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By Lam Nguyen Tai

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I. INTRODUCTION

(1999)

For over two thousand years, the Chinese (known as ethnic minority group

Huaren ) have been a significant presence in Vietnam. Arriving perhaps

as early as the third century B.C., they made their way to Vietnam from the
southern Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, as well as from Hong
Kong (now known as ASR ) and Macao. Historically at that time, Vietnam was
controlled by the imperial Chinese military and naval powers. The Chinese have
always been the largest Chinese ethnic group in Vietnam, settling primarily in
the south around Ho Chi Minh City. They speak Cantonese, the language of
commerce among all Chinese in Vietnam and believed to be the oldest
established form of the Chinese language.
The Chinese population in Vietnam grew over the centuries and peak at
2.3 million now. The Chinese gather mostly in the south, reside in urban areas
where they engage in trade and commerce. Vietnamese of Chinese ancestry
have been active in rice trading, milling, real estate, and banking in the south
and shopkeeping, stevedoring, construction, cooking, gold- and silver-smithing,
laundry, painting, and in service industries in the south and mining in the
north..While retaining cultural ties with their own people, they live among the
Vietnamese and participate in many of the same businesses and recreational
activities. For some time, the Chinese controlled most of the food, textile,
chemical, and electrical industries, and virtually all of the trade industry.
Cholon can be considered as Ho Chi Minh Citys (formerly named Saigon)China
Town. The name given to the area where Chinese traders established a base in
the early 19th century to barter rice and produce from the Mekong Delta for tea,
textiles and manufactured goods.
The city is settled mainly by Chinese migrating mostly from some
provinces and areas in southern China. Consequently, the languages (dialects)
spoken among the community has been very diverse and plentiful. The Chinese
language(s) (Mandarin and several dialects) used in Vietnam has been regarded
as important roles in the Vietnam historical and cultural and social development.
For they were historically used as official language in imperial Vietnam for quite
a long time. Moreover, Confucian dynamism, which refers to the teachings of
Confucius, practically a long-term versus a short-term orientation in life has
been the compass of the Chinese life and action.

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II. CANTONESE & MANDARIN -LINGUA FRANCAS OF CHINESE IN CHOLON

In modern times, the Chinese language as a whole is often referred to as
Zhongwen which technically refers to written language, whereas Huayu

or Putonghua (Mandarin) refers to the spoken language. (94% of the

people living in the Peoples Republic of China are said to speak Han languages

divided into eight major dialects, also called language groups, that for the
most part are mutually unintelligible. The Chinese of Vietnam are originated
from Canton (Guangdong), Hokkien (Fujian), Hainan, Hokka and Teochiu
(Chaozhou) areas speaking divergent so-called local languages.
Chinese of Vietnam have regularly used their language groups as their
most significant identifying features. Speaking the same group language have
been referred to as the same group and they created each association called
Bang (group). For some time, this distinction has been caused to irrelevant
linguistic conflicts. Most groups believe that their language is the best medium
for preserving and expressing main Chinese traditional culture. These linguistic
conflicts and disagreements have often been seen in rituals of wedding,
parents longevity-celebrating and funerals etc.
For example, in wedding, one group prefers to deposit money to the
brides family by using some numbers 4 / shi /, e.g. 4,444,000 VND or so.
Dialectally pronounced shei-shei or si-si homonym with shishi
meaning generation to generation, ever. But other group would prefer to use
many numbers 9 /jiu/ (e.g. 999,999 VND), homonymous to /jiu/ meaning
long , long-lasting etc.
In such cases, many attempts have been made to avoid linguistic conflicts within
the community. For the population of Cantonese, however, overnumbers the others and its
group language is mostly spoken among the community in Cholon (China town), like in
Hongkong, Cantonese has been often used by common agreement especially in
commerce and daily contact for various activities.
But at the present, Putonghua or Huayu is the language of education in all
Chinese schools (before 1975) or The Chinese Language Centers, it is now
considered as one of the prominent language learning places after English. Now
Putonghua is gradually more and more important. It is the official language used
in the government. The term Mandarin comes from mandarin speech , and
refers to its role as the lingua franca of officials during the Ming and Qing
Dunasty based in Beijing. After the collapse of Qing monarchy in 1911, the
adoption of this national language became a concern. Nowadays, more and
more Chinese not only in Vietnam but also throughout the China mainland
especially in Hongkong and Macao, Putonghua has become the most important
communicative Chinese language.
I will show the differences of some Chinese group language phonetics:
For example : Have you had meal yet ?
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Mandarin :
Cantonese:
Hokkien/ Chaozhou:
Hokka :

Ni chifan hao le ma ? () ?
Nei xitfan hu mei ?
Li jiabui?jiabeng ho boi ?
Nhi xiit-fang um chen ? Etc.

