Missionaries as Field Linguists

Have you ever wondered why Vietnamese is written with a Romanized alphabet while its neighbors, China, Japan, and Korea, historically used character-based systems?

In this episode, Kenneth and Professor John Phan discuss the "startup age" of the Vietnamese script. We journey back to the 17th century to discover that Chữ Quốc ngữ wasn't just a colonial imposition, but a complex collaboration involving Portuguese pioneers, Italian linguists, and forgotten local consultants.

What We Explore:

The "Hip-Hop" Age of Nôm: How the 17th-century explosion of vernacular literature set the stage for a new way of writing.

The 3 G’s (God, Gold, and Glory): Why missionaries like Francisco de Pina and Alexander de Rhodes were the first "field linguists" in Vietnam.

The Great Identity Crisis: Why 20th-century Confucian elites feared that abandoning Chinese characters would mean the "extinction" of the Vietnamese soul.

From Niche to National: How cheap literary magazines like Nam Phong and the abolition of the civil service exams in 1919 turned a missionary tool into a weapon of anti-colonial empowerment.

The "Pure" Vietnamese Fallacy: A deep dive into why there is no "essential" Vietnamese identity—only a beautiful, ever-changing aggregation of influences.

"There is no quintessential essence to being Vietnamese. It’s an aggregation of different things that changes over time. You have to be a little Buddhist about it." — John Phan

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Many of you still have the chance to record and preserve the legacies of your own families. I’ve sat with families now for interview sessions to record the rich histories of parents and explore the lives of the generations that preceded them. Don’t let your family stories go untold! Take a moment to reach out and together we will bring out your family’s story on a recorded journey. - Kenneth Nguyen

Visit https://www.vietnamstorybank.com/ today for more information!