Chữ Nôm

A script created in 13th-century Vietnam by combining and modifying Chinese characters (Chữ Hán) to write Vietnamese. It made heavy use of the phono-semantic compounding principle, fusing meaning and sound from two Hanzi to represent native Vietnamese words. Nearly a millennium of classical Vietnamese literature and administration was recorded in this script, including Nguyễn Du's epic poem "The Tale of Kiều". It was displaced by the Latin-based Quốc ngữ during the French colonial period and effectively died out in the 20th century; today it survives only in scholarship and heritage projects at institutions like the Hán-Nôm Institute. One of the three great scripts in the Hanzi sphere of influence, alongside Japanese hiragana and Korean hangul.