Change the Way
Vietnamese is Written:
Don't write
Vietnamese as it is a monosyllabic language!
By PHU CUONG
I've been wondering for a
while the question: "Why is Vietnamese written as a monosyllabic
language while it is not?"
The answer I found is based on these theories:
From the very beginning of
the modern human races, all languages around the world were developed
from single sounds or monosyllabic words! The first human languages,
originated somewhere from Africa, certainly had about few hundreds of simple monosyllabic words,
e.g. eat, drink, jump, go, run, I, you, he. je, nous, vous, etc. By observing how babies learn their first
language this fact can be proved . Later, thanks to the human brain evolution and due to needs
for better communication, people started adding more sounds (or
syllables) to the original words for clearly expressing their mind. In
fact, monosyllabic languages on earth now are spoken only by a very few
tribal minorities in Asia and Africa, excluding Vietnamese .
Unfortunately, Vietnamese is still considered by many people as one of
those monosyllabic
languages which are still existing on earth (spoken at least by 75 millions or more people).
Even though Vietnamese is now
grouped into the Mon-Khmer language family by majority of Vietnamese
linguists, which is still questionable and debatable matter, it still can be
considered as a cousin of the
original Chinese based on all the similar characteristics of all its
linguistic aspects except for the case of grammatical order of the adjective
position (cf. thien thanh vs. troi xanh). Vietnamese is written the way as it is today mainly
because each of its sound is originally based on each of the Chinese
writing character. However, Chinese at the present state is certainly a polysyllabic
language as reckoned by most Chinese linguists. Besides Vietnamese and Chinese, Korean
and Japanese are also written in a similar way in block characters -- but they are not monosyllabic languages at all.
Therefore the fact that Vietnamese is still written in separate formation cannot constitute Vietnamese as a monosyllabic
language by nature. We can prove that by examining many basic Vietnamese
words which are polysyllabic or disyllabic words in nature, for example,
mangtang, moac, cuicho, bavai... Solely the only fact that the majority of
vocabulary originated from Chinese being used in Vietnamese is enough to
establish the polysyllabic nature of the Vietnamese language. For example,
one can say sonha, giangsan, sonthuy, but cannot break the morpheme son or
san out from its combined formation to say "toi len son".
Today's Romanized Vietnamese was
invented and evolved when European missionaries came to Vietnam and
learned Vietnamese mostly from peasants and ethnic minorities such as
Muong people, whose Vietnamese proficiency was not too good or poorly
spoken. In the process of using Latin alphabet to transcribe the spoken
Vietnamese, these missionaries intentionally simplified the way
words were written so that the new writing system was easier to read for
the less-educated mass. Therefore the Vietnamese words were separated
clearly by a space or a hyphen between syllables regardless of they were
monosyllablics or polysyllabics in nature. For examples: ong_Troi,
con_gai, Quoc_Tu_Giam...(instead of... ongtroi, congai, Quoctugiam),
..or tu-tuong, thanh-kien, thien-than, vat-chat, tu-do which should have
been correctly transcribed as tutuong, thanhkien, thienthan, vatchat,
tudo, etc.
The way of writing Vietnamese
as it was then was made out of their own advantages and convenience,
too. Please don't get me wrong on this, I would not deny the good deeds they contributed toward developing our modern
written language. However,
just imagine that if you were a math teacher and always gave your
students easy problems all the time to make them happy. That was how
they wanted to keep their followers happy. It has been over 300 years
now and even though the writing language has been in official use for
less than a century people have gotten used to that way of reading and
writing. Unfortunately, this has profoundly affected the way we speak and write, and most
importantly, the evolution of genetic structure of our people's
brain, too.
Nowadays, when writing
Vietnamese people have become lazy to draw a short bar or "hyphen
-" between disyllabic or polysyllabic words such as tivi, honda,
mayvitinh, vanhocnghethuat, but many do remember to use a hyphen (-) to write
their full names such as Nguyen-van-Anh-Vu. Why don't they just write Nguyenvan
Anhvu instead? Something must be sacred about their names, but the soul
of Vietnamese is not -- that's somebody's else business. Technically, it's just a waste of
paper and time. Just take into consideration the fact that one must lift
the pen or hit space key on a computer keyboard hundreds of times for a
few pages in writing. It is illogical that
most newspapers print "Saigon, Ha Noi in Viet Nam" instead of
Saigon, Hanoi in Vietnam. My rough estimate is that we will save up to
5 % of paper , and 10% of our valuable time if we omit those separation
spaces.
Nevertheless, this writing is
not to bring up the subject of saving time and paper. There is
something more important: The way we write will affect to the way we
speak and the development of our people's brain structure, especially
for children who begin to learn their first words in the Vietnamese
language. The brain of children who
"must" learn his first language from a more sophisticated
language, in this case the written language, would be naturally required
to work harder, and as a result, his brain would develop a little much
better than otherwise. Generation after generation, that will have an
accumulated effect significantly on genetic evolution of our people's
brain.
Any language on earth is
evolving or changing slowly in time. Typically
more than a few vocabulary words and meanings are added into American
English a day! Vietnamese language
should need more than that because of the increasing role played by
new technology and science in daily life that are much in need for a
developing country like Vietnam. That needed change would not be easily
accomplished if our language still keeps its monosyllabic way of writing
because the Vietnamese language as it is today is no longer a
monosyllabic language. Monosyllabic languages which are still in use
are those of tribal or less civilized people whose brains have not
evolved or developed sophisticatedly enough to memorize or coordinate
different syllables simultaneously in their native tongues.
We do not have to be Vietnamese linguists to apprehend the problems with
our mother tongue; common sense teaches us what is "better"
or "better not". So, please don't take this lightly. Let's
join in a movement to start writing Vietnamese in a more scientific way
which reflects the true nature of our polysyllabic language.
Here
is the first simple step we can begin with: Do not leave a
"space" between the polysyllabic words. For instance: cuicho,
chanmay, bavai, bangkhuang, bongo, thanhaonhansi, hanghasaso,
hientuongluan, nhansinhquan, utru, tuongtuong, canhchung, xemxet,
quansat, suyluan, tuduy... or any words that usually come together such as cucchangda,
tuynhien, buoisang, chodu, macke... In English one may notice that the
commonly paired words are written in the combined formation. For
instance, the word "university" was originated by two words
"universal city", or "nevertheless" was "never
the less", "albeit" was "all be it", afternoon
was clearly from after......noon!" etc.
Noitomlai, dayla mot loi viet dung cho tieng Viet hiendai:
Chungta cothe batdau lam mot
cuoc cachmang nho cho vanhoa Vietnam, bangcach thaydoi loi viet tieng
Viet ngaytubaygio. Bietdau trong tuonglai motvai thehe toi se cho
ketqua totdep ma hientai khong ai cothe thaytruoc duoc!
PHU CUONG
