section_path: Vocabulary and adaptation/Vietnamese
section_name: Vietnamese
paragraph_text: Vietnamese
  
  Chinese characters are called chữ Hán (𡨸漢), chữ Nho (𡨸儒; ' Confucian characters'), or Hán tự (漢字) in Vietnamese. Literary Chinese was used for all formal writing in Vietnam until the modern era, having first acquired official status in 1010. Literary Chinese written by Vietnamese authors is first attested in the late 10th century, though the local practice of writing is likely several centuries older. Characters used to write Vietnamese called chữ Nôm (𡨸喃) are first attested in an inscription dated to 1209 made at the site of a pagoda. A mature chữ Nôm script had likely emerged by the 13th century, and was initially used to record Vietnamese folk literature. Some chữ Nôm characters are phono-semantic compounds corresponding to spoken Vietnamese syllables. Another technique with no equivalent in China created chữ Nôm compounds using two phonetic components. This was done because Vietnamese phonology included consonant clusters not found in Chinese, and were thus poorly approximated by the sound values of borrowed characters. Compounds used components with two distinct consonant sounds to specify the cluster, e.g. 𢁋 (blăng; 'Moon') was created as a compound of 巴 (ba) and 陵 (lăng). As a system, chữ Nôm was highly complex, and the literacy rate among the Vietnamese population never exceeded 5%. Both Literary Chinese and chữ Nôm fell out of use during the French colonial period, and were gradually replaced by the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet. Following the end of colonial rule in 1954, the Vietnamese alphabet has been sole official writing system in Vietnam, and is used exclusively in Vietnamese-language media.