanged from generation to generation and only the moderns dared lay hand to it. Lazy scribes have existed for as long as there have been scribes. That hiragana and katakana are now treated as a completely separate category is more down to them being used very differently than how they were derived.
      - karmasimida 3y ago
        Fair, I think the difference here is that by simplifying Chinese characters into Kana, it also removes the semantics from the character completely, but that is also not completely unheard for Chinese either (like 的, for example).
      - 3y ago

npn 3y ago

It is not that hard. Nom is pretty much Chinese word meaning + Chinese word pronunciation. Though for foreign people it will be a challenge.

numpad0 3y ago
> Nom is pretty much Chinese word meaning + Chinese word pronunciation. Hard disagree, from a Japanese speaker standpoint. I suspect it's almost deliberate that any mixtures of Chu Nom and Chinese can be handled natively to Vietnamese speakers, and nobody else. Nothing in it makes sense to me, far less than Chinese text do.
- npn 3y ago
  > Nothing in it makes sense to me Understandable, because it was based on how it sounded, not based on the meaning of the compound characters. So it only makes sense for Vietnamese people. For example, from this wikipedia image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_vocabulary#/media/File:VietnameseVocabComparsion.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_vocabulary#/me... The first word "núi" (mountain) is made up of 山 and 內, 山 is the meaning of the word, and 內 is how it (mostly) sounds. Without knowing Vietnamese it is impossible to guess the meaning.