and religious purposes. Vietnamese calligraphy (Thư pháp chữ Việt) has enjoyed tremendous success at the expense of Chữ Hán calligraphy since its introduction in the 1950's. Since the mid-1990s however, there has been a resurgence in the teaching of Chinese characters, both for Chữ Hán and the additional characters used in Chữ Nôm. This is to enable the study of Vietnam's long history as well as cultural synthesis and unification. For linguists, the Sino-Vietnamese readings of Chinese characters provide data for the study of historical Chinese phonology and reconstruction of the Old Chinese language. Additionally, many Vietnamese may study Han characters to learn other languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and sometimes Korean. This can make it easier to study these languages due to the high concentration of Chinese-cognate words. Hence, they also end up with some measure of fluency with Hán-Nôm characters. The significance of the characters has occasionally entered western depiction of Vietnam, especially since French rule. For instance, novelist E. M. Nathanson mentions chu Hán in A Dirty Distant War (1987). Mixed script It is known that Ho Chi Minh wrote in a mixed Vietnamese Latin–Hán-Nôm script. From the Sino-Vietnamese readings, some words have ended up in common vernacular Vietnamese. For example, "nhất" (一) has come to mean "first" and "tứ" (四) has come to mean fourth in vernacular Vietnamese. Modern Vietnamese can be thought of as a romanised or transliteration rendering of common Hán-Nôm words, that has since been used as the main medium of language in Vietnam. See also Related romanisations: Portuguese Alphabet (Vietnamese alphabet was largely based on the conventions of the Romance languages) References Works cited External links Hán tự: A Vietnamese-Chinese wordlist (via Wayback Machine) Từ điển Hán Việt Thiều Chửu () (via Wayback Machine) Hán Việt Từ Điển Trích Dẫn, Vietnamese Han character dictionary Thiều Chửu dictionary :vi:Chữ viết tiếng Việt (contains additional info that has yet to be translated into the English wiki) https://www.britannica.com/art/Vietnamese-literature Chinese characters Writing systems Vietnamese writing systems Logographic writing systems History of Vietnam