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Vietnamese written in Chinese characters.
Also known as: Nom script, Southern characters
The Vietnamese script built from Chinese characters and Vietnamese inventions, used before the Latin alphabet displaced it.
Wrote the Vietnamese language using Chinese characters and characters invented for Vietnamese.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Displaced within a generation by the Latin-based alphabet, so Vietnam is the clearest case anywhere of a country changing script wholesale and losing direct access to its own earlier literature.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Required a reader to know Chinese first, which is the practical reason it never spread beyond a scholarly class and the reason the replacement took hold so quickly.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Square block characters built from the same brush strokes as Chinese writing, each filling one notional cell, many of them pairing a component chosen for meaning on one side with a component chosen for sound on the other.