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Comment by bugbuddy | Hacker News Reader

Wikipedia and all linguistic resources that I have come across categorize Vietnamese as an Austroasiatic language (which includes Khmer) and not “Sinosphere language” (whatever that means). You are confusing writing system with language. I would argue that adopting the Latin alphabets was a great mistake. It basically severe all the young generations from all their historical writings. Also, Latinized Vietnamese scripts is one the most hideous scripts out there.

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> I would argue that adopting the Latin alphabets was a great mistake. It basically severe all the young generations from all their historical writings. Also, Latinized Vietnamese scripts is one the most hideous scripts out there.

No thanks. Most historical texts have been transliterated into modern chữ quốc ngữ without much compromise in meaning and literary eloquence. The writing facilitates learning Latin languages so much, and most importantly it has perfect phonemic orthography: there exists a bijection between well-formed words and speech, i.e., spelling bee is not a thing in Vietnamese.

I don't think it's a bijection for anyone's speech, it's more of a compromise between different varieties with incompatible phoneme inventories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_phonology#Hanoi_ini...

Yes, I have to agree. I was so surprised by that bijection claim. It is so outlandish. I mean if you restrict and force everyone to only use the exact phonemes the scripts allow, then of course you will be able to make that claim but it is not possible.

The ‘Sinosphere’ is the cultural and linguistic area which has been influenced by China. This area includes the Vietnamese language, which has undergone heavy Chinese influence. At the same time, Vietnamese is an Austroasiatic language by descent, related to other Austroasiatic languages like Khmer (as you note), Mon and Santhali. Most other Austronesian languages are not part of the Sinosphere, but Vietnamese is.

As a speaker (or at least writer) of English which uses the Latin alphabet and that has extensive borrowings from Latin and French, how connected do you consider yourself to the Canterbury Tales, to Beowulf, and to Cicero?

Nada

Yes, I'm talking about the writing systems here, the article is about typography after all.

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