The result of this lingua francas has solved many problems of

unintelligibility between Chinese from different areas in China in the Chinese
community everywhere in Vietnam. That is also the main Chinese language
taught at universities in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and recognized as one of the
prominent foreign languages in Vietnam.
III. SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT IN THE CHINESE LANGUAGE :
Chinese integrate both meaning and pronunciation information in its
characters. Due to the central role of calligraphy in Chinese art and the vitality
of Chinese civilization, Chinese characters have held a similarly preeminent
position in the world's art.
Chinese characters are often thought of as overly complex, in fact they
are all derived from a couple hundred simple pictographs and ideographs in ways
that are usually quite logical and easy to remember. These wen (or zigen

) are the true radicals of Chinese. as identified by Xu Shen in his classic

Shuowen Jiezi nearly 2000 years ago. Xu Shen also devised the bushou ,
meaning "section headings", to help organize his dictionary into more
manageable parts. With minor changes this bushou system has been the
foundation of almost all subsequent Chinese dictionaries. Often mistranslated as
"radicals", not all of the bushou are true radicals in that some of them can be
further broken down into their component words. Moreover, many of the true
radicals are not included in the list of bushou.
For the limitation of the article, I cannot present a series of "character
genealogies" ( Chinese Zipu) which show graphically the close interconnections
between characters. I will briefly introduce how Chinese characters and
language are used to the social aspects and context.
As known as a Confucianism-based Chinese tradition, the Chinese in
Vietnam are certainly profoundly affected by Confucian philosophy and thought.
The thought that emphasizes that male is outside, female is inside (Nan zhu wai,
nu zhu nei ) was not only affected by Confucian thought, but by
the feudalism of Chinese society from the very first beginning.

Example 1:

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 /nan/ meaning male of composed of

two characters (or

linguistically called morphemes) FIELD + ENERGY = MALE .

Example 2:
The character for PEACE can be recognized by the two characters
composing of woman under a roof. ROOF + WOMAN = PEACE
The example of this kind of concept can be seen in many wordforms and
expressions that denote the philosophical thought right in Chinese people not
only in Vietnam but all over the world as well.
The everyday term ren simply means person and its easy character to
learn. Although the major Confucian virtue of ren is written a bit differently,
Ren (authoritative conduct), it is derived by adding the number two to
ren ( ) . What this "picture" suggests to is that the highest virtue in
Confuciuss thought is one person plus two. In other words, the highest virtue of
ren is achievable in relationships of only three or more, that is to say, only in
societal relationships.
The Chinese seldom say I love you to their parents. In fact, they never
say anything to their parents that is equivalent to the words I love you. What is
the reason that they say those three words to theirs? It is certainly not because
they dont love their parents but because a more acceptable way of expressing
love for the old is by action. Because this love is unlike other kinds of love for
other people, naturally there is a special word for it. This is xiao (also known
as shau), meaning filial responsibility, love for parents expressed in action.
The character xiao is made of two morphemes. One is earth with a stick ,
indicating the old parents. The other morpheme is the character son
underneath the old, symbolizing a son, or more precisely, offspring, is
underneath the parents being carried. From the character xiao, people are
probably inspired by the scene of a good son carrying his weak old father unable
to walk well, willing sacrificing his youthful energy and time to serve his father.
Xiao (shau) in Chinese really compasses all forms of active love for parents.
Confucius, whose ideas about inequality and hierarchy are quite dominant
in Chinese cultures, was an intellectual of humble origins in China around 500 BC.
One of Confucian principles of teaching is The stability of society based in
unequal relationships between people. These relationships are called Wu Lun

