XIN TANG (New China) - Pinyin.info

19 XIN TANG: NEW CHINAlopment, the French undertook a crash program in whichthey sought to promote the alphabetic script whileassuring that the ideological content of Quoc Ngupublications would be monopolized by pro-French hirelings.This maneuver backfired. Anti-colonialist ideas expressedin an increasingly vernacular style of writing in Quoc Nguwon out and contributed mightily to the struggle fornational independence.It appears that the legacy of extensive illiteracyinherited from the French colonial period has now beenliquidated despite the difficult conditions that haveprevailed since 1951. The cultural heritage has beenpreserved in a different form and made available to awider audience, as indicated by the fact that the Quoc Nguversion of the national masterpiece, the 18th centurypoetic epic Tale of Kieu, now enjoys a far greaterreadership than the Nom original could ever have had.Careful language planning has adapted Quoc Ngu to modernneeds in previously neglected areas such as the sciences.An intense patriotism, manifested in a fierce struggle fornational independence and revolutionary change, hasproved to be not incompatible with the use of an originallyalien system of writing.The Vietnamese success in seizing opportunities forcarrying out sociolinguistic changes of broad significancestands in contrast to the failure of intellectuals in otherSinitic countries to transcend their narrow cultural outlookand make use of the opportunities available to them forsimilar changes in their own systems of writing.There were two lost opportunities for China. The firstoccurred in the teens of this century. At that time theincipient movement for alphabetic writing, represented inpart by V.R. Chao's closely reasoned advocacy, was sidetrackedby Hu Shi's contention that an intermediate stageof baihua written in characters had to be undertaken firstto pave the way for the transition. Instead of making a