The Changes Of Vietnamese Letter Symbol And The Developing Of National Consciousness

To a great extent, the evolution and substitution of letter symbol reflects the historical progress of Vietnamese nation.From the first Emperor of Qin to the invasion of France, as a county and dependency of China, Vietnam was influenced deeply by the Han culture, Chinese characters was its formal character, and has recorded its feudal society culture in more than two thousand years. In the 19th century, with increasing gradually in national consciousness, Vietnamese created Chu Nom based on Chinese characters, but Chu Nom has not be developed greatly and popularized because being limited by Chinese characters.From 16th century, Vietnam came into the unrest late dynasty, western missionaries reached Vietnam with the merchant ship. In order to preaching, the western missionaries created the Vietnamese Latin Pinyin characters by the helping of Vietnamese believers, and that evolved into the subsequent modern Vietnamese characters. French missionaries preached in Vietnam led to the full-scale invasion to Vietnam of France. After occupied Vietnam, to disseminate French civilization and assimilate colonists, French colonizers popularized the Vietnamese Latin Pinyin characters by force. That constructed the growing space to Vietnamese Latin Pinyin characters unconsciously. Struggling with French colonial rule toward national independence, Vietnamese progressives and communists fully recognized the simple and easy of Vietnamese Latin Pinyin character, they published newspapers, create literary outputs, open study class to popularize the Vietnamese Latin Pinyin characters, also to improve the national quality and spread revolutionary ideas. The Vietnamese Latin Pinyin characters helped to strengthen national consciousness and became a sharply weapon in the Vietnamese national independence war. After victory, the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam was established, the Vietnamese Latin Pinyin characters became Vietnamese formal characters naturally.