Word Formation Of Chinese Characters And Nom Scripts: Comparison And Contrast

A thousand years of ancient Chinese rule over Vietnam resulted in Chinese significant influence on Vietnamese religion, ideology, literature, language, and orthography - particularly orthographic language. In feudal times, the Vietnamese government utilized Chinese writing system in education, administration, foreign affairs and creative works. Therefore, Vietnamese vocabulary is profoundly influenced by Chinese one. Statistics by Vietnamese linguists indicate that more than 70 percent of the Vietnamese vocabulary is borrowed from Chinese language. It is possible to state that the Nom Script, a Vietnamese writing system, accounts for the largest amount of borrowed vocabulary because the script's word formation (component and mechanism) originates from Chinese words.Such components of Nom Script as strokes and roots are exactly those that make up Chinese characters. Those who are ignorant of Chinese language may assume that Nom Script and Chinese character are identical.The mechanism for Nom Script's formation also applies the"six methods"of Chinese word formation.Despite being significantly influenced by Chinese characters, Nom Script is apparently a distinctive Vietnamese orthography. In addition to the external similarities between Nom Script and Chinese character, there are notable structural differences between these two scripts. On that basis, this thesis attempts to make schematic research on the similarities and differences in word formation methodology between Nom Script and Chinese character.The thesis consists of a prologue and five chapters as follows:Prologue: Significance of the study– Literature Review– Research MethodChapter 1: Brief introduction to word formation of Chinese character and Nom script. This chapter presents six Chinese formation methods (namely pictography, indicative, ideative, harmonic, descriptive, and homophone) and three Nom ones (namely ideative, harmonic and homophone).Chapter 2: Comparison between Chinese figure-idea relation and Nom figure-idea relation by means of three formation methods (ideative, harmonic and homophone).Chapter 3: Comparison between Chinese tone-sound relation and Nom tone-sound relation by means of two formation methods (harmonic and homophone).Chapter 4: Comparison and Contrast table of 200 synonymic words in Chinese and Nom Script. This table also lists the percentage of six formation methods that help form those 200 words.Chapter 5: Conclusion.