Chữ Nôm in the context of Classical Chinese

The Nguyễn dynasty (Vietnamese: Nhà Nguyễn or Triều Nguyễn, chữ Nôm: 茹阮, chữ Hán: 朝阮) was the last Vietnamese dynasty, preceded by the Nguyễn lords and ruling unified Vietnam independently from 1802 until the start of the French protectorate in 1883. Its emperors were members of the House of Nguyễn Phúc. During its existence, the Nguyễn empire expanded into modern-day Southern Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos through a continuation of the centuries-long Nam tiến and Siamese–Vietnamese wars. With the French conquest of Vietnam, the Nguyễn dynasty was forced to give up sovereignty over parts of Southern Vietnam to France in 1862 and 1874, and after 1883 the Nguyễn dynasty only nominally ruled the French protectorates of Annam (Central Vietnam) as well as Tonkin (Northern Vietnam). Backed by Imperial Japan, in 1945 the last Nguyễn emperor Bảo Đại abolished the protectorate treaty with France and proclaimed the Empire of Vietnam for a short time until 25 August 1945.

The House of Nguyễn Phúc established control over large amounts of territory in Southern Vietnam as the Nguyễn lords (1558–1777, 1780–1802) by the 16th century before defeating the Tây Sơn dynasty and establishing their own imperial rule in the 19th century. The dynastic rule began with Gia Long ascending the throne in 1802, after ending the previous Tây Sơn dynasty. The Nguyễn dynasty was gradually absorbed by France over the course of several decades in the latter half of the 19th century, beginning with the Cochinchina Campaign in 1858 which led to the occupation of the southern area of Vietnam. A series of unequal treaties followed; the occupied territory became the French colony of Cochinchina in the 1862 Treaty of Saigon, and the 1863 Treaty of Huế gave France access to Vietnamese ports and increased control of its foreign affairs. Finally, the 1883 and 1884 Treaties of Huế divided the remaining Vietnamese territory into the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin under nominal Nguyễn Phúc rule. In 1887, Cochinchina, Annam, Tonkin, and the French Protectorate of Cambodia were grouped together to form French Indochina.

The Red River or the Hong River (traditional Chinese: 紅河; simplified Chinese: 红河; pinyin: Hóng Hé; Vietnamese: Sông Hồng; Chữ Nôm: 瀧紅), also known as the Sông Cái (lit. "Main River"; Chữ Nôm: 瀧丐) in Vietnamese and the Yuan River (元江, Yuán Jiāng) in Chinese, is a 1,149-kilometer (714 mi)-long river that flows from Yunnan in Southwest China through northern Vietnam to the Gulf of Tonkin. According to C. Michael Hogan, the associated Red River Fault was instrumental in forming the entire South China Sea at least as early as 37 million years before present. The name red and southern position in China are associated in traditional cardinal directions. The river is relatively shallow, and carries a lot of reddish silt along its way, appearing red brown in colour.

The Chinese family of scripts includes writing systems used to write various East Asian languages, that ultimately descend from the oracle bone script invented in the Yellow River valley during the Shang dynasty. These include written Chinese itself, as well as adaptations of it for other languages, such as Japanese kanji, Korean hanja, Vietnamese chữ Hán and chữ Nôm, Zhuang sawndip, and Bai bowen. More divergent are the Tangut script, Khitan large script, Khitan small script and its offspring, the Jurchen script, as well as the Yi script, Sui script, and Geba syllabary, which were inspired by written Chinese but not descended directly from it. While written Chinese and many of its descendant scripts are logographic, others are phonetic, including the kana, Nüshu, and Lisu syllabaries, as well as the bopomofo semi-syllabary.

These scripts are written in various styles, principally seal script, clerical script, regular script, semi-cursive script, and cursive script. Adaptations range from the conservative, as in Korean, which used Chinese characters in their standard form with only a few local coinages, and relatively conservative Japanese, which has coined a few hundred new characters and used traditional character forms until the mid-20th century, to the extensive adaptations of Zhuang and Vietnamese, each coining over 10,000 new characters by Chinese formation principles, to the highly divergent Tangut script, which formed over 5,000 new characters by its own principles.

