quốc () is commonly mistakenly rendered as Hợp chủng quốc, with chúng ( - many) replaced by chủng ( - ethnicity, race). Another example is tiệt diện ("cross-section") being replaced by tiết diện. One interesting example is the current motto of Vietnam "Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam / Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc", all the words are Sino-Vietnamese. Writing Sino-Vietnamese words with the Vietnamese alphabet causes some confusion about the origins of some terms, due to the large number of homophones in Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese. For example, both (bright) and (dark) are read as minh, thus the word "minh" has two contradictory meanings: bright and dark (although the "dark" meaning is now esoteric and is used in only a few compound words). Perhaps for this reason, the Vietnamese name for Pluto is not Minh Vương Tinh ( – lit. "underworld king star") as in other East Asian languages, but is Diêm Vương Tinh () and sao Diêm Vương, named after the Hindu and Buddhist deity Yama. During the Hồ Dynasty, Vietnam was officially known as Đại Ngu ( "Great Peace"). However, most modern Vietnamese know ngu () as "stupid"; consequently, some misinterpret it as "Big Idiot". Conversely, the Han River in South Korea is often erroneously translated as sông Hàn () when it should be sông Hán () due to the name's similarity with the country name. However, the homograph/homophone problem is not as serious as it appears, because although many Sino-Vietnamese words have multiple meanings when written with the Vietnamese alphabet, usually only one has widespread usage, while the others are relegated to obscurity. Furthermore, Sino-Vietnamese words are usually not used alone, but in compound words, thus the meaning of the compound word is preserved even if individually each has multiple meanings. Today Sino-Vietnamese texts are learnt and used mostly only by Buddhist monks since important texts such as the scriptures to pacify spirits (recited during the ritual for the Seventh Lunar month - Trai Đàn Chẩn Tế) are still recited in Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations. Such as the chant, Nam mô A Di Đà Phật coming from 南無阿彌陀佛. See also Chữ Nôm (historical writing system modelled on Chinese characters) History of writing in Vietnam Stratum (linguistics) References Citations Sources Further reading Chiang Chia-lu (江佳璐). (2014). 析論越南漢字音魚虞分韻的歷史層次 [Discussion on the Phonological Strata of Sino-Vietnamese as Reflected in the Distinction between Rhymes Yu (魚) and Yu