Chu Nom

Chu Nom (Chữ Nôm in quoc ngu and 字喃 in Chinese characters, lit. "southern script") is a classical vernacular script (based on Chinese characters) of the Vietnamese language, and was the most common method of writing Vietnamese for over a millennium.

The script for writing Chinese characters in Vietnamese is hán tư or chữ nho (字儒). The former is considered heavily sinicized, and the latter is more common.

By the early 20th century the use of chu Nom (script) gave way to a roman-style alphabet known as chu Quoc-Ngu. Although a vast cultural heritage and history remains written in chu Nom, few Vietnamese today can read it.

After Vietnamese independence from China in 939 CE, scholars began their creation of Nom, an ideographic script that represents Vietnamese speech. For the next 1,000 years – from the 10th century and into the 20th – much of Vietnamese literature, philosophy, history, law, medicine, religion, and government policy was written in Nom script. During the 14 years of the Tay Son emperors (1788-1802), all administrative documents were written in Chu Nom. In other words, approximately 1,000 years of Vietnamese cultural history is recorded in this unique system.

This heritage is now nearly lost. With the 17th century advent of quoc ngu – the modern roman-style script – Nom literacy gradually died out. In 1920, the colonial government decreed against its use. Today, fewer than 100 scholars world-wide can read Nom. Much of Vietnam's vast, written history is, in effect, inaccessible to the 80 million speakers of the language.