On the Structural Types of the Nom Characters in “Chinh Phu Ngam Bi Luc” Kept in the National Library of Vietnam

Abstract

The Chinh Phu Ngam Bi Luc kept in the National Library of Vietnam is the most complete version of the Chinh Phu Ngam. There are 412 verse lines, totaling 2,885 words; excluding repeated words, characters used in people’s names, and place names, the number is 1,251 words in the Chinh Phu Ngam Bi Luc. Nom characters in this book are divided into single-font and combined-font characters by the “component analysis method.” According to the different functions of components, single-font characters can be further divided into single-font pictographic characters, single-font phonetic characters, and single-font code characters. At the same time, Combined-font characters can be further divided into form-pronunciation combination characters, meaning-meaning combination characters, sound-meaning combination characters, meaning-marked combination characters, sound-pronunciation combination characters, pronunciation-marked combination characters, form-pronunciation combination characters, and so on. According to statistics, the number of single phonetic characters and combined phonetic and semantic characters is the majority. This shows that Vietnamese and Chinese are closely related in pronunciation, and a large number of Chinese characters are borrowed to remember pronunciation. The pictophonetic mode has become the mainstream structure of Nom characters.