抄録
'Chữ Nôm, ' the former system of writing invented by borrowing the principles and forms of the Chinese character, really means "vulgar script" or "southern character, " in contrast to 'Chữ Nho, ' meaning "Confucianist scholars' script."
I have been considering why 'Chữ Nôm' was not established as the Vietnamese orthography like the similar Japanese demotic script Kana but was replaced by 'Quốc Ngữ, ' meaning "national script, " which was invented by modification of the Roman alphabet. Recently I noticed that as long as 'Chữ Nôm' depended to a large degree phonetically and semantically on the Chinese system it was impossible for most of the people, who were blinded by their governor and had almost no chance to learn Chinese itself, to master it completely. And, paradoxically, just because it remained vulgar, its raison d'être was to express racial romanticism. In other words, almost all Vietnamese intellectuals, most of whom were bilingual, never hoped that the script would be fostered as a national orthography.
If this is true, it is evident that the script played a very important role in every sphere in Vietnamese history. Scholars of Vietnam should, therefore, comprehend its system and structure and, if possible, investigate its origin and how it changed in each period of history.
