Author of proposal to improve Vietnamese script speaks out

Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien said that his proposals were only within the scope of a research project, which he started 20 years ago. What was published in the press was part of the research project.

The reason he thought about improving the writing system was because after more than 40 years of doing research, teaching, writing books, and compiling dictionaries, he found that the national language had many complicated phonetic symbols. Many people still could not write correctly even when they were old.

From there, Associate Professor Hien proposed a plan as a basis for improving the writing system. The letter Đ will be removed from the current Vietnamese alphabet and some Latin letters such as F, J, W, Z will be added and 11 existing letters in the current alphabet will be changed.

The letters in orange are the ones that Associate Professor Hien suggested for improvement.

According to Associate Professor Hien, this improvement will unify the writing system for the whole country, eliminate most shortcomings, eliminate spelling mistakes, and not cause difficulties for users.

In addition, the alphabet will be simplified from 38 letters to only 31. People will not need to distinguish between “ch” and “tr”, or “r” and “gi” and “d”… At the same time, it will save time, effort and money, because the number of characters when drafting documents will be less, printing will save money on paper and ink.

Associate Professor Hien also added that the research on improving the writing system as above is only his personal opinion. The public's reaction in the past hours is understandable, because anything new always has controversy. However, he hopes to receive professional comments.

An example of improving writing in the way of Associate Professor Bui Hien.

“In the linguistics community, there are many supporters but also many opponents. Some even say this idea is crazy. They think Vietnamese is already very good and should not be improved any further,” Associate Professor Bui Hien shared.

He also added: “Actually, I do not want the press to bring my research to the public at this time because I have not prepared well, which could cause social disruption. Currently, the project is not yet complete, that is, there is only a part about consonants, I have not yet presented the vowels. Readers who only read the summaries of the work in the press will not fully understand the problem, and it is easy to have negative reactions.”

Despite many conflicting opinions, Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien said he will continue to research the issue of improving writing and will soon present his completed work to the public.