THE NÔM TALE OF KIỀU, THE VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE, AND QUỐC NGỮ SCRIPT: LANGUAGE AND WRITING ISSUES IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES THROUGH RESPONSES TO THE TALE OF KIỀU IN SOUTHERN VIETNAM

Abstract

The issue of Quốc Ngữ script and the Vietnamese language was raised in Southern Vietnam as early as the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Quốc Ngữ journalism and literature in the South demonstrated the convenience and necessity of replacing the traditional Chinese and Nôm scripts. At the same time, an equally urgent and important task was to prove that the Vietnamese language was sufficiently rich to support the development of literature written in Quốc Ngữ. Among the various lines of argument pursued, Southern intellectuals turned to the language of The Tale of Kiều. Although several important studies on the history of the Quốc Ngữ have discussed the contributions of Trương Vĩnh Ký and Huỳnh Tịnh Của, none has examined how these two scholars drew upon the language of The Tale of Kiều to promote Quốc Ngữ. This article is the first to investigate this issue systematically. It focuses on three major activities: Trương Vĩnh Ký's transliteration of The Tale of Kiều from the Nôm script into Quốc Ngữ in 1875 and his use of this first Quốc Ngữ edition as a textbook at the Interpreter School; Huỳnh Tịnh Của's extensive use of linguistic materials from The Tale of Kiều in compiling Đại Nam quấc âm tự vị, the first comprehensive Vietnamese dictionary written in Quốc Ngữ; and the explanation and annotation of the vocabulary of The Tale of Kiều in the Southern Vietnamese press.