Should the Redundant Dấu Sắc be omitted from the current Vietnamese writing?

By Qúy Lê

Preamble

While dấu sắc, hereafter designated as DS for simplicity, is an important part of the romanized Vietnamese writing, the author regards the presence of DS in words ending in c, ch, p, or t as redundant. Consequently he raises the question whether redundant DS should be omitted from the written Vietnamese language.

The author was not aware of the existence of any discussion on the redundant DS. Should such a discussion ever exist, this paper must be seen as a genuine coincidence, not a renewal of an old issue.

What is a redundant DS?

I have asked hundreds of Vietnamese including students, people of all walks of life to pronounce a test word written as "hat" and then tell me the most common meaning of that word. Without a single exception they all pronounced clearly that word as if it were written as "hát" and gave the correct meaning as "to sing". We all knew that written words have two primary functions: to show the correct pronunciation and to record the meaning. In the example above the absence of DS in the test word does not change the pronunciation and the meaning of "hát". Therefore the DS in "hát" is redundant.

The following are further examples of words whose redundant DS have been removed; anyone who can read Vietnamese will recognize the words at once and without the slightest difficulty:

Ac, oc, up, băc, căc, dăt, dôc, giac, hăc, hoc, hot, khuc khich, kich thich, kich thuoc, lăc căc, lâc câc, lăp băp, loc coc, lach cach, mach, moc, môc, mut, nach, noc, nut, năp, phat phât, phap, phich, quach, quat, quât, quit, rac, rach, rich, rot, sat, set, siêc, siêt, tac, tap, tat, tit, tich, toc, thut thit, thach thưc, vac, vach, văt, vât, vet, vut, xap, xat, xăt, xâc, xet, xich mich v.v.

Brief review of teaching method of reading

Until about 1945 children were taught to read words ending with sound as ác, ắc, ấc, áp, át, ách etc. in steps. For example, to make a sound for "ác" pupils were taught to say in consequent steps, which can be numbered as follows:

A - cê - ác - sắc - ác

1 2 3 4 5

It can easily be seen that at step 3 the complete sound of "ác" was already achieved. Steps 4 and 5 were redundant.

After 1945 some parts of the country, especially in the North children were taught to read as:

A - cờ - ác - sắc - ác

The only change was the pronunciation of the letter c. Steps 4 and 5 were also redundant. In both cases it would have been simpler if children were taught to stop at step 3.

The same argument can apply to all words ending with c, p, t or ch. The following table shows all the ending sounds that have redundant DS.

ác, át, áp, ách
ắc, ắt, ắp
ấc, ấp, ất
éc, ép, ét
ếc, ếp, ết, ếch
(íc), íp, ít, ích (not used)
iếc, iếp, iết
óc, óp, ót
oóc
ốc, ốp, ốt
ớc, ớp, ớt
úc, úp, út
uốc, (uốp), uốt (not used)
ức, (ứp), ứt (ditto)
ước, ướp, ướt
yết

How often did Redundant Dấu Sắc occur?

This is a puzzling question. In order to say that how often the redundant DS occurs one needs to have some idea about the number of words in the Vietnamese language.

Nguyen Nhu Y reported that there are about 120,000 entries in the Dai Tu Dien Tieng Viet (Ministry of Education and Training, Centre of Vietnamese Language and Culture) published by Nha Xuat ban Van hoa Thong tin in 1998. This figure includes idioms, acronyms and abbreviations. As a very rough estimate this author at first believes that about 12% of those entries (or about 15,000) represent monosyllabic Vietnamese words. The estimate above was subsequently regarded as excessive for the author later came across a remark by Diệp Quang Ban and Hoàng Văn Thung (Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Việt, 3rd edition, Nhà Xuất bản Giáo dục, 1999) in which they quoted Nguyễn Quang Hồng's "estimated number of Vietnamese monosyllabic words in current use to be around 5890" (Nguyễn Q. Hồng: Âm tiết Tiếng Việt ..., Tạp chí Ngôn ngữ, Hà nội, 1976).

Vietnamese vocabulary may have 40,000 or even 60,000 words but the majority of these are compound words (từ ghép or cụm từ) made up of monosyllabic words.

As a matter of curiosity the author took a small sample from Hồi ký Trần Văn Khê, pages 200-203. Out of a total 988 words he encountered 63 words containing redundant DS (6.38%). Accepting that this sample is very small for any useful statistical purpose the result should not be discarded lightly. After all in most public opinion polls pollsters took samples of less than 0.001 %. In Australia samples of about 2,000 voters chosen from a population of over 18,000,000 were often used to obtain fairly accurate prediction for federal election results.

From the same sample above if one considers only 179 words having DS only the redundant ratio will be 63/ 179 or 35.20%, a considerable high percentage. Thus 1 in every 3 DS used is redundant.

Where will we go from here?

The Vietnamese language, like French and English, is not perfect in its current written form. However it has far less inconsistencies than those 2 more widely used languages. During the last century the Vietnamese authorities were very reluctant in making any changes. The only noticeable change in recent years is the adoption of i in lieu of y, e.g. lí (lý), quĩ (quỹ) etc. The change however was not in totality for it does not apply to y, ý, yết and ending sounds -uyên, -uyết, -uyệt. If words as á (á châu), ó (la ó) do exist then why can we not accept í (í kiến)? Similarly one should write words like nguiễn, quiết, nguiệt etc.

Redundant DS can be omitted without any hassle. Children will have less difficulty in learning to read and write. Will the authority consider adopting the removal of the redundant DS? The answer is most likely negative. However time will tell.