Chinese Influence on Vietnamese: A Sinospheric tale

Abstract

Vietnamese enjoys the longest contact history with Chinese in the Sinosphere, which dates back to at least a century before Christ. Northern Vietnam, known as Annam, had been under the Chinese rule for a millennium before the independence of the country. Influence from the imperial Chinese language, however, has imprinted many aspects of the Vietnamese language. For instance, the invention of Chữ Nôm, modeled on the Chinese characters, laid the foundation of literature in Vietnamese. This paper will discuss how Vietnamese differs from other Mon-Khmer languages in becoming a prime Sinospheric member. The major domains to examine include phonology (especially lexical tones), quadrisyllabic idiomatic expressions, syntactic constructions such as the passive and the relative clause, as well as the role of Chữ Nôm in facilitating borrowing from Chinese.