As one of the first people to read the manuscript of this book, until today, I still retain the initial impression: extremely valuable and respectful. Since I was a student at the Faculty of Literature, Hanoi University of Science until now, I have been reading the research results published regularly over time by Professor Hoang Thi Chau. Years and months have passed; when the Professor collected those results into an anthology, I saw a truly great synthesis; and looking behind the shadow of the words, indeed, I saw "works of countless numbers...".
Cover of the book. (Photo: Jackie Chan)
Although I have the honor to present to readers below a few things about this collection, I do not think that this is a book review, in the true sense of the title, but only want to tell a few stories, with the hope of contributing to help us visualize a few simple features of the Professor's scientific journey.
In 1962, after graduating from Russian Literature and returning to Vietnam, Professor Hoang Thi Chau was assigned to research and teach aboutVietnamese Dialectsat the Faculty of Literature, Hanoi University of Science (now the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi). Her typical result for this research direction is the workVietnamese in different regions of the country (Dialects)published in 1989. To be fair, in our country, since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been people who have raised the issue of discussing and researching local languages (dialects), but it was not until this work, with a very unique approach: an interdisciplinary approach to language - history - society - culture, that the greatest milestone in the study of dialects and Vietnamese dialectology was truly marked; because it "shows the appearance of Vietnamese in different regions of the country, not only in its current, static state but also reflects the dynamic, historical development processes in the complex relationship between the internal structure of Vietnamese and the social and geographical factors of the country.1”
The above viewpoints and research methods are also clearly shown in each article on dialects and idioms such as:Vietnamese Dialects and Villages, Characteristics and Interpretationsvariableof Hue dialect... of the Professor.
In 2005,Vietnamese in different regions of the country (Dialects)[not in this collection] was awarded by the National Council for Science and Technology AwardsState Prize for Science and Technology.
However, the first echo of her research was the articleAncient linguistic connections in Southeast Asia through some river namespublished in the Scientific Bulletin, Volume II, 1964-1965, of Hanoi University, just two years after she returned from the Soviet Union. She proved that the two largest rivers embracing the entire Southeast Asia region, the Truong Giang and the Mekong, both have the original name Kong, which means “river” in Vietnamese, and restored to its ancient form <khlong>. EM Murzaev, a leading professor of Toponymy in the Soviet Union, published the above article with the title:River names in Vietnam, in the 2-volume set:Oriental toponymyedited by him (1969)2.
Immediately, when Vietnamese historians focused on researchingHung King Era, She was fascinated.Find historical data in ethnic languages”, published a series of articles in the journalHistorical researchand the bookHung Vuong founded the countrylike:Van Lang State through linguistic documents,Some features of the organization of Van Lang society through linguistic documents...
After retirement, she continued to research place names but switched to applied research such as:Standardizing the writing of Vietnamese ethnic minority names in Vietnamese texts,Standardizing foreign place names on world maps(published by Vietnam) [in a major national project of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment].
For ethnic minorities, she always wondered:Why do many ethnic groups still not have a written language?Studying the reality in the North of our country, she realized that: ethnic minorities do not wait for others to come and write for them, but they do it themselves. Many ethnic groups do not have a written language such as Muong, Dao, Cao Lan, Giay... do not have a written language, but they have published poems, literature, folk songs, proverbs... in their own language, because the ethnic intellectual class relies on Vietnamese script for transcription. She proposed a very different idea: So linguists do not have to gropingly investigate and research the languages of ethnic minorities to build a written language for them, but only need to base on the Vietnamese national script, improve and supplement to build a common set of transcription for ethnic groups.
Studying more than 20 sets of letters and more than 40 phonetic systems of the languages of ethnic minorities in our country, she has collected and classified them according to each type of phonetics to discover common and unique features, and finally, built a common phonetic alphabet based on the improved and supplemented national alphabet. Scientific reportPhonetic types of languages in Vietnam and common transcription setwelcome atSoutheast Asian Linguistics Conferenceat the University of Oregon (USA, 1996). Later, the National Culture Publishing House (Hanoi) published her book.Building a phonetic alphabet for ethnic minorities in Vietnam(2001) as a supporting tool for ethnic groups to create their own writing, at least to record oral poetry and personal compositions in their ethnic language.
At the 6th Pan Asiatic Lingustics International Conference in 2004, she continued to present research results onSituation and policy of building and popularizing writing systems of ethnic minorities in Vietnam. Two professors of Oriental Studies of the Federal Republic of Germany, T. Engelsbert and HD Kubitscheck, respectfully included this article in the book.Ethnic Minorities and Politics in Southeast Asia(Ethnic Minorities and Policy in Southeast Asia) 2004.
Her research results have shown very practical, simple and reasonable things: the people who need ethnic minority scripts are first of all the intellectuals in the localities, so the first target of popularizing ethnic scripts is the older cultured people and cultural and educational officials... who are working, then teaching ethnic scripts in schools, when it has become a real need of society. Some places have done the opposite and have not brought about the expected results.
There is one more point I would like to add: while researching ethnic minority languages, she was very interested in the issue of the appearance of the tone system in the Cham language, which is currently happening right before our eyes; and we can completely directly survey it to help us better understand the process of forming the tone system of Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese... which took place a long time ago.
Dear readers.
Having written this far, I feel I should not write any longer, because as I have determined from the beginning, these words are not an introduction or commentary for the book.
The breadth and depth of the research contents; theories, methods and practicality, specifically in the research of relevant issues (from Dialectology, through Toponymy, to Historical Linguistics and Geographic Linguistics, to Ethnic Minority Languages, teaching Vietnamese as a foreign language), readers can find and recognize when holding and reading this collection of works.
__________
1Comments by Professor Hoang Van Hanh (Quoted from the article Dialectology Yesterday and Today in this collection).
2In 1993, while at Cornell University, NY. USA, while reading the bookBibliography and index of mainland Southeast Asian languages and linguistics(Yale University Press, 1986) by F. Huffman, I saw a foreign author also researching river names in Southeast Asia but the results were published about 4 or 5 years later than the work of Prof. Hoang Thi Chau. Unfortunately, because I did not pay much attention, I have now forgotten the name of that researcher, and I also do not remember exactly whether it was 4, 5 or 6 years later; and the book is not in my hand at the moment. That year, Prof. Nguyen Van Loi was also at Cornell; we exchanged this information with each other. In a few seminars and private discussions with some researchers at Cornell, we announced the above work of Prof. Hoang Thi Chau and this information was very welcome.
Author:Vu Duc Nghieu
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