NÔM CHARACTERS TRANSCRIBING SOUTHERN LANGUAGE IN RELATION TO OTHER REGIONAL PHONIC SYSTEMS – THE CASE OF NÔM TEXT “KIM CỔ KỲ QUAN” OF NGUYỄN VĂN THỚI

Abstract

Chữ Nôm (Nôm characters) is a writing system for transcribing Vietnamese, had been used popularly in Vietnam from the 13^th century to the beginning of the 20^th century; however, it had never been standardized by the government. So, during the time of its development, chữ Nôm left many different ways of writing. Chữ Nôm script was used to record Vietnamese, often had local color in reflecting regional phonetic characteristics. Chữ Nôm in the South of Vietnam was considered very typical for this feature. This paper would introduce a new interpretation in some aspects of the script reflecting the local phonetic states, based on the survey of Nôm characters in Kim cổ kỳ quan of Nguyễn Văn Thới.