6 shortcomings in the proposal to improve 'Vietnamese' by Associate Professor Bui Hien

When part 1 of the proposal to improve the national language by Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien (the consonant part) was announced in the media, public opinion had mixed reactions, mostly against. The following article is also a continuation of that line of thought when Associate Professor Bui Hien announced part 2 of the proposal with improvements to the Vietnamese vowel system.

Introducing an article by Dr. Trinh Thu Tuyet (former Literature teacher - Chu Van An High School, Hanoi):

Seriously, Vietnamese has had many illogical things for hundreds of years, illogical things that have been rationalized by default conventions in the Vietnamese language community, for example the letters c/k/q, r/d/gi, ng/ngh, g/gh...

Those defaults gradually become habits, from habits, gradually become common spelling standards, and standards are one of the important criteria in establishing aesthetic values ​​in the minds of Vietnamese language users. Irrationality always has the potential need to change to reduce and eventually eliminate it, to gradually bring scientific and aesthetic values ​​to Vietnamese.

However, changing habits that have been formed for hundreds of years is extremely difficult, from the change plan to the problem of resolving old consequences in documents that have been in existence for hundreds of years, especially the difficulty in the community's receptive attitude!

So the problem is to find the best solution for change, a solution that is both scientific and reasonable, and does not change too many existing factors, avoiding shocking the community.

The plan proposed by Associate Professor Bui Hien has too many changes that are not convincing to Vietnamese language users, who are also the true owners of the community's valuable spiritual assets, and it is understandable that it can easily cause negative reactions.

Many opinions explain the unreasonableness and impossibility of the proposed solutions of the Associate Professor. I would like to give only a few very small opinions about the shortcomings.

Author of the article - Dr. Trinh Thu Tuyet, former Literature teacher - Chu Van An High School, Hanoi.

First of all, there is instability in the way the problem is posed:

- Solve spelling mistakes by removing the right-wrong boundary of consonants!

- Using the capital Hanoi's dialect as the phonetic basis for determining the Vietnamese alphabet. Meanwhile, Hanoi's dialect basically does not distinguish r, d/s, x/ch, tr... and will not be able to represent the pronunciation of Vietnamese people in general.

Speech came first, writing came later.To record speech, the letters must fully express the subtle nuances of speech, cannot be erased and unify those nuances, cannot change the main sounds and force language users to follow the spelling when unifying x/s; ch/tr; r/d...

One of the beauties of Vietnamese is the richness and subtle flexibility of its phonetics, and phonetics are formed mainly by tones, rhymes, and rhythms, elements that are primarily composed of the consonant and vowel systems! The differences between the consonants r - d, ch - tr, x - s... create subtle tones for the syllables when pronounced!

For example, it would be impossible to recognize the beauty of the verse "Those trembling streams of leaves" by Xuan Dieu; the verse "Standing on this side of the river, why do I feel so regretful/ Why do I feel so heartbroken like a falling hand" by Hoang Cam; the verse "The father's ambition makes my shoes and sandals ring/ Black and black, still silk" by Tran Te Xuong; or the lyrics "The army marches like waves... The army is drunk in the song..." by Van Cao... if pronounced according to the proposed direction of national language reform!

It is an undeniable fact that phonetics creates the SPIRIT of a language, it is the subtlety and magic of a language! Therefore, I believe that improvement should aim at solving the simple irrationalities of the written characters without harming the phonetics!

After the phonetic element is the lexical element.The expressive meaning of vocabulary is closely related to writing. If the boundaries of ch/tr, s/x, r/d... are blurred, very complex homophones with different meanings will appear in Vietnamese.

