Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien unexpectedly 'released' part 2 of the proposal to reform 'Vietnamese'

While public opinion was "uproaring" about the first part of the improvement of the "Tiệq Việt" consonants not long ago, Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien - former Vice Principal of Hanoi University of Foreign Languages ​​continued to complete the 40-year research project and decided to publish part 2 (the entire project) earlier than planned.

The entire Vietnamese alphabet (phonemes) (capital Hanoi) consists of 33 units.

Talking to Dan Tri reporter, Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien said that the first published part only mentioned improving the consonant system according to the principle that "each letter only represents one phoneme and each phoneme has only one letter to represent". In the second part, he completed the research on the vowels of Vietnamese.

"I tried to accurately and completely discover the vowel phoneme system of Vietnamese (Hanoi) to select letters corresponding to each phoneme based on the principle of one phoneme - one letter," Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien said.

According to him, there are two key issues that need to be resolved: The number of actual vowel phonemes in Vietnamese and the corresponding letters.

On the principle of combining vowels in Vietnamese syllables. Currently, in the Vietnamese vowel system, it has been recorded and regularly used according to orthographic standards, including 16 vowels represented by letters in typical independent positions or standing in syllable combinations with accompanying consonants as follows:

After determining the two new vowel and consonant phoneme systems, it is necessary to combine them into a phoneme table with a unified and complete alphabet of Hanoi language. The entire Vietnamese alphabet (phoneme) (capital Hanoi) consists of 33 units by Associate Professor Bui Hien.

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

In the new reading alphabet, the order a - b - c is still kept. The bold letters in the above table are to note that these are letters that have new phonemic values ​​(reading in an improved way) instead of the letters read in the old national language alphabet. Some letters will have completely changed pronunciation such as: C (chờ), f (phờ), j (jờ), k (cờ), q (thờ), w (ngờ), x (khờ), z (dờ).

Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien affirmed that the improvement of the national language is only aimed at adjusting the current alphabet based on the phonetic system for the capital Hanoi, and does not affect the phonetic system to make the language different, leading to different meanings as some rumors have been circulating recently.

Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien talks with reporters at his home.

"Scientific research is my right"

Previously, as Dan Tri reported, at the end of November 2017, part 1 of the proposal to improve the national language by Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien, as soon as it appeared in the media, caused many controversial opinions, even being harshly "stoned".

When asked about the reason for publishing the rest of the work earlier than expected, Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien affirmed that the reason he published it earlier than expected (March 2018) was not because he was "stoned" after publishing the consonant improvement part.

“In Vietnamese, there must always be two parts: consonants and vowels that always go together. If there are consonants, there must be a vowel part to be able to combine into a sentence.

Although I have received many strong objections recently, I think that is a normal phenomenon because my work is not yet complete. The Government leaders and the Ministry of Education and Training said that there is still no policy to apply any plan to improve the national language, that is the job of the managers. My research from a scientific and personal perspective is my right."

The Associate Professor of Linguistics was not too upset by the rude comments. He emphasized that he had spent more than 40 years researching this scientific work and had gone through many difficulties to have the completed document today, and he felt very satisfied.

“More than 20 years ago, when the project initially showed results, I proposed to improve the national language in a scientific journal but it was not considered.

My improvement of the national language aims to continue to improve the effectiveness of the Latin alphabet in the development and integration stage of the 4.0 revolution. This is a personal scientific research and proposal, not a State one. Whether it can be applied or not will be decided by the Government.

As for the unfriendly and even malicious comments, I think that is normal because some people will understand, some will not. The scientific research I am experimenting with, if you like it, you can use it, if not, then no one is forcing you to use it," Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien shared.

According to him, with the easy-to-remember and easy-to-read characteristics, learning the entire improved alphabet only takes 1-2 days for those who already know the current alphabet. First graders, ethnic minorities, and foreigners will have their "basic" learning time shortened by at least half compared to the old one.

According to Dantri