XIN TANG (New China) - Pinyin.info

17 KIN TANG: NEW CHINAwith antecedents in the 8th century that was wellestablished by the t 3th, was used for phonetic writing ofVietnamese, mainly poetry.3. Monarchical independence and Catholic separatism(1651-1861). Three writing systems: Classical Chinese,Nom, and Quoc Ngu. The last was a system of romanizedVietnamese developed by Catholic missionaries and usedexclusively by them.1. French colonialism (1861-1915). Four writingsystems: Classical Chinese, Nom, Quoc Ngu, and French.Initially Quoc Ngu was used only by the colonialists andtheir collaborators, and by them only to a very limitedextent; later it was also taken up by anticolonialists.French was not only spoken by the colonialists but was alsogiven pride of place in administration and education. Somecolonialists were determined that it should eventuallyreplace Vietnamese even as the spoken language of thepopulation as a whole in order to achieve the goal of a-France asiatique. D5. National independence (1 915-presenU One writingsystem: Quoc Ngu.In the second half of the 19th century the existence offour competing systems of writing presented anticolonialistVietnamese with the problem of which systemto espouse as part of their struggle for independence.Initially they were hostile to Quoc Ngu and used only Nomand Classical Chinese in their anti-colonialist writings.Greatly impressed by Japan's victory over Russia. andnoting also its possession of a writing system thatincluded the simple kDmI syllabaries, in 1907 anticolonialistleaders such as the monarchist Phan Boi Chaudid an about-face and, swallowing their distaste for ascript identified with their alien overlords. made themomentous decision to embrace the use of Quoc Ngu. (Theyouthful Ho Chi-min taught it shortly afterward to workersin a fish-sauce factory school.) Alarmed at this deve-