Usage
Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary has a status similar to that of Latin-based words in English: they are used more in formal context than in everyday life. Because Chinese and Vietnamese use different order for subject and modifier, compound Sino-Vietnamese words or phrases might appear ungrammatical in Vietnamese sentences. For example, the Sino-Vietnamese phrase bạch mã (白馬 - white horse) can be expressed in Vietnamese as ngựa trắng (horse white). For this reason, compound words containing native Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese words are very rare and are considered improper by some (for example, chung cư "apartment building" was originally derived from chúng cư 眾居 "multiple dwelling", but with the syllable chúng "multiple" replaced with chung, a pure Vietnamese word meaning "shared" or "together". These tend to only happen with "native" words with the same etymology as their Sino-Vietnamese counterparts.).
Some Sino-Vietnamese words are entirely invented by the Vietnamese and are not used in Chinese, such as linh mục (靈牧 - spiritual shepherd) for pastor. Others are no longer used in modern Chinese or have other meanings. For example, the Vietnamese word lý thuyết, meaning 'theory', is from the Chinese word 理説, which is no longer in use. The official name for the United States in Vietnamese is Hoa Kỳ (花旗). This is a former Chinese name of the United States and translates literally as "flower flag".
Writing Sino-Vietnamese words with quốc ngữ had caused some confusions about the origins of some terms, due to the large amount of homophones in Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese. For example, both 明 (bright) and 冥 (dark) are read as minh, thus the word "minh" has two contradictory meanings: bright and dark (although the "dark" meaning is now esoteric and is used in only a few compound words). Perhaps for this reason, the Vietnamese name for Pluto isn't Minh Vương Tinh (冥王星 - lit. underworld king star) as in other East Asian languages, but is Diêm Vương Tinh (閻王星), named after the Hindu and Buddhist deity Yama. During the Hồ Dynasty, Vietnam was officially known as Đại Ngu (大虞 - Great Peace). Unfortunately, most modern Vietnamese know ngu as "stupid" (愚); consequently, some misinterpret it as "Big Idiot" (大愚). Conversely, the Han River in South Korea is often erroneously translated as sông Hàn (韓) when it should be sông Hán (漢) due to the name's similarity with the country name. However, the homograph/homophone problem is not as serious as it appears, because although many Sino-Vietnamese words have multiple meanings when written with quốc ngữ, usually only one has widespread usage, while the others are relegated to obscurity. Furthermore, Sino-Vietnamese words are usually not used alone, but in compound words, thus the meaning of the compound word is preserved even if individually each has multiple meanings. Most importantly, since quốc ngữ is an exact phonetic transcription of the spoken language, its understandability is as high as or higher than a normal conversation.
In addition, quốc ngữ is sometimes used by ethnic Hoa who have forgotten how to use Chinese characters correctly, to communicate to other Hoa in Chinese; their spoken dialects are usually Cantonese or Teochew, which are close to Sino-Vietnamese. Thus, Sino-Vietnamese can actually be used as a fully functional written language.
Read more about this topic: Sino-Vietnamese Vocabulary
Famous quotes containing the word usage:
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