Re: Why Romanizing Thai language?


"Dr.Tulip" <Dr.Tulip@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:GrSdnabKidJuf7TeRVn-hQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| Why Romanizing Thai language?
|
| In a Vietnamese's case, the French governent back then had a hard time
| reading the Chinese style Vietnamese's characters, that's why they imposed
| the rule to romanize the Vietnamese language.
|
| In this case, Thai's citizens have their own choice, and they will want to
| stick with what they already know.
====================================
The transcription of the Vietnamese language in Roman alphabet started a
long time before the arrival of the French in Indochina:

"The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of
the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent
expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and
southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the
Khmer people of the Mekong delta in the vicinity of present-day Saigon/Ho
Chi Minh City), Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Indic
and Malayo-Polynesian languages at first, until Chinese came to predominate
politically toward the middle of the first millennium C.E.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of
Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a
prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as
the primary language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese
lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Vi?t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact,
as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the
beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written
using Chinese characters (see Chu Nom) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a
similar pattern as used in Japan (see kanji), Korea and other countries in
the Chinese cultural sphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th
century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Ch?
Nôm, most notably Nguy?n Du and H? Xuân Huong (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm
poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Qu?c Ng? system of Romanized writing was
developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in
proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late
19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in
education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as d?m
(dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), and va-li (valise). In
addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported
through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to
predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became
widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for
teaching and communication with the general population."

It is commonly said that the shifting to Roman alphabet was accelerated by
the fact that many Vietnamese, who generally hate the Chinese, were happy to
get rid of the Chinese characters.

Cheers
Daniel


.

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