Vietnamese Syllable #3: The Aging of My Mother Tongue
An observation of the evolution of the Vietnamese language through documents and records on consonant clusters and pronunciation in Middle Vietnamese.
Đọc bản tiếng Việt tại đây.
The language of Vietnamese, once adorned in the elegant áo giao lĩnh (cross-collar robe), quietly reposes in our wardrobes, as those writing days with Chữ Nôm* have slipped beyond our reach. Now, it has donned shirt and trousers walking along the aisles of light. It once followed the hum of the fields and the pull of the fishing nets with Thai, Tay, Cham, and Khmer. Now, it navigates between applications as smoothly as currents of air invisible to the human eye. Changes trailing changes, and today, we would sometimes hear a Vietnamese word that is both strange and ours.
*Chữ Nôm literally means Southern script. It’s a logo-graphic writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language.
A change of script, a change of heart?
In the previous sections, we explored the abundance of Vietnamese syllables, both meaningful and nonsensical. Words that can be pronounced but are yet to carry meaning in Vietnamese will, at some point, manifest themselves.
In everyday life, we often utter syllables that lack clear meaning, such as when we talk about spoonerism. To make them more comprehensive, we tend to associate them with syllables that have meaning and adhere to correct spelling conventions. However, there’s another phenomenon ever-present in all languages, one that may help bring these yet-meaningless syllables to light: phonological change.
Let’s examine the relationship between syllables, sound shifts, and orthography in the following example:
ɓiết → viết
ɓãi → (có thể là) vẫy
ɓá → vá
ɓĕào → vào
ɓợ → vợ
In modern Vietnamese, the letter "b" is represented as the sound [ʙ]. According to Roland Jacques, the Vietnamese “b” has two pronunciations. The first sounds like "mb," inhaled rather than exhaled. The second resembles the Greek "b," rougher than the Vietnamese "v," articulated with an open mouth, represented as ɓ and often transcribed as "v" in Vietnamese alphabet.
We extended our gaze to the time when the Việt-Mường group separated from the Mon-Khmer and when Vietnamese branched off from Việt-Mường. That’s when we can observe the process of phonological change in Vietnamese. This process unfolded during the era when Chữ Nôm was still in use. To make comparisons with other languages within the same family (Muong, Bana, Chut, Arem, etc.), linguists have reconstructed the ancient pronunciation of Vietnamese.
On those reconstructed pronunciations, researcher Trần Trí Dõi demonstrated that Vietnamese has a marked tendency toward monosyllabism over its periods of development. However, when dictionaries first emerged in Vietnam, around the mid-17th century, we still had clusters such as tl, bl, and ml (for example, tiêu ngươi “to tease,” blan blở “to worry,” mlầm “to err”). The Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum (Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary) also documented these consonants and provided corresponding monosyllabic forms.
“Everyday, in every possible way.”
Today’s orthography is the result of thousands of years of Vietnamese formation and evolution. Throughout this process, phonological changes have continuously occurred alongside the interplay and influences of various languages, cultures, and geographical regions. Orthography, in this sense, serves as a communal home for the multitude of different syllables across Vietnam. Since the 16th century, we’ve seen spelling evolve in parallel with sound shifts. But what about today?
Every day, I learn a little more about how modern Vietnamese words have been pronounced; I learn that many of the words I frequently use have roots or influences from other languages (such as "trăng" in Vietnamese and "tlăng" in Cham). And I learn that we’ll likely still call Hanoi "Hà Nội" and not "Henei." Things change, but some words stick around. Yet to this day, I still write “tạm biệt” on Google Docs and “toạm buỵt” if you catch me on Whatsapp, “biết gì hong?” when casually chatting, and “bik gì khum” when I’m on the verge of stirring the pot up. I don’t know how Vietnamese will sound in the future, nor what word will stay. Which syllables will endure, which will echo faintly, and which will rise from the very heart of the language?
And it is precisely this ever-changing immanence that has helped me realize: the richness of Vietnamese syllables isn’t a theory that needs proving; its richness is a living, breathing life. And we ought to simply observe that life. And observe forevermore.
Thank you note
This marks the conclusion of The Vietnamese Syllable Trilogy by CodeSurfing. Over the past four months, the series has laid the groundwork for a fellowship program, supporting local artists in their creative inquiry into “Vietnamese Language.” The project trio — Yui Nguyễn, Nhân Phan, and Ngọc Võ — would like to express heartfelt gratitude to our wonderful readers.
Vietnamese Syllable is the initial research trilogy that fueled the “Our Vietnamese Project,” hosted by CodeSurfing.
Other parts of Vietnamese Syllable:
For full content about “Our Vietnamese Project” by CodeSurfing, please visit here.
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