Toward the standardization of the spelling of place names in Son La province
Abstract
Due to lack of national standards, the same Vietnamese place name could be written differently in administrative, scientific, journalistic texts as well as pronounced differently in broadcasting, television and stage. Taking part in the the project Building the system of Vietnamese and international place names system used for the mapmaking in Son La province, we compare various writtings of place names (defined in co -ordinates) collected in four documents: Topographic map (Vb 1), Land use’s present condition map (Vb 2), List of villages and humlets (Vb 3) and Dossiers of border lines (Vb 4) and the results clearly show that the variations in writting have roots in two languages: Vietnamese and Thai. This has been confirmed by evidences from the field research on the writing of all the place names in province.