Vietnamese Hán văn

Vietnamese Hán văn (漢文) is the Vietnamese pedagogical reading tradition for Classical Chinese (Literary Chinese, lzh) texts, using Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation (âm Hán Việt). The third major East Asian Sino-reading tradition alongside Japanese kanbun (ja_kanbun), Korean hanmun, and Cantonese pedagogical reading (zh_wenyan_edu). Distinct from chữ Nôm (vi_nom, the demotic Vietnamese script for native Vietnamese morphemes) — Hán văn reads Chinese characters in Classical Chinese order with Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation, not Vietnamese morphology. Sino-Vietnamese readings preserve more Middle Chinese-derived phonology than modern Mandarin: 6 tones, stop finals -p/-t/-k, nasal final -m. The system of Confucian education in Vietnam from the 11th-century Văn Miếu Quốc Tử Giám (Temple of Literature) until the 1919 abolition of imperial examinations; survives in modern Han-Nôm scholarly tradition.

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