The Lý dynasty (Vietnamese: Nhà Lý, Vietnamese pronunciation: [ɲâː lǐ], chữ Nôm: 茹李, chữ Hán: 朝李, Vietnamese: triều Lý), officially Đại Cồ Việt (chữ Hán: 大瞿越) from 1009 to 1054 and Đại Việt (chữ Hán: 大越) from 1054 to 1225, was a Vietnamese dynasty that existed from 1009 to 1225. It was established by Lý Công Uẩn when he overthrew the Anterior Lê dynasty. The dynasty ended when empress regnant Lý Chiêu Hoàng (then 8 years old) was pressured to abdicate the throne in favor of her husband, Trần Cảnh in 1225, the dynasty lasted for 216 years. During Lý Thánh Tông's reign, the official name of the state was changed from Đại Cồ Việt to Đại Việt, a name that would remain Vietnam's official name until the onset of the 19th century.

Domestically, while the Lý emperors were devout in their adherence to Buddhism, the influence of Confucianism from China was on the rise, with the opening of the Temple of Literature in 1070, built for the veneration of the Confucius and his disciples. Six years later in 1076, the Quốc Tử Giám (Guozijian) was established within the same complex; Initially the education was limited to the children of the emperor, the imperial family as well as mandarin and nobility, serving as Vietnam's first university institution. The first imperial examination was held in 1075 and Lê Văn Thịnh became the first Trạng Nguyên (Zhuangyuan) of Vietnam.

Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically. Chinese characters, Korean hangul, and Japanese kana may be oriented along either axis, as they consist mainly of disconnected logographic or syllabic units, each occupying a square block of space, thus allowing for flexibility for which direction texts can be written, be it horizontally from left-to-right, horizontally from right-to-left, vertically from top-to-bottom, and even vertically from bottom-to-top.

Traditionally, written Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese are written vertically in columns going from top to bottom and ordered from right to left, with each new column starting to the left of the preceding one. The stroke order and stroke direction of Chinese characters, Vietnamese chữ Nôm, Korean hangul, and kana all facilitate writing in this manner. In addition, writing in vertical columns from right to left facilitated writing with a brush in the right hand while continually unrolling the sheet of paper or scroll with the left. Since the nineteenth century, it has become increasingly common for these languages to be written horizontally, from left to right, with successive rows going from top to bottom, under the influence of European languages such as English, although vertical writing is still frequently used in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Macau, and Taiwan.

The Tây Sơn dynasty (Vietnamese: [təj ʂəːn]; Vietnamese: "Nhà Tây Sơn" or "Triều Tây Sơn", (chữ Hán: 朝西山; Chữ Nôm: 茹西山), officially Đại Việt (Chữ Hán: 大越), was an imperial dynasty of Vietnam. It originated in a revolt led by three peasant brothers with the surname Nguyễn, rebelling against the Lê dynasty, Trịnh lords and Nguyễn lords (no relation). The Tây Sơn would later be succeeded by the Nguyễn dynasty.

The Tây Sơn dynasty ended the century-long war between the Trịnh and Nguyễn families, overthrew the Lê dynasty, and united the country for the first time in 200 years. They acknowledged Qing suzerainty and gained recognition from the Qianlong Emperor as the legitimate rulers of Vietnam. Under the most prominent of the Tây Sơn brothers Nguyễn Huệ (Emperor Quang Trung) Vietnam experienced several years of relative peace and prosperity. But Quang Trung died relatively young at the age of 40 and his successor Cảnh Thịnh, aged 9, was unable to prevent civil conflict among the Tây Sơn court which allowed the last Nguyễn lord Nguyễn Ánh to retake the south of Vietnam, extinguish the Tây Sơn and establish the Nguyễn dynasty.

Ruby characters or rubi characters (Japanese: ルビ; rōmaji: rubi; Korean: 루비; romaja: rubi) are small, annotative glosses that are usually placed above or to the right of logographic characters of languages in the East Asian cultural sphere, such as Chinese hanzi, Japanese kanji, and Korean hanja, to show the logographs' pronunciation; these were formerly also used for Vietnamese chữ Hán and chữ Nôm, and may still occasionally be seen in that context when reading archaic texts. Typically called just ruby or rubi, such annotations are most commonly used as pronunciation guides for characters that are likely to be unfamiliar to the reader.

Vietnamese calligraphy (Vietnamese alphabet: Thư pháp Việt Nam, chữ Hán: 書法越南) relates to the calligraphic traditions of Vietnam. It includes calligraphic works using a variety of scripts, including historical chữ Hán (Chinese characters), chữ Nôm (Vietnamese-derived characters), and the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet. Historically, calligraphers used the former two scripts. However, due to the adoption of the Latin-based chữ Vietnamese alphabet, modern Vietnamese calligraphy also uses Latin script alongside chữ Hán Nôm.

