On July 27-28, in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, seminars and book launches on the History of the National Language (1615-1919) were held by Omega+ Book Company and Kim Dong Publishing House. Here, speakers reviewed important milestones in the history of the formation, development and transformation of the national language, as well as the important contributions of Dr. Pham Thi Kieu Ly to this research topic.
A myriad of emotions
According to Dr. Tran Quoc Anh (Santa Clara University, USA), over the past century, there have been many research works on the national language. Up to now, this topic has gone through 4 generations, starting from "the great" Leopold Cadière - who paid attention to Vietnamese language and culture, until the 1950s and 1960s with the generation of Vietnamese students who had access to archives in Rome such as Thanh Lang, Nguyen Khac Xuyen... The 3rd generation marked the important work of Do Quang Chinh, taking the time frame from 1620 - 1659 and was considered the first person to publish valuable original documents. Dr. Pham Thi Kieu Ly is the 4th generation who contributed to completing the remaining shortcomings and extending the research period, from 1615 - 1919.
A set of 3 works for many audiences on the history of the national language by Dr. Pham Thi Kieu Ly
Sharing about her journey, Dr. Kieu Ly said that the idea for this topic started in 2012 when she had the opportunity to "join" the intellectual activity group of the late teacher Pham Toan. She shared that at that time, it was purely out of curiosity about who created the national language; then, the support of the late teacher Pham Toan also coincided with the time when she applied for a scholarship to study languages in France, helping this journey to begin. Researching documents from 2014, in 2018 she successfully defended her doctoral thesis. Since then, she has continuously added more documents to publish her works.
Sharing her feelings when the project has created 4 books in many genres, for a variety of audiences in both French and Vietnamese, Dr. Kieu Ly said she was extremely moved. The journey to find documents, for her, was like a "roller coaster of emotions" from joy, sadness to tears. When asked what she found most impressive in this journey, the author said it was the meticulousness and professionalism of the archives in Europe, because the process is often very simple, only including letters of recommendation from professors about 2, 3 months before arriving there, as well as the modern digitized repositories of the Jesuits in Rome, Lisbon, Paris.
She revealed that she also had many feelings when she was the first person to touch many documents written in Vietnamese script contained in more than 40 cartons at the Dominican Archives in Ávila (Portugal). Among them were more than 40 books about the experiences of Father Philipphe Binh - who went to Portugal to meet the king when the Jesuit order was closed and could not return home forever. During those 30 years, he and other priests wrote many documents on many different topics because they had nothing to do, and when reading the line: "I have already written the stories of other priests, so who will tell my own story?", Dr. Kieu Ly could not help but feel moved and sad.
Leave the ivory tower
In this launch, in addition to the work History of Vietnamese Script (1615 - 1919) developed from her doctoral thesis defended in 2018, Dr. Kieu Ly also introduced 100 questions about the history of Vietnamese script for the general readership. She shared that the work was done during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she was in the process of revising her thesis manuscript into a French book Histoire de l'écriture romanisée du vietnamien (1615 - 1919) published by Les Indes Savant Publishing House. At that time, she put herself in the position of the readers and the questions they would likely ask themselves to complete the book.
Dr. Kieu Ly (middle) shares many experiences with different levels of emotions during the process of creating the work.
Before the above two works, in 2023, Dr. Kieu Ly also collaborated with artist Ta Huy Long to launch Journey of creating national script through many stories of priests about the process of creating national script for children. The work is very popular as to date, more than 7,000 publications have been published. Dr. Kieu Ly shared that at first she was very skeptical about this idea, but when Kim Dong Publishing House suggested it, she tried and it took her 7-8 times to write the work to complete it as it is today. Since then, she has been attracted to making books for children, and expressed her happiness and emotion at bringing knowledge closer to a variety of audiences, from researchers, general readers to children.
During a talk at Ho Chi Minh City Book Street (July 28), Dr. Kieu Ly shared that being a researcher in the "ivory tower" of science is a somewhat lonely job when it is difficult to communicate and exchange thoughts with people around. However, it is thanks to bringing her works to a large audience that she feels she is sharing and reaching out to many people. For her, disseminating knowledge to the public is still the top goal instead of chasing after expensive Western awards that do not contribute anything to the country.
Talking about her work, she modestly calls it a "small brick" on the "great wall" of research on the national language, but it can be believed that from here many other works will continue to connect, thereby creating a panoramic picture of the writing system that Vietnamese people still use every day.
Source: https://thanhnien.vn/hanh-trinh-dai-chung-hoa-nhung-nghien-cuu-ve-chu-quoc-ngu-185240728221103872.htm
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