The Evils of Quốc Ngữ
Premodern Vietnamese Historical Sources, And What Historians Don’t Tell You about Them
As I stated in the previous post, in 1744 Nguyễn Phúc Khoát, the “Nguyễn lord” of Đàng Trong (the southern half of the Lê Dynasty
Erasing Confucian Temples (Văn Miếu 文廟) from Vietnamese History
I’ve recently been doing some research using a nineteenth-century geography called the Đại Nam nhất thống chí 大南一統志 (Unified Gazetteer of Đại Nam). As usual,
Trịnh Hoài Đức, Gabriel Aubaret and the Production of Knowledge about the Mekong Delta
In the early nineteenth century, Trịnh Hoài Đức, a Vietnamese scholar-official of Chinese descent, compiled a geographical gazetteer of the Mekong Delta region entitled the
Hoa, Annamite and Ta: Or Why People Can’t Understand Vietnamese History
I’ve said it a million times before, but I’ll say it here again: “It is impossible to understand pre-20th-century Vietnamese history if one does not
The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #8
Any time I read something in English about the premodern history of the Red River Delta and find an author saying that a work from
The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #4 continued yet again
I want to thank blogger Quach Hien for investigating this issue of why modern Vietnamese translations of the [Đại] Việt sử lược mention “Hùng vương”
The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #4 continued again
Blogger Quach Hien has a nice response to this issue of how modern Vietnamese translations of the [Đại] Việt sử lược do not note that
Evils of Quốc Ngữ #6
Yet another problem with Vietnamese translations of classical Chinese writings is that translators have left out parts of old texts which they do not like.
The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #5
One of the first problems I noticed with quốc ngữ translations is that they add the words “China” (nước Tàu or Trung Quốc) or “in
The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #4 continued
Continuing on the issue of the translation of the character “đôi” (碓) in the Đại Việt sử lược as “hùng,” a reader kindly sent me
The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #4
There is a text known as the Việt sử lược or the Đại Việt sử lược which was reportedly compiled in the fourteenth century. During
The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #3 (and the “un-khoa học-ness” of Vietnamese scholarship)
I was reading the Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư for the year 618 and found that it mentions Qiu He, the governor of Giao/Jiao
The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #2
The Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư contains (6/11a) the following information about a brief conversation between the monarch, Trần Thánh Tông, and the general,
The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #1
[I need to fix this entry. The general point I make is still correct, but Ong Tran Nghia did not translate the passage I said
