2020-3

【摘要】

Although geographically situated in Southeast Asia, Vietnam should be considered an East Asian civilization, when considering issues of culture, religion, and script. Regarding its script tradition, Vietnam is unquestionably a member of what has been called the Sinographosphere or Sinographic Cosmopolis. In particular, in addition to the Indian script and the Roman alphabet, which each contains within itself diverse subdivisions, there have existed within Vietnamese history those scripts derived from the Sinographic tradition, which we may consider “Vietnamese Sinography.” These consist of Sinographs (Sinograms), and four varieties of vernacular scripts including Việt Nôm (the Sinographic script used to represent the Vietnamese language), Tày Nôm, Dao Nôm, and Ngạn Nôm (vernacular Sinographic scripts used to represent the three ethnic minority languages of Tày, Dao, and Ngạn respectively). Similar to Sinographs, these four kinds of Nôm scripts are semantic-phonemic in nature, and they are all categorized as “square scripts” or “square-block scripts” (chữvuông, 方块文字). Therefore, the research of square scripts in Vietnam can be called “Sino-Nôm studies” (nghiên cứuHán Nôm, 汉喃研究), despite the fact that “Sino-Nôm studies” includes a wider breadth beyond the research of scripts.

Whereas the field of Sinographic studies in China, Japan, and Korea has reached high levels of development, thefield of Vietnamese Sinography, with only a mere dozen book-length publications, remains lesser known—particularly in English- and Chines-language-based academic circles (see Appendix). In order to promote the field of Vietnamese Sinography to Anglophone researchers, the Journal of Chinese Writing Systems has organized this special issue ofeight articles, with contributions by scholars from Vietnam including Trịnh Khắc Mạnh, Đào Phương Chi, Đỗ Thị Bích Tuyển, and Nguyễn Tuấn Cường (Institute of Sino-Nom Studies), Phạm Văn Khoái and Bùi Anh Chưởng (University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi), as well as several renowned international scholars including David Holm (National Chengchi University, Taiwan), Shimizu Masaaki (Osaka University, Japan), and John Phan (Columbia University, USA). These scholars discuss a number of Sinographic topics in Vietnam, including the relationship between Sinogaphic scripts and politics, the basic units of the Nôm script and their relationship with those in the Chinese script, the role of Nôm script in historical research of Vietnamese language and writing, comparative study of Tày Nôm and Zhuang Vernacular Scripts, and last but not least, Chinese character variants (chữ Hán dị thể, 汉字异体字) in Vietnamese classical texts.

As the guest editor of this special issue, I would like to thank all of the above-mentioned authors for their contributions to this special issue on Vietnamese Sinography—the first of its kind published in an Anglophone academic journal. Wehope this issue will help attract attention from Anglophone scholars to promote the field of Vietnamese Sinography. This issue is also organized to commemorate the 50th anniversary (1970–2020) of the establishment of the Institute of Sino-Nôm Studies (at the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Vietnam)—a key site for the study of Vietnamese Sinography and classical texts.

尽管越南地处东南亚，但如果考虑文化、宗教、文字，越南也应归属于东亚文明。就其文字传统而言，越南无疑是“汉字文化圈”中的一员。如果细分的话，越南历史上除了使用印度文字和罗马字母之外，还存在着使用汉字的传统，我们可以称之为“越南汉喃文字”。“越南汉喃文字”主要包括越南的汉字及从汉字派生出来的四种本土文字都叫“喃字”，即记录越南语的越族（或京族）喃字、分别记录岱族、瑶族、岸族三个少数民族语言的岱族喃字、瑶族喃字、和岸族喃字。与汉字的性质相似的是，这四种喃字都属于意音文字，也叫“方块文字”。尽管“汉喃”研究范畴远超文字的范围，越南的方块文字研究仍称之为“汉喃”研究。

     虽然中国、日本和韩国的汉字学研究已经达到了很高的发展水平，但越南汉字学或“越南汉喃文字研究”领域在英语和汉语学术界仍然鲜为人知，只有十几本专著性的出版物。为了向英语学术界推广越南汉喃文字研究，本刊邀约了越南学者郑孟克、陶芳芝、杜氏碧选、阮俊强（汉喃研究院），范文快、裴英掌（越南河内国家大学所属社会与人文科学大学），以及学界知名学者贺大卫（David Holm，台湾政治大学），清水政明（Shimizu Masaaki，日本大阪大学）及潘阳（John Phan，美国哥伦比亚大学）等八位作者，讨论了越南文字与政治的关系、喃字的基本文字单位和汉字的关系、喃字在越南语言文字历史研究中的地位、岱族喃字和壮文的比较研究以及越南文献中的汉字异体字研究等问题。

     作为特约编辑，我非常感谢上述提到的作者对本期“越南汉喃文字”专刊的贡献。我们希望这本专刊能引起英语学术界的注意，以促进越南汉喃文字研究领域的发展。同时这本专刊也是为了纪念越南汉喃文字及古典文献研究的重镇——汉喃研究院成立五十周年(1970–2020)。

Guest Editor

Nguyễn Tuấn Cường 阮俊強

Director of the Institute of Sino-Nôm Studies, Vietnam cuonghannom@gmail.com, cuongnt@vnu.edu.vn

（张春凤翻译、阮俊强校订）