Thursday, August 19, 2010

Viet Nam

Viet Nam and not Vietnam
Living in a community like here is a chance to experience how people think of their country.
Culture
Literature
Music

Why would I even study? Why would I read the articles, books? I'm not even sure if I would be capable of working in the field. It's the belief that, one day, I will come back to build the country that drives me on.

Doing things for a purpose. Why would I strive forward? It's for a purpose. I would just accept what I have.

Ngo Bao Chau 17 years holding the citizenship of Vietnamese

Etymologists and anthropologists have defined the origins of the Viet people by separating the components of the calligraphy for Viet, or Yue, as it is known in Mandarin. On the left side of this ideogram is a character pronounced tau in Vietnamese, meaning to run. On the right is the complementary component pronounced Viet, with the meaning and profile of an axe. This component carries with it the particle qua, which signifies a lance or javelin.
This small ideographic analysis depicts the Viet as a race known since antiquity as a migratory, hunting people, perpetually moving and spreading beyond their frontiers of origin, carrying bow and arrow, axe and javelin.
The word Viet is the Vietnamese pronunciation of a Chinese character meaning beyond or far. It also has the sense of "to cross", "to go through", "to set onself right". The character Nam, meaning South, probably served to differentiate between the Viets in the North who remained in China and those who had left and headed South.
This is so deeply rooted in the Vietnamese consciousness that most people believe Vietnamese to be a monosyllabic language, which, in fact, it is not. The perception that Vietnamese consists of syllables rather than words doesn't sit as well with speakers of European languages, who have a more clearly developed concept of the word.

Please think about that! Please! Join us in this effort NOW by start writing Vietnamese in combined formation of syllables of a word for each concept. In practice, when you are in doubt, think of an equivalent word in English or in another common foreign language. For example, for 'although' we have 'macdu', for 'blackboard' > 'bangden', 'faraway' > 'xaxoi', and so on.


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