Can't write off Vietnamese people's role in devising their script

The fact that all credit for creating Quoc Ngu, the Vietnamese writing system based on the Roman alphabet, goes to two missionaries, French Alexandre de Rhodes and Portuguese Francisco de Pina, does not do justice to the Vietnamese people who helped them significantly in the task, experts said at a two-day conference held in Da Nang last weekend.

Roland Jacques, a professor at Canada's Saint Paul University, argues that the exclusion of locals' contribution to devising the Quoc Ngu writing system was a "shortcoming." Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Dong.

Father Roland Jacques, a professor at Canada's Saint Paul University, said the exclusion of locals' contribution to devising the Quoc Ngu system, officially used in schools and in the administration of Vietnam since 1919, was a "shortcoming."

This probably resulted from a mindset of ignoring and not appreciating indigenous people, he added.

Jacques said he had found many documents and books written by Vietnamese people in Quoc Ngu and sent from Vietnam to Rome at a time when Pina and Rhodes were preaching in Vietnam. This was proof that the Vietnamese people had worked alongside the priests and made significant contributions to devising the Vietnamese writing system, he added.

The rule of multiple Chinese dynasties had shaped Vietnamese culture and literature from 207 BC to 939 AD. As a result, the official Vietnamese language was written in classical Chinese (Nho), followed by the development of native Vietnamese script (Nom), before the adoption of Quoc Ngu.

Chau Yen Loan, a researcher with the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies under the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, said Pina arrived in Vietnam in 1617 and had to study Vietnamese as quickly as he could so as to fulfill his assignment to promote Christianity.

To do this, he learnt the local language from people from all walks of life and a year later, he and a Vietnamese young man translated The Lord's Prayer and several other basic prayers of Christianity into Quoc Ngu, marking the very first step in the process of writing down spoken Vietnamese in the Roman alphabet, Loan said.

She also said that in order to begin writing down the very first spoken language of the Vietnamese people, Pina had received lots of help from the locals.

Pina then went on to open a class in Quang Nam Province, teaching Vietnamese to other foreign preachers, one of whom was Alexandre de Rhodes.

Later, Rhodes also took the help of locals in learning to speak Vietnamese more fluently, she said.

Researcher Nguyen Hong Hanh with the HCMC University of Social Sciences and Humanities, said Rhodes's main teacher was a 13-year-old boy.

The boy had followed Rhodes every day as an assistant and taught the missionary to pronounce Vietnamese, and Rhodes was not the only one who benefited thus, because learning from locals was the the most effective way to become fluent. For the foreigners, there were many teachers, from a vendor in the market to the children in the neighborhood, or the students they taught, she said.

Hanh emphasized that without help from the Vietnamese people, the process of creating the Quoc Ngu writing system would have been impossible, so it was necessary to recognize this contribution.

Portrait statues of Francisco de Pina and Alexandre de Rhodes, claimed as the creators of the Vietnamese writing system Quoc Ngu, made by Vietnamese sculptor Pham Van Hang. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Dong.

A colonial enterprise

Some experts at the conference decried the linking of Quoc Ngu with the colonial enterprise.

In October, Da Nang’s Department of Culture and Sports proposed renaming the city’s streets after Alexandre de Rhodes (1593 - 1660) and Francisco De Pina (1585 - 1625).

However, as the department was collecting public comments on the proposal, some retired officials opposed the move, saying the missionaries’ role in creating Quoc Ngu was rooted in the colonial enterprise.

For now, the department has put the proposal on hold.

It was pointed out at the conference that the two priests had created the Quoc Ngu in the 17th century, while the French colonization of Vietnam started in 1858 and ended in 1954 following the historic Dien Bien Phu battle.

Nguyen Dang Hung, a professor at the University of Liège, said: "It’s unacceptable to say that the missionaries who came here and created the Quoc Ngu two centuries ago worked for the French. That is misperception and slander.

"We don’t have to deify those missionaries, but they were in fact profound linguists who ... helped us create our writing system and for that, we should be grateful," Hung said.

These experts said they hope Da Nang could go back to the plan to name its streets after the two Portuguese priests and that other cities and provinces would follow suit in the future.