Vietnamese Literature

Bilingual Vietnamese Proverbs AZ

Vietnamese proverbs are concise statements expressing deep thoughts, practical knowledge, and experience-based judgments, covering all aspects of Vietnamese life, and bearing some flavour of a particular culture.

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Modern Vietnamese Character

Modern Vietnamese literature finds its roots during the French colonial period, when popularization of the romanised script quốc ngữ finally allowed it to break free from the restrictions of classical Chinese literature.

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Modern literature 1945-1975

Prior to 1945 comparatively few southern writers had achieved recognition or success, but against a background of relative stability, prosperity and artistic freedom in the late 1950s and early 1960s a small but active literary scene began to emerge in South Việt Nam, initially under the influence of a circle of writers, linguists and educators who had relocated from the north.

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Modern literature before 1945

The first real flowering of modern Vietnamese literature took place in the north under the influence of the romantic styles, themes and techniques of French literature.

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Classical Han Chinese

During the 1,000 years of Chinese rule over what is now northern Việt Nam, chữ Hán (classical Han Chinese, also known as chữ nho) became firmly established as the language of the Vietnamese royal court and would remain so until as late as 1918 when the ancient system of mandarin examinations was finally abolished.

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Nom Character

From an early period a special ideographic script known as chữ nôm was also devised for transcribing spoken Vietnamese. According to annals dating from the late 13th century, the poets Nguyễn Thuyên and Nguyễn Sĩ Cố were the first to write in chữ nôm. At the turn of the century King Hồ Quý Ly (1400-1407) himself translated the Confucian classic Kinh Thi into nôm. Thereafter an increasingly large number of other works were composed in the new script.

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Vietnamese language and scripts

Among the 54 Vietnamese ethnic groups some have had their own scripts for a long time and some have not preserved their ancient scripts. As a matter of fact, some ethnic groups consisting of some hundreds of individuals living in remote areas have their own languages.

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The Vietnamese Girl in Popular Poems

The Vietnamese girl never complaints about the condition and the role a Confucian society has assigned to her since the dawn of time. From her young age, being used to hearing popular poems incessantly sung by her mother or sister and continuing to grow up with the rhythm and the sound of the swinging hammock, she began to absorb unconsciously the recommendations found in these poems.

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Vietnamese proverb and folk songs

Nobody knows for sure the origin of Vietnamese proverbs and folk songs in terms of their inception and authors. Vietnamese proverbs and folk songs, however, are orally transmitted and incessantly edited throughout generations.

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Vietnamese language - a Long History

About 60 percent of modern Vietnamese words are of Chinese origin. Many basic words, like geographical terms, were adopted from mono tonal Mon-Khmer languages, while tonality came from Tai.

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Trang tin du lịch

Bilingual Vietnamese Proverbs AZ

Modern Vietnamese Character

Modern literature 1945-1975

Modern literature before 1945

Classical Han Chinese

Nom Character

Vietnamese language and scripts

The Vietnamese Girl in Popular Poems

Vietnamese proverb and folk songs

Vietnamese language - a Long History