(five basic relationships): ruler-subject, father-son, older-younger brothers,

husband-wife, and senior - junior friends. These relationships contain mutual
and complementary obligations, that is, the junior partner owes the senior
respect and obedience; the senior owes the junior partner protection and
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consideration. Therefore, the Chinese introduce their father as jiayan

meaning strict
protective

father and their mother as cimu meaning kind and

The center of Chinese community society is the family including the

immediate relatives and the ancestors extending back for many generations. The
continued use of family middle names from past generations reflects this
emphasis, i.e. each generation will have their fixed middle name (know as
generation name, beiming ) to follow orderly. From this, they will know
who is upper or older than who. Therefore, if two Chinese people happen to
know that they have the same family name after introduction, they immediately
will gladly recognize as relatives (as belonging to the same ancestors) and then
following to ask each others middle name in order to get to know who is senior.
Later, this kind of relation will be described as to be social link. The Chinese
term of social uncle, siblings (shishu , shuxiung ) etc. can be heard
through this fraternization.
The Chinese family unit provides an economic safety net for its members.
In turn, the standards of family devotion, loyalty, and pride are woven into each
member. Rituals to honor the ancestors make the family a strong religious unit
and determine the welfare of the living members. A strong, unified family is
deemed necessary for mutual protection in a competitive and alien society. It
also is of great advantage in helping a new immigrant family member integrate
into life in Vietnam. Many attempts, however, have been made by the former
government to force the Chinese to assimilate as Vietnamese citizens, but thus
far, they have resisted and tended to develop their culture.
The Chinese family ranges from a small nuclear family to a larger group
including several small families under one roof. Each generation may have its
own apartment within the house. The sociolinguistic concept of Five
generations in the same house (Wu dai tong tang ) is said to be the
most fortunate (fu ) with a lot of Children, grand-children and great grandchildren attaching all around.
As in the rest of Chinese society, the Chinese family is patriarchal (male
dominated), with the leadership passing to the eldest or most worthy son. Elders
generally exert great influence. The expression the fathers power transferred
to the elder after death (xiung quan dai fu ). Years ago, parents in
Chinese family decide the marriages of their children. The choice of husband or
wife is often determined by business considerations and the strong desire to
have a family with equal social standing. This is said to be equal door to equal
house (men dang hu dui ).
Festivals are an important part of life for the Chinese. Especially Chinese
(as well as Vietnamese) New Year is a moveable feast in the lumar calendar
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which falls any time between January 25th and Valentines Day. Theatrical
ensembles often perform at festivals and ceremonies, with displays of Chinese
martial arts and dragon dances. Wishing friends and loved ones prosperity in the
New Year is an important aspect of Chinese tradition. Wan shi ru yi
(everything goes as ones wish); yi fan feng shun (a ship in full sail
with the inscription: "Smooth sailing"). On the red paper are Chinese words
(calligraphy) written by Chinese ink and stuck on the front entry door : Wu fu lin
men , wishing five kinds of good fortune arrive at the door. These five
good fortune are: Longevity, prosperity, health, excellence, good end.
Red is perhaps the most auspicious colour in Chinese culture, signifying
happiness and good luck. Gold is reminiscent of riches. The pronunciations of
many of the images shown are homophonic with the aspirations they represent.
For example, the word for bat fu is very similar in sound to fortune fu.
Reading some of the other symbols easily seen in the Chinese community, people
can see that this is a wish for conjugal bliss, prosperity and longevity:
Conjugal happiness: A (female) phoenix matched on the opposite side by a
(male) dragon (long feng he ming ); plums ; paired birds etc.
Prosperity, good fortune: A bat atop two coins which have the inscription
fa cai , "Make money" ; paired fish (homophonic with excessive );
oranges (homophonic with good); a ship in full sail with the inscription:
"Smooth sailing"
Longevity: the God of Longevity (shou ) peaches (longevity fruit);
deer (longevity animal) etc.
IV. CONCLUSION :
Despite of originating from different areas China, speaking different group
languages (dialects or known as local languages) causing conflicts in
communication, the Chinese of Vietnam has realized that monolingualism is
characteristic only of a minority of the worlds peoples. For the need of the
living condition and communicative, multilingualism is a must and has
historically been created by societal requisition. Now the Chinese of Vietnam
have gradually integrated into the community by being willing to learn other
languages.
Living languages are always changing, as they respond to chnges in social
structure. Language reflects society; it also serves to pass on social structure,
for learning a language is a central feature of being socialized.

Lam Nguyen Tai

Vietnam

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REFERENCE
1. Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia. 1993-1997, Chinese culture,
Microsoft Corporation.

2. Kozar S. (2000) Chinese New Year Celebrations. Univerisity

of Edingburgh
3. Spolsky B. ( 1998 )

Sociolinguistics.

Oxford, Oxford

University .
4. Website http://www.Zhongwen.com/gudian.htm
5. Website http://www.Chinesecalligraphy.com
6. Zesiger C. (1999) Old Saigon's Chinatown enjoys revived
fortunes ,ASIA INC.
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