The ABC alphabet and the Vietnamese language

Abstract

The Quốc-ngữ – the latin alphabet – is a writing system created by the European catholic missionaries since the seventeenth century to diffuse the catholicism in Vietnam, both in the Tonkine (in the North) and in the Cochinchina (in the South). It was natural for the missionaries to use the Latin to transcribe the Vietnamese language as their writing was the Latin itself. To a certain extent, it was acceptable for this Latin script to transcribe the minimal segments in European languages, but it was not compatible to do the same thing with the minimal segments in Vietnamese. That was why the changes/modifications were carried out from the birth of the Quốc-ngữ in order to make it compatible with the Vietnamese. It was Alexandre de Rhodes who had tried to finalize the Quốc ngữ since it began to be romanized. However, as we know, due to the lack of epistemological foundation, the efforts to rationalize the Quốc ngữ has not been successfully completed so far, except for some obvious irregular deviations in the writing of this kind.