For example, two verses of Nguyen Khoa Diem: "They keep and pass on to us the rice seeds we grow/ They pass the fire through each house, from the coal to the firewood" - the reader distinguishes the difference between "passing on" (the transfer of values ​​- mainly spiritual - over time) and "passing on" (the transfer of mainly material elements in space); distinguishes the difference between "sharing" in "sharing" (mainly aimed at expressing/confiding/empathizing... spiritual values;

If it is a material value, it is mainly directed towards expressing feelings of support and sympathy such as "sharing rice and clothes"...) with "splitting" (using an object such as a saw, knife... to divide/cut an object that is usually tangible vertically); or distinguishing the meaning of statements through pronunciation such as "Not far from Truong Sa"/ "- Have you had lunch yet? - You haven't had lunch yet! / My husband's family grows it/ Asian buffalo/ Her skin has recently become whiter..." These are linguistic phenomena that are very difficult to distinguish if the letters are simplified as proposed.

The entire Vietnamese alphabet (phonemes) (capital Hanoi) consists of 33 units by Associate Professor Bui Hien.

PGS's principles for improving Vietnameseis that each phoneme is written with only one letter (character). However, the PGS's solution raises some new problems as follows:

- There will be cases where a letter has to carry many sounds.

For example: c must contain two sounds tr and ch; z contains r, d and gi. That inadequacy leads to the self-elimination of a part of the phoneme, which not only loses the rich and unique musicality in TV but also leads to homophones that are very difficult to distinguish as mentioned in parts 2 & 3.

- Or vice versa, a sound still exists in many different letters.

Observing the "Direct Experiment" passage of Associate Professor Bui Hien - excerpt from Nhan Dan newspaper - December 16, 2017, there are cases where the sound ă is written as a in the syllable "cach"; the sound ă is written as ă in the syllable "can" (the sentence "...mot kác kăn kơ, bài bản...").

- According to current orthography, if the diphthong uô/ ươ/iê is a mid-rhyme, then write uô (rầu miền), ghi ươ (equivalent), ghi iê (Vietnamese), and if it stands alone without a final rhyme, then it changes to ua (mua); ươ (rain); ia (tia). For hundreds of years, this sound change has not been a problem for Vietnamese speakers.

Now, according to the proposal of Associate Professor Bui Hien, the letter a only records the sound a, and in cases where a is read as ô (buy) it will be returned as "muô"; a is read as ơ (rain) it will be returned as "mươ"; a is read as ê (tia) it will be returned as "tie"; a is read as ă (tay) it will be returned as "tây".

However, in the case of the sounds â ghi â and ố as in the syllables: "tân" and "tô", there will be a phenomenon of one sound appearing in two letters while if following the improved system according to the principle of one letter recording one sound, the letter "tô" must be changed to "tát"! So the principle of one letter recording one sound of PGS was not thorough even in his own system!

Proposal to cut one stroke of the letter "n", combined with the letter "h" to record the sound "nh" (nh) is a very difficult proposal to convince both scientifically and aesthetically!

Synchronous improvement of Vietnamese writingwill create a break in a national cultural period! The first time, the majority of Vietnamese people had difficulty with the cultural and historical heritage of using Chinese; but this time, it is ironically difficult with the heritage of using Vietnamese!

The Associate Professor said that there is no need to reprint all books, newspapers, publications, textbooks, economic contracts, documents..., because he believes that people who know the national language can still use all of those things for the rest of their lives! So if this proposal is implemented, how will our future generations receive the cultural heritage of using the current national language if they do not know two language systems at the same time?

Proposing the solution of "printing some necessary literary works for rapid popularization" like the time when using the national language instead of Chinese characters at the beginning of the last century would implicitly eliminate a large part of the national cultural heritage (because reprinting many would be too big a problem for the budget).

The Associate Professor cited the birth certificates of the French period printed in three languages: French, Chinese, and Vietnamese (!), if following this initiative, how many times greater would the amount of money, effort, time... printing be than the 9% savings that he said the new improvement would bring?

Those are some initial thoughts on the shortcomings if we apply Associate Professor Bui Hien's proposal to improve Vietnamese.

According to Dantri