# What happened to the Vietnamese written language?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-vietnamese-written-language/736682>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 5, 2015, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-vietnamese-written-language/736682 "2015-11-05T05:44:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2015, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-vietnamese-written-language/736682/21 "2015-11-07T05:16:11Z")

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> [@Pleonast](#):
>
> Speaking of ironic, North Korea stopped using all Chinese characters and switched to entirely to the native alphabet. While South Korea uses a mix of Korean and Chinese.

This was definitely the case in South Korea during the late 1970s. Not long after that, though, South Korea essentially switched to writing in 한글 (Hangul) only, with an occasional Chinese character (known as 한자 Hanja) when absolutely necessary in printed publications. Students are still required to learn a standard set 1,800 characters through middle and high school. In daily life, though, you rarely encounter people using Hanja for anything other than their name on official documents (name in Hanja for official documents, name in Hangul for everything else). For North Korean students, they must know 3,000 Hanja before attending university.

[Here](http://chosun.com/) is an example of a major Korean newspaper’s site. There is no Chinese character other than to select the site’s Chinese language edition. When I first lived in Korea in the late 1970s, the newspaper was mostly in Hanja with Hangul used, as in Japanese, for particles and native words not derived from Chinese. [Here](http://webnews.asahi.co.jp/) is a major Japanese news organization’s site showing how Japanese is written today.

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**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2015, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-vietnamese-written-language/736682/22 "2015-11-07T05:44:25Z")

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> [@Giles](#):
>
> The name is usually written in English as [Izumi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izumi) – it’s not uncommon, and means spring (i.e., a source of water, and not the season).
> 
> He wrote “zu” as “du” because Japanese syllables are in groups of five, with the same initial consonant. The first is a, i, u, e and o; the second is ka, ki, ku, ke and ko; and so on. However, with some consonants the sound varies according to the following vowel, so the d group is da, ji, zu, de and do. One system of romanisation (the most common) writes the syllables the way they are spoken, but another keeps the consonant the same (da, di, du, de and do) – but that di is pronounced ji [d͡ʑi in the IPA] and the du as zu.

泉 is not an overly uncommon character. So, kinda weird the father would call this out.

Actually, the reasons I jump in is because  
a) 泉 is part of my Chinese name and  
b) I just want to ask “where is [Wade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade%E2%80%93Giles)?” 😃

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