How did Associate Professor Bui Hien's strange proposal about "Vietnamese" once cause a stir?

Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien, former Vice Principal of Hanoi University of Foreign Languages, passed away on May 11, at the age of 90.

When mentioning him, we cannot help but mention the proposal to reform Vietnamese into "Tiếu Việt" which caused a stir and led to debates many years ago.

Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien, who proposed the reform of the Vietnamese language, passed away on May 11 at the age of 90 (Photo: TL).

In November 2027, the newly published book by Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien followed heated debates with proposals to adjust the Vietnamese language.

An example of Vietnamese language improvement given by Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien is that "education law" should be written as "law záo zụk", "state" is "n'à nữk", "language" is "qôn qữ"...

At that time, Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien said that after nearly a century, the national language has revealed many inadequacies, so it needs to be improved to be simple, easy to remember, easy to use, save time, materials...

The irrationalities that Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien pointed out include: Currently, we use 2 or 3 letters to represent a consonant phoneme at the beginning. For example, C - Q - K (cuoc, quoc, ca, kali), Tr - Ch (tra, cha), S - X (sa, xa)... In addition, we use 2 letters combined to represent the phonemes of some consonants at the end of a rhyme such as Ch, Ng, Nh (mách, ông, tanh...).

Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien was born in 1935 in Ha Hoa, Phu Tho . He is a Russian lecturer and former Vice Principal of the University of Foreign Languages ​​(now the University of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi).

His funeral will be held at 1:00 p.m. on May 12, and he will be buried in Vinh Chan, Ha Hoa, Phu Tho.

Author Bui Hien commented that these are inconsistent phenomena, not following any common principles, leading to difficulties for readers and writers, even causing misunderstandings or not understanding the exact content of the information.

Learners, such as children or foreigners, also make mistakes very often due to this complexity.

From there, he proposed a solution as a basis for moving towards an optimal solution to present to the state.

The improved national language of author Bui Hien is based on the cultural language of the capital Hanoi in terms of both basic phonemes and 6 standard tones, the principle is that each letter represents only one phoneme and each phoneme has only one corresponding letter to represent it.

The letter Đ will be removed from the current Vietnamese alphabet and some Latin letters such as F, J, W, Z will be added.

In addition, change the phonemic values ​​of the 11 existing letters in the table above, specifically: C = Ch, Tr; D = Đ; G = G, Gh; F = Ph; K = C, Q, K; Q = Ng, Ngh; R = R; S = S; X = Kh; W = Th; Z = d, gi, r.

Because the sound "nhờ" (nh) does not have a new character to replace it, the above text temporarily uses the compound character n' to express it.

Complete version of the improved writing proposed by Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien (Photo: TL).

While public opinion was "uproaring" about part 1 of the improvement of "Tiếu Việt" consonants, Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien continued to complete his 40-year research work and decided to publish part 2 (the entire work).

In the second part, he completed his research on Vietnamese vowels.

Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien shared that he sought to accurately and completely discover the vowel phoneme system of Vietnamese (Hanoi) to select letters corresponding to each phoneme based on the principle of one phoneme - one letter.

He pointed out two key issues that need to be resolved: the number of actual vowel phonemes in Vietnamese and the corresponding letters.

The entire Vietnamese alphabet (phonemes) (capital Hanoi) he proposed consists of 33 units.

In the new reading alphabet, the order a - b - c is still maintained. The bold letters in the table above are to note that these are letters that have new phonemic values ​​(read in an improved way) instead of the letters read according to the old national language alphabet.

Some letters will completely change their pronunciation such as: C (wait), f (fờ), j (jờ), k (cờ), q (thơ), w (ngờ), x (khờ), z (đờ).

Calm before public reaction

When announcing each part of the research project proposing to improve the Vietnamese language, in the face of fierce opposition, Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien remained calm, saying that this reaction was normal, especially when the project was not yet completed.

He himself also shared: "If I suddenly see the word 'improvement', I also feel silly."

However, this scientist maintains that even though the managers have not yet decided to apply any plan to improve the national language, his research from a scientific and personal perspective... is his right.

He also emphasized that he had spent more than 40 years researching this scientific work and experienced many difficulties to have a complete text and he felt very satisfied.

Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien (Photo: TL).

As for unfriendly and even malicious comments, he said it was normal because some people would understand and some would not.

He also assessed his scientific research as experimental, anyone who wants can use it.

Besides the opposing opinions, even criticism, many educators and scientists believe that Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien's research on improving Vietnamese is worthy of respect.

Patented Improvements

At the end of 2017, the Copyright Office (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism) officially signed and granted copyright to the work "Article on improving the national language" by Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien.

At that time, Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien shared that he registered the copyright not because he was afraid that others would infringe on his research but only to prevent cases of using his improved writing for bad purposes. He welcomed everyone to use the new writing in life or in scientific research.

By March 2018, Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien stopped all research on improving "Tieq Viet".

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/giao-duc/de-xuat-la-ve-tieq-viet-cua-pgs-bui-hien-tung-gay-suc-soi-the-nao-20250512103513591.htm