Traditional Vietnamese calligraphy is strongly affected by that of China. Chữ Hán was often used as a literary language in ancient Vietnam, and as a result, Vietnamese calligraphy also used to follow Chinese calligraphy’s standard and used chữ Hán in many of its writings. For example, during the Lý dynasty, its style was similar to China’s Tang dynasty (618-907). During the Trần dynasty, it was influenced strongly by China’s Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasties.

The Ngô dynasty (Vietnamese: Nhà Ngô; Chữ Nôm: 茹吳), officially Tĩnh Hải quân (chữ Hán: 靜海軍), was a semi-independent Vietnamese dynasty from 939 to 968. The dynasty was founded by Ngô Quyền, who led the Vietnamese forces in the Battle of Bạch Đằng River against the Chinese Southern Han dynasty in 938.

Around 930, as Ngô Quyền rose to power, northern Vietnam was militarily occupied by the Southern Han and was treated as an autonomous province and vassal state of the Later Tang Dynasty, referred to as Tĩnh Hải quân. Every year the Jiedushi of Tĩnh Hải quân had to pay tribute to its Chinese master in exchange for peace and political support. At the beginning of the 10th century, China was domestically plagued and weakened by civil war during what is known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Chinese were preoccupied with these civil struggles and lost their grip on Tĩnh Hải quân periodically. Tĩnh Hải quân took advantage of this opportunity and proclaimed its independence and seceded from China. Under the rule of Lord Protector Dương Đình Nghệ, the Tĩnh Hải quân state initiated a full blown military campaign for independence.

Đàng Trong (chữ Nôm: 唐冲, lit. "Inner Circuit"), also known as Nam Hà (chữ Hán: 南河, "South of the River"), was the region of Vietnam south of the Gianh River, under the lordship of the Nguyễn clan, and later expanded through Vietnamese southward expansion. It was bordered to the north by Đàng Ngoài, ruled by the Lê–Trịnh.

Throughout the 17th century and most of the 18th century, the Nguyễn lords, though claiming loyalty to the Lê emperors in Thăng Long (Hanoi), ruled Đàng Trong as a de facto independent kingdom. Nguyễn rulers titled themselves as Chúa (chữ Nôm: 主, lit. "Lord") instead of Vua (chữ Nôm: 𤤰, lit. "King") until Lord Nguyễn Phúc Khoát officially claimed the title Vũ Vương (chữ Nôm: 武王, lit. "Martial King") in 1744.

The culture of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Văn hoá Việt Nam, chữ Hán: 文化越南) are the customs and traditions of the Kinh people and the other ethnic groups of Vietnam. Vietnam is part of Southeast Asia and the Sinosphere due to the influence of Chinese culture on Vietnamese culture.

Ancient Vietnamese cultural artifacts, such as Dong Son drums were found spread throughout Southeast Asia and South China, suggesting a spread of ancient Viet (Yue) culture all the way south to Indonesia. Vietnamese culture was heavily influenced by Chinese culture due to the "1000 years of Northern Rule" (111 BCE – 939 CE). From this period until the 19th century, Classical Chinese (Hán văn) was the language used for formal writing. Between the 15th and 19th centuries, popular literature and folk songs were written in the Vietnamese language using a Vietnamese script (chữ Nôm) derived from Chinese characters (chữ Hán).

Spoken and written Vietnamese today uses the Latin script-based Vietnamese alphabet to represent native Vietnamese words (thuần Việt), Vietnamese words which are of Chinese origin (Hán-Việt, or Sino-Vietnamese), and other foreign loanwords. Historically, Vietnamese literature was written by scholars using a combination of Chinese characters (Hán) and original Vietnamese characters (Nôm). From 111 BC up to the 20th century, Vietnamese literature was written in Văn ngôn (Classical Chinese) using chữ Hán (Chinese characters), and then also Nôm (Chinese and original Vietnamese characters adapted for vernacular Vietnamese) from the 13th century to 20th century.

