Another way to honor the Nôm script.

The poet Che Lan Vien, in his book *Thinking More About Nguyen*, wrote: “He made a contribution to that language/ (...)/ So that for a thousand years to come, the moon of the Vietnamese language will forever remain.” “That language” is the Nom script, and the “moon of the Vietnamese language” that Che Lan Vien refers to is *Truyen Kieu* - a masterpiece by the great poet Nguyen Du, the pride of Vietnamese literature on the international literary stage.

Congratulations. Ink painting. Painting by artist Vo Trinh Bien.

As everyone knows, our ancestors, wanting to end the borrowing of Chinese characters, created a writing system to represent the sounds of the Vietnamese language – called chữ Nôm. Based on Chinese characters, they used these characters as prefixes to create chữ Nôm – the phonetic script of Vietnamese. However, because Vietnamese is a polysyllabic language, a single Chinese character could not represent all the syllables, so our ancestors flexibly combined two Chinese characters to create a new chữ Nôm character. This new chữ Nôm character partly represents sound and partly represents meaning. Furthermore, in a few cases, our ancestors used multiple Chinese characters to represent a single chữ Nôm sound. The above analysis shows that chữ Nôm was developed by our ancestors on the foundation of Chinese characters. Chinese characters are the outer shell of chữ Nôm. For chữ Nôm to represent its inner content, it absolutely needs the outer shell of Chinese characters. This explains why later generations classified Chinese and chữ Nôm as belonging to the same group. Because if you discard the Chinese characters (the outer shell), you cannot see the content inside the Nôm script. In other words, Nôm script cannot have meaning without the outer shell of Chinese characters to express that meaning.

Although its development was incomplete and still dependent on Chinese characters, the Nôm script once made its mark in the history of Vietnam as the national language – the script of the Vietnamese language, a status that Chinese characters never achieved in our country. Nôm literature also proved superior to Chinese literature. The Nôm literary tradition has produced several outstanding authors such as Nguyễn Trãi, Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, Đoàn Thị Điểm, Nguyễn Gia Thiều, Nguyễn Du, Hồ Xuân Hương..., with many great works: Nguyễn Trãi's Quốc âm thi tập, Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm's Bạch Vân Quốc ngữ thi tập, Đoàn Thị Điểm's Chinh phụ ngâm (translation of Chinh phụ ngâm), Nguyễn Gia Thiều's Cung oán ngâm khúc, Nguyễn Du's Truyện Kiều, Hồ Xuân Hương's Xuân Hương thi tập...

The flourishing development of Nôm script literature, both in terms of ideological content and artistic value, is a powerful expression of national pride and the clearest evidence of our ancestors' aspiration to build an independent civilization. Through the aforementioned masterpieces of Nôm poetry, "the script of our language," the Nôm script has been elevated to a high status by Vietnamese literati. It is no longer a "crude, illegible" script; Nôm has become a means of literary creation. Many Nôm works of literature have reached the pinnacle of linguistic artistry, a source of pride for our national literature.

Aware of the duality between Sino-Vietnamese and Vietnamese script, artist Vo Trinh Bien in Da Lat expressed his love for "the script of the Vietnamese language" by transforming Vietnamese characters into captivating and skillful works of art. On large sheets of roki paper, using only fingertips and ink, these calligraphic paintings appear one after another, full of enchantment. Here is the character for "mother," composed of the radical for "woman" and the character for "beauty." "Mother" in Vietnamese script is an ideographic character, meaning "mother" refers to a beautiful woman. There is the character for "love." Our ancestors used the character for "weak" (yếu) at the top, concealed by the radical for "female," and the character for "woman" at the bottom to express "love." "Love" in Vietnamese script is both phonetic and ideographic. "Love" is the emotion that a woman keeps hidden in her heart. Our ancestors also created the character for "celebration," which carries many meanings. "Mừng" (rejoice/celebrate) consists of the character "tâm" (heart/mind) and the character "minh" (bright/enlightened), implying that one should rejoice when the heart of someone remains pure and bright. One should rejoice when someone possesses enlightened wisdom. One should rejoice when a nation has a wise ruler...

According to artist Vo Trinh Bien, his drawing of individual Nôm characters as mentioned above is a rehearsal for a long-term project in the near future: drawing a complete version of the Tale of Kieu – the masterpiece of the great poet Nguyen Du. The Tale of Kieu is a narrative poem in Nôm script consisting of 3,254 lục bát (six-eight) verses. It is not only the "Book of Poetry" of the Vietnamese people, but also Nguyen Du's affirmation of the Vietnamese identity through the Nôm script – a script that expresses our ancestors' aspiration for linguistic independence. Through the Nôm script, our ancestors once again affirmed that this is the script of the Vietnamese language, the wisdom of the Vietnamese people.

Source: https://baolamdong.vn/van-hoa-nghe-thuat/202505/them-cach-ton-vinh-chu-nom-72b0af9/