Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society JSEALS 19.1 (2026): lxxxiv–cxxx Data/Notes Article ISSN: 1836-6821 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21313/10524/52555 University of Hawai’i Press JEAN-LOUIS TABERD’S TREATISE ON VIETNAMESE FUNCTION WORDS AND ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT1 Trang Phan Luisa M. Paternicò Ca’ Foscari University of Venice L’Orientale University of Naples thihuyentrang.phan@unive.it lmpaternico@unior.it Abstract This paper presents a critical, linguistically annotated English translation of the prefatory materials in Jean-Louis Taberd’s Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum (Serampore 1838), focusing especially on the appended “Treatise on Various Particles and Pronouns Most Useful for Elegant Expression in the Annamite Language.” Situated within the history of early quốc ngữ and missionary language description, Taberd’s treatise constitutes an unusually systematic inventory of Vietnamese functional items (broadly construed), including negation and interrogation markers, clause l inkers, comparatives and degree/focus expressions, classifiers, and discourse particles. Our edition preserves Taberd’s order and metalinguistic framing while providing minimal, targeted notes to clarify early modern Latin categories, dialectal/orthographic remarks, and diachronic shifts relative to present-day Vietnamese. Where Taberd explicitly flags a form as “of Chinese origin” (or restricts it to Sino-derived compounds), we supply Chinese character(s) and Sino-Vietnamese readings for cross-checking. The result makes a key nineteenth-century source accessible to a wider readership and offers new empirical material for the history of Vietnamese grammatical description, quốc ngữ development, and Sino-Vietnamese grammatical vocabulary. Keywords: Vietnamese historical linguistics; quốc ngữ; missionary linguistics; functional words; Sino-Vietnamese ISO 639-3 codes: vie, zho 1 Introduction Recent scholarship has emphasized that Vietnamese linguistic studies by Western missionaries belong to a long tradition that began with the Jesuits in the seventeenth century, notably with Alexandre de Rhodes, continued through the eighteenth‑century efforts of the Paris Foreign Missions (Missions Étrangères de Paris, hereafter MEP) missionaries. Across the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, this tradition generated a range of dictionaries and grammars, both in manuscript and in print, and in the process helped shape the early orthographic conventions and descriptive categories of Romanized Vietnamese (quốc ngữ). These works, together with later colonial-era educational and administrative policies, contributed to the standardization and eventual official adoption of quốc ngữ as the national script. Within this tradition, the works of the French missionary Jean-Louis Taberd (1794–1840)2 stand out for both scope and completeness: it includes a fully developed Vietnamese–Latin dictionary, a Latin–Vietnamese dictionary (not covered in this article), a practical account of sounds and tones, a concise grammar, and most significantly a systematic treatment of functional words grounded in actual usage. For researchers of historical phonology, lexicons, pragmatics, and grammaticalization, his writings remain indispensable primary sources. The present paper, following a brief introduction to the history of quốc ngữ and an overview of Taberd’s life and work, offers an English translation of the prefatory materials on the Vietnamese language that open his Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum, first printed in Serampore in 1838. This text is considered of crucial importance for any study of Vietnamese historical linguistics. This new critical edition approaches Taberd’s dictionary, especially its prefatory materials and the appended “Treatise on various Particles and Pronouns most useful for elegant expression in the Annamite language” (hereafter, the Treatise), an alphabetized inventory of functional words, through historical and linguistic perspectives. It demonstrates, first, why missionaries required such a dense catalogue of function words (negatives, interrogatives, classifiers, complementizers, comparatives, focus markers, etc.) as indispensable to effective communication. Second, it makes visible Taberd’s attention to the Sino-Vietnamese layer, which reflects the ongoing interaction between Hán/Nôm literacy and the emerging quốc ngữ prose style. In this sense, the Treatise is more than a lexicographic supplement: it captures Vietnamese grammar at the pivotal moment when quốc ngữ was on the verge of shifting from a missionary tool to a national script. 2 Brief history of quốc ngữ 3 Vietnamese has long existed at the crossroads of three writing systems: classical Chinese characters Hán tự, the locally adapted demotic script chữ Nôm, and a Latinbased orthography now known as quốc ngữ (Romanized Vietnamese). The last of these began as a missionary tool in the seventeenth century and, unusually for the Confucian cultural sphere, went on to become the official script of the modern state and to be formalized nationwide in the midtwentieth century. In the context of early modern missionary linguistics, the first to attempt to romanize Vietnamese were Jesuits who mapped Vietnamese sounds and tones onto a Latin alphabet and described the language through categories inherited from Greco-Latin grammar. Their work, first circulated in reports and textbooks for training clergy, eventually became used in the domains of education, journalism, and administration, where quốc ngữ eclipsed the ideographic scripts in everyday use. Before romanization, Chinese characters entered the Red River delta with Han imperial administration in 111 BCE. Even after Vietnamese political independence in 939 CE, Hán script remained the prestige medium of schooling and bureaucracy. In the tenth century, Vietnamese scholars developed Nôm script, a mixed system that (i) repurposed certain Chinese graphs purely for their sound values and (ii) coined new composite graphs by combining a semantic “key” with a phonetic component; Nôm served vernacular literary and documentary needs for centuries (see summaries by Nguyễn 1959 and DeFrancis 1977). This long Hán/Nôm bilingual ecology forms the backdrop against which romanization later spread. The romanization began in Cochinchina in 1615, where Jesuits learned Vietnamese for evangelization and, following European pedagogical practice, drafted grammars and wordlists while transcribing the language with Latin letters (Auroux 1994:112-16). Reports from the field credit the Portuguese Francisco de Pina (1585-1625) with an early glossary (1619) and a short tract on spelling and tones (1622–23). In the following years, António de Fontes (1569-1648) recorded diacritics for the six tones in 1631, and Gaspar do Amaral (1592-1646) compiled a 1634 vocabulary that stabilized many orthographic conventions.4 Building on these and on a lost dictionary by António Barbosa (1594-1647), Alexandre de Rhodes (1591-1660) published the trilingual Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum together with a concise grammar (Brevis declaratio) in Rome (1651), the first printed synthesis of the new script for foreign learners (Rhodes 1651; Jacques 2002). After the missionaries of the Society of Jesus were supplanted by those of the MEP, romanized writing was taught in seminaries in Siam (Ayutthaya) and in Tonkin to train local clergy. A turning point came in 1685 when Bishop François Deydier (1634-1693) ordered all confidential reports to be written with “European letters,” after messengers carrying Nôm documents had been intercepted, an incident that transformed quốc ngữ from a classroom aid into an operational medium of ecclesiastical communication in Vietnam (Marillier 1995). Through the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, Vietnamese and European priests used the script in routine reporting; within this same missionary line, we find Pigneau de Béhaine’s Dictionarium AnamiticoLatinum (1772–73, ms.) and J. L. Taberd’s expanded Dictionarium printed in Serampore (1838), which includes the Treatise translated in the present study.5 The French conquest (Đà Nẵng, 1858) and the colonial rule reshaped the script ecology. In Cochinchina, the administration established bilingual schools; Admiral Charner’s decree of 21 Sept 1861 created the Adran School, and under Admiral de la Grandière (from 1864) primary education in quốc ngữ scaled quickly because it could be mastered in months rather than years (Phạm & Albano 2023:374–375). Municipal schools and evening classes followed (under Admiral Ohier, from 1868), and the Dupré decree (1871) required quốc ngữ in parts of the civil examination. By 1882, it was prescribed for administrative paperwork; after protectorate treaties (1884–85) the model spread to Tonkin and Annam under Paul Bert and his successors (Osborne 1969: 100). These policy shifts triggered debates—among French officials and Vietnamese literati alike—about which script and language should anchor modern schooling. Some colonial voices favored adaptation (vernacular instruction with quốc ngữ as a bridge to French): Émile Roucoules (n.a.) argued that quốc ngữ, by regularizing soundtosign relations, would raise literacy without severing cultural continuity (Roucoules 1889, 1890). Others pressed assimilation: Étienne Aymonier (1844-1929) doubted Vietnamese lexical resources for scientific subjects and recommended teaching largely in French, with quốc ngữ as a transitional tool (Aymonier 1890; Ferry 1890). Vietnamese intellectuals were no less divided. The Confucian scholarpoet Nguyễn Đình Chiểu (1822-1888) opposed replacing sinograms, while Catholic scholars Trương Vĩnh Ký (Petrus Ký, 1837-1898) and Huỳnh Tịnh Của (1834-1907) actively promoted quốc ngữ for mass education. Trương’s position was nuanced: he advocated retaining Chinese studies for historical depth while using quốc ngữ to democratize literacy. He also argued that Nôm’s semantic “keys” can aid interpretation, whereas quốc ngữ offers greater phonetic precision for schooling (Trương 1876, 1888; DeFrancis 1977). By the early twentieth century, quốc ngữ had become a vehicle for print culture and modernization. In Cochinchina, the newspaper Gia Định Báo ‘Gia Định News’ (1865) began in translation, then under Trương Vĩnh Ký and Huỳnh Tịnh Của grew into a forum for literature and practical knowledge. A raft of vernacular periodicals followed (e.g., Nhựt trình Nam Kỳ ‘Cochinchina Daily’ 1897; Nông cổ mín đàm ‘Agriculture and Trade’ 1901; Lục tỉnh tân văn ‘Six Provinces News’ 1907). In Tonkin, Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh launched Đăng cổ tùng báo ‘The Old Tattler’ (1907) in both quốc ngữ and Chinese characters and later Đông Dương tạp chí ‘Indochina Review’ (1913), explicitly advocating quốc ngữ as the people’s script and debating how Chinese learning should continue (Brocheux & Hémery 2001). Parallel modernist movements, the Duy Tân Hội ‘Association for Modernization’ (1906) in Quảng Nam and Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục ‘Tonkin Free School’ (1907) in Hà Nội, offered free classes for men and women, translated Rousseau and Montesquieu, and used quốc ngữ as the medium for civic education (Trịnh 1995: 94-5). Institutionally, the decisive break came with the abolition of the Confucian examinations in 1919, after which quốc ngữ replaced Chinese characters in official and legal domains. From that point through the revolutionary and postcolonial years, quốc ngữ became consolidated as the shared written standard and has remained the national orthography since 1945. Jean-Louis Taberd’s Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum (Serampore, 1838) stands at a pivotal point in the history of quốc ngữ. Building on the Jesuit tradition of coupling dictionary with grammar, it introduced what appears to be the first systematic inventory of Vietnamese functional words in print: the Treatise. This long list of functional words provides not only a lexical record but also a map of the syntactic and pragmatic devices that underlay spoken Vietnamese, precisely the grammar missionaries needed in order to communicate, preach, and teach. Placed within the wider trajectory of quốc ngữ, the Treatise bridges two eras: it inherits seventeenth-century missionary practices of language description and romanization (i.e., producing grammars and dictionaries in a Latin framework) while anticipating the nineteenth-century expansion of the script into schooling, administration, and public print culture. For this reason, the Treatise captures Vietnamese at a transitional moment, when quốc ngữ was already a precise technical tool—able to represent tones, syllables, and lexical contrasts with accuracy, yet had not fully displaced Hán and Nôm in the public sphere. The functional wordlist, embedded in this ecology, offers an unusually early usage-based description of particles and pronouns that continue to shape Vietnamese discourse today. 3 Jean-Louis Taberd’s life and work Jean-Louis Taberd (1794–1840) was an influential missionary bishop whose linguistic work contributed significantly to the standardization of quốc ngữ.6 Taberd was born on June 18, 1794, in Saint-Étienne (Loire), France, in the Diocese of Lyon. He was ordained a priest on July 27, 1817, and exercised his ministry as a vicaire (curate) first in Montluel (Ain département, eastern France), and then, beginning on August 19, 1818, at the parish of Saint-Irénée in Lyon (Anoge 1948:1678). In August 1820, he entered the Seminary of the MEP and departed for his mission in Cochinchina (Vietnam) on November 7, of the same year. Taberd worked in several provinces in the mission area of Vietnam between 1821 and 1834. In 1821, he was in Cổ Vưu (Quảng Trị), and in 1822, he worked in the Đồng Nai and Mekong River regions. Following the death of Father Auguste Thomassin (1794-1824), Taberd assumed the role of superior, based on his seniority among the missionaries, while awaiting the appointment of a bishop by Propaganda. In 1825, Taberd administered Eastern Cochinchina, which was the Apostolic Vicariate of Cochinchina. In June 1827, King Minh Mạng (1791-1841) called him to the court of Huế, along with other missionaries, intending to prevent them from preaching by retaining them as translators. He remained in this disguised “captivity” until mid-1828, when he and his companions were freed at the request of the Viceroy of Lower Cochinchina, Lê Văn Duyệt (1763 or 1764-1832). Taberd was appointed Bishop of Isauropolis (in partibus) and Apostolic Vicar of Cochinchina on September 18, 1827. He was consecrated on May 30, 1830, in Bangkok. He later settled in Lower Cochinchina (Western Cochinchina) at Lái Thiêu, where the seminary was located and oversaw the establishment of convents of the Amantes de la Croix in Tân Triều and Lái Thiêu (Launay 1916: 589-590). Due to increasing persecution, Taberd was forced to leave in early 1833. He traveled to Siam with a few seminarians, who later proceeded to the General College in Pinang (Penang) in the following year. In 1834, Taberd refused the Siamese King’s request to accompany his army during an invasion of Cochinchina, which created a difficult situation and compelled him to go to Singapore. There, he learned that numerous Annamite Christians blamed him for some of their troubles because he had fled to Siam. Believing he could no longer return to Cochinchina, he consecrated Father Étienne-Théodore Cuenot (1802-1861) as his coadjutor in Singapore on May 3, 1835, and entrusted him with governing the mission (Anoge 1948: 1678). His mission area was Malacca between 1833 and 1838. Subsequently, he traveled to India to oversee the publication of his linguistic works, which were printed at Serampore (Fredericnagori). In 1838, he was appointed interim Apostolic Vicar of Bengal. Jean-Louis Taberd died in Calcutta on July 31, 1840. His name was later bestowed upon a street in Saigon and the principal Catholic college of Western Cochinchina. He was also an honorary member of the Asiatic Society of Paris and the Bengal Society (Societas Bengalensis) (Launay 1916: 590). Taberd is primarily known for his contributions to lexicography and grammar, particularly his work on the Vietnamese language (called “Annamitic/Annamese” in missionary sources of his period). He undertook the printing of these works at his own expense or at the expense of the Cochinchina mission. His major linguistic works were printed by J.-C. Marshman in Serampore (India) in 1838: • Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum (Vietnamese-Latin Dictionary): This dictionary was initially composed by Mgr Pigneaux de Béhaine, Bishop of Adran, and Apostolic Vicar of Cochinchina, and was later completed and edited (absolutum et editum) by J.-L. Taberd. A comparison with the original manuscript shows that Taberd made very few changes to Pigneaux’s original work. It contains a substantial introduction (46 pages) which includes the Grammaticae Compendium (Grammar Summary) and the Tractatus de Variis Particulis et Pronominibus ad Elegantem Linguae Anamiticae Clocutionem Utilissimis (Treatise on Various Particles and Pronouns Most Useful for Elegant Expression in the Annamite Language). This introduction (translated in Section 5 of this article) is considered an original work by Taberd, as Pigneau de Béhaine’s manuscript did not include a grammar section. • Dictionarium Latino-Anamiticum (Latin-Vietnamese Dictionary): This dictionary was composed solely by Taberd (auctore J.-L. Taberd). It contains an extensive introductory section (88 pages) featuring historical and geographical details on the Empire of Annam, preceding the vocabulary section. It includes the Appendix ad Dictionarium Latino-Anamiticum (Appendix to the Latin-Vietnamese Dictionary) and a multilingual section titled Cochinchinese Vocabulary / Vocabulaire cochinchinois / Index Vocabulorum Cocincinensium / Tự vị An Nam (Cochinchinese Vocabulary/ Cochinchinese Vocabulary [French]/ Index of Cochinchinese Words/ Vietnamese Dictionary). Three other works on logics and theology, written by or associated with Taberd, were printed by J.-C. Marshman in Serampore: • Compendium logicæ, nec non Documenta rationis, quibus accedit brevis notitia juris utriusque (1839): Edited by Taberd for the alumni of the General College of Foreign Missions. • Documenta rectæ rationis seu Forma instructionis ad usum alumnorum sinensium, anamitarum, nec non et catechistarum concinnata (1839): Taberd is listed as the editor (edita), though the content was primarily composed by Father Alary. • Biên phân chánh tà. Documenta rectæ rationis: A later reviewed edition of Documenta rectæ rationis. One last work is on cartography: • [Carte] seu Tabula geographica imperii anamitici ab auctore Dictionarii latino-anamitici disposita (1838) (A geographical map of the Annamite empire designed by the author of the Latin-Annamitic dictionary). A new edition of this map was published in 1862. 4 Introduction to the translation Before presenting the present critical edition of the Treatise, it is important to point out that two translations of Taberd’s work were made in the past: one in Vietnamese and one in French. A Vietnamese translation was produced by Nguyễn Khắc Xuyên (1994). It appears to be a straightforward rendering aimed at a limited, largely Christian readership and does not include a linguistic or critical apparatus; for example, there are no systematic notes on Sino-Vietnamese etymology or historical grammar. More recently, Antoine Bossard (2022) published a French translation with comments of the first part of the Dictionarium anamitico-latinum, adding some Chinese characters. This work, however, appears to have limited circulation and is not easy to obtain outside Japan. This edition differs in both scope and method. It presents a critical, linguistically annotated English translation of Taberd’s preface and functional word list, together with annotations on the words that Taberd identifies as being of Chinese origin. Hopefully, this English version will make Taberd’s text accessible to a wider readership. The following pages, in offering a new annotated translation in English of most of the content of the Preface that opens J. L. Taberd’s Dictionarium anamitico-latinum (Serampore, 1838), include: the prefatory materials, programmatic statements, phonology and orthography, “Grammar Summary”, and the quite lengthy Treatise on various particles and pronouns most useful for elegant expression in the Annamite language. Only the final “Remarks on the versification rules” are excluded because it is outside the scope of this paper. As stated in the previous pages, the Preface sits at a pivotal moment in the history of quốc ngữ. In a few dense pages, Taberd tells his readers how the dictionary came into being, gathering the remains of an earlier project associated with Bishop Pigneau de Béhaine (1741-1799) and enlarging it with a grammar, a treatise on particles, remarks on versification, a character key, and a supplementary multilingual vocabulary and map. The author also specifies that it was written for missionaries, scholars, and the curious. In doing so, he links lexicography to pedagogy and evangelization, characteristic of the 17th to 19th century missionary tradition, but with a methodological clarity all his own. The Preface is a compact linguistic sketch of Vietnamese in the early 19th century. Taberd distinguishes the learned Chinese written tradition from everyday speech, explains how Vietnamese makes use of Chinese characters (including locally coined compound graphs), and shows, with concrete examples, how a single character can vary in sound and meaning in Vietnamese usage. These pages capture the mixed script ecology, Hán/Nôm alongside quốc ngữ, that scholars still rely on for reconstructing usage, sound values, and reader practices of the period. As for the detail of the content, after a presentation for readers (Amice Lector), the first section is dedicated the orthography and phonology of Vietnamese. Taberd inventories the vowels and their combinations (including what he labels as diphthongs and "triphthongs")7, initials, finals, and tone marks, and he illustrated the six tones with six /ma/-shaped words differentiated only by tone. He also notes regional phonetic variation, for instance, the northern (Tonkinese) use of initial clusters such as bl and ml, which he treats as characteristic of particular provinces. He correlates tone names with contour descriptions and gives practical notes on quantity and vowel–consonant cooccurrence. These passages are translated in full, preserving the lists and their internal order. A short grammar summary follows, in which Taberd, working within the Graeco-Latin grammatical model, sketches the parts of speech and then recasts Vietnamese facts in that mold: no morphological cases, a wordorder genitive, dative marked by cho, tenseaspect formed with particles (e.g., đã, sẽ, hãy), and a nuanced pronoun and address system keyed to status and relationship. The translation here keeps his structure and terminology while clarifying where the Latin frame is purely expository rather than structural for Vietnamese. The Preface culminates with the third and most interesting section, a long Treatise on particles and pronouns—what we would call “functional words”. The term “particle” is understood broadly, since, for example, Taberd also includes some adverbs and directional verbs in his work. In addition, the word “pronoun” is used by Taberd to indicate measure words or classifiers as well. This treatise is, so far as we know, one of the earliest systematic inventories of Vietnamese function words printed in quốc ngữ, arranged lemmabylemma with copious examples and careful pragmatic notes (interrogative, concessive, purposive, adversative, delimiters, degree modifiers, address particles, etc.). In some cases, Taberd points out that a specific particle is of Chinese origin and footnotes are added to elaborate further on this. The translation faithfully and literally follows Taberd’s order and content as literally as possible. Taberd writes as a grammarian who is also a lexicographer and teacher. He is descriptive in many respects (register, region, etiquette), despite the fact that his framework borrows Latin categories to scaffold a language without inflectional morphology. The result is immensely useful, especially his particle system, the finegrained values of which (e.g., dầu/ dẫu concessives; cho as dative, purposive, degree adverbializer; mà/ song/ nhưng contrastive words; hễ conditionals; nào/ chi/ gì interrogative–indefinites) are illustrated in live clauses rather than glossed in isolation. Readers should therefore treat the examples as microcontexts that reveal semantics, discourse function, and politeness in tandem. The translation aims to preserve Taberd’s concise technical Latin while rendering it in clear, modern English. The approach here used is intentionally close and literal: it generally does not expand Taberd’s terminology with interpretive paraphrase in the main text, even where his categories reflect early modern European frameworks (e.g., “rational/irrational animals”). Instead, his phrasing is kept, and brief clarifications are supplied in notes when needed, especially where a Latin label (e.g., ablative, supine) functions as an expository convenience rather than a native Vietnamese category. The Vietnamese examples are reproduced as transmitted, with tone and diacritic marks. When Taberd contrasts regions or registers, his contrasts are kept and, where helpful, gloss modern readings. As stated above, Taberd’s “particles” span what modern linguists would distribute across adverbs, prepositions, complementizers, conjunctions, clausal particles, pronouns, classifiers, and interjections. His lemmata are no reclassified in the present work. Where meanings have shifted in presentday Vietnamese or a sense is obsolete or restricted, it is marked accordingly. For example, certain readings that Taberd records, such as bằng in an “as for …” topic sense, are either rare or no longer productive today; these are noted in the footnotes rather than normalized away. We retain early19thcentury spellings that are integral to his analysis (e.g., the treatment of bl/ml), adding brief notes where this helps the nonspecialist connect to modern orthography. Among Taberd’s particle list, footnotes are added where Taberd explicitly identifies a form as being of Chinese origin (or clearly restricts it to Sino-derived compounds). In those instances, his origin label is retained and, where possible, the corresponding Chinese character(s) and standard Sino-Vietnamese reading(s) are supplied for cross-checking. The identifications are mainly based on two references works by Lê (1959, 1993), which provide a practical baseline for Sino-Vietnamese tagging. Because the 1993 volume sometimes revises or diverges from the 1959 entries, we record both when they differ. We emphasize that these sources serve as starting points rather than definitive etymological authority.8 Taberd employs the exonyms of his period (“Annamite,” “Cochinchinese”) and writes within the framework of missionary grammar. In this translation, his original labels are retained in the main text but render them as “Vietnamese” in the footnotes for clarity and consistency. In short, the Preface is both a front door to Taberd’s dictionary and a selfcontained guide to Vietnamese sounds, structure, and, above all, functional words as they were understood and used in the early nineteenth century. The present new annotated translation in English keeps that dual character: practical and programmatic, descriptive and didactic, anchored in examples that still repay close reading and with a critical apparatus that should benefit the reader, both the scholar and the curious. 5 A critical translation Taberd, J. L. (Jean Louis). 1838. Dictionarium latino-anamiticum. Fredericnagori vulgo Serampore: Ex typis J. C. Marshman. Link to the text: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b000747834&seq=18 PREFACE Dear Reader, This work was first initiated by a man most learned in the Cochinchinese language, namely the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Joseph Georges Pierre Pigneau, Bishop of Adran and also Apostolic Vicar of Cochinchina9. His name will be remembered for eternity, for indeed, fame prevents a man worthy of praise from dying. Thus, it is not our intention to bestow accolades upon him, as we do not believe ourselves capable of doing so in a manner befitting his stature. A greater work, not so much in size as in substance, had been composed by this Most Illustrious Prelate. However, the original manuscript, so much longed for, was lost in the fire that consumed the Annamite College in the province of Ca Mau in the year 1778.10 Although only a small portion of this work remained for us, we, who have succeeded such great man, though unworthy, in the same Apostolic Vicariate, have endeavored to gather these remnants, revise them, enrich them with numerous additional entries, a Grammar, a Treatise on particles, a Commentary on Annamite versification, a Horto florido11, as well as a Table of Key Characters, and bring them to light. Our purpose has been to assist in the study of this language for the missionaries - heralds of the Holy Gospel in the Annamite Empire -, the indigenous students, and those who are curious about foreign literature. For the benefit of travelers and merchants, we have also included, as a supplement, an English, French, Latin, and Cochinchinese Vocabulary, which, for greater convenience, we have placed at the end of the Latin-Annamite Dictionary, along with a Geographical map of the same empire. It is now our primary task to briefly discuss the characters as well as the Annamite language. There is no doubt that the Annamite language originates from Chinese. Indeed, their characters not only bear great similarity to Chinese ones but are also either entirely or partially borrowed from them. However, the characters or hieroglyphs of both people have undergone such changes that they cannot understand each other, neither in reading nor in speaking. Those born into respectable families devote themselves to studying Chinese characters, for these characters are used among the Annamites in legal texts, petitions, and other documents. Those who aspire to great achievements or seek honors and dignities must dedicate themselves wholeheartedly and with great effort to the study of Chinese characters. By writing these characters, they are able to communicate with the Chinese. However, the pronunciation differs so greatly between the two peoples that they cannot converse with one another.12 Thus, two languages are used in Cochinchina: the language of the scholars, or the Chinese language, and the common language, which is used daily by everyone, and which we shall now discuss. The common language is indeed written using Chinese characters, but often these characters do not retain either the pronunciation or the meaning they have in Chinese. Some characters retain their Chinese meaning but are pronounced differently. For example, the character 人 ‘man’, is pronounced Jin or Jen [ren]13 in Chinese but Nhơn in Annamite. Others retain a similar pronunciation, such as 吒 ‘father’, which is pronounced cha [zha] in both languages, yet the meaning differs: in Chinese, cha means ‘to be angry’, while in Annamite, it means ‘father’.14 Some of them also retain the same pronunciation and meaning, but they also use it for a very different meaning with a pronunciation that is very different from the Chinese character. For example, 明, which is pronounced Minh by the Annamites and Ming or Mim by the Chinese, depending on the different way of writing adopted by the Europeans, and it signifies ‘bright’ in both languages. However, the same character 明 is also used in Annamite [p.i] to signify mầng or mừng ‘to congratulate’ or ‘congratulations,’ making its pronunciation and meaning understandable only from the context and the sense of the sentence. For example, if someone writes 明鏡 ‘mirror’, Minh Kính, where kính follows minh, it clearly indicates that minh retains its original pronunciation and genuine meaning. But if the same character appears in a letter, such as 敬明 convention and custom dictate that it should not be read Kính minh, but rather Kính mừng ‘a greeting with respect and congratulation’. It often happens that an Annamite word is written using two characters combined, and these we call truly and properly Annamite characters, as they were created by the people themselves to indicate certain words or pronunciations they commonly use. We have marked these characters with an asterisk (*) in the Table of Character15 Keys at the end of the dictionary. Of these two characters, one determines the meaning of the word, while the other its pronunciation. The character indicating the meaning of the word sometimes does so accurately and clearly, because in Chinese it retains the same meaning as that intended in the Annamite word. For example, to write the Annamite word miệng, meaning ‘mouth’, the Chinese character for ‘mouth’ 口 is used, and next to it, another character 皿 mịnh is placed, which represents the sound. The first character indicates the object ‘mouth’, and the second defines the pronunciation miệng, which they intend to produce through the conjunction of both characters 𠰘. However, sometimes the character used to determine the meaning of the word does so only vaguely, because in the Chinese language, it does not refer to the same specific object but only indicates that the object belongs to a certain category or type. For example, to write the character Sẻ, meaning ‘sparrow’, they first place the generic character for birds 鳥 followed by another character indicating the pronunciation 仕 Sĩ. In this case, no one doubts that the bird designated by that character 𪀆 refers to a ‘sparrow’. There is great irregularity in this use of characters that the Cochinchinese adopt to establish the pronunciation of compound words. Since they use Chinese characters to write their Vietnamese language, they almost always pronounce them differently than the Chinese, and the same character is often pronounced in four or five different ways, depending on the different meanings it expresses or the different objects it is combined with. For example, the Chinese character 吝 Lẫn ‘stingy, greedy’, in the Chinese manner and pronunciation, is pronounced Lìn or Lin by the Chinese themselves. However, the Vietnamese use the same character in different pronunciations and meanings [such as] Lận ‘to deceive’; Lấn ‘to surpass’; Lần ‘turn’, and Lẩn, Lẫn etc. as it can be seen at the end [of this work]. If another key16 is added to the same character [it results in different pronunciations and meanings], for example, 𣵰 which is pronounced Lặn ‘to submerge’, or Lẵn ‘polished’. Since many Chinese characters share the same pronunciation, it often happens that two Vietnamese speakers do not use the same character to express the same sound, or that the same writer uses one character at one time and another character at another time to indicate the same sound. For example, to represent the word một ‘one’, they sometimes use one of the following characters: 沒, 没, 蔑. To indicate the number ba ‘three’, some use 𠀧, others use 巴. To express the verb đi ‘to go’, some use 𪠞, others use 帝. The character sâm 參 ‘to add, insert’ is also pronounced tham or tam, depending on its use. Hence the need, and hence the effort. Although the characters or hieroglyphs are included in this dictionary, their explanation is nevertheless provided using Roman letters. However, this writing method does not clearly indicate Annamite pronunciation. There are indeed many sounds in this language that do not exist in European languages, and it has therefore been necessary to establish some special diacritical marks to indicate sounds or pronunciation, all of which must be explained [p.ii]. SEQUENCE OF ANNAMITE LETTERS IN ORDER Vowels Simple vowels: a, ă, â, e, ê, i, y, o, ô, ơ, u, ư. Diphthongs Ai, ay, ây; ao, au, âu; eo, êu; ia, iê, io, iô, iơ, iu, iư; oa, oe, oi, ôi, ơi; ua, uâ; uê; ui, uy; uô, ươ; ưa, ưi, ươ, ưu. Triphthongs17 Iai, iay, iây; iao, iau, iâu; ieo, iêu; ioi, iôi, iơi; iua, iưa, iươ; oai; uay, uây, uyê, uôi; ươi, ươu. Consonants Initial Consonants B, bl; c, ch; d, đ; g, gh; h, k, l; m, ml; n, ng, ngh, nh; ph, qu, r, s; t, th, tr; v, x. Final Consonants C, ch, m, n, ng, nh, p, t. Note 1. The letters bl and ml are used among the Tonkinese, or occasionally in provinces adjacent to this region. Note 2. Nouns ending in c, ch, p, t only take two diacritical marks, grave and acute. On the Quantity of Syllables Ă and  are always short. A placed before ch, nh, u, y is shortened; therefore, if there are words where a short diacritic ˇ appears or not, they must still be pronounced briefly. Hence, in the table below concerning the context of vowels with consonants, it is indicated that there is no connection between the letter A and ch, nh, etc. A placed after i, u, ư is also shortened. An exception occurs when gi precedes a, in which case a is lengthened (e.g., gia meaning ‘house’). A following o is lengthened. A before i, o, and consonants is lengthened. E before p, t is shortened. E before or after o is lengthened. Ê before ch, nh, p, t is shortened. I before ch, nh, p, t is shortened. I after a, o, ô, ơ, u, ư is also shortened. I before a, u is lengthened. O before a, c, e is shortened. O after a, e is shortened. Ô before c, p, t is shortened, in the other cases is lengthened. Ơ is always lengthened. U, Ư before c, p, t, y are shortened. U after e, i is also shortened; in the other cases u, ư are lengthened. Y is always shortened. Diacritics, Signs, and How to Apply Them to Vowels A written plainly or without a sign. À descending tone. Ạ grave tone. à falling tone. Ả interrogative tone. Á with an acute mark. [These diacritics apply similarly to other vowels] [p.iii]. a à ạ ã ả á ă ằ ặ ẵ ẳ ắ â ầ ậ ẫ ẩ ấ e è ẹ ẽ ẻ é ê ề ệ ễ ể ế i ì ị ĩ ỉ í y ỳ ỵ ỹ ỷ ý o ò ọ õ ỏ ó ô ồ ộ ỗ ổ ố ơ ờ ợ ỡ ở ớ u ù ụ ũ ủ ú ư ừ ự ữ ử ứ CONTEXT OF INITIAL CONSONANTS WITH VOWELS Note. In each letter combination, a dot or circle indicates that there is no combination between the characters in the horizontal lines and the characters in the vertical lines to which they correspond [p.iv]. CONTEXT OF VOWELS WITH FINAL CONSONANTS [p. v] PROLOGUE There is a common saying: "well begun is half done." The smallest thing is indeed the smallest, but to be faithful in the smallest is the greatest. Experience has shown that those who are ashamed to return to the elementary foundations of languages, like children, are never able to speak or write any language well. Therefore, it is worthwhile to carefully note what is essential to study this language, namely: to correctly pronounce the sounds of letters, both vowels and consonants, as well as those of the various syllables. We will gladly adhere to the orthographic system established by the early missionaries and always maintained by others. According to the structure of the Annamese language, there are twenty-nine letters, twelve of which are considered vowels, while the rest are consonants, as can be seen in the table above. The sounds of this language are marked with certain symbols, and the value of vowel letters is modified by diacritics. There are five tonal marks, namely: Descending, Grave, Falling, Questioning, and Acute. When no mark is placed, the sound is called "Level" (Plana). Thus, there are five marks but six tones, as illustrated by the word Ma, whose various tonal marks indicate different meanings: Ma [level tone), ‘hemp’; Mà [grave tone), ‘but’; Mả [questioning tone), ‘curs’; Mã [falling tone), ‘horse’; Má (acute tone), ‘tomb’; Mạ [descending tone), ‘mother’. These tone marks could, in a way, be compared to musical notes. The level tone Ma corresponds well to the lower Sol; Mà to Mi minor; Mạ to Ut minor; Mã to La; Mả to Si natural; Má to Ut major. However, since each word has its own pitch, the middle register is the one that must regulate the other tones. Thus , in two ways, the tone that pertains to discourse or conversation is noted here, as they have various ways of modifying the voice depending on the diversity of subjects. These, however, should not be regarded as absolutely exact, as some differences still exist, and in three or four listening sessions with an experienced teacher, a student of this language will make more progress in pronunciation than in studying a thousand written explanations. The first tone is called level or even, because it is pronounced without any vocal inflection, such as Ma. The second tone is called descending or soft because it is pronounced with a lowering of the voice, such as Mà. The third tone, or what is better called the heavy tone, is grave or weighty, as it is pronounced from deep within the chest in a serious manner, such as Mạ. The fourth tone is called falling or circumflex, because the voice first bends and then slightly rises, such as Mã. The fifth tone is called interrogative, as it is pronounced with a certain gentle inflection, just as we raise our voice when asking a question, such as Mả as in ‘is it so?’, ‘isn’t it?’; Hỏi ‘to ask’. The sixth tone is called acute, because it is pronounced with a sharp, high pitch, such as Má. From what has been said, it is clear that the same word Ma, depending on the variation of tone marks, can have entirely different meanings. This happens frequently with other Vietnamese words as well. It is worth noting here that the interrogative tone is often used interchangeably and is frequently confused with the falling tone, especially in the northern provinces. Likewise, some words that are considered polite in one province may be considered rude in another. For example, the word Mụ ‘woman’, is seen as respectful and polite in the northern provinces when referring to an ordinary woman. However, in the southern provinces, this word is considered inappropriate, and it is necessary to use Bà instead to refer to a woman. This distinction applies to many other words, though we could not fully account for all these regional variations in this work. Therefore, we advise the reader to carefully observe actual usage, as customary practice dictates correctness in speech. We now proceed to explain, (as far as possible) the pronunciation of this language and, at the same time, analyze the modifications made to letters through diacritics. A has three distinctions. A without any mark or diacritic is pronounced as a long letter, and it is almost equivalent to two, or it is prolonged like the long Latin ā, as in ái ‘to love’.18 [p.vi]. Ă with a semicircle or short mark, as in poetry, is pronounced briefly and clearly, similar to the Latin in càpere cibum [‘to take a meal’] and in Annamite ăn [‘to eat’].19  with a cap or a circumflex accent is pronounced briefly and in a somewhat muted or slightely obscure manner, as in Latin mem in amem [‘may I love’ or ‘let me love’] or in French amèrement [‘bitterly’]; [in Annamite] âm ‘sound’. Sometimes, however, it is pronounced in a contracted manner, similar to o with a beard, i.e. ơ, as explained below, as in ân ‘favor’. E is in two forms. Simple E is pronounced like an open è or an é with a circumflex accent in French, as in mère, ‘mother’, mẹ; in anh em chị em ‘brothers and sisters’, the e is pronounced as if the final s were removed from frères et sœurs while maintaining the same sound. Ê with a cap or circumflex accent is pronounced clearly, similar to e in Latin, for example suave [‘pleasant’], êm, or like closed é is pronounced in French bonté [‘goodness’]. I is in two forms. Simple I is usually pronounced as a long vowel and almost as an undivided syllable, such as tai ‘ear’; ai ‘who’. The Greek Y is pronounced as in the Latin language, but at the end of a word, Y indicates the formation of a diphthong with a syllabic division, as in ấy ‘that one’. This creates the distinction between I and Y at the end of the word: when I appears at the end of a word after another vowel, it does not form a separate syllable, whereas the Greek Y divides the syllable, as in cai ‘to govern’ and cây ‘tree’; the former is pronounced as a single syllable, the latter is pronounced as if it were câ-ï. This is similar to how the two dots are used in Latin, e.g., Sinaï, or in the French language, two dots, which are called a diaeresis, as for example in naïf, ‘simple’, as ngay thật [‘truly, honestly’ in Vietnamese]. O is in three forms. Simple O is pronounced lightly and clearly, as a short o in Latin, for example moneo [‘to warn’], in Annamite bảo, or as o without any accent as in French dogue [‘dog’], in Annamite chó. Ô with a cap or with circumflex accent is slightly muted, pronounced by moving the tongue towards the palate while rounding the lips, as in Latin Dōma [‘dome’], French Dôme, or Annamite ốc tròn. Ơ with a beard or with a small sharp mark on the right, is similar to the sound of a mute or stammering voice, though it should be pronounced gently and briefly. The French pronunciation of eux, ‘they’, or œufs, ‘eggs’, when the final fs is dropped or not pronounced, as is common in French pronunciation, closely approximates the pronunciation of this letter. U is in two forms. Simple U is pronounced as in Latin but in the Italian manner, as in obscurum, u ám [‘dark’], umbella, dù [‘umbrella’], or in French ou as in mou, ‘soft’. It should be noted that when u appears at the end of a word after a, it forms either a double syllable, similar to when a diaeresis is placed over vowels in Latin, as in e.g., aër [‘air’], or as in the Vietnamese word au. However, when o follows a within a word, as in cao, ‘high’, it is understood as a diphthong. Ư with a beard is pronounced somewhat like ơ but more strongly and deeply, almost from the throat, e.g., ừ ‘to agree’. When ư and ơ appear together in the same word, as in rượu ‘wine’ or mực ‘ink’, the pronunciation becomes quite difficult for non-natives. Note that ư and â are sometimes used interchangeably by many speakers, as in mầng or mừng ‘to congratulate’; đấng or đứng ‘to stand’. Similarly, some write bậnh or bệnh, and occasionally bịnh [to mean] ‘illness’. This variation occurs because some people articulate these vowels more or less distinctly, pronouncing them more or less clearly or muted. These brief remarks on vowels conclude our discussion, and we now move on to consonants. B is pronounced as in our Latin, e.g., ba ‘three’; bê ‘calf’; bì ‘skin’; bó ‘bundle’; bú ‘to suck’. C is used at the beginning and end of words, e.g., cá ‘fish’, ác ‘bad’. C is used with vowels a, o, ô, u, ư, but for e and i, K is used instead. [For example] ca ‘to sing’ is pronounced as in Latin. Co ‘to bend’ as in Latin the city of Co;20 Cu, ‘dove’ as in Latin, Italian manner, as said above about u. Usage has also established that we should use ‘Ch’ to express in some way what the Italians write as ‘ca, ce, ci, co, cu.’ For example: cha ‘father’; che ‘to cover’; chi ‘what’; cho ‘to give’; chủ ‘lord’. This pronunciation is difficult, and it is even more difficult to explain. Cha is pronounced almost as if it were Kia, with K being pronounced softly and the i being very short. Or perhaps it is better compared to the Spanish pronunciation of muchacho ‘boy’. [p. vii] D is in two forms. Đ with a stroke is pronounced the same as Latin or French D, e.g., đoạn ‘then’. D without a stroke, unlike our Latin D, presents some difficulty for foreigners. When pronouncing this sound, the tongue should be raised to the roof of the mouth and immediately withdrawn without touching the teeth. The mouth should be sufficiently open, and when D appears before e or i, it should be pronounced in a somewhat muted and brief manner. This is because unstroked D contains an inherent e or i sound, e.g., we write Da ‘skin’ and we pronounce almost as Dia or Diea, with a very short e or i. F does not exist in this language, but Ph is used instead. G is used in this language, for example, gà ‘chicken’ is pronounced like the first syllable of gallina in Latin or Gabriel in French.21 Ge does not exist, but there are ghe, ghê, gi, go, gu. G before h, as in ghe, ‘boat’, is pronounced softly but almost like K. Gi is pronounced similarly to guimauve in French, as in giềnh giàng ‘giant’. Go, gu are pronounced like Gomor and gula in Latin. However, G at the end of a word has a different sound, which will be explained under the letter ng. H occurs frequently in this language and is aspirated, it is [pronounced] from the throat and marked with a rough breathing. It appears at the beginning of words with all vowels, e.g., like héros in French, hùng hào in Annamite. But after K, e.g., khá ‘fitting, enough’, H functions like the Greek X. After P, e.g., pha ‘to mix’, H is equivalent to Greek Φ. After T, e.g., tha ‘to spare’, it sounds like Greek Θ. H is also used after C and N. For example, if we take the Portuguese word cacha, ‘simulation’ and remove the final a, we get the Annamite cách ‘method’. Thus also, the Portuguese word manha ‘habit’ when the final a is removed and the word mạnh ‘strong’ remains, these two words fairly well indicate the Annamitic sound. J, which is incorrectly called a consonantal I, does not exist. They replace it as much as possible with the letter G; thus, they write Gi giu in their characters to represent the name Jesu. However, in the Latin-Annamitic Dictionary, we have written Jé ju, pronouncing them almost as if they were Iê Iu, to avoid the harshness of Gi giu. K is pronounced harshly and from the throat, only before e, h, i, e.g., kẻ ‘who’, khát ‘to be thirsty’, kì ‘wonder’. In other words, usage requires C, as has already been noted for that letter. L is pronounced as in Latin or French, e.g., La ‘to cry out’, lá mái ‘ceiling’. The Tonkinese often add B to l and say, for example, blả ‘to untie’; in some provinces of Cochinchina bordering Tonkin, they say tlả instead of blả, which sounds similar but is less soft than standard Annamite trả ‘to untie’. Similarly, they add M before l and instead of lời ‘word’, they pronounce mlời, etc. M is pronounced as in Latin, e.g., ma, mê, mi, mo, mu. It is used both at the beginning and end [of words], but the lips must be pressed firmly together, e.g., mâm ‘round table’ or ‘more’. N na, nê, ni, no, nu are pronounced as in Latin or French. But N at the end of a word, e.g., man, is pronounced like Latin Aman or French manne, almost omitting the final letter, and men, ‘ferment’ is pronounced like amen. Ng, e.g., nga, this expression is somewhat nasal and requires the tongue to be positioned slightly raised towards the palate; ngà ‘ivory’ has a pronunciation similar to Hebrew ngain צ.22 When ng is at the end of a word, e.g., hang ‘row’, is pronounced like French amant [‘lover’] or sang [‘blood’] or the first syllable of mansionis in Latin. If the word ends in êng, e.g., thiêng liêng ‘spiritual’, it sounds like French fin [‘end’] or daim [‘deer]], or Latin dens [‘tooth’] with a clipped ending. If it ends in ong, e.g., long ‘dragon’, it is pronounced like Portuguese irmão [‘brother’]. If it ends in óng,23 e.g., long ‘hair’, it is pronounced like French long. If h is added, e.g., nhà ‘house’, it is pronounced like Italian gna. If gh is added, e.g., nghe ‘to listen’, the pronunciation becomes more difficult, similar to ghe with an added n. Ph is not pa but rather pha, phê, phi, pho, phu. Ph is pronounced like the French F, but more softly than in the Latin word propheta [‘prophet’], and it is equivalent to the Greek Φ. For example, pha ‘to mix’. Additionally, P appears at the end of words, such as áp ‘to preside’, and it is pronounced like ours. Q is used and pronounced as in Latin, e.g., qua ‘to cross’, pronounced like Latin quasi [‘almost’] [page viii] but rather in a softer and more delicate way, maintaining a balance between r and l. To avoid this difficulty, the Tonkinese pronounce blời instead of trời and tlơn instead of trơn. Others say Tlời instead of Trời. S is used at the beginning of words and never in the middle or at the end. Sa, sê, si, so, su are pronounced similarly to the French cha, che, chi, cho, chu or the English sha, she, etc. For example, Sa ‘very fine silk fabric’, is pronounced by the French as cha. Se is pronounced like chaise, omitting the final syllable, etc. T. ta, tê, ti, to, tu, is used at both the beginning and end of words, e.g., tát ‘to exhaust’. As an initial, it is similar to Latin, e.g., tam ‘three’. But as final, it has a slight inflection, and the tongue strikes the palate, e.g., rút (to extract) is pronounced similarly to Latin Ruth, Bà rút in Vietnamese. However, when h follows t as already said, for example tha ‘to spare’, then the letter h should be aspirated. V. va, vê, vi, vo, vu can also be almost pronounced as in Latin, but no breath or hissing sound is required, and the lips should not be pressed together but should touch lightly. X. xa, xê, xi, xo, xu. This letter x when alone represents a single consonant whose sound is intermediate between the letters s and ch in French, and xa, xê, etc. are pronounced in a softer manner than in French and even more gently than sc in Italian. These things shall suffice as much as possible; whoever can explain them better, let him do so. I will in no way be troubled by the bitter goads of envy. GRAMMAR SUMMARY All the words of various languages can generally be classified into nine categories: Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Participle, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction, and Interjection. Below is a brief overview. On Nouns The Annamite language has both common and proper nouns. For example, nhơn ‘man’; cây ‘tree’ are common nouns. Huế is a proper noun referring to a royal province. To form a substantive noun, a general word like sự ‘thing’ is often added, i.e, lành ‘good, honest’, adding sự we obtain the noun sự lành ‘goodness, integrity’, etc. On Gender Although this language does not strictly have gender, it can express [gender distinction] with the help of certain words. Thus, to indicate the difference between sexes, it uses the word Trai for masculine and Gái for feminine. For animals Đực indicates the male, and Cái the female, i.e., bò đực ‘bull’, bò cái ‘cow’. For birds and other words, Trống and Mái, i.e., gà trống ‘rooster’, gà mái ‘hen’. Before the names of rational or irrational animals, the word Con is ordinarily placed, as if to say ‘son’ or ‘daughter,’ ‘little boy’ or ‘little girl’, hence the words con trai ‘son’; con gái ‘daughter’, con gà mái ‘hen’, con cá ‘fish’. They also commonly use the word Cái before the names of material and artificial things, for example, cái bàn ‘table’, cái hòm ‘chest’, cái này ‘this thing’. The words cây, trái and củ or khoai usually precede the names of fruit trees or of tubers that grow on the ground, for example, cây mít ‘jackfruit tree’; trái thơm ‘pineapple’; củ or khoai ngà ‘ivory yam’. On Number Nouns are typically singular in form; however, to form the plural, certain common words must be added, such as chúng, những, các, phô, etc. For example: ‘We’, chúng tôi; ‘all those who’, những kẻ; ‘Lords’, phô ông, etc. From what precedes and follows, some nouns can become plural, as usage will teach. On Cases There are no true grammatical cases in this language as in Latin. Nevertheless, the nominative always precedes an active verb, though sometimes it follows a passive or neuter verb. The genitive is recognized by the fact that, between two nouns, [p. ix] the one that follows is the genitive, for example, sách ông ‘the master’s book’. The dative is usually indicated by the word Cho placed before the noun, e.g., ‘to do something for someone’ làm sự gì cho người. The accusative generally follows the active verb but can sometimes precede it; there is no fixed rule. The vocative is indicated either by words like ớ, ơ, a, or by using an honorific title before the name of the person being addressed, as will be explained in pronouns. For example: ‘oh my God!’ ớ Chúa tôi!. The ablative is formed using certain prepositions, such as bởi, cho khỏi i.e., ‘take this away from him’ hãy cất lấy sự nầy cho khỏi người. (See Latin-Annamese Dictionary, p. V). On Adjectives The adjective added to the noun to designate its qualities, whether good or bad, is not lacking, but is commonly placed after the noun, e.g., của tốt ‘a good thing’, của xấu ‘a bad thing’. The comparative is formed by adding the word hơn ‘more’, e.g.: ‘good’ tốt; ‘better’ tốt hơn. For the superlative, the words lắm or rất and others are added: ‘very good, the best’ tốt lắm, rất tốt. On Pronouns Personal pronouns are: ‘I’ tôi, ‘you’ mầy, ‘he’ nó, ‘we’ chúng tôi, ‘you [plural]’ chúng bay, ‘they’ chúng nó. These can be strictly spoken, but politeness rarely allows them, as we shall soon see. In the first person, the king uses the word trẫm; those of higher rank use tao, ta, min24 while inferiors generally use tôi ‘servant’ [in a formal context]. In the second person, the word anh ‘brother’ is used when addressing an equal. If addressing a superior, ông ‘master’, người, ngươi, ngài ‘person of status’ are more appropriate and respectful. Even inferiors are sometimes addressed with mầy ‘you’; however, other forms are also used as customs dictate. In the third person, the word nó, ‘he’ is rarely used unless in a contemptuous manner, or if the speaker is significantly superior [in rank]. It is better to say ông ấy ‘that master’, người ấy ‘that person’, or anh ấy ‘that brother’. However, practice in speaking will make these and other distinctions easier to grasp. If I were to include all possible variations, this explanation would become too lengthy. The possessive pronoun is expressed using the word mình, e.g., ‘his/her own thing or your own thing’ của mình. Personal pronouns are also used, e.g., ‘my thing’, của tôi; ‘your thing’, của mầy, ‘our thing’, của chúng tôi; ‘your [plural] thing’, của chúng bay. However, it is better to follow the method previously explained, especially when equals speak to each other, and even more so when an inferior addresses a superior. Thus, one should say: của anh ‘the brother’s thing’; của chú ‘the father’s thing’, của cậu ‘the uncle’s thing’, của ông ‘the master’s thing’, etc. The demonstrative pronoun, this is expressed by nầy; ‘this thing’, của nầy. The same applies to that. Other variations can be found in the Dictionary. The relative pronoun ‘who’ is expressed by the words là kẻ, kẻ, là sự, or by the general term thuộc về meaning ‘to pertain to’, e.g., ‘the brother is the one who spoke’, anh là kẻ đã nói; ‘the book that belongs to my uncle’, sách thuộc về cậu tôi. However, if the relative pronoun refers to a superior, e.g., God or the King, then kẻ is not used. Instead, đấng or đứng should be used: ‘God, who created heaven and earth’, Chúa là đấng dựng nên trời đất. Indefinite pronouns are quite numerous: ‘who?’ ai?, ‘what?’ đi gì?, ‘whoever’ ai ai mặc lòng or ai nấy. ‘Someone’ có kẻ; ‘everyone’ mỗi kẻ, ‘some people’ có kẻ, một đôi kẻ, etc. These pronouns sometimes also function as interrogatives. At the end of a phrase, they frequently use chăng? To indicate a question, e.g.: ‘are you well?’ có sức khỏe chăng?, ‘did you do it?’ đã làm rồi chăng?, ‘Yes, I did’, đã. The word đã, ‘already’ expresses a question to which an answer is given. Hence, sometimes, in the response, words are found that mirror the question. On the Verb There is absolutely no verb conjugation among the Annamites, strictly speaking; however, through the use of certain particles, they have three main tenses. The verb mến means ‘to love’, and tôi mến ‘I love’. The past tense is formed by adding đã ‘already’, so tôi đã mến ‘I loved’. The particle sẽ designates the future, so tôi sẽ mến ‘I will love’. The imperative is marked by hãy before the verb and sometimes đi after it, e.g., hãy làm ‘do it’; lấy đi ‘take it’). Sometimes the imperative is understood from context: đi ‘Go!’; lại đây ‘come here!’. Other tenses are created using additional particles; for example, the imperfect is formed [p. x] with đương khi or khi ấy ‘when’ or ‘then’, or khi ‘at the time’, i.e., khi cha đến đây, thì tôi hãy còn theo đàng tội ‘when the father came here, I was still following the path of sin’. It should be noted that the word hãy còn ‘still’, is necessary to indicate the imperfect tense, in contrast with khi ‘when’, which indicates past tense, as if one were saying ‘I was following the path of sin when the father arrived here’. For the past tense, I have already explained. The pluperfect tense is formed in this way, for example: ‘I have loved’, khi trước tôi đã mến which is ‘I loved before’; or in this example: khi cha mẹ tôi chết thì tôi đã bỏ đàng tội ‘when my father and mother died, I had already abandoned the path of sin’. I have already noted above regarding the future and imperative tenses. To form the subjunctive tense, the verb chớ chi ‘would that, if only’ is used, or nếu ‘if’, for example: ‘may I love’ chớ chi tôi mến; for the imperfect tense, it is said: chớ chi khi ấy tôi mến ‘if only I loved at that time’. The past tense is indicated as: chớ chi tôi đã mến ‘I may have loved’. In the pluperfect tense, it may be said: chớ chi khi ấy tôi đã mến ‘if only I had loved’. The future subjunctive is formed with the words khi sẽ đã, for example: ‘I will have loved’ khi tôi sẽ đã mến. The infinitive tense is indicated by the verb itself, for example: mến ‘to love’. But it is better understood when there are two verbs, then the second or latter is designated by the first. For example: ‘it is necessary, one must, we must love’, etc. phải mến. The perfect and pluperfect tenses of the infinitive are generally designated as in Latin; for example: ‘to have loved’ đã mến. For the future tense: ‘to be about to love, to be going to love, to have been about to love,’ it is proper to say sẽ yêu mến, or sẽ phải mến, or đã phải mến; for example: ‘I say that the mother is going to love’, tôi nói mẹ sẽ mến. ‘I think the teachers were going to warn’, tôi tưởng các thầy dạy đã phải bảo đều ấy. In the gerund: ‘of loving’, đáng mến; ‘by loving’, cách mến; ‘to be loved’, vì mến, mà mến. In the supine, it is also said mà mến ‘to be loved’. The present participle, for example: ‘loving’ is translated as a noun meaning ‘a lover’ kẻ mến. In the future participle, for example: ‘about to love’ is said as kẻ sẽ mến; this applies to the active verb, which can be called hành ngôn. To form the passive verb, which can be called thọ ngôn, they commonly use the words chịu ‘to endure’, đặng, ‘to be able’, or bị ‘to suffer’. For example: ‘I am loved’, tôi chịu mến, tôi bị mến, or tôi đặng mến. Other tenses are conjugated in the same way as the active verb, always retaining one of the aforementioned auxiliary words chịu, đặng, or bị. However, it should be noted that this method is more European than Annamese; therefore, it is preferable, whenever possible, to convert the passive meaning into an active one. For example, instead of saying ‘I am loved by God’, [it is better to say] Đức Chúa Trời mến tôi ‘God loves me’; this form aligns more naturally with the structure of the language than [using the passive] tôi chịu Đức Chúa Trời mến. In the infinitive tense, ‘to be loved’ is expressed as chịu mến. In the perfect and pluperfect tenses, ‘have been loved’ [masculine, feminine, or neuter] or ‘had been’ is expressed as đã chịu mến. In the future tense, ‘will be loved’ or ‘is to be loved’ is said as sẽ phải chịu mến. In the past participle, ‘loved’ [masculine, feminine, or neuter) is expressed as đã chịu mến. In the future participle, ‘about to be loved’ is expressed as kẻ sẽ chịu mến or sẽ phải chịu mến. In the supine, ‘to have been loved’ is expressed as cho đặng chịu mến or mà mến. For further details, refer to the Dictionarium Latino-Anamiticum, page XIV and following. On Participles What pertains to participles has already been discussed when speaking about the Verb, whether active or passive. One thing remains about the absolute participle, so it is generally permissible to say, for example: ‘while I am or he is speaking’, tôi hay là người những mảng nói; ‘when finished having dinner’, khi ăn cơm tối đoạn. On Adverbs This language abounds in adverbs, whether to indicate quantity, such as ‘much’, nhiều; ‘little’, ít; or to signify place, time, and other aspects, as can be seen throughout the Latin-Annamese Dictionary. On Prepositions The prepositions of this language correspond in many respects to the prepositions of the Latin language; for example, ‘from, away from, by’, bởi, tại, vì; ‘above’, trên; ‘in between’ dưới,25 etc. On Conjunctions The Annamese have words that connect verb with verb, phrase with phrase; for example, they say for ‘and’, [p.xi] the words và, mà; ‘also’, [with] cũng; song, ‘but’, mà; ‘nevertheless’, nhưng mà; ‘unless’, ví bằng chẳng, nếu chẳng for, etc. Even without any conjunction, many elements are elegantly grouped together. On Interjections To express various emotions, the Annamites use various interjections; for example, ‘Oh my God!’, a Chúa tôi!, ‘Oh wretched me!’, a khốn tôi!, ‘Alas!’, Hỡi!, ‘Oh, my son!’, Hỡi con!, ‘Oh brother!’, ớ anh, etc. The reader and the philologist of the Annamese language are warned that this language does not tolerate an indefinite or indeterminate meaning as Latin does; therefore, they often add many words to clarify the meaning of speech. Likewise, the custom has grown to combine two, three, or four similar words together for elegance or for the sake of rhythm; for example, ‘to wash one’s face’ is expressed as rửa mặt mũi, which [literally] means ‘to wash the face and nose’; ‘house’ is nhà cửa, meaning ‘house and gate’, or gia quán, meaning ‘house and inn’; ‘to burn with anger’ is nong gan thạnh nộ, meaning ‘boiling with wrath and rage’, etc. They also have many specific terms for different actions and objects; for example, ‘to carry’ is đội if on the head, cắp nách if under the armpits, bưng if with the hands, and vác if on the shoulders. Similarly, regarding eating, different words are used; for example, for a common person ‘eating rice’ is ăn cơm; for superiors and officials, thì cơm; for princes and nobles, xơi cơm. However, whatever the king does —whether he eats, drinks, walks, or speaks— is expressed with the word Ngự; for example, ‘the King drinks tea’, Vua ngự trà; ‘the King approves’, ngự chế; ‘the King speaks’, Ngự phán, and many others. Thus, someone who does not use these specialized expressions will be difficult to understand, or at least will reveal that he does not have a good grasp of the Cochinchinese language. By consulting both dictionaries, learning through practice, and from everything stated above, everyone will be able to see for themselves that this language is quite simple in its structure, varied in its sounds, and rich in words for expressing daily and common matters, but it lacks many terms, especially for higher and spiritual matters or for deep and hidden sciences. Now, let us move from minor topics to greater ones, and present to the philologist of the Annamese language an analysis of certain particles that are most useful for refined speech in this language and also pertain to its Grammar. TREATISE ON VARIOUS PARTICLES AND PRONOUNS MOST USEFUL FOR ELEGANT EXPRESSION IN THE ANNAMITE LANGUAGE A, sometimes an interjection of exclamation or calling, ‘ô’; [as in] ‘Oh brother!’ A anh!, and sometimes of sighing, ‘ah! ah!’ Ai! ai ôi! is an interjection expressing pain, equivalent to ‘alas! alas!’. Ai a! is an interjection of groaning, meaning ‘hey!’ Ă, is only used in colloquial speech and, when placed at the end of a sentence, is a particle either seriously or ironically expressing approval, khéo ắ! ‘how skillful!’ hay ắ! ‘really good!’ Ấy, is sometimes a pronoun meaning ‘that’ [masculine, feminine, neutral]; for example, người ấy ‘that person’; ấy vậy ‘with things being so’; bởi ấy ‘because of that, therefore’; khi ấy ‘at that time, then’. Sometimes, it means ‘behold’, referring to something previously mentioned and now recalled to memory; for example, ấy như tôi đã nói ‘behold, as I have already said’. It differs from Nầy, which refers to something present, and from Kià, which refers to something appearing at a distance. Ắt, [means] determined, confirmed, necessary: for example: ắt là ‘it is necessary’ or ‘it is certain’, ắt thật ‘confirmed and certain.’ Bấy, this particle is placed at the end of an affirmative sentence to indicate ‘how great’, often conveying admiration, or ‘how much’; it is used with a positive or superlative adverb, either directly or indirectly: bền lâu bấy! ‘how long it lasts!’ nhặt bấy! ‘how severe or strict!’ nhiều người khéo tay bấy! ‘how many skillful people!’, lắm bấy, ‘how very much’. Bấy nhiêu and Mà thôi, whether placed together or separately, the former indicates ‘so much ‘or ‘of such size’ or ‘so many’; the latter means ‘no more’; for example: bấy nhiêu người còn sống mà thôi ‘only that many people or that many men remain alive, and no more’. Sometimes [bấy] means ‘then’ or ‘so much’, but only with certain adjuncts: e.g., bấy giờ ‘at that time’; bấy chầy, ‘such a duration, for that long’. For the past it is said: bấy lâu, bấy thuở; bấy dài ‘for such a long time’, bấy sâu ‘such depth’. Do not confuse bấy giờ ‘then’ with bây giờ ‘now’; nor bấy nhiêu ‘so much’ for a past event, with bây nhiêu ‘so much’ for a present event. [p. xii]. Bao, this means: ‘what,’ ‘whether’, ‘how much,’ ‘by what’, that is to say referring to ‘manner’, or ‘time,’ or ‘for’ or ‘how’ when compounded. It is used interrogatively, relatively, or indefinitely and is restricted when combined with certain modifiers. For example, quản bao, sá bao, nài bao, màng bao ‘what is to be taken care of?’ bao nã ‘in which way?’, this expression is almost always placed at the end of a phrase. Bao nỡ ‘shall I still endure?’ bao thuở ‘at what time?’ or ‘when?’ when referring to a distant time. Bao xa ‘how far?’ (in terms of distance or journey). Bao dài ‘how long?’ (for other things). Bao giờ ‘when?’ or ‘at what time?’ bao lâu ‘how long?’ bao lăm ‘how much in price?’ or ‘how much’ in an unspecified quantity. Bao nhiêu refers to a distinct number or an easily distinguishable quantity. The phrase bao nhiêu corresponds to bấy nhiêu, as in ‘however much you bought, I will return that much’ người đã mua bao nhiêu, thì tôi sẽ trả lại bấy nhiêu. These two phrases are sometimes used interchangeably but improperly. Bằng, sometimes it is taken to mean ‘if’, as in như bằng ‘just as if’, dường bằng, nhược bằng, ví bằng ‘supposing if’, ‘supposing that!’. Sometimes it means ‘equally’ or ‘likewise’; cũng bằng ‘equally as’. Occasionally, it means ‘from’ or ‘through’, especially when used with nouns of material or instrument, for example, tượng đúc bằng đồng ‘a statue cast from bronze’. Sometimes it signifies ‘as for’, as in bằng bây giờ ‘as for now’26; bằng tính Đức Chúa Trời thì chẳng hay chịu chết ‘as for the divine nature, it cannot undergo death’. Bèn is sometimes used for ‘but’; for example, bèn chữa chúng tôi ‘but deliver us.’ Sometimes it means ‘immediately’ or ‘then’; for example, nói đều ấy đoạn bèn qua đời ‘having said this, he immediately / then passed away.’ Bỡi is sometimes used for ‘because of’; for example, bỡi vì, or vì bỡi ‘due to the cause,’ or ‘because.’ Often, vì is implied; for example, bỡi tôi vô ý ‘because I was careless.’ Sometimes, it means ‘from’; for example, bỡi đâu ‘from which place,’ or ‘where from’; bỡi đó ‘from that place,’ or ‘thence’; bỡi đây ‘from this place,’ or ‘hence.’ Cái is a generic pronoun27 for certain manufactured objects that do not have a specific pronoun; for example, cái nhà ‘house’; cái này ‘this thing.’ In colloquial speech, it can also mean ‘on the contrary,’ or ‘however’ as a contrastive term. However, nouns that have their own specific pronoun require that pronoun before them, not cái; for example, cuốn sách ‘book’; chiếc chiếu ‘mat’; chiếc tàu ‘ship.’ [Cái] sometimes means ‘turn,’ ‘time,’ or ‘that which,’ but only in colloquial speech; for example, tắm một cái ‘to bathe once’ or ‘to wash the body one time’; một cái ‘one strike’ or ‘to hit once’; cái ta sau sống lại, ai mà chẳng tin? ‘but who would not believe that we will be resurrected?’ It is often placed before nouns that are not manufactured objects, functioning almost like a relative pronoun with its noun, especially when the speech conveys some indignation, contempt, or an elevated tone; for example, cái người ‘the person’; cái lời ‘the word’; cái thân tôi ‘my condition.’ However, this pronoun, like other pronouns, can never be omitted when numerical nouns such as một, hai, ba, bốn, etc., precede it. See Một. Càng implies hơn, meaning ‘more’ or ‘increasingly’; for example, đặng làm vậy thì càng báu ‘if it can be so, the more valuable / the better’; sometimes hơn ‘more’ is explicitly stated, as in càng báu hơn [‘more valuable’]. Càng, placed twice before a word or adjective, the former relates to ‘which’, the latter to ‘that’, and the meaning is equivalent. For example: bệnh càng uống thuốc thì càng nặng ‘the stronger the medicine, the more severe the illness becomes.’ Càng phạm tội thì càng xa nước thiên đàng ‘the more one sins, the farther from the kingdom of heaven one is’; hơn twice thus implied is not expressed in the first part, but can be expressed in the second part, although less well as in: càng xa nước thiên đàng hơn. Cha, cha, cha is an interjection expressing indignation or admiration, ‘ah! aha! hey! oh my!’ However, due to such emotions, it is sometimes pronounced as cha chả. Chăng, when placed at the end of a phrase, is used to indicate ‘is it not’, ‘not’, ‘whether’, or ‘if’, as an interrogative, negative, or indefinite; for example, anh có biết nó chăng? ‘Do you, brother, know him or not?’ or ‘or do you recognize him?’ hoặc là Đức Chúa Trời có thương đến ta chăng? ‘perhaps God will have mercy on us?’ phải giữ kẻo mất đi chăng? ‘it must be preserved so that it does not perish.’ Chẳng ‘not’ or ‘certainly not’; for example, chẳng vậy, or nếu chẳng vậy ‘if not so’ or ‘otherwise’; chẳng qua là ‘nothing other than’ or ‘only’; chẳng phải? means ‘is it not?’ or ‘not necessarily,’ ‘not so,’ ‘not essentially,’ or ‘not absolutely.’ Chi, when placed after verbs or nouns, means ‘what,’ ‘which,’ or ‘something’, etc. it is used interrogatively, indefinitely, or relatively, mainly referring to things, rarely to people unless in a contemptuous manner; for example: lo chi ‘what is there [p. xiii] to fear?’; hề chi ‘what does it matter?’; cớ chi ‘for what reason?’; thế chi ‘in what way?’; việc chi ‘what work, what task?’. When [chi] is placed before a verb, it means ‘how,’ or ‘whether’, or ‘not’; for example, chi đặng, ‘how can I,’ ‘is it possible,’ etc. Chi dám, ‘do I dare,’ ‘how do I dare’. Chi sờn, ‘not to lose courage.’ When chẳng or another negative appears at the beginning, and chi is placed at the end of a clause, with a verb inserted in between, both together mean ‘nothing’, the first meaning ‘not at all’, the second meaning ‘anything’; for example, chẳng quản chi, ‘to care about nothing’; Chẳng hề chi, ‘it does not matter’. Không sợ chi, ‘to fear nothing’; phải chi, ‘if only’. Hèn chi, ‘of course,’ or ‘it is no wonder why’; cam hèn chi, (same meaning) or ‘therefore’. Huống chi, ‘even more so,’ or ‘even less so’; phương chi, (same meaning). Chớ chi means ‘if only’. Gì is equivalent to chi and can be used interchangeably, but chi is more formal and slightly more refined, whereas gì is more informal. See Nào. Chí means ‘until’; chí nhẫn ‘all the way to’. Chỉn is a particle sometimes known to scholars, occasionally meaning ‘only,’ sometimes meaning ‘but.’ Chỉn thật means ‘truly’ or ‘certainly’. Chiếc, since it signifies ‘odd’, has come to be used as a pronoun for certain individually considered objects; for example, chiếc đũa ‘a chopstick to eat rice’; chiếc ghe is ‘a boat’; chiếc nệm ‘a mattress’. Cho is sometimes used in place of ‘for,’ as in cầu cho chúng tôi ‘pray for us.’ It is often a marker for the dative case, indicating benefit or detriment, as in Đức Chúa Trời xuống cho thiên hạ nhiều ơn ‘God sends down or pours many blessings into the world.’ The person receiving the benefit or harm is often not explicitly stated, as in Đức Chúa Trời xuống cho nhiều ơn, meaning ‘God grants many blessings to those mentioned before.’ At times, this particle [cho] appears between an active verb and its personal accusative object, as in chôn cho kẻ chết, to mean ‘to bury for the benefit of the dead’; or phán xét cho kẻ sống cùng kẻ chết ‘to judge for the benefit or detriment of the living and the dead.’ It can also indicate a final purpose or an adjunctive clause, as in hầu cho thấy mặt, meaning ‘so that afterward I (you, he/she) may see the face’; or cho đến đỗi, meaning ‘until eternity’. Cho nên, is often misinterpreted as ‘therefore’; Cho nên nỗi ‘the cause is such that’. Cho hay (what happens) ‘so that we/you may know’ etc. Cho kẻo ‘so that it does not….’ Cho đặng or đặng cho, cho được, or được cho ‘so that it is possible’, cho đặng, or cho được, more often mean ‘that I may be able absolutely’especially after verbs of desire, whether expressed or implied, as in muốn giết nó cho đặng ‘he/she wants that he/she may be able to kill him completely. Nó nguyền làm đều ấy cho được ‘he vows to do that so that it can be fully accomplished.’ [Cho] can also indicate concession, as in nói làm vậy cũng cho đi ‘even if you say it like this, let it be so.’ In this usage, cho can be replaced with the verb ‘to allow.’ Sometimes it signifies ‘until,’ marking an endpoint, limit, or even an exhaustive extent, as in giết cho hết, meaning ‘to kill them all’ or ‘to kill everyone, down to the last one’; làm cho cùng việc ‘to complete the task entirely.’ The particle đến is often implied but sometimes explicitly included, as in giết cho đến hết ‘to kill until none remain’; khảo cho đến tội ‘to torture until the guilt justifies it’. When [cho] is placed before an adjective, it transforms it into an adverb, either when it precedes a verb of command or instruction, as in lệnh dạy đánh cho mạnh ‘the king commands to fight / strike strongly’; or when it is placed with a verb in the imperative mood, as in hãy đi cho mau, meaning ‘go quickly’; or with verbs expressing necessity, such as phải ở cho khiêm nhường ‘one must behave humbly’, or with conditional verbs or particles, such as bằng chẳng trở lại cho kíp ‘if he does not return quickly’; ai xưng tội chịu lễ cho nên thì được phép đại xá ‘whoever confesses properly receives plenary indulgence’; or with verbs of desire, as in tôi muốn thức dậy cho sớm ‘I want to wake up early’; or with verbs of request, such as xin chúa phù hộ cho cha đi đàng sá cho bình yên ‘I pray that God protects you father so that you (father) may travel safely’; or with verbs or other prohibitive statements, as in ma quỉ ngăn trở kẻo ta ăn năn tội cho nên ‘the devil prevents us from truly repenting of our sins.’ It often appears with the particle mà or cho to indicate purpose or completion, as in sắm lễ vật mà cưới cho rồi meaning ‘to prepare gifts to absolutely / properly celebrate the wedding ‘; xin Đức mẹ giúp tôi cho xưng tội cho nên ‘I pray that the Holy Mother helps me to properly confess my sins’; or with negative particles, such as chẳng nói cho rõ ‘he does not speak clearly’; or when an interrogative particle follows, as in có học hành cho siêng năng chăng? ‘does he study diligently?’ Sometimes, [cho] is [p. xiv] preceded or followed by another element whose meaning must be interpreted contextually. However, it never transforms it into an adverb when the meaning is indefinite. For example, one does not say chim bay cho mau to mean ‘the bird flies quickly.’ In certain spatial or temporal contexts, cho đến đỗi can mean ‘until the end of time’ or ‘until the last moment.’ Cho hay ‘skillfully, aptly, beautifully’. Cho nên ‘correctly, properly, or legitimately’; (as above.) The verb muốn, meaning ‘to want’ or ‘to desire’; đáng ‘to be worthy’ or ‘to deserve’; định ‘to decide’; liệu or toan ‘to plan’ or ‘to attempt’; làm ‘to do’; and certain other similar words, unless another word immediately follows, always require after them this particle cho and the nominative, especially the personal nominative, must be placed immediately after it; for example, muốn cho người ấy ‘to want that person to...’. If the particle cho is omitted, the sentence would either be highly ambiguous or imply an unfavorable sentiment toward the person; làm cho con cháu mắc tội ‘they caused their descendants to fall into sin.’ Cha định cho anh ‘the father decided that you (are) a brother’. Đáng cho Chúa thưởng ‘worthy to be rewarded by God’. I have said ‘unless’, as in some cases, it is more appropriate to say muốn khỉ ngụy ‘to want to incite a rebellion’; toan làm ‘to plan to do something’; định phải ‘to determine that it must be done.’ Chớ sometimes means ‘but’; for example, tôi nói làm vậy, chớ anh nói làm sao? ‘I think this way, but what do you think, brother?’ Sometimes, it is equivalent to the particle ‘num’28, either in a compound form; for example, chớ ai chẳng thông lẽ ấy? ‘Who does not understand or grasp that reasoning?’; or separately; for example, chớ tôi chẳng thấy? ‘Do I not see?’. When chớ and sao are placed together, the former means ‘but,’ and the latter means ‘why’; for example, chớ sao anh để vợ đi? ‘But why do you, brother, repudiate your wife?’. When placed separately, the first [chớ) also means ‘num’, and the second [sao) means ‘what’ in a compound form; for example, chớ anh chẳng biết sao? ‘Do you not know, brother?’. One of the two words is often implied: for example, chớ anh chẳng biết? or anh chẳng biết sao? Chớ and làm sao, when placed immediately together, also mean ‘but why’; for example, chớ làm sao mà ăn ở làm vậy? ‘but why does he behave this way?’. However, when placed separately, the first chớ means ‘but,’ and the second làm sao means ‘what’ or ‘how’; for example, chớ bây giờ con tính làm sao? ‘but now, my child, what do you plan to do?’. Cha định thể ấy, chớ anh em nói làm sao? ‘The father has decided so, but what do you, brothers, say?’ Sometimes, [chớ] means a prohibitive ‘do not’; for example, chớ khá ‘it must not be’ or ‘it is forbidden’. Chớ hề ‘never’. Mà chớ, when placed at the beginning of a phrase, means ‘and do not’; for example, phải ở khiêm nhượng mà chớ ở hỗn hào ‘you must behave humbly and not arrogantly.’ However, when it is placed at the end of a phrase or sentence, it means ‘certainly’ or ‘definitely’; for example, ai giữ mình thể ấy thì đẹp lòng chúa mà chớ ‘whoever keeps themselves pure will certainly please God.’ It can also indicate alternative ways of speaking; for example, gặp chăng hay chớ ‘if it happens, great; if not, it doesn’t matter.’ Nói cho phải chớ, mà means ‘it can indeed be said this way, but...’ Chốc or Chúc, these particles when placed after a verb, are equivalent to the composite [Latin] particle met; for example, tôi chúc means egomet [‘I myself’]. Chúc, when placed at the end of a phrase, is a particle indicating realization or affirmation from suddenly understanding something; for example, chúc ấy ‘at that very moment’; thoát chúc ‘immediately, instantly’. Chưng, when placed before nouns referring to time or certain things, this particle means ‘in’; for example, chưng ngày ‘in the day’; chưng tay Đức Chúa trời ‘in the hands of God’; chưng thuở, ‘in time.’ Additionally, scholars use it in place of ‘from,’ ‘by,’ ‘for,’ ‘to,’ etc. Có, when placed immediately before verbs, either signifies ‘to be,’ with the following verb equivalent to a participle; for example, có biết means ‘I am, you are, he is to be knowing’; or it can also mean ‘to have,’ and a postposed verb equivalent to a verbal noun derived from it.; for example, có hay means ‘to have knowledge.’ More commonly, it serves as an affirmative particle, opposing the negatives không and chẳng, simply implying an affirmation. Hence, when a question is asked, such as nó có biết chăng? ‘Does he know?’, if the response is negative, one replies không or chẳng, but if affirmative, one simply says có, meaning có biết [‘yes’ or ‘he does’]. In this sense, có is not only placed before verbs but also before nouns or adverbs; for example, có kẻ ‘someone’, ‘a certain person’; có đâu ‘where’, ‘from where.’ Con is a pronoun, either general or specific, of persons taken in a general or particular sense. A general one applies even to human beings as a group, in contrast to animals; for example, con người ta ‘man.’ It can also denote children in relation to all other men; for example, con thơ ‘infant’; con ranh ‘aborted [fetus]’. It also refers to older or somewhat older [persons] [p. xv] (always to be understood as of both sexes and in general) in relation to elders or others of higher status; for example, con nít ‘young children’; con trẻ the same [‘children’]; con trai ‘young man’ or ‘son’; con gái ‘young woman’ or ‘daughter’; con đòi ‘maidservant’; con hát ‘female singer’ and can also refer to singers and performers; con buôn ‘female merchant’, and can also mean ‘merchant’ in general; con tôi or con mọi ‘female servant’; con dâu ‘daughter-in-law.’ the special [form] applies to female infants, girls, or young women in a particular sense, in relation to their equals or superiors; for example, con Nguyệt ‘the daughter named Nguyệt’; con mẹ Nguyệt means ‘the young woman whose mother is called Nguyệt’ or ‘the young woman named Nguyệt.’ In this case, the noun mẹ ‘mother’ is added because she is either already a mother or could become one. Con also serves as a general or specific pronoun for all animals that have sensory perception in contrast to other creatures; for example, con thú ‘quadruped’; con vật ‘beast’; con sâu ‘worm,’ etc. It can also be a general pronoun for certain young plants; for example, con thuốc ‘a young tobacco plant’; con cải ‘young mustard plant ready for transplantation’; con cải rổ ‘a small cabbage sprout’. Additionally, it is used as a general pronoun for certain objects, either animated or resembling the shape of a fish or insect; for example, con mắt ‘eye’; con ngươi ‘pupil’; con dấu ‘seal’ [for stamping); con vác ‘burden’ or ‘load,’ similar to a sword, spear, lance, and other similar objects; con sẻ ‘wooden peg’ inserted between a pillar and a beam; con cờ ‘chess piece [pawn]’;29 con tiện ‘baluster’; con quay means ‘spindle’. Của, when it indicates a thing taken generically, should be placed after the name of the external and possessed object to distinguish it from the natural one; for example, da của tôi ‘animal skins that belong to me’; otherwise, without it, it means ‘my natural skin.’ Cùng, this particle, when placed immediately or mediately after certain verbs, is equivalent to the preposition ‘through’ or with some compound verbs, signifyies ‘throughout’ or ‘entirely’. For example, đi cùng xứ ‘to travel throughout the entire region’; làm chẳng cùng việc ‘not completing the entire task’; when used separately, for example kiếm cùng nhà ‘searching through the entire house,’ where cả và meaning ‘all’ or ‘entire’ is often implied. This can also be explicitly expressed as kiếm cùng cả và nhà, đi cùng cả và xứ [‘searching the whole house’ or ‘traveling through the entire region]. See also khắp. Cùng, when used separately, sometimes signifies ‘end,’ ‘to the end,’ or ‘limit,’ whether of places or things; for example, cùng đàng ‘the end of the roads’. Đi cùng đàng ‘to go to the end of the roads.’ The particle đến, meaning ‘to,’ is implied but can also be explicitly stated, as in đi đến cùng đàng. Cùng, another particle, in this way is equivalent to the particle ‘to’ or is compounded with certain verbs; for example, nói cùng ‘to speak to’; or separately, as in thuật lại cùng thân thích ‘to recount or retell to relatives’; học lại cùng bà con ‘to report to one’s family’. When placed after compound verbs, especially those indicating motion, [cùng] means ‘to’ in a repetitive sense; for example, đi đến cùng thầy ‘to go to the teacher’; chạy đến cùng cha mẹ ‘to run to one’s parents’; kêu đến cùng Chúa ‘to call out to the Lord’; đam đến cùng quan ‘to bring before the magistrates.’ It sometimes means ‘with’ in compound expressions; for example, ngồi cùng ‘to sit with’; ở cùng ‘to dwell together’; or separately, as in đi cùng bằng hữu ‘to go with friends.’ Sometimes, it is used to mean ‘against’; for example, đánh cùng kẻ nghịch ‘to fight against enemies.’ It can also mean ‘toward’; for example, có lòng cùng vua ‘to have loyalty toward the king’ or ‘to be faithful to him.’ It sometimes means ‘at, with’; for example, ở cùng ai? ‘To stay with whom?’; đặng ơn cùng Chúa ‘to find grace with God.’ It can also mean ‘among’; for example, nói thầm thĩ cùng nhau ‘to whisper among themselves,’ where cùng nhau can be understood as ‘mutually among themselves.’ It can also mean ‘from’; for example, xin cùng Chúa ‘to ask from God.’ The meaning of this particle, like many other particles, varies depending on context. For example, cùng tôi, depending on location and context, can mean ‘with me,’ ‘against me,’ ‘at my place,’ or ‘toward me.’ This [particle] is often used without an explicit case, either referring back to something previously expressed or not expresses; for example, Chúa Gi giu tha tội cho một người đạo kiếp phải đóng đinh cùng ‘Lord Jesus, who forgave the sins of a thief who was crucified with you.’ Sometimes, it means ‘also’ or ‘equally,’ especially at the end of a supplication; for example, cho tôi cùng, ‘give it to me also,’ implying something that has been given to others before. Tha tội cho tôi cùng ‘forgive me my sins likewise, as you have forgiven others’. [p. xvi] It can also function as ‘and’ in a coordinating role; for example, Đức Chúa bà Maria cùng ông thánh Giu de ‘Holy Lord and Saint Mary and Saint Joseph.’ In other cases, it can mean ‘whether,’ ‘or,’ or ‘either-or’; for example, gặp cùng chăng? ‘did you meet (him) or not?’; muốn cùng chẳng muốn, thì cũng phải làm ‘whether you want to or not, you must do it.’ Cũng sometimes means ‘likewise,’ ‘also,’ ‘too,’ or ‘equally’; for example, cũng phải tai hại ‘he also fell into misfortune or loss.’ Sometimes, it means ‘as’; for example, cũng như ‘as if’; cũng giống or cũng dường ‘just as.’ Cũng như thể or cũng dường như ‘just as if.’ Cũng giống như has the same meaning. When cũng and một precede a noun, followed by the pronoun ấy or nầy at the end, cũng then means ‘the same’ while một means ‘one,’ and ấy or nầy means ‘that’ or ‘this,’ forming the equivalent of ‘the same’. For example, cũng một lẽ ấy ‘one and the same reason.’ Cũng một người ấy ‘one and the same person’; ấy and nầy differ in that này refers to something present, whereas ấy refers to something distant or past. If the subject is not previously mentioned, then ấy and nầy are omitted: for example, cũng một đạo ‘one and the same religion or law’ or ‘of one and the same religion or law.’ Cũng một nước means ‘one and the same kingdom’ or ‘of one and the same kingdom.’ Cũng, when placed before nữa or vuối but after other words, with some words interposed, means ‘and,’ ‘also’, ‘even,’ while the latter words mean ‘together’ or ‘as well’ and can also mean ‘furthermore.’ For example, vốn thật là Chúa, song khi ra đời cũng thật là người nữa means ‘He is truly God by nature, but when incarnated, he is also truly man,’ or ‘at the same time, truly man.’ When this particle follows a verb, it sometimes takes on a conditional meaning and is equivalent to the imperfect subjunctive in function, meaning ‘indeed’ or ‘certainly.’ For example, tôi cũng muốn ‘I indeed would like’ or ‘I certainly wish’; cũng chịu ‘I would endure’ or ‘I certainly would bear it.’ Dầu sometimes means ‘although,’ ‘even if,’ ‘just as.’ Dầu mà, dầu cho [can be used as follows]: dầu Chúa để tôi khó khăn hèn hạ, thì tôi cũng làm tôi tá Chúa ‘although you, God, allow me to be poor and lowly, I will still serve you, Lord.’ Dầu cho em làm sự chẳng lành, thì anh cũng chẳng chấp ‘even if you, my brother, do something bad, I will not hold it against you.’ Sometimes, dầu means ‘whether’; for example, dầu muốn dầu chẳng ‘whether he wants to or not.’ Other times, it means ‘if’; for example, ví dầu Chúa chẳng giúp ‘if God does not help.’ It can also mean ‘according to’ or ‘by’; for example, dầu lòng ‘according to one’s will, desire, or choice.’ Mặc dầu, same meaning. When dầu or dầu mà appears at the beginning of a clause and mặc lòng is placed at the end, then the latter means ‘still’ or ‘even so,’ while the former at the beginning means ‘if’ in a compounded form.’ For example, dầu mà phải chết mặc lòng ‘even if I must die, I will still do it.’ Dẫu, ‘although’, dẫu mà, same meaning. Dễ sometimes means ‘easy’; sometimes, ironically, it means ‘difficult’, ‘harsh’; sometimes, it means ‘whether’ or ‘if,’ for example: dễ đâu Chúa chẳng biết? ‘does God not know?’ When used in this interrogative sense, it conveys a tone of great humility and gentleness from the speaker; whereas chớ expresses emphasis or harshness. Dĩ, ‘all the way to’, is of Chinese origin, always used with Chinese compounds, for example, dĩ hạ ‘all the way down’ or ‘all the way to every single one.’30 Do sometimes means ‘cause’, for example, do nào, ‘for what reason?’ do hà, the same. Sometimes it means ‘since’; for example, do năm nay có lệnh vua truyền ‘since this year the king’s edict has been issued.’ Dối in a way means ‘false’; as in nói dối ‘to speak falsely’ or ‘to lie.’ Sometimes it means ‘perfunctory,’ as in làm dối ‘to act perfunctorily.’ Dưới sometimes means ‘under’ or ‘beneath,’ as in dưới trời, meaning ‘under the sky’; sometimes it means ‘in,’ specifically in a lower place, as in dưới thế ‘in the world,’ or dưới đời, the same. It is said in relation to the sky, which is positioned above, and is also expressed as trên đời, with the same meaning, relative to the underworld, which is positioned below. It is also said as trong đời, meaning the same, relative to both. See Xuống. Dường sometimes means ‘as if,’ ‘like,’ ‘similar to,’ or ‘just as’; for example, dường con nít means ‘like a child’, ‘similar to a child.’ Dường như ‘just as if.’ Cũng dường bằng, ‘just as if.’ Sometimes it refers to manner, quantity, or similarity, as in dường nào, meaning ‘in what manner,’ ‘in what way,’ ‘of what quality,’ or ‘how.’ Dường ba, means the same. Dường nầy ‘in this way.’ Có dường ‘there is a way in things’. Ví dường ‘in likeness to’ or ‘in the manner of.’ Sánh dường, the same. Đà or đã sometimes functions as a particle indicating past tense, equivalent to ‘already’; for example, đã chết means ‘already dead.’ Đã rồi means ‘already finished’ or ‘completely done, perfectly completed.’ Sometimes it means ‘before’ or ‘first’; for example, để cho tôi nói đã, ‘allow me to speak first.’ Khoan đã means ‘wait first’. Sometimes [p. xvii] rồi is used instead, and when paired with another verb corresponding to the action being discussed, đà or đã may be omitted; for example, rồi hoánh đi is used instead of đã rồi hoánh đi, meaning ‘the task is completely finished.’ Anh rồi chưa? for anh đã làm rồi chưa? ‘Have you brother already finished the work or not?’ cùng chẳng đã, or việc cùng chẳng đã or sự cùng chẳng đã, ‘the matter has come to extremes, which can neither be left as it is, nor changed in any other way.’ Đây sometimes means ‘this place’, or ‘here’; for example, ở đây ‘in this place,’ or ‘from this place,’ or ‘to be here, to stay here.’ Đến đây ‘up to this place.’ Cho đến đây ‘up to this point’; từ đây ‘from this place’; bỡi đây ‘from this place’31 or ‘hence.’ However, it is not used in bỡi đây cho nên for ‘hence it follows that’; instead, bỡi đó cho nên is used, meaning ‘it follows from this that….’ Sometimes đây means ‘there’ or ‘to that place’; for example, qua đây, ‘to pass through here’; đến đây or better lại đây, ‘to come here.’ Đấy sometimes means ‘there,’ ‘to that place,’ or ‘that place.’ However, because this word also means ‘to urinate,’ it is more appropriate to use the particle đó, which has the same meaning. Those who use đấy in this context are considered unrefined. Đang, ‘in the act of.’ For example, đang khi ‘in the act of’. Đang khi ấy ‘meanwhile’, ‘at that time’. Đàng, ‘towards’ or ‘in the direction of’.32 For example, đàng đầu ‘towards the front’; đàng đuôi ‘towards the back’; đàng trên ‘towards the top’; đàng dưới ‘towards the bottom’; đàng trong means ‘towards the interior’, often referring to Cochinchina, which is considered the interior region compared to Tonkin. Conversely, đàng ngoài ‘towards the exterior’ or Tonkin, which is considered the exterior region compared to Cochinchina; đàng nhà thờ ‘towards the part where the temple is.’ In most cases, the particle về, meaning ‘towards’ or ‘to’, is implied but sometimes explicitly stated, such as in về đàng nhà thờ. Đặng, since this verb means ‘to obtain’ or ‘to achieve,’ when it is placed after certain verbs, it either means the result or end of something that has been brought about, which is indicated by the preceding verbs. For example, ma quỷ cám dỗ đặng ta’ the devil tempted us with effect,’ or ‘the temptation was successful.’ Đánh đặng ‘to have been able to fight,’ or ‘to have able to obtain a victory.’ Xin đặng ‘to request and obtain’ or ‘to succeed in a petition.’ It can also signify signifies an action that is later heard, known, etc., which, while it was taking place, was not seen, heard, or known, such as hay đặng or biết đặng ‘to realize’. Thấy đặng ‘to see something that was not seen while it was taking place’. Nghe đặng ‘to hear something only after it has been said’ or ‘to understand something not initially comprehended.’ This verb also conveys the meaning of ‘to be able to’ and is often placed after other verbs, for example, làm đặng, meaning ‘to be able to do.’ However, sometimes is placed before, either preceded by the particle cho or another word, such as cho đặng ở cùng nhau ‘so that they can live together.’ The particle ‘cho’ is often placed before, indeed even before its own nominative, for example, xin mẹ giữ nhà đặng cho tôi đi chợ ‘I ask you mother to take care of the house so that I can go to the square.’ It can also be stated without cho, as in xin mẹ giữ nhà đặng tôi đi chợ, meaning to be able to do something despite some external impediment; hôm nay tôi đặng đi chơi ‘today I can go out to play,’ implying that no external factors are preventing it. Đặng and được have the same meaning and can be used interchangeably. Đâu sometimes means ‘where,’ ‘in what place,’ ‘somewhere,’ or ‘from where.’ For example, ở đâu ‘where to be,’ ‘where to stay,’ ‘to be somewhere,’ ‘to stay somewhere,’ ‘in which place,’ ‘from which place,’ or ‘from where’; bỡi đâu ‘from which place or from where,’ as in bỡi đâu mà đến ‘Where do you come from?’. Sometimes bỡi is understood: for example, hay đâu ‘how could one know, or how could one guess?’; bỡi đó, chẳng phải bỡi đâu ‘from that thing, but not from anywhere else’. Sometimes [đâu means] ‘where’ or ‘which way.’ For example, đi đâu means ‘where to go’; đi qua đâu or đi ngang qua đâu ‘which way to pass through.’ It can also mean ‘why,’ ‘how,’ or ‘whether,’ as in tôi có chịu đâu ‘would I endure?’ or đâu dám meaning ‘how dare I?’ or ‘who dares?’ Additionally, when it is used to mean ‘where,’ ‘which,’ ‘how,’ ‘whether,’ or ‘from where’ at the end of an interrogative clause, it is properly placed; however, when it is found at the end of a negative sentence in certain books, it is incorrectly positioned. Good authors never place [đâu] in this way, especially when the negative word is distant from it. Có đâu at the beginning of a clause is equivalent to ‘perhaps,’ whereas when chăng is placed at the end, đâu means ‘whether.’ For example, có đâu nó gạt tao chăng ‘could it be that he deceived me?’ However, when used alone without chăng, it sometimes means ‘why,’ ‘where,’ or ‘from where.’ See Có. Đâu đâu ‘everywhere’; đâu đó ‘anywhere’. Đến sometimes means ‘to,’ indicating time or an endpoint. For example, đến ngày tận thế ‘until the day of the end of the world’; cho đến hết đời ‘until the end of life’; đến năm sau ‘until the next year’. Cho đến [p. xviii] chết ‘until death’; đến khi ‘until the time when.’ Đến sau ‘to a future time’ or ‘later’. Từ sáng mai đến tối ‘from early morning until night.’ Sometimes, [đến] means ‘on the matter,’ ‘to the point,’ or (if I may say so) ‘directly or immediately to the issue.’ For example, hề chi đến việc ấy? ‘what does that have to do with the matter?’; tưởng đến lòng lành Đức Chúa trời ‘thinking directly of God’s mercy’. Suy đến hình khổ kẻ có tội ‘considering directly the punishment of sinners’. Nói đến or nhắc đến ‘making mention of something directly.’ Sometimes, it means ‘to a person’ or ‘directly to someone.’ For example, Đức Chúa bà đoái đến kẻ có tội ‘the Blessed Mother of God looks upon sinners’. Nhớ đến Chúa ‘to remember directly to God’; thương đến tôi ‘to love me directly.’ In all these examples, it acts as a marker indicating an action directed towards things or people. Sometimes, [đến] means ‘to a place’ and can be used alone, as in đến đây ‘to this place’ or ‘up to here,’ and đến đó ‘to that place’ or ‘up to there.’ When combined with verbs indicating movement, it is not only equal to the preposition ‘to’ but also to ‘through.’ For example, đam đến or đem đến ‘to bring, to lead, to carry, to convey ‘; dắc đến ‘to guide by hand’, ‘to lead by hand’; kêu đến ‘to draw towards’; kêu đến means ‘to call upon’ or ‘to appeal to a higher authority,’ as in kêu đến Chúa ‘to cry out to the Lord’; đá đến ‘to reach, to arrive’; vói đến the same, it refers to something suspended above. Chạy đến or ‘to rush on foot’; chảy đến ‘for liquid to flow to’ or ‘to arrive’. Bay đến ‘to fly to’; đi đến ‘to go to’ or ‘to arrive at.’ Often, the verb đi meaning ‘to go’ is implied, such as in đến đây ‘to reach here’ or đến đó ‘to reach there.’ Chúa đến viếng ta ‘God comes to visit us.’ Some of these compound verbs often have an additional phrase following them, marked by the particle cùng which means ‘to’ and reinforces repetition. For example, chạy đến cùng thầy ‘to run to the teacher’; đam con đến cùng tôi ‘to bring his son to me.’ This particle, like certain others, is often used without specifying the case or is inferred from context. Đều ‘similarly,’ ‘equally,’ or ‘uniformly.’ For example, chia chẳng đều ‘to divide unevenly’; hai người đều đi cùng nhau ‘two people or both individuals go together’. Hết thảy thảy đều phải chết ‘all without exception must die equally.’ Đi, this particle is placed after words or their nominal elements, and either means ‘without any hindrance’; for example, hủy đi ‘to shake off without obstruction’ or it can signify a transition from a better to a worse state; for instance, thúi đi ‘to rot’; mục đi ‘to decay’; chết đi ‘to die,’ and hư đi ‘to be corrupted’, or [for] a thing [to go] from being to non-being.: as in biến đi ‘to disappear’; phai đi ‘to fade’, in terms of color or passion; lặn đi ‘to submerge’, as the sun or pimples on the skin. Additionally, it can indicate an action being performed without hesitation; for example, đọc đi ‘to read fluently or recite without hesitation.’ It can also signify movement from one place to another, particularly after verbs that indicate motion; for example, trẩy đi ‘to depart,’ bước đi ‘to walk,’ chèo đi ‘to row away,’ chạy đi ‘to run,’ and trốn đi ‘to flee.’ Furthermore, it can function similarly to particles ‘from’, ‘away from’, or ‘out of’ in composition, as in bỏ đi ‘to abandon’; chối đi ‘to deny’; giấu đi ‘to hide,’ khuất đi ‘to disappear, ‘to be covered by an object’; khuất đi ‘not to notice due to many preoccupations’; chém đi ‘to cut off’ and đem đi ‘to take away.’ In some contexts, đi can mean ‘without resistance’ or ‘absolutely’; for instance, chịu lì đi ‘to endure without resistance, absolutely accept without struggle.’ The particles đi gì or đi chi ‘what matter?’ differ in that đi gì is more colloquial and commonly used with làm vậy or làm vầy meaning ‘like this’, whereas đi chi is more formal and is often paired with mần rứa or mần ri, which also means ‘like this’ (in some regions, though in others mần rứa and mần ri are not considered formal). Gì and chi, đi gì or đi chi differ from each other in this way: all of these can be combined with active verbs or verbs taken in an active sense, but đi gì or đi chi can also be used with substantive verbs equivalent to ‘to be’ or ‘to become.’ ‘Gì’ and ‘chi’, however, cannot stand without a noun or some expressed pronoun. Hence it is correct to say: làm gì, làm chi ‘what to do?’, nói đi gì, nói đi chi ‘what are you saying?’; however, it is incorrect to say: là chi, là gì alone; instead ‘one must say’ là đi chi or là đi gì; use là sự chi, là cái chi, là cái gì ‘what thing is it?’. Arrogant people say this, but wrongly so: tên mi là chi? for ‘what is your name?’ A better way to say it is tên con là tên gì? or tên con là thằng gì? when speaking to boys; for girls, tên con là con gì?; for men, tên ông là ông gì?; and for women, tên bà là bà gì? Đi and lại, when used separately—each following the same verb—indicate repetition and make the verb iterative. For example, nói đi nói lại ‘to say something repeatedly’ or ‘to keep repeating’; làm đi làm lại ‘to do something again and again’ or ‘to keep doing it.’ [p. xix]. However, when [đi and lại] are placed together, they can either mean ‘to go and return’ (see Lại) or ‘whatever happens’, ‘however things are.’ For example, đi lại cũng chẳng khỏi vạ ‘whatever happens, the punishment cannot be avoided’ or ‘to reposition a piece that was poorly placed during a game of latrunculi’. [Additionally], đi đi lại lại [mean] ‘to frequent some place’ or ‘to keep going back and forth.’ Đó sometimes means ‘there’ or ‘in that place,’ as in ở đó ‘to be or stay there’. Qua đó ‘to pass through there’; đến đó ‘to return there.’ Sometimes, it refers to ‘that place’ or ‘that thing,’ as in bỡi đó, ‘because of that’ or ‘from that place’ or ‘from there’. Bỡi đó cho nên ‘therefore it happens that’; từ đó ‘from that place’. At times, it functions as ‘he, she, it’, as in đuôi con voi đó, chớ chẳng phải con voi ‘that is the elephant’s tail, but it is not the elephant itself.’ Sometimes (but rarely), it is used to mean ‘you’ [plural], just as đây can be used to mean ‘I’ or ‘we’ in a context of disagreement or indignation. For example, đây đó xa nhau ‘I and you’ or ‘we and you are distant from each other’ or ‘we are separated.’ Đó is often used alone to mean ‘that/those’, with an implied verb, as in đó đã for để đó đã ‘leave it, save it etc. there for now’; đâu đó ‘everywhere’ or ‘anywhere.’ Đoạn, when placed after a verb or its nominal element, either means ‘after’ or turns the verb into a verbal noun equivalent to an absolute ablative. For example, nói đều ấy đoạn ‘after speaking those words’ or ‘those words having been spoken.’ When positioned at the beginning of the second clause, it means ‘thereafter,’ as in chồng chết đoạn nó mới trở về quê quán ‘after her husband died, then she finally returned to her homeland.’ Sometimes it is taken to mean ‘article’, or ‘point in time’, or ‘thing/matter’, as in đoạn thầy ở dưới bàn thờ ‘at the moment when the priest is below the altar.’ Đoạn sách ‘a section’ or ‘a chapter of a book’. Đòi is used to mean ‘each,’ ‘every,’ or ‘all,’ referring to time, place, days, or occurrences. For example, đòi nơi ‘everywhere’ or ‘in all places’; đòi phương ‘all over the world’; đòi khi ‘at all times’. Đòi ngày ‘every day’; đòi lần ‘each time’; đòi phen same meaning. Đơm is a particle that, when placed after certain verbs or their nominal elements, signifies ‘on,’ ‘to the side of,’ ‘to the surface of something,’ ‘into one,’ or ‘nearby.’ It is equivalent to ‘on’ or ‘to’ when combined with certain verbs. For example, thêm đơm ‘to add on’; nối đơm ‘to attach’; đặt đơm ‘to place’; để đơm, the same; dính đơm ‘to adhere’. Often, when the verb đặt or để is omitted, [đơm] alone implies ‘to place on’. For example, đơm cơm ‘to serve rice onto plates’. or ‘to fill bowls with rice,’ where the understood [verb] is never explicitly stated. Đồng sometimes means ‘together’, as in đồng đi cùng nhau ‘they go together.’ Sometimes it means ‘equal’ or ‘equally,’ as in phân chẳng đồng phần ‘to divide into unequal portions’. Chia chẳng đồng ‘to divide unequally.’ It can also function similarly to ‘the same’, and in this sense, it is both Chinese and Annamese. In Chinese, it combines with purely Chinese words: đồng bào ‘of the same womb’ (uterine siblings); đồng liêu ‘of the same dwelling’ (inhabitants); đồng tình means ‘of the same sentiment’, ‘of the same mind’ (like-minded individuals).33 In such cases, the omitted particle diệc, which requires the particle dem as a suffix, is often implied and sometimes explicitly stated, as in diệc đồng như thể ‘one and the same substance, quality, or mode of a single identical entity.’ In native Annamese usage, đồng is used in the same way and with the same meaning: đồng long ‘same mind’ or ‘same heart’; đồng tình (as mentioned above); đồng đạo ‘of the same sect’ or ‘of the same legion.’ In these cases, the omitted particle cũng, equivalent to dem, is often understood and sometimes explicitly stated, as in cũng đồng tình cùng nhau ‘they share the same sentiment together’. Cũng đồng một đạo cùng nhau ‘they belong to the same religion or order together.’ Đổng, ‘presumptuously’, ‘with reckless audacity.’ Đứa, is used as a pronoun for children, servants, or those of lower status. Đừng, ‘do not/must not’, is a prohibitive particle. Được, equivalent to đặng, see Đặng. E, ‘do not’ or sometimes ‘for fear that’. È, is an interjection expressing a warning. Gì, is equivalent to chi, see Chi and Nào. Há, ‘how?’, ‘in what manner?’, for example, há dám ‘how dare you?’; há là ‘what is it?; há rằng the same or ‘can it be said what [it is], or how it can be said?’, há là chăng? ‘how could it not be?’. [p. xx] Hà, used as who, which, what in relative, interrogative, or indefinite contexts, since it is of Chinese origin, it is always placed with Chinese nouns. Examples: do hà ‘for what reason?’, hà sự ‘what matter?’, hà huống ‘how much more, how much less’.34 Hãi, when placed before a verb, it forms the imperative mood. Examples: hãi ở cho bình yên ‘stay in peace, remain peacefully’. Sometimes it means ‘still, yet’: hãi còn ‘still survive, still remain, still continue’. However, hãy is preferred over hãi, and hãy còn is preferable to hãi còn, as some write. Hầu, sometimes means almost, nearly, about to. Examples: hầu chết ‘bout to die’, hầu trẩy ‘bout to depart’, hầu hết ‘nearing the end, almost finished’. Sometimes it means ‘afterward, later’. Examples: hầu cho thấy mặt Chúa ‘so that we may later see the face of the Lord’, tôi hầu biết lấy đi gì mà trả ơn nghĩa Chúa tôi ‘I do not yet know what I will later receive to repay the grace of my Lord’. In such cases and others, when used in a doubtful sense, it functions as a suspensive particle. Hay has various meanings depending on the context or the preceding verb or noun, similar to the Latin adjective Bonus [‘good’]. For example, viết hay ‘to write beautifully’; chạy hay ‘to run quickly’; bắn hay ‘to explode or to shoot skillfully’; vẽ hay ‘to paint elegantly’; giảng hay ‘to preach well’ or ‘to deliver an eloquent or learned speech’; thầy hay ‘a skilled doctor’ or ‘a learned teacher’; thuốc hay ‘an effective medicine.’ When placed before a verb or noun, hay can mean ‘to know’ or ‘to be skilled at,’ and the following verb functions as a noun. For example, hay vẽ ‘to be skilled in painting’ or ‘to be an expert in the art of painting’; hay chữ ‘to be literate’ or ‘to be knowledgeable in literature’; hay thuốc ‘to be skilled in medicine’ or ‘to know the art of healing.’ Sometimes, hay can mean ‘prone to,’ ‘inclined to,’ ‘easily affected by,’ ‘habitually doing,’ ‘accustomed to,’ or ‘prompt to do something,’ which can have both positive and negative connotations. For example, Đức Chúa Trời hay thương xót kẻ có tội ‘God is merciful to sinners’; hay chơi ác cờ bạc ‘addicted to gambling’; hay kính mến Đức Chúa Trời ‘devoted to the love of God.’ Since in these contexts it describes habitual tendencies, it often corresponds to Latin adjectives ending in -ax, -alis, -elis, -ilis, or -undus. For example, hay nói ‘talkative’; hay nói dối ‘deceitful’; hay ăn ‘gluttonous’; hay uống ‘prone to drinking’; hay giận ‘quick-tempered’; hay khoe ‘boastful’; hay phá phách ‘troublesome’; hay khóc ‘prone to crying’; hay chết ‘mortal.’ Sometimes, it means ‘often’ or ‘frequently,’ as in nó hay đến đây ‘he frequently comes here’ or ‘he is accustomed to coming here’. When placed immediately after chẳng, không, or another negative particle, [hay] can correspond to the prefixes in- or im-, or to the syllables -alis, -elis, -ilis in Latin. For example, chẳng hay mất ‘imperishable’; chẳng hay chịu chết ‘not subceptible to death’; chẳng hay chết ‘immortal.’ In some cases, the additional word đặng is added after these negative constructions, with the same meaning as hay, for emphasis. For example, chẳng hay mất đặng or không hay chết đặng etc. still mean ‘imperishable’ or ‘immortal.’ The word đặng is somewhat redundant but adds emphasis to the impossibility of the described action không hay chết đặng etc. Hay or hay là can mean ‘or’ or ‘whether.’ This meaning is often implied [in questions]. For example, có không? ‘is it so or not?’ or ‘yes or no?’; rồi chưa? ‘have you finished or not?’ This can also be explicitly stated as có hay là không? or rồi chưa hay là chăng? Hãy, ‘still, yet’, imperative marker. See hãi. Hẳn, ‘to be certain, to be sure’; hẳn thật ‘absolutely certain.’ Hằng sometimes means ‘always,’ for example, tôi hằng sợ hãi ‘I always fear and tremble.’ Often, it is followed by the particle liên, which means ‘without interruption,’ as in Chúa hằng gìn giữ ta liên meaning ‘God always protects us without interruption.’ It should be noted that in this way of speaking, as in many other similar expressions, there is often redundancy, which we should adapt to according to the well-known saying: ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ Sometimes, it means ‘each’ or ‘every’ and is placed before time-related nouns. For example, xin rày hằng ngày dùng đủ ‘we now ask for enough daily sustenance,’ or ‘give us our daily bread’; hằng năm ‘each year’. After these time-related nouns, [hằng] is sometimes repeated and means ‘always,’ ‘continuously,’ or ‘without interruption,’ as in hằng năm, hằng xưng tội ‘every year, one confesses sacramentally without interruption’; hằng hằng ‘eternally’; hằng lề ‘frequently’ or ‘ordinarily.’ Hoặc or hoặc là, sometimes means ‘perhaps, maybe’: hoặc lần này tôi phải chết ‘perhaps this time I must die’. [p. xxi]. Sometimes, at the end of a phrase, it has the accompanying particle chăng, meaning ‘perhaps’, but this is less commonly used. For example: hoặc là phen nầy tôi đặng khỏe mạnh chăng ‘perhaps this time I will regain my health’. Sometimes it is used as ‘or, either... or’. For example: hoặc kẻ giàu hoặc kẻ khó, sao vậy cũng phải chết ‘whether rich or poor, they must all die’; hoặc tôi hoặc anh, ‘either I or you’. Hè, ‘come on,’ ‘go ahead,’ ‘let’s do it.’ Hẽ is an interjection expressing compassion, sorrow, or impatience. For example, thương hẽ! ‘how pitiable!’ or ‘how lamentable!’; khốn hẽ! ‘oh, wretched one!’ or ‘how miserable!’ These expressions differ in nuance: thương hẽ is usually used actively by common people; khốn hẽ is passive, expressing suffering or distress; tiếc hẽ ‘what a loss!’ or ‘how regrettable!’ is used actively to express sorrow over a loss or regret. Hề, ‘ever’, it is always used in prohibitive, negative, or interrogative contexts. For example: chớ hề ‘never’ [in a prohibitive sense]; mựa hề, same meaning; chẳng hề ‘never’; chưa hề ‘never before’; chi hề ‘by no means’; nào hề ‘in no way’. The first two are correctly used for future contexts, while the last four are better suited for past situations. Chi hề and nào hề can also mean ‘what does it matter?’, hề chi đó ‘what difference does it make?’. Hễ, or hễ là, placed before a noun is equivalent to ‘whenever’ or ‘whosoever’ when combined with certain words. For example, hễ là mấy lần ‘however many times’; hễ mấy lần, or hễ bao nhiêu lần, or hễ là bao nhiêu lần, same meaning, hễ ai ‘whoever’, ‘whosoever.’ Hễ or hễ là mean ‘insofar as,’ ‘to the extent that,’ or ‘because of’. For example, hễ là đấng làm người thì phải ‘as long as one is a human being, one must act accordingly’ or ‘to the extent that one is human, one must act consequently.’ When hễ or hễ là is used together with nào, gì, or chi, with certain words in between, the first part functions as ‘whatever’, while nào, gì, or chi mean ‘which,’ ‘what,’ or ‘whichever.’ For example, hễ người nào ‘whichever person’ or ‘whoever’; hễ vật nào ‘whichever thing’; hễ sự gì ‘whichever issue’; hễ lần nào ‘at any time’; hễ là khi nào ‘whenever’ or ‘at whatever time.’ See Nào. Hèn chi or hèn gì, kham hèn chi or kham hèn gì ‘no wonder,’ ‘hence,’ ‘which is why,’ or ‘what’s surprising about it.’ For example, kham hèn chi mà chẳng bỏ nhau ‘no wonder they don’t tolerate each other’; hèn chi mà chết sớm ‘no wonder he died early’. Hiếm means ‘rare’ or ‘infrequent’. Hiếm lắm ‘very rare’. Ironically, it can also mean ‘a lot’ or ‘frequent,’ for example, hiếm lắm ‘very often’, ‘plentiful’. Through another layer of irony, it can return to its original meaning, which depends on the speaker’s tone and manner. Hiếm chi ‘not rare at all’. Họa ‘perhaps’, for example, ngộ họa ‘perhaps by chance’. When placed at the end of a phrase, it signifies ‘a fortuitous case’ or ‘by accident,’ as in đặng làm vậy, thì là họa ‘if it happens like that, then it is by accident’ or ‘it is a fortuitous case’. Hơn ‘more’, as in hơn là ‘more than’ or ‘rather than.’ When placed after an adjective, it forms the comparative degree: trắng hơn ‘whiter.’ Sút hơn, ‘lower’ or ‘less’; kém hơn, same meaning. Sút hơn là or kém hơn là ‘less than.’ Sometimes là is omitted: for example, con giàu hơn cha ‘the son is richer than the father’; hơn nữa is a superlative marker when it follows an adjective, and that adjective is either positive or comparative, it is necessary; for example: người nầy mạnh, người kia mạnh hơn, anh lại mạnh hơn nữa ‘this person is strong, the other is stronger, but you are the strongest.’ A major grammatical mistake occurs when hơn nữa is used without a preceding positive or comparative form, whether to mean ‘more and more’ or in any other sense. Hòng differs in no way from hầu, except that it is not used as a particle of suspension or doubt like hầu. Huống, ‘much more’ or ‘much less’, is never used alone but always with other words. For example, huống chi, huống chi là, huống gì, huống gì là, huống lựa, huống lựa là ‘how much more’ or ‘how much less’. Chúa chúng ta còn phải chết, huống chi là ta ‘Our Lord had to die, how much more should we (die, or accept death).’ Thuốc hay chưa cũng chẳng đặng, huống chi thuốc mất ‘even effective medicine might not heal, how much less ineffective medicine.’ In Latin phrases where the particle nedum [‘much less] appears, it is translated in Vietnamese using huống chi, huống lựa, etc. The difference is that in Latin it negative or affirmative, while in Vietnamese, [p. xxii] it is interrogative. For example: Một đồng tiền sứt, tôi cũng chẳng cho, huống lựa là mười tấm bạc ‘I wouldn’t even give a single broken coin, much less ten patacas’, or ‘even more ten patacas.’ It can also be expressed as hà huống chi, hà huống chi là, hà huống gì, or hà huống gì là, all having the same meaning. Kẻ sometimes means ‘person’, with nào ‘who, which’ implied. For example: kẻ nói làm vậy ‘the person who speaks like that’. Sometimes, nào is explicitly stated: kẻ nào nói làm vậy ‘whoever says that’. It can also mean ‘some’ when referring to people. For example, kẻ thì muốn ở, kẻ thì muốn đi ‘some want to stay, some want to go.’ In this sense, it is often preceded by the affirmative particle có: for example, xưa có kẻ hỏi Đức Chúa Gi giu rằng ‘In the past, a certain person asked the Lord Jesus, saying.’ Dầu kẻ in colloquial speech, when placed at the end of a phrase, means ‘at least’ or ‘at the very least,’ or it can function as an optative particle expressing a wish or desire. Kề sometimes functions as a preposition meaning ‘near’ or ‘close to’ and is used in combination with certain verbs. For example: nằm kề ‘to lie adjacent to’; đứng kề ‘to stand next to’; ngồi kề ‘to sit beside.’ It can also be used separately, as in ở kề ‘to stay close to’ or ‘to be near.’ Kém is always used to mean ‘inferior’ or ‘less,’ with the comparative marker hơn often implied and sometimes explicitly stated. For example: của nầy kém hơn của kia ‘this item is of lower quality or less valuable than that one.’ Kẻo means ‘lest’ or ‘so that not,’ functioning as a conjunction. For example, Chúa cứu lấy ta, kẻo ta phải sa địa ngục ‘God saves us so that we do not fall into hell.’ It is often followed by the particle mà or preceded by cho, both of which mean ‘so that not’: hãy uống thuốc kẻo mà phải chết ‘drink the medicine so that you do not die.’ Chúa chuộc lấy ta cho kẻo lầm sa hỏa hình địa ngục ‘God redeems us so that we do not go astray and fall into the torments of hell.’ Chi kẻo ‘why not’ or ‘why,’ but because it is somewhat ambiguous, it is often followed by a negation particle like chẳng or another clarifying word. For example: ai lỗi phép nầy, chi kẻo quan chẳng bắt? ‘Who breaks this law, why does the magistrate not arrest them?’ Alternatively, chi kẻo can simply mean ‘why’: ai đi cầu lắt léo chi kẻo khỏi té xuống sông? ‘Who crosses a rickety bridge, why do they not fall into the river?’ Khá when placed after a verb means ‘sufficiently,’ ‘well enough,’ or ‘quite a lot.’ For example, biết khá ‘knows sufficiently,’ ‘understands well enough.’ When placed before a verb, it means ‘necessary,’ ‘must,’ or turns the verb into a gerund or participle equivalent to ‘-ing’ or ‘-able’ in English. For example, khá làm ‘must do’ or ‘needs to be done’; khá nói ‘must say’ or ‘needs to be said.’ Sometimes, [khá] means ‘permissible’ or ‘allowed,’ especially when combined with a negation or prohibition particles. For example, mựa khá ‘let it not be allowed’; chớ khá ‘do not let it be allowed’; chẳng khá ‘not allowed.’ Khắp, when placed after verbs indicating movement, means ‘through places’ and is equivalent to the preposition ‘through’ or is compounded with certain verbs. For example, đi khắp bầu thế giái ‘travel throughout the entire world’; chạy khắp xứ ‘run through all regions.’ When used separately, without indicating movement, [it means ‘everywhere’], for example, ở khắp nơi ‘to be everywhere’, or ‘in all places’; kiếm khắp nơi ‘search everywhere’ or ‘search in all places.’ In these cases, [khắp] is often followed by cả và, meaning ‘entire, whole,’ or mọi, meaning ‘all,’ or các, meaning ‘various’ or ‘remaining,’ which are sometimes omitted but often explicitly stated. For example, đi khắp cả và thế giái ‘travel throughout the entire world’; ở khắp mọi nơi ‘to be everywhere’. Sometimes, it is placed before things or people, indicating an exception, with the aforementioned words understood but not explicitly stated. However, it is never followed by them explicitly. For example, tôi hỏi khắp mặt, mà chẳng ai nói lại ‘I questioned all and each individual person, but no one responded.’ Furthermore, this differs from the particle cùng in that cùng is commonly used with the singular number, and thus is often followed by cả và, explicitly or implicitly stated, as it is taken only in the singular. For example, kiếm cùng nhà or kiếm cùng cả và nhà ‘search the entire house.’ On the other hand, [khắp] is used with plural nouns or singular nouns that imply plurality and is followed by các, mọi, or cả và, explicitly or implicitly. For example, kiếm khắp mọi nơi ‘search everywhere’, đi khắp cả và bầu thế giái ‘travel throughout the entire world’. Although cùng is generally used with singular [nouns], it is sometimes used with plural, but not without các or mọi, etc. expressed. Khi sometimes means ‘while’ or ‘when’; for example, đang khi ‘while in action’; cho đến khi ‘until.’ Khi tôi mới đi đàng phước đức ‘when I had just embarked on the path of virtue.’ Sometimes, it is equivalent to the conjunction ‘than’ in comparisons; for example, trước khi ‘before’; sau khi ‘after.’ It can also mean ‘time,’ as in khi đói khát ‘at the time of hunger and thirst.’ Có khi ‘sometimes’ or ‘occasionally’ but is sometimes used abusively to mean ‘perhaps,’ especially when repeated or combined with a negative like chăng or không: for example, có khi có, có khi không ‘perhaps yes, perhaps no’; khi đắng cơm nghẹn nước ‘in the time of bitter rice and water that sticks in the throat’ or ‘in a time of distress or illness’; đang khi ấy or đương khi ấy ‘meanwhile’ or ‘during that time’; một khi ấy ‘at one and the same time’ or ‘instantly’; often accompanied by cũng and equivalent to dem compounded, [p. xxiii], meaning ‘often’; for example, cũng một khi ấy ‘at one and the same time as well’; đến khi ‘when the time comes’ or ‘when’; khi nãy ‘recently past time’ or ‘just a moment ago’; khi đầu ‘initially’ or ‘at the beginning’; khi trước ‘previously’ or ‘before’; khi sau ‘later’ or ‘afterward.’ After khi, the word nào, meaning ‘which’ or ‘what time,’ is often omitted; for example, khi tôi phạm tội ‘at the time when I sinned.’ When nào is explicitly stated, it becomes: khi nào tôi phạm tội [‘when I sinned’]. Khiến, as a final or adjunctive particle, is obscurely known even to the learned and is scarcely used, except when explaining a certain Chinese character.35 Khỏi sometimes is equal to the particle ‘beyond’, and is either used separately, for example, khỏi giái hạn ‘beyond or over the limit’; khỏi núi ‘beyond the mountain peak’, or combined in words like lên khỏi ‘to ascend beyond’ and nhảy khỏi ‘to jump over’. Sometimes, it is equivalent to the preposition ‘from’ or ‘out of,’ used separately as in qua khỏi ‘to pass from’; cứu khỏi ‘to save from’ or ‘to rescue from’; kéo ra khỏi tay ma quỉ ‘to pull out of the hands of the devil’, or in compound forms such as đi khỏi ‘to leave’ or ‘to be away from’; trốn khỏi ‘to escape from,’ ‘to evade a pursuer’, ‘to achieve escape’. When used in the sense of ‘from’ or ‘out of,’ it always implies the presence of a noun like vẹn, ‘immune’ or rảnh ‘free’, which is often omitted but understood, for example, tôi chẳng khỏi chết ‘I am not free from death,’ or ‘I will not escape death’; khỏi xâu bơi thuế viết ‘exempt from taxes and public duties’. If one of these implied nouns is explicitly stated, khỏi is understood [even when omitted], such as ai vẹn bợn nhơ? ‘Who is immune from impurity?’ and chẳng rảnh việc nhà ‘not free from household affairs’. Occasionally, it is preceded by the particle cho, as in dậy cho khỏi đây, meaning ‘move so that this place is cleared’ or ‘move away from here.’ Khôn, ‘whether/how is it possible’, ‘hardly,’ ‘with difficulty,’ or ‘barely,’ for example, đạo mầu trí thấp khôn dò đặng ‘a profound doctrine is hardly, with difficulty, or barely understandable by a low intellect’, or is it possible to investigate?’. Không, like chẳng, is a negative particle opposite to the affirmative particle có. It can mean ‘not,’ ‘by no means,’ as in không thấy ‘not see’. It can also mean ‘without,’ ‘not being,’ ‘not having,’ or ‘lacking,’ as in không nhơn đức ‘without virtue,’ ‘not having virtue,’ ‘lacking virtue’. When used to mean ‘not having’ or ‘not being,’ the word có is often implied and sometimes explicitly stated, for example, không có nhơn đức. If có is followed by another verb, it becomes an affirmative particle for that verb, as in không có suy đến ‘not consider’. When không or chẳng is followed by nào, gì, or chi, sometimes with other words in between, the former [two] words are equivalent to ‘neither’ or ‘nor’, while the remaining correspond to ‘any’ or ‘something’; otherwise, either combination can mean ‘nothing.’ For example, không người nào ‘neither any man’ or ‘no one’; không lo gì, chẳng lo chi ‘not worried about anything’ or ‘not worried at all’. It can also mean ‘free of charge’ or ‘gratuitously,’ as in làm không ‘work for free’; cho không ‘give for free’. It may also mean ‘empty’ or ‘without necessary components,’ as in trầu không ‘betel without areca nut’; cau không ‘areca nut without betel’; tay không, mình trần ‘empty hands, bare body’; lòng không ‘empty stomach,’ ‘fasting’; trên không ‘empty space or sky’; khi không ‘time without activity, ‘idle time’, often implying ‘without reason.’ Hư không means ‘void’ or ‘without result’; không không means ‘not nothing’ or for nothing’. Khống, ‘indeterminate,’ ‘indistinct,’ or ‘without a specific intention’. Kia, ‘the other’; hôm kia ‘the day before yesterday’; and bữa kia, the same. Kìa, ‘here it is’ referring to something visible from afar; kìa kìa, the same; hôm kìa, bữa kìa ‘four days ago’. Kíp, ‘quickly’; chầy kíp ‘sooner or later’ or ‘eventually’. Là sometimes means ‘namely’; for example, một là ‘namely, the first’; hai là ‘namely, the second’; số là ‘the reason is’ or ‘the origin is certainly so’; ít là ‘at least’; ít nữa là the same. Sometimes, [là] is used as a comparative ‘than’ when placed with an adverb in positive, comparative, or superlative forms, for example, khác chi là ‘what differs than’; chẳng khác chi như là ‘no difference than if’; người này nhơn đức hơn là người kia ‘this person is more virtuous or benevolent than the other’; chẳng qua là ‘no more than’ or ‘not beyond,’ which in Latin would be expressed as non nisi [‘no more than’]. Khác nữa là ‘even more different than’; quá nữa là ‘far more than.’ Sometimes, [là] is equivalent to ‘that’; for example, chẳng ngờ là ‘unexpectedly that’; chẳng biết là sống đến chừng nào ‘it is unknown that one will live until when’. Chẳng hay là việc ấy nên chăng ‘it is not known whether that thing is permitted or not? ‘, ắt là ‘because it is confirmed’ or ‘it is needed; thật là ‘it is certain’ or ‘certainly that’; hay là ‘or’ or ‘whether.’ See Hay. [p. xxiv]. Miễn là ‘as long as’; chẳng lựa or chẳng lựa là, when placed at the beginning of a following clause, with the preceding clause being affirmative, means ‘there is no need’ or ‘let alone’; for example, nói ít đều đã chẳng đủ chẳng lựa or chẳng lựa là nói nhiều đều ‘saying a few words suffices, no need for many,’ or ‘let alone saying many.’ Some people use lọ instead of lựa. Nhứt là ‘especially’ or ‘primarily.’ Lại sometimes means ‘again’; for example, đã uống khi nãy, bây giờ lại uống thêm ‘he already drank earlier, now he drinks again.’ In this sense, sometimes the entire preceding clause is implied; for example, đã lại nói làm vậy ‘having already said so before, now he says it again.’ Sometimes, it means ‘on the contrary’; for example, đã gian lại ngoan ‘now he is unjust; on the contrary, he wants to appear generous and kind,’ referring to a harmful person who, despite causing harm, feigns innocence and goodwill. Sometimes, it means ‘furthermore’; for example, đã giết người rồi lại đốt nhà ‘he has already killed the man and, after doing that, he is also burning his house.’ Sometimes, it means ‘moreover’ or ‘therefore’; for example, lại nói thuở ấy ‘furthermore, it is said’, or ‘it is told that at that time’.’ Sometimes, [lại] means ‘indeed’; for example, chẳng những chẳng chối, lại xưng ngay ra ‘not only did he not deny it, but indeed he confessed.’ Mà lại ‘but indeed,’ ‘rather, indeed.’ Depending on context, mà lại can also mean ‘furthermore,’ ‘on the contrary,’ ‘in addition,’ or ‘again.’ When placed after verbs or their nominal elements, it corresponds to the particle ‘re-’ compounded, sometimes meaning ‘again,’ ‘back,’ or ‘reciprocally’. Or ‘viceversa’, ‘on the contrary’, ‘returning to the original state of things’; for example, trở lại ‘return’; nói lại ‘repeat’; ở lại ‘stay’; thưa lại ‘respond’ to a superior; đứng lại ‘stop’; ném lại or quăng lại ‘throw back’; yêu lại ‘love in return’; đánh lại ‘strike back’; sửa lại ‘fix again’; lập lại ‘restore’; tủy lại ‘recover consciousness’; kéo lại ‘pull back’; trẻ lại ‘rejuvenate’; mới lại ‘renew’; lui lại ‘retreat’; lui lại can also mean ‘detract’ or ‘subtract from a total.’ Sometimes, lại means ‘opposite to’ or ‘towards a location’ nearby, whether directly or sideways, and it can be used compounded with motion [verbs]; for example, bay lại ‘fly towards’; chạy lại ‘run towards’; or it can be used separately, also with motion; for example, từ đây lại đó ‘from here to there’; từ đó lại đây ‘from there to here’; ngồi lại đây ‘sit here’ or ‘sit in this place’; lại bên nầy ‘to this side’; lại bên kia ‘to the other side’; lại đây ‘to this place’ or ‘to this side’; lại đó ‘to that part, or place.’ Lại is also frequently used to mean ‘to move towards’ or ‘to come to a place, to a location or position that is opposite but not far away’, as previously mentioned, with the verb đi ‘to go’ implied. For example, lại nhà tôi ‘to come to my house’. The implied [verb] is often explicitly stated, such as in đi lại đây, đi lại bên nầy, đi lại đó, or đi lại bên kia. When used in this sense, lại differs from qua or sang, which are used when there is an obstacle such as a river, sea, wall, or mountain between the two locations, while lại is used for nearby locations without such barriers, sometimes [lại] is mistakenly interchanged with those two but this is less accurate. Additionally, when placed after certain verbs, lại indicates opposition to an enemy or rival, meaning to prevail over or to be equal to them. The preceding verb is then effectively placed in the gerund form in -ing. For example, làm chẳng lại nó ‘by doing, he does not prevail over him’ or ‘he is not equal to him in action.’ Nói lại miệng nó ‘by speaking or debating, he prevails over or is equal to him in argument’; nói lại can also mean ‘to respond,’ as mentioned earlier, implying either a reply in words, an argument against someone, or even a defiant response to a superior. Lấy, when placed before a noun, sometimes serves as an indicator of the ablative case, denoting means, material, manner, cause, etc., which is often translated as ‘by/through.’ For example, lấy lời lành an ủi anh em ‘to comfort brothers with kind words’ or ‘by kind words’; lấy việc làm, ‘by works’ or ‘through deeds’; lấy tên Đức Chúa trời ‘in the name of God’ or ‘by the name of God.’ In the second sense, lấy in such cases can also mean ‘to take’ or ‘to use.’ For example, lấy tiếng ‘to take a pretext’ or ‘to use a pretext’; lấy tiếng can also mean ‘to acquire a good reputation.’ Sometimes, [lấy] is used in place of ‘for,’ as in lấy thảo, ‘for gratitude’; lấy cớ, ‘for an excuse’; lấy rồi ‘for the completion of a task,’ that is, merely to complete the task without considering its effect. In some cases, it means ‘according to’: for example, làm lấy ý ‘to act according to one’s own will’; lấy đặng or lấy được ‘according to possibility,’ which in Latin is equivalent to ‘by right or wrong’. In other cases, it can mean ‘into’, always in a negative sense: for example, tông lấy ‘to thrust into’; mắc lấy ‘to fall into’; đóng lấy the same. This particle, when placed after certain active verbs or verbs taken actively, signifies ‘to oneself,’ ‘for oneself,’ ‘to one’s side,’ ‘for one’s benefit,’ ‘in one’s part,’ or ‘for one’s or another’s advantage.’ For example, kéo lấy ‘to pull towards oneself’; cầm lấy ‘to hold onto for oneself’; cướp lấy ‘to seize for oneself’; giữ lấy ‘to guard for oneself’; chịu lấy ‘to receive, to accept for oneself’; cứu lấy dân ‘to save the people,’ meaning to rescue them for their benefit; chữa lấy mình ‘to defend oneself, to protect oneself’ for one’s benefit. Although these expressions already imply a certain benefit, [p. xxv], some of them can take the additional particle cho, which explicitly marks benefit or advantage: cướp lấy cho mình ‘to seize for oneself,’ emphasizing personal gain; giữ lấy cho cha mẹ ‘to keep for one’s part but to be transferred for the benefit of one’s parents.’ Lấy lòng ‘to accommodate oneself to someone’s will’. Since [lấy] can also mean ‘to marry,’ ‘to take a spouse,’ or ‘to engage in carnal relations,’ those learning the language should be careful when using it with animate subjects to avoid unintended humorous or inappropriate meanings. Instead of saying lấy chim ‘to take a bird’, one should use bắt chim ‘to catch a bird’ to avoid misunderstandings, etc. Lẩy, this particle, when placed after certain verbs, signifies an action or omission carried out ironically or indignantly, usually according to another’s will but against one’s own intentions or judgment. This action or omission typically results in harm to the person performing it, to many others, or even to themselves, or it may be entirely useless. For example, bỏ lẩy ‘to abandon or discard something out of such a motive’; làm lẩy ‘to act out of such a disposition’; nói lẩy ‘to speak in such a manner’; meaning to approve something ironically or agree indignantly with another’s opinion, similar to someone saying ‘fine, fine’ in anger; giận lẩy ‘to become angry due to a difference in opinions.’ Làm sometimes means ‘into’, indicating division into various parts; for example, chia ra làm nhiều phần ‘to separate into many parts’. Sometimes, it is used in place of ‘for’, ‘as’, or ‘to be regarded as’: for example, lấy làm thật ‘to consider or acknowledge as true’; làm chớ ‘to bear witness’; làm chi? ‘for what purpose?’. When làm chi is used at the end of a prohibitive sentence, it implies a preceding phrase such as ‘if so’ or ‘if it must be’, and the verb in question is often understood to be repeated: Xin Chúa chớ phạt nó làm chi ‘I beg you, God, do not punish him, but if you must, then for what purpose?’ Làm sao and làm vậy, or làm vầy, whether used together or separately, have different meanings. The first means ‘why’ or ‘how’; the latters mean ‘thus’, ‘in this way’, ‘such’, ‘so’, or ‘things being this way’. When used together làm sao làm vậy, they mean ‘whatever happens’ or ‘however it may be’: for example, làm sao làm vậy thì cũng chẳng nên ‘whatever happens, it will not be appropriate.’ When used separately and in inverse construction, i.e., làm vậy or làm vầy at the beginning without làm sao; or làm sao at the end without làm vậy or làm vầy, their meanings remain the same, however, làm sao means ‘how’, ‘what kind’, or ‘what’, taken interrogatively, relatively, or indefinitely: làm vậy thì bệnh đã trọng lắm ‘thus, in this way, the illness has become very severe’; ăn năn tội là làm sao? ‘What is repentance for sin?’ Đức Chúa Trời ra làm sao? ‘How does God appear?’, ‘What is God’s nature?’ The difference between làm vậy and làm vầy: làm vậy means ‘in this way’ in a general sense, làm vầy means ‘in this specific way that you see’ or ‘given the current circumstances’; làm kia ‘in another way’; làm tê, the same. Lâu, ‘for a long time’; lâu lắc, the same; đã lâu ‘already long ago’, ‘for a long time’; lâu dài ‘for a long time’; bấy lâu ‘for so long’; bấy lâu năm nay ‘for so many years now’; bao lâu ‘how long?’; bao lâu nay ‘for how long now?’; lâu năm ‘many years’; đã lâu năm ‘for many years already’; sau lâu năm ‘many years later.’ Lên when placed after certain verbs or their nominal elements, has the same meaning as the particles ‘up’, ‘onto’, ‘above’, or ‘to’ when compounded with certain words in Latin; for example, bay lên ‘to fly up’; đặt lên, để lên ‘to superimpose’; tôn lên ‘to exalt’; treo lên ‘to suspend’; ngó lên or xem lên, coi lên ‘to look up’; dở lên ‘to lift up’; đi lên ‘to go up’ or ‘to ascend’; chảy lên ‘to flow upwards’ or ‘for the water to rise’. Often, the verb đi ‘to go’) or chảy ‘to flow’ is implied: nước lên ‘water rising’; lên núi ‘to ascend a mountain’, ‘to climb up a mountain’. This term frequently appears with particle trên or đến which are equivalent to the prepositions ‘above’ or ‘to’, which serve to reinforce or specify the direction of the verb: đi lên trên núi ‘to go up onto the mountain’; nước lên đến bãi ‘water rising to the shore’; tằm ăn lên ‘silkworms reach the stage where they eat whole mulberry leaves instead of shredded ones.’ Lì means ‘without reluctance’, ‘without resistance’: for example, chịu lì đi ‘to endure completely without reluctance’; uống lì đi ‘to drink without resistance or stopping’; đánh gạt lì ‘to gamble without having money on hand.’ Liên sometimes can mean ‘closely connected’: for example, ở liên phủ nhà vua ‘to be closely connected to the royal palace’; sometimes can mean ‘incessantly’; for example, nói liên đi ‘to speak incessantly’; nói liên miệng ‘to talk incessantly (as they say), without stopping’. If [p. xxvi] hằng is at the beginning and liên is at the end of a phrase, the former means ‘always’ or ‘individually’; the latter, however, means ‘without interruption: hằng đánh nhau liên ‘they fight each other constantly and without interruption’; see hằng. Thầy hằng dạy dỗ liên ‘the teacher teaches continuously and without interruption.’ Liền, ‘so joined that hardly any gap appears’; it also means that no interval of time intervenes, for example: uống đoạn liền chết ‘after this was drunk, without any interval of time or without delay, or immediately, he died’. Often before this immediately, or after it mediately, they add the redundant particle tức thì, which means ‘immediately’, ‘at once’, for example: uống đoạn tức thì liền chết ‘after this was drunk, he immediately died without delay ‘. This could be said in Latin as ‘as soon as he drank the poison, he died’; ngựa liền ‘a well-trained horse runs with such even steps that not even the slightest leap is mixed into its running.’ Lộn, ‘disorderly, confusedly’; sometimes, it is equivalent to the particle cum in Latin that forms compound words: đổ lộn làm một ‘to confuse into one’; it can also mean ‘mutual’, but always in a negative sense: dức lộn nhau ‘to insult each other’; mắng lộn nhau ‘to scold or shout at each other’; chưởi lộn nhau ‘to hurl curses or insults at each other’; kiện lộn nhau ‘to sue each other’; đánh lộn nhau ‘to beat or to physically fight each other.’ Lựa or lựa là sometimes means ‘what’ or ‘what is necessary’ or ‘what is appropriate’; it is always used interrogatively or negatively, often with the particle phải, meaning ‘necessary’ or ‘must’, either explicitly stated or implied, for example: chẳng lựa nói nhiều đều ‘there is no need of saying much’; lựa là phải bảo ‘what is necessary to be warned about?’. Sometimes, it means ‘not only that’, and at other times, it means ‘much less’ or ‘how much,’ with the particle huống meaning ‘more’ or ‘less’ either explicitly stated or implied. See Huống. Luôn, ‘continuously’, ‘inseparably’; luôn lỉ, the same; luôn thể ‘at the same time’. Luống, ‘in vain’, ‘uselessly’: for example luống trông ‘to wait in vain’; hư luống ‘to grieve in vain’; luống những ‘only, but in vain’; luống những, it is used abusively to mean ‘only’; luống những sầu bi ‘only sorrowful and anxious’, better expressed as ‘continuously sorrowful and anxious.’ Mà, sometimes as ‘and’ or ‘also’: for example mà tha nợ cho chúng tôi ‘and forgive us our debts’; mà thôi ‘and no more’; mà chớ ‘and not otherwise’. These two differ in that mà thôi is placed at the end of a clause and usually requires a following phrase, whereas mà chớ is at the end of a sentence and often needs nothing further. (Mà) i salso used as ‘so that’ (subordinating conjunction): for example nó làm gì ta mà sợ(?) ‘What does he do to us that we should fear(?)’. Often, mà in this meaning follows an implied nên ‘to happen’ or ‘to occur’, which is usually omitted. This is especially true when preceded by particles like bỡi vì ‘because’, làm sao ‘how’, or bỡi đâu ‘from where’: for example làm sao mà chẳng âu lo? ‘how is it possible not to worry?’; người ấy làm sao mà ghét? ‘what is it about that person that makes you hate him?’; bỡi đâu mà phải tai? ‘where does the disaster come from?’; bỡi vì đạo vạy mà mình phải xiêu ‘because of false doctrines, one deviates from the right path’; bỡi trong kẻ chết mà sống lại ‘among the dead, he was brought back to life.’ If mà is replaced by the particle cho, the word nên must be explicitly stated: bỡi đó cho nên ‘from that, therefore’; làm sao cho nên Chúa phạt? ‘how does it happen that God punishes?’ [Mà] as ‘but’ or ‘however’, contrastive: for example cha thì làm vậy, mà con thì làm vầy ‘the father does this, but the son does that’; nếu mà ‘if, however’; phải mà ‘if only’; bà ấy có chồng, mà chồng đã để ‘that woman had a husband, but he divorced her’; chớ mà ‘however’, nhưng mà ‘yet, however’; song mà ‘however’; vậy mà ‘even so’. [Mà] as ‘then’ or ‘moreover’, sequential: for example mà khi nó mới khỉ binh ‘then, when he first deployed the troops.’ Placed here next to the word ‘mà’, it can be understood as ‘and’ or ‘however’, ‘indeed’, etc.; sometimes as ‘to’, namely in the sense of purpose or use: for example để mà thờ ‘preserve for worship.’ Mặc sometimes is used as ‘for’, ‘according to’ or ‘depending on’: for example, mặc ý ‘at will, according to one’s will, intention, or judgment’ etc. or ‘according to what pleases, according to judgement’; mặc dầu, the same; mặc long, the same; mặc ai ‘according to whomever’s will or wish’; mặc thích ‘according to one’s liking or preference’; mặc lượng ngài ‘according to your capacity or judgment’, used politely when addressing superiors or honored persons; mặc sức ‘according to one’s ability or resources, as much as one can’. [Mặc] as ‘from’: mặc ở tay ta ‘hanging from our hands’ or ‘depending on us’.36 Mấy, ‘how many’ or ‘however many’, or at what price, in what number, order, time, etc., is said both interrogatively, relatively, and indefinitely: [p. xxvii] for example mấy người? ‘how many people?’ mấy người làm vậy, ‘however many people do so’; bán mấy? ‘for how much or at what price is it sold?’; bán mấy mấy ‘for whatever price it is sold’; the nonun giá which means ‘price’ is implicit, which can be also expressed: bán giá mấy mấy ‘selling at whatever price’. [Mấy] as ‘what order’ or ‘which’: thứ mấy ‘what order?’ or ‘what ranking?’; mấy thuở? ‘how many occurrences, how many times?’. For the past tense it is said, mấy khi ‘how often?’ or ‘on what occasions?’; mấy lăm ‘how much in quantity, collected but not distinct in number’; hết mấy ‘how much has been completed, used up, or consumed’; hết mấy lăm ‘how much has been used up, or consumed’; chẳng hết mấy lăm ‘not much has been spent, not many were used’ etc. When mấy or la mấy appear at the end of a negative phrase, it generally means ‘not very much’: for example chẳng giàu là mấy ‘not that rich’. Mần răng and mần rứa or mần ri, the first is the same as làm sao ‘how, why’, the second is the same as làm vậy ‘do like that, act in that way’, the third is the same as làm vầy ‘do like this, act in this way’, (See Làm). I have already mentioned that in many places, these expressions are not considered refined, though some argue that they are polite and even courtly. This may have been true in a past century, but now it depends on regional usage. Mẽ is an interjection of admiration when something seemingly impossible or very difficult becomes possible or easy, or vice versa. Miễn, ‘provided that’; miễn là has the same meaning; miễn chấp ‘do not insist,’ ‘do not take into account,’ or ‘consider excused’. Mình sometimes means ‘oneself, himself, herself, itself, themselves, one’s own’. Sometimes it means ‘you yourself’[masculine and feminine]. Although it has this meaning, it is never used for the second person but always for the third person in general, similar to Latin ‘you see, you ignore’. Except when a wife, speaking angrily to her husband, or peers speaking angrily to their equals, are embarrassed to call them by the appropriate pronoun. Mới sometimes means ‘recently’, sometimes it means ‘finally’ or ‘just beginning’, sometimes it means ‘new.’ Mong, ‘shortly after’, ‘almost’, ‘about to happen.’ NUMERAL NOUNS Một, hai, ba, bốn, năm, sáu, bảy, tám, chín, mười, mười một, mười hai, mười ba, mười bốn, mười lăm, mười sáu, etc., hai mươi, hai mươi mốt, hai mươi hai, etc., hai mươi lăm, hai mươi sáu, etc., ba mươi, ba mươi mốt, etc., ba mươi lăm, etc., bốn mươi, bốn mươi mốt, etc. bốn mươi lăm, etc., and so on up to a hundred. Một trăm, trăm mốt, trăm hai, etc., trăm năm, trăm sáu, etc., trăm mười, trăm mười một, trăm mười hai, etc., trăm mười lăm, etc., trăm hai mươi, trăm hai mươi mốt, etc., trăm hai mươi lăm, etc., trăm ba mươi, etc., trăm ba mươi lăm, etc. and so on up to a thousand. Ngàn, ngàn mốt, etc., ngàn năm, etc., ngàn mười lăm, etc., ngàn hai mươi, ngàn hai mươi mốt, etc., ngàn hai mươi lăm, etc., and so on up to a myriad or ten thousand. Một muôn ‘ten thousand’, etc. To count larger numbers, follow the same pattern: after four, for five always use năm; after fourteen, twenty-four, thirty-four, etc., for fifteen, twenty-five, etc., always use lăm, [e.g.] mười lăm ‘fifteen’, hai mươi lăm ‘twenty-five’, etc.; after ten, for one always use một; after twenty, thirty, forty, etc., after [use] chục, which is ‘decas’ [e.g.], hai chục ‘twenty’ etc.;37 after one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, etc., for one always use một and for ten always use mười; after ten, for another ten always use mươi, [e.g.] hai mươi ‘twenty’, ba mươi ‘thirty’, etc. Outside the counting series, meaning not starting from một, hai, ba, bốn, etc., instead of ten, chục can be used; the word chục is also used for people; instead of ‘fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five’, etc., you can say một chục rưỡi, hai chục rưỡi, ba chục rưỡi, etc., but not một chục năm, hai chục năm, etc. Before chục, trăm, ngàn, etc., when spoken, một can be placed or not at will, but in writing, for clarity, it should always be included. Outside the counting series trăm mốt means ‘one hundred and ten’; trăm hai ‘one hundred and twenty’; trăm tư, but not trăm bốn ‘one hundred and forty’; trăm rưỡi ‘one hundred and fifty’; trăm năm is incorrect. Similarly, ngàn mốt means ‘one thousand and one hundred’; ngàn hai ‘one thousand and two hundred’; ngàn tư but not ngàn bốn ‘one thousand and four hundred’; ngàn rưỡi, but not ngàn năm ‘one thousand and five hundred’, and so on for larger numbers. Outside the counting series, if we want to indicate ‘one hundred and one or two’, etc., ‘one thousand and one or two’, etc., it is necessary for us after một, or hai, etc. to immediately place the noun or pronoun of the thing being discussed: một trăm một giạ ‘one hundred and one unit called giạ;38 một ngàn hai cái ‘one thousand and two objects of whatever was previously mentioned’. Furthermore, our Annamese speakers commonly use only these numbers namely: một = 1, mười = 10, trăm = 100, ngàn [p. xxviii] = 1,000, muôn = 10,000, vàn = 100,000, vẹo = 1,000,000.39 Each subsequent number is ten times the previous one. For other numbers, when necessary, they use Chinese numerals, as can be seen in the vocabulary section at the end of the Latin Dictionary on numbers and measurements. Moreover, in this language, some nouns have pronouns,40 while many others do not. The reason why some have them and others do not is not based on logic, it is simply dictated by usage, and that is the final explanation. The nouns that have pronouns are either general: such as cái, con, etc., or specific, such as cấp, ngôi, [for example] cấp siêu ‘a wax gourd’; ngôi sao ‘a separately identified star’. Now, nouns that do not have pronouns can be placed directly after numbers without any difficulty: hai ngày ‘two days’; ba người ‘three people’; năm bước ‘five steps.’ However, for nouns that do have pronouns, the number comes first, followed by the pronoun, and finally the noun itself: ba cái bát ‘three bowls’; bốn con cá, ‘four fish’; năm tấm ván ‘five planks’; khi Chúa đời, có một ngôi sao lạ mọc ra ‘when Jesus was incarnated, a marvelous star appeared’. There are some exceptions, such as: parts of something: ghe tám ván ‘a boat made of eight planks’; contained quantities and measurements: bán bảy bát dầu ‘selling seven bowls of oil’; punishments: such as đánh ba mươi roi ‘striking thirty lashes’; tools: chèo ba chèo ‘rowing with three oars’; chém năm rìu ‘chopping with five axes’. The reasoning behind these exceptions is left for scholars to study further. But these numbers chục, chục mốt, etc.; chục rưởi, etc.; hai chục, ba chục, etc.; trăm, trăm mốt, etc.; trăm rưởi, etc.; hai trăm, ba trăm, etc.; ngàn, ngàn mốt, etc.; ngàn rưởi, etc.; hai ngàn, ba ngàn, etc.; muôn, muôn mốt, etc.; muôn rưởi, etc.; hai muôn, ba muôn, etc., neither require nor reject pronouns, for example: một chục cá ‘ten fish’, hai trăm con cá ‘‘two hundred fish’. However, they do require specific pronouns when attached to certain items or when used with general pronouns to clarify ambiguous nouns; for example: ba chục cấp siêu, ‘thirty wax gourds’, một ngàn ngôi sao ‘one thousand stars’, ba trăm tấm bạc ‘three hundred silver ingots’. I mentioned ambiguous nouns because if ngôi or tấm is not specified, it is difficult to understand sao as meaning ‘star’, since sao can also refer to spots on some animals. Similarly, bạc must be clarified with tấm to mean ‘money’ or ‘patacas’, as bạc also means silver in general. Mựa, ‘do no’ prohibitive: mựa nỡ ‘do not allow’; mựa hề ‘never, not at all’; mựa khá ‘do not let it be possible, do not allow it.’ Mười, see Một. Nả, an interrogative final particle, often equivalent to the interrogative particle nam in compound form, always placed at the end of a clause and usually accompanied by other words: bao nả? ‘how? or in what way?’ ai nả? ‘who indeed?’, nong nả? ‘with intensity, fervently.’ Nao, like nào, is equivalent to the Latin particles num [‘whether’] or ec [‘if, whether’] compounded, or to the relative pronoun quid ‘what, which’, used relatively, interrogatively, or indefinitely, but it is read this way for smoothness and is generally limited to use with certain words, namely: khi, no, thuở, khác, phải; for example: khi nao ‘quando num?’ or ‘when?’; thuở nao ‘when exactly?’ or ‘at what time?’; no nào, same meaning. No nao can also mean ‘even’, but this usage is less correct and stems from corruption. Khác nao ‘what is the difference?’; phải nao? ‘what and to whom are you obligated?’ Nào, when placed before a word to form a compound, is usually equivalent to the particles ec or nam in compound form or num in compound form or separately; for example: nào ai? ‘is there anyone?’; nào khi? ‘has there ever been?’; nào bao giờ?, same as ‘has there ever been?’. This often remains separate and retains its composite form: for example: nào thấy ai giữ thứ tự tôn ti? ‘has anyone ever been seen maintaining order between the eminent and the humble?’; nào thấy Chúa đói rách bao giờ, mà chúng tôi cho ăn mặc? ‘has there ever been a time when we saw God hungry and ragged, so that we gave Him food and clothing?’. Either nào or bao giờ is often omitted: for example, nào thấy Chúa đói rách, mà etc. or thấy Chúa đói rách bao giờ mà etc. If doubled, the second nào means ‘who, what, which’ or ‘someone, something’: for example nào khi nào thấy Chúa ở tù rạc? ‘has there ever been a time when we saw God in prison?’ Nào đâu, ‘where, whither, from where’ is often split into two parts: for example, ớ Cain, nào Abêlê ở đâu? …qua đâu? …đi đâu? ‘Oh Cain, where is Abel? where di he pass? Where did he go?. Nào thầy có hay đâu? ‘from where does the master have knowledge?’. But when asking ‘from where’ with movement, it must be said: bỡi đâu mà đến? ‘from where does he come?’. Nào and đâu are often used interchangeably and frequently have their corresponding verbs omitted: for example: nào Abêlê? Abêlê đâu? From such examples, we can understand based on context whether the question means ‘Where is Abel?’ or ‘Where is Abel going?’ However, when referring to ‘where from’ without movement, one of these words [p. xxix] is omitted while the verb remains: thầy có hay đâu? nào thầy có hay? [‘does the teacher know?’]. When nào is combined with chi or gì to mean ‘what’ or ‘something’, it is never used together with eâ, of which the former cannot but the latter truly can be understood implicitly: for example: nào loài vật có biết gì? ‘do animals know anything?’; nào ta ân cần những việc gì? ‘what things do we fully engage in?’ When immediately following a noun, nào functions as a relative pronoun meaning ‘who, which, some, any, whoever, or whatever’, whether interrogative, relative, or indefinite: e.g, người nào ‘who, which person, what kind of person, any person’; cách nào ‘some way, which way, what manner, how’; thể nào, the same; dường nào, the same meaning; khi nào ‘any time, at any given time’; ngần nào ‘some quantity, what quantity, how much.’ Nào and ấy, when placed after any given noun, [function differently:] the former means ‘any, whichever, whoever’ etc., while the latter means ‘his, her, its, their, or with his/her/its/their own.’ For example: người nào việc ấy, phải làm cho đến than ‘whoever takes on a task must see it through to completion’; chum nào nắp ấy ‘each jar with its own lid’; người nào gói ấy, cấp nách theo tôi ‘let any man, carrying his burden under his armpit, follow me’; alternatively, the latter can mean ‘that’ [masculine, feminine, neutral]: for example, ngủ ngày nào tối ngày ấy ‘he sleeps every day until nightfall’; chơi đêm nào sáng đêm ấy ‘he plays every night until the morning of that same night’; while the former expresses ‘this way’, the latter expresses ‘such as’: for example, cha nào con ấy ‘like father, like son.’ However, nào differs from gì or chi when used for ‘who, which, what’ in that nào specifies a particular one distinct from others without referring to its nature, property, essence, or name, making it usable in relative, interrogative, or indefinite contexts, for example: cây nào ‘which tree’, meaning a tree distinct from all others in general; con cá nào ‘which fish’, meaning a specific fish distinct from all others. Chi or gì means ‘who, which, what’ when referring specifically to the nature, essence, properties, or species of something, distinguishing it from others of different species. It can be used in relative, interrogative, or indefinite contexts, for example: sự gì ‘which matter’, referring specifically to a matter distinct from all others; con cá gì ‘which fish’, specifying a particular species distinct from all others, or asking for its name, etc.; cây chi ‘which tree’, referring to its specific properties, species, or name among all the species; cây chuối gì ‘which type of fig tree’, referring to its specific species or name among all the fig trees. However, with the following expressions, these words can be used interchangeably: chi phải, nào phải ‘what is necessary’; khác nào, nào khác, khác chi, chi khác, khác gì, gì khác ‘what is the difference.’ Nào hề, chi hề, hề chi, hề gì ‘what pertains to, what concerns’; chi hề or nào hề, also meaning ‘has it ever happened?’ or ‘never happened.’ Nây means ‘this’ [masculine, feminine, neutral] and is limited in usage, being only combined with the noun bên, as in bên nây ‘this side’ or ‘this part.’ Nầy means ‘this’ [masculine, feminine, neutral] or ‘behold this’. For example, nầy là means ‘behold, this is’ or ‘this is.’ Although it refers to the present, when one wants to recall a past event and bring it into the present, nầy is used. Conversely, when referring to something present but wanting to distance it, ấy is used. Similarly, the adverb kìa which typically refers to something distant, can be used for something nearby. Nên, ‘to happen’ or to occur’; cho nên ‘so that it happens’. Sometimes, the particle cho is omitted, e.g., vậy nên phải chết ‘thus, it happens that one must die.’ Depending on the context, nên alone or cho nên can also mean ‘rightly, well, or legitimately.’ (See Cho.) Nên meaning ‘to happen’ or ‘to occur’ is always implied between bỡi and mà, bỡi đâu and mà, nhơn vì and mà, or vì and mà, for example: bỡi đâu mà ra sự làm vậy? ‘where does it happen that the matter comes to this?’ (See Mà.) Nên nỗi, ‘the cause of why it happens’ or ‘the reason something comes to this point.’ Ai làm nên nỗi nước nầy? ‘who caused this situation to happen?’; cho nên nỗi ‘the cause of why it happens that.’ Sometimes, nên is used to mean ‘into’, that is, [transitioning] into another state, for example: chim hạc hóa nên rùa ‘the bird hạc [crane] (a symbol of long life) transforms into a turtle (which is also a symbol of longevity)’. Con khỉ trở nên ông thánh ‘the monkey turns into a saint’ (a fable of the pagans). Trộm cướp trở nên quân tử ‘a thief and robber has become an eminent man’. When nên means ‘to happen’ or ‘to become’, and is placed immediately after certain verbs, it indicates something coming into existence [p. xxx] from nonexistence. Tạo nên ‘to create’; lập nên ‘to establish’; dựng nên, the same, làm nên ‘to accomplish, as if saying ‘to create, to establish, etc., so that they come into being.’ Depending on the context, làm nên can also mean ‘to act properly, to act well, or to do’; this particle, when used in composition, is never placed after the verb’s nominal element with which it is combined. Examples: dựng nên trời đất ‘to create heaven and earth’; nói nên lời ‘to speak words that are not absurd but meaningful.’ Nếu, ‘supposing that’, e.g., nếu vậy ‘supposing it is so’; sometimes như, meaning ‘if’ , is omitted but occasionally expressed, for example: nếu như vậy or nếu như làm vậy ‘if it is like that’; nếu chẳng vậy or nếu chẳng như làm vậy ‘supposing it is not so, or otherwise’; nếu mà, ‘if however, if indeed, or if otherwise’; in this last case, như is sometimes omitted but occasionally expressed. Ngang, sometimes means ‘against’, referring to reason, custom, institution, law, etc., e.g., làm ngang ‘to act against reason’; nói ngang ‘to speak irrationally’; ở ngang ‘to behave against custom and institution’. Sometimes it means ‘transverse’, e.g., if a dọc line, which is a straight line, runs from east to west, then a ngang line runs from north to south or vice versa. Sometimes it is equivalent to the prepositions ‘through’, ‘across’, or ‘past’ when combined with verbs commonly indicating motion, e.g., bay ngang ‘to fly across’; chảy ngang ‘to flow through’; đâm ngang ‘to pierce through’; đi ngang ‘to pass by, to cross.’ After these compound verbs, the particle qua is often added, meaning ‘through’ or ‘across’, serving as a repetition for emphasis, e.g., đi ngang qua cữa sổ ?41 ‘to pass through the window’; đâm ngang qua hống ‘to pierce through the side’. Qua and ngang have the same meaning and nature, and one can replace the other, where one is compound and the other is separate; however, ngang is more commonly compounded than qua. Nghịch, this particle is equivalent to the preposition ‘against’ or ‘opposed to’, either separately: e.g., nghịch ý ‘against the will, intention, or judgment’; nghịch lẽ ‘against reason.’ or in composition: e.g., nói nghịch ‘to contradict’; ở nghịch ‘to oppose’; these compound forms are never separated from their base words, unlike some other constructions: e.g., kẻ ngoài nói nghịch đạo thánh đức Chúa trời ‘the unbelievers contradict the holy religion of God.’ After this particle, whether separate or compounded, the words vuối or cùng are often found, meaning ‘against’ or ‘opposed to,’ serving as a repetition: e.g., ở nghịch cùng tôi ‘to be opposed to me’; nói nghịch vuối tôi ‘to contradict me.’ Ngõ, ‘in order that, so that’: e.g., ngõ cho ‘so that, in order that’; cho is often implied: e.g., ngõ họa ‘so that perhaps’; ngõ hay ‘let it be known’; ngõ được ‘so that I may be able to.’ Ngoài, ‘outside’, for example, ngoài thành ‘outside the city’. It is often used in place of ‘in’, meaning ‘in an exterior location,’ either with or without movement: e.g., ngồi ngoài vườn ‘sitting in the garden’; đi ngoài đồng ‘going to the field.’ It is frequently placed after a verb indicating movement and combined with the particle ra, equivalent to ‘out of’ or ‘beyond’ or in repetition: e.g., đi ra ngoài thành ‘to go out of the city’ or ‘beyond the city’; bỏ ra ngoài ‘to cast out.’ Sometimes, it means ‘outside’ or ‘outdoors’: e.g., ở ngoài ‘being outside’; chạy ra ngoài ‘to run outside.’ Ngược ‘reversed, inverted’, of a place or meaning: as if the heel is placed where the head should be, or as if the end is placed where the beginning should be: e.g., treo ngược ‘to hang upside down so that the feet or lower part are up while the head or upper part is facing the ground’; viết ngược ‘to start writing from the later strokes or letters, with the earlier ones following.’ Sometimes, it means ‘unjust, against the law, against due justice’: e.g., ăn ngang ở ngược ‘to act unjustly, against the law, etc.’; nói ngược ‘to speak absurdly.’ Nhau ‘each other, one another, mutually, reciprocally’: e.g., cùng nhau ‘together, with each other, among themselves, mutually’; vuối nhau, the same. Nhơn, sometimes for ‘in’: in this sense, it is almost never used except in the baptismal formula: for example., nhơn danh cha ‘in the name of the Father.’ Sometimes for ‘from’: e.g., nhơn thể ‘from the same work’; nhơn việc ‘from the same matter.’ Sometimes as ‘because of’: e.g., nhơn sao? ‘for what reason? why?’; nhơn vì ‘because of, due to’; nhơn bỡi, the same; nhơn vì cớ nào ‘because of which cause’; nhơn vì sừ nầy ‘because of this matter, therefore, wherefore’. Như, sometimes as ‘as, like, same, similar to’: e.g., tôi cũng như anh ‘I am the same as you, just like you, similar to you.’ Sometimes as ‘if’: e.g., giả như ‘for example, if’; giả như also means ‘in the manner of, in similarity to’: e.g., giả như mũ triều thiên ‘in the manner of, or similar to, a crown’; thí như ‘for example, if’; ví như, the same; như thể, the same, or just as if’; giả, thể, ví, or thí are often omitted; e.g., như ai bây giờ ‘for example, if someone now’; dường như ‘just as if’; tợ như, the same; giống như, the same. [p. xxxi] Before any of these four expressions, the particle cũng ‘also’ is implied, but it is often explicitly stated: e.g., cũng như thể ‘the same as if.’ Như and vậy, when placed immediately and at the end of a clause, the latter means ‘thus, so,’ while the former means ‘similarly’: e.g., Đức Chúa trời cũng ở cùng ta như vậy ‘God acts similarly towards us.’ When placed at the beginning of a clause, như means ‘if,’ and vậy means ‘thus’: e.g., như vậy thì chẳng khỏi chết ‘if that is so, then we shall not die.’ When placed in the middle, vậy means ‘thus,’ while như means ‘as, like’: e.g., Đức Chúa bà như sao mai vậy ‘the Holy Mother of God is like the morning star.’ Nhưng ‘but, yet’ at, sed, is an adversative particle; nhưng mà ‘however, but, nevertheless’. Những sometimes is a plural marker. Sometimes it means ‘all and only’; for example, những ngày ấy chẳng nên làm việc xác ‘on all and only those days, it is not allowed to do physical work.’ Sometimes it means ‘only’, e.g., những lo đến việc ấy ‘thinking only about that matter’; chẳng những ‘not only.’ Sometimes it means ‘while still, while only’, i.e., những chạy thuốc thì kẻ bệnh đã chết ‘while still waiting for medicine, the sick person has already died.’ If một ‘one’ precedes this particle, then it means ‘only’, whereas this particle itself is a plural marker, or it can mean ‘all and only’, e.g., một muốn làm những sự dữ ‘only wants to commit evil deeds,’ or ‘or all and only the bad things.’ Nhược, ‘supposing’; e.g., nhược bằng ‘supposing if’; the other is often implied: nhược ai chẳng, or bằng ai chẳng trở lại cùng Chúa, người sẽ lảy tên ‘supposing if someone does not return to God, he will shoot arrows at them’. Nọ, ‘that’ [masculine, feminine, neutral] or ‘behold’; this pronoun is used to refer to ‘another’ or ‘an additional thing’, for which there is no direct equivalent Latin pronoun; almost to say ‘still another or still different’; thus nọ is used as an adverb meaning ‘behold’ and differs from nầy, kia, and ấy. It is used for something present when it is nearby and for something distant when it is far away. Nội, just as from the Latin particle in come inter and intra ‘within, among’, so from the Anamitic trong, that is, in, seemingly come nội trong ‘inside or among’, and used to indicate something within a boundary, space, location, or number’; for example, nội trong ba ngày ‘within three days’; nội trong mình ‘inside the body, throughout the whole body’; nội trong chỗ nầy ‘inside this place, not outside this place’; nội trong thế giái ‘within the world’; sometimes trong is implied, as in nội mình ‘inside the body’ or nội chỗ nầy ‘inside this place’. Nữa ‘beyond or more’, referring to things, time, or people. For example, đến nữa ‘up to a little more time’; lát nữa, một lát nữa, chặp nữa, giây nữa, một giây nữa, chút nữa, một chút nữa, ít nữa, một ít nữa ‘a bit more’ these are all the same as đến nữa, and the word đến can often be added before any of them. Chút nữa, một chút nữa, ít nữa, một ít nữa also mean ‘a little more of something’. Ít người nữa, một ít người nữa ‘a few more people’. If conditional words like bằng, ví bằng, nếu, nếu mà appear at the beginning of a sentence, and nữa is placed at the end meaning ‘still’ or ‘also’, while the preceding words mean ‘if’ or ‘even if’. For example, bằng muốn giết tôi nữa ‘even if he wants to kill me’ or ‘if he wants to kill me as well as others’. Nữa also means ‘at least’, as in ít nữa là ‘at least’. Quá nữa or quá nữa là ‘more than’, ‘more than the majority’; sau nữa means ‘finally, ultimately’. Hơn nữa is a marker of the superlative and necessarily requires either a positive or at least a comparative form before it. See Hơn. Ớ, an interjection for calling, equivalent to Ô [‘Oh’] in Latin, which is commonly used in informal and familiar speech. It should never be used when addressing superiors or those of high status to whom we owe great respect, such as teachers, officials, kings, and God. Ờ, or Ờ Ờ, an interjection expressing acknowledgment or realization, used by superiors towards inferiors or sometimes among equals towards each other. Ở is used to indicate ‘at’ or ‘in’ without motion, or as ‘from’. For example, ở nhà tôi ‘at my place, or in my house’; ở đâu ‘from which place or where, in which place’; ở đó ‘in that place, or there; from that place, or from there’; ở đây ‘in this place, or here; from this place, or from here’. In these examples, depending on the context, ở can also mean ‘to stay, to be, to reside, or to remain’. It can also mean ‘to depend on or to hang from’. For example, sự ấy mặc ở tay ta ‘that matter depends on our hands, or on us’; ở đâu ở đó means ‘wherever it may be, or wherever it is present.’ [p. xxxii] Ôi is an interjection expressing pain, sorrow, or exclamation; oh! alas!’. For example, cha ôi ‘oh father!’; hỡi ôi! The same. It can also be used as an expression of mourning, ôi! [‘oh! alas!’]. When used in a pleading or affectionate manner, it means ‘please’ or ‘I beg you’. In this last meaning, due to the intensity of the affectionate emotion, the pronunciation is drawn out and softened, making it sound more like ội! rather than ôi!. For example, ôi thương ôi! ‘an interjection of sorrow, compassion, sighing, or lamenting. Ơi, a particle used to respond to equals or inferiors, also a particle used to call familiars. For example, cha ơi, ‘oh father!’; mẹ ơi ‘oh mother!’. Ốt, ‘entirely, absolutely’: e.g., ốt thật ‘absolutely certain’; ốt át ‘hurriedly, with force, with violence.’ Phải before certain active verbs, either immediately or mediately, makes them passive. For example, phải cầm trong tù ‘to be detained in prison’. Sometimes it means ‘into’, implying harm or detriment: mắc phải tai ‘to fall into calamity’; the verb mắc is often implied, for example, phải vạ ‘to fall into punishment’. Sometimes it means ‘to do or to suffer’: phải tàu or phải ghe ‘to suffer a shipwreck’. Sometimes it means ‘necessary’ or ‘must’: chẳng phải lo ‘not necessary to worry, must not think about it’. Sometimes it means ‘properly, justly, appropriately, decently, rightly, correctly’: thầy nói đều ấy phải ‘the teacher speaks about these matters appropriately, etc.; vừa phải ‘mediocrily, sufficiently, appropriately, proportionately, neither more nor less’. Sometimes it means ‘so, exactly, intrinsically, essentially, really, truly’: e.g., nói cho phải ‘so to speak’; ngôi thứ ba có phải là Đức Chúa trời chăng? ‘is the third person essentially, intrinsically, etc., God?’; người ấy chẳng phải anh tôi ‘that man is not exactly, really, intrinsically my brother’; phải chi ‘what if’; phải mà the same or ‘if however, if nevertheless.’ Phô a marker of the plural number appropriate for either people or things. For example, phô ông ‘you men’; phô nuôi, phô gã, phô ngươi ‘you who are of lower status or younger age’; phô đứng ấy ‘those of higher status among men or spirits’; phô sự, phô đều ‘affairs.’ Qua, immediately placed after verbs indicating motion, it is either equivalent to the prepositions ‘through, past’, or to ‘across’, e.g., đi qua ‘to pass through, to pass by, to go across’; very often, the verb đi is implied, for example, qua đây ‘to pass here’; chảy qua ‘to flow through’; nhảy qua ‘to leap over’; đâm qua ‘to pierce through’; lội qua ‘to wade across’; trốn qua ‘to flee across’. After qua, whether taken as a separate word or replacing đi, the particle ngang is often found, having the same meaning and serving as a repetition of the prepositions ‘across, through’, etc. For example, đi qua ngang ruộng ‘to traverse through the fields’; nhảy qua ngang mương ‘to leap across the canal’. Qua and ngang can replace each other, where if one is used in composition, the other is separate. However, ngang is more often used in compound form than qua. For example, nhảy ngang qua ‘to jump across the rice field’ is more common rather than nhảy qua ngang. It can also mean ‘superficially, for the first time, not precisely, or in passing’. For example, nghe qua ‘to hear in passing or briefly’; đẽo qua ‘to carve roughly, as in an initial carving that will be refined later’; xem qua ‘to glance at something briefly.’ Qua and lại when placed together, mean to frequent a place, and often the verb đi ‘to go’ is implied before each of them, though sometimes it is explicitly stated e.g., đi qua đi lại ‘to go back and forth’. Tốt qua ưa ‘good or beautiful beyond desirability’; chẳng qua là ‘nothing other than’, ‘no more than.’ Quá sometimes means’ beyond, more than, or exceeding’: for example, quá sức ‘beyond strength, above or exceeding one’s capacity’; lời quá vốn ‘interest exceeds or surpasses the capital’; quá chừng ‘beyond the limit’. Quấy, ‘absurd, erroneous, with a solecism’; quấy quá, the same. Quanh or quanh co, ‘winding, meandering, circuitous’; for example, đàng quanh or đàng quanh co ‘a winding road’; đi quanh or đi quanh co ‘to move in a winding path’; nói quanh or nói quanh co ‘to speak evasively, to beat around the bush’. Quanh, or quanh quất, or xung quanh equivalent to the preposition ‘around’ or ‘surrounding’ either separately as in quanh đây, xung quanh đây, quanh quất đây ‘around this place’; or compounded as in đi quanh, đi xung quanh, đi quanh quất ‘to go around’; vây xung quanh, ‘to surround’; vây quanh, ‘to encircle, to enclose’. These forms are used interchangeably. It is rarely said as vây quanh, vây quanh quất, vầy quanh, vầy quanh quất. Ra this particle, when placed after verbs or their objects, sometimes corresponds to the preposition ‘out of’ or ‘from’ in compound forms, e.g., kéo ra ‘to pull out’; bỏ ra ‘to eject’; chảy ra ‘to flow out’; bước ra ‘to step out’; nói ra ‘to speak out’; nứt ra ‘to burst out’; thở hơi ra ‘to exhale’; đi ra ‘to exit, go out’. Very often the verb đi ‘to go’ or chảy ‘to flow’ is implied: ra ngoài ‘to go outside’; ra về ‘to return out’; ra nước vàng ‘to discharge pus’; ép chẳng ra dầu ‘to extract oil from wood’; sometimes [p.xxxiii] it means ‘separate or apart’, equivalent to the prefix se- in compound words, e.g., phân ra ‘to divide, separate, segregate’; chia ra ‘same as above’; sometimes means breaking into multiple pieces, equivalent to the prefixes di- or dis- in compound words; vỡ ra ‘to break apart’; nát ra ‘to shatter’; vãi ra ‘to scatter’; lo ra ‘to be distracted’; lo ra also means ‘to shift focus due to an unfavorable event’; sometimes means ‘[bringing something] to public, into light, or into the open’; tỏ ra ‘to declare’; làm ra ‘to produce’; sinh ra ‘to create, give birth to’; tra ra ‘to examine and reveal hidden causes’; in these examples, it implies bringing into the public or revealing something; sometimes corresponds to the prefix re- in certain compound words; buông ra ‘to let go’; nới ra ‘to loosen’; lui ra ‘to retreat’; sometimes it means changing into an opposite or worse state: người nhơn đức trở ra người tội lỗi ‘a pious person turns into a sinner’; trở ra also means ‘to turn something outward’; sometimes it means ‘transitioning from non-existence to existence’, which in Latin can be expressed as ‘to acquire’ or ‘to emerge’; làm chẳng ra tiền ‘working without making money’; đặt nợ ra lời ‘by lending at interest, profits arise’. First of all notice that when combined with verbs like sinh ‘to be born’ or tạo ‘to create’, this particle should usually be placed before rather than after the nouns: e.g., sinh ra trời đất, and rarely sinh trời đất ra ‘to create heaven and earth’; tạo ra nhơn vật and rarely tạo nhơn vật ra ‘to create people and other creatures’. Secondly, when this particle is placed before the nominal elements of certain verbs, it commonly signifies the attainment of the effect of the action, which is indicated by those preceding verbs; and the words placed before this are equivalent to Latin words in the gerund ending in -do: e.g., nghĩ ra nhiều đều or nhều sự ‘thinking and and coming up with many ideas’; thở ra hơi ‘to exhale breath’; when placed after nominal elements, it usually retains its meaning as ‘from’, as shown in the examples above. Rằng this particle, when placed after verbs that signify acts of speech, is equivalent to the participle ‘saying’; nói rằng ‘speaks saying’; phán rằng ‘declares saying’; than rằng ‘laments saying’. ‘When placed after other verbs, especially those indicating mental actions, it is equivalent to the word ‘that’; tưởng rằng ‘to think that.’ Rất, ‘very’, when placed before a positive adjective, both form the superlative: e.g., rất nhơn đức ‘very virtuous, or most pious.’ Rồi sometimes means ‘completely, absolutely’, sometimes it is equivalent to the preposition per combined with certain verbs and signifies completion or entirety: e.g., làm rồi ‘to accomplish, to complete’, often with the verb làm implied and only this word expressed: e.g., anh rồi hay chưa? ‘have you finished or not?’. Sang when placed immediately after verbs indicating movement, is equivalent to the prefix trans-: e.g., đi sang ‘to cross over’; nhảy sang ‘to jump over’; the verb đi is often implied: e.g., sang bên tây ‘to travel to Europe; sang and qua, having the same meaning, can be used interchangeably. Sao sometimes means ‘why?’ or ‘for what reason?’, similar to làm sao: e.g., sao or làm sao chẳng hủy nó đi? ‘why not kill him?’ See Làm. Sometimes it means ‘who, which, what’ when used interrogatively: e.g., cớ sao? ‘for what reason?’; nhơn sao? ‘because of what (reason)?’ Sometimes it means ‘how’: e.g., sao dám ‘how dare you’; sao đặng ‘how can (I)?’. When chớ, dễ, or há is placed at the beginning of a phrase, and sao at the end, the former means ‘is it not?’ or ‘could it be?’, and the latter means ‘why?’ in a combined sense: e.g., chớ anh chẳng biết sao? ‘don’t you know brother?’ very often, one of the two is omitted but still understood: e.g., chớ anh chẳng biết, or anh chẳng biết sao?’Sao and vậy, or làm sao and làm vậy, whether placed together or separately, the former means ‘why’ or ‘wherefore’, as above; the latter, however, mean ‘thus’, ‘so’, or ‘in this way’. When placed together, they also signify ‘whatever it may be’ or ‘however it may be’. Chẳng and sao, when placed separately with words of estimation interjected between them, both are equivalent to the noun ‘nothing’; for example, chẳng kể sao, chẳng xem sao ‘to care not at all’. Sau this particle corresponds to the preposition ‘after’ either separately: e.g., sau lưng ‘behind the back’; sau nhà ‘behind the house’; đứng sau ‘stand behind’; or in composition: e.g., theo sau ‘follow behind’ or ‘subsequent’; để sau ‘postpone’. Sometimes it means ‘in, on’, specifically in the back part: e.g., sau lái ‘in the stern’; sau lưng ‘on the back’. Sometimes it means ‘following, future’: e.g., năm sau ‘next year’; ngày sau ‘in future days’. Sometimes it means ‘later’: e.g., sau sẽ hay ‘we will see later’; sau nữa ‘furthermore, the rest’; sau hết ‘finally’; mai sau ‘in the near future’; trước sau ‘before and after’ or ‘sooner or later’. Sẽ sometimes it is a sign of future tense: e.g., chết rồi tôi sẽ chôn đi ‘when he dies, I will bury him’; sometimes it means ‘gently’ [p. xxxiv] or ‘without force’: e.g., sẽ vậy ‘so gently’; sẽ sẽ ‘gently, more gently’; đi sẽ sẽ ‘walk calmly or with a slow and light pace.’ Sợi is a pronoun for certain very fine and elongated things: e.g., sợi chỉ ‘thread or sewing thread’; sợi tơ ‘raw silk thread’; sợi vải ‘fiber extracted from fabric’; sợi thép ‘wire or ductile iron’; sợi mây ‘rattan strand, either split or unsplit.’ Song, ‘but’ adversative, not inchoative; song mà ‘but however’; only the Tonkinese say song le for ‘but’, whereas the Cochinchinese neither say it nor understand what it means. Sòng ‘vigorously, without interruption, consistently; sòng sã, the same meaning. Sốt, ‘entirely, absolutely’ only placed at the end of a negative phrase; this particle is more commonly used among the Tonkinese than among the Cochinchinese. Tại sometimes means ‘at or with’: for example, tại lệnh trên ‘at the King, or in the power of the king, or due to the royal decree’; sometimes means ‘in’ or ‘from a certain place’: for example, tại đây ‘in this place or here, or from this place or hence’; sometimes means ‘from’: for example, sự ấy tại ta ‘that matter is from us’, with the verb ở ‘to depend’ implied, which is sometimes expressed: for example, sự ấy ở tại ta ‘this matter depends on us’; sometimes means ‘towards a person’: for example, kí tại ‘(this letter) sent to N.’; tựu tại ‘(this letter) should reach N.’; tựu tại also means ‘to gather in a place or at someone’s presence’. Tái, ‘again’, this particle placed immediately after a verb is equivalent to the prefix re- in composition, but since it is of Chinese origin, it is used with Chinese-derived words: for example, tái hoàn ‘to return, to restore’; tái hồi ‘to revert’; tái phát ‘to recur.’42 Tấm when it means a ‘thin piece’, it is used as a specific pronoun for certain things cut into thin pieces and separated from the whole or shaped into a piece: for example, tấm ván ‘a plank’; tấm phên ‘a bamboo or leafy partition’; tấm vải ‘a piece of cloth’; tấm giể ‘a piece of old cloth’, or a rag; tấm áo ‘a garment’; tấm quần ‘a loincloth’. These last two are called this way both as distinct from the whole and sometimes with a sense of inferiority; tấm lòng ‘a piece (as they say) of the heart’, metaphorically refers to emotions or the soul. Tạn, ‘up to, as far as’; tạn trời ‘up to the sky’; tạn mặt ‘face to face’. Thay, placed at the end of an affirmative phrase or clause, means ‘how, how much, or very’. Thằng is a general pronoun used for boys in relation to all, for juniors in relation to seniors, for servants in relation to free people, or for men, especially commoners, in relation to officials and rulers, appropriate to each of them in particular; for example, thằng vích, that one called vích, but equals never use it among themselves unless out of contempt or anger. Thêm, ‘bigger, greater’, or ‘to increase’. Theo, ‘according to’, for example, theo ý Chúa ‘according to the Divine will’. This particle when placed after certain verbs or their objects, either corresponds to the preposition ‘under’ in composition or means ‘after oneself, with oneself’, for example, đi theo ‘to follow’, mang theo ‘to carry along on the neck or shoulder’. Thì sometimes means ‘then’, for example, khi Chúa tắt hơi, thì trời đất động địa ‘when God expired, then the heavens and the earth trembled’; sometimes means ‘therefore, thus’, for example, thì thôi ‘this being done, therefore it is enough, thus it should stop’; ai muốn nghe, thì nghe ‘whoever wants to listen, thus let them listen’; sometimes it is equivalent to ‘indeed, however, or but’ in the same phrase, for example, con học trò thì chuyên kinh sách, kẻ