Chữ Hán were introduced to Vietnam during the thousand year period of Chinese rule from 111 BC to 939 AD. Texts in Vietnam were written using chữ Hán by the 10th century at the latest. Chữ Hán continued to be used as the official administrative script until the 19th century with the exception of two brief periods under the Hồ (1400–1407) and Tây Sơn (1778–1802) dynasties when chữ Nôm was promoted. Chữ Nôm is a blend of chữ Hán and unique Vietnamese characters to write the Vietnamese language. It may have been used as early as the 8th century but concrete textual evidence dates to the 13th century. Chữ Nôm never supplanted chữ Hán as the primary writing system and less than five percent of the educated Vietnamese population used it, primarily as a learning aid for chữ Hán and writing folk literature. Due to its unofficial nature, chữ Nôm was used as a medium for social protest, leading to several bans during the Lê dynasty (1428–1789). In spite of this, a sizable body of literature in chữ Nôm had accumulated by the 19th century, and these texts could be orally disseminated by individuals in villages.

The Vietnamese alphabet (Vietnamese: chữ Quốc ngữ, chữ Nôm: 𡨸國語, lit. 'script of the national language', IPA: [t͡ɕɨ˦ˀ˥ kuək̚˧˦ ŋɨ˦ˀ˥]) is the modern writing script for the Vietnamese language. It is a Latin-based script whose spelling conventions are derived from the orthography of Romance languages such as Portuguese, Italian, and French. It was originally developed by Francisco de Pina and other Jesuit missionaries in the early 17th century.

The Vietnamese alphabet contains 29 letters, including 7 letters using four diacritics: ⟨ă⟩, ⟨â⟩, ⟨ê⟩, ⟨ô⟩, ⟨ơ⟩, ⟨ư⟩, and ⟨đ⟩. There are an additional 5 diacritics used to designate tone (as in ⟨à⟩, ⟨á⟩, ⟨ả⟩, ⟨ã⟩, and ⟨ạ⟩). The complex vowel system and the large number of letters with diacritics, which can stack twice on the same letter (e.g. nhất meaning 'first'), makes it easy to distinguish the Vietnamese orthography from other writing systems that use the Latin alphabet.

Madhyamaka (Sanskrit: मध्यमक, romanized: madhyamaka, lit. 'middle way; centrism'; Chinese: 中觀見; pinyin: Zhōngguān jiàn; Vietnamese: Trung quán tông, chữ Nôm: 中觀宗; Tibetan: དབུ་མ་པ་, Wylie: dbu ma pa) refers to a tradition of Buddhist philosophy and practice founded by the Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher Nāgārjuna (c. 150 – c. 250 CE). The foundational text of the Mādhyamaka tradition is Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā ("Root Verses on the Middle Way"). More broadly, Madhyamaka also refers to the ultimate nature of phenomena as well as the non-conceptual realization of ultimate reality that is experienced in meditation.

Since the 4th century CE onwards, Madhyamaka philosophy had a major influence on the subsequent development of the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, especially following the spread of Buddhism throughout Asia. It is the dominant interpretation of Buddhist philosophy in Tibetan Buddhism and has also been influential in East Asian Buddhist thought.

The Vietnamese cash (chữ Hán: 文錢 văn tiền; chữ Nôm: 銅錢 đồng tiền; French: sapèque), also called the sapek or sapèque, is a cast round coin with a square hole that was an official currency of Vietnam from the Đinh dynasty in 970 until the Nguyễn dynasty in 1945, and remained in circulation in North Vietnam until 1948. The same type of currency circulated in China, Japan, Korea, and Ryūkyū for centuries. Though the majority of Vietnamese cash coins throughout history were copper coins, lead, iron (from 1528) and zinc (from 1740) coins also circulated alongside them often at fluctuating rates (with 1 copper cash being worth 10 zinc cash in 1882). Coins made from metals of lower intrinsic value were introduced because of various superstitions involving Vietnamese people burying cash coins, as the problem of people burying cash coins became too much for the government. Almost all coins issued by government mints tended to be buried mere months after they had entered circulation. The Vietnamese government began issuing coins made from an alloy of zinc, lead, and tin. As these cash coins tended to be very fragile, they would decompose faster if buried, which caused the Vietnamese people to stop burying their coins.

The inscriptions of Vietnamese cash coins can be written in either the Viết chéo (曰湥 / 曰袑, top-bottom-right-left) style or the Viết thuận (曰順, clockwise, top-right-bottom-left) style.

The Anterior Lê dynasty, alternatively known as the Former Lê dynasty (Vietnamese: nhà Tiền Lê; chữ Nôm: 茹前黎; pronounced [ɲâː tjə̂n le]) in historiography, was a dynasty of Vietnam that ruled Đại Cồ Việt (chữ Hán: 大瞿越) from 980 to 1009. It followed the Đinh dynasty and was succeeded by the Lý dynasty. It comprised the reigns of three emperors.

21°02′15″N 105°50′19″E / 21.03750°N 105.83861°E / 21.03750; 105.83861The Trần dynasty (Vietnamese: Nhà Trần, chữ Nôm: 茹陳; Vietnamese: triều Trần, chữ Hán: 朝陳), officially Đại Việt (Chữ Hán: 大越), was a Vietnamese dynasty that ruled from 1225 to 1400. The dynasty was founded when emperor Trần Thái Tông ascended to the throne after his uncle Trần Thủ Độ orchestrated the overthrow of the Lý dynasty. The Trần dynasty defeated three Mongol invasions, most notably during the decisive Battle of Bạch Đằng River in 1288. During its final decades, several succession crises and invasions from Champa severely weakened the dynasty. In 1398, emperor Trần Thuận Tông was forced to cede the throne to his three-year-old son Thiếu Đế, who in turn was forced to abdicate in 1400 in favor of the minister Hồ Quý Ly.

The Trần improved Chinese gunpowder, enabling them to expand southward to defeat and vassalize the Champa. They also started using paper money for the first time in Vietnam. The period was considered a golden age in Vietnamese language, arts, and culture. The first pieces of Chữ Nôm literature were written during this period, while the introduction of vernacular Vietnamese into the court was established, alongside Literary Chinese. This laid the foundation for the further development and solidifying of the Vietnamese language and identity.

The Lê dynasty, also known in historiography as the Later Lê dynasty (Vietnamese: "Nhà Hậu Lê" or "Triều Hậu Lê", chữ Hán: 朝後黎, chữ Nôm: 茹後黎), officially Đại Việt (Chữ Hán: 大越), was the longest-ruling Vietnamese dynasty, having ruled from 1428 to 1789, with an interregnum between 1527 and 1533. The Lê dynasty is divided into two historical periods: the Initial Lê dynasty (Vietnamese: triều Lê sơ, chữ Hán: 朝黎初, or Vietnamese: nhà Lê sơ, chữ Nôm: 茹黎初; 1428–1527) before the usurpation by the Mạc dynasty, in which emperors ruled in their own right, and the Revival Lê dynasty (Vietnamese: triều Lê Trung hưng, chữ Hán: 朝黎中興, or Vietnamese: nhà Lê trung hưng, chữ Nôm: 茹黎中興; 1533–1789), in which the emperors were figures who reigned under the auspices of the powerful Trịnh family. The Revival Lê dynasty was marked by two lengthy civil wars: the Lê–Mạc War (1533–1592) in which two dynasties battled for legitimacy in northern Vietnam and the Trịnh–Nguyễn Wars (1627–1672, 1774–1777) between the Trịnh lords in North and the Nguyễn lords of the South.

The dynasty officially began in 1428 with the enthronement of Lê Lợi after he drove the Ming Chinese army from Vietnam. The dynasty reached its peak during the reign of Lê Thánh Tông and declined after his death in 1497. In 1527, the Mạc dynasty usurped the throne; when the Lê dynasty was restored in 1533, the Mạc fled to the far north and continued to claim the throne during the period known as Southern and Northern Dynasties. The restored Lê emperors held no real power, and by the time the Mạc dynasty was finally eradicated in 1677, actual power lay in the hands of the Trịnh lords in the North and Nguyễn lords in the South, both ruling in the name of the Lê emperor while fighting each other. The Lê dynasty officially ended in 1789, when the peasant uprising of the Tây Sơn brothers defeated both the Trịnh and the Nguyễn, ironically in order to restore power to the Lê dynasty.

The Later Trần dynasty (Vietnamese: Nhà Hậu Trần, chữ Nôm: 茹後陳; Sino-Vietnamese: triều Hậu Trần, chữ Hán: 朝後陳), officially Great Việt (Vietnamese: Đại Việt; chữ Hán: 大越), was a Vietnamese dynasty. It was the continuous line of the Tran dynasty that led Vietnamese rebellions against the Chinese Ming dynasty from between 1407 and 1413. The regime was characterized by two revolts against the Ming China which had by then established its rule over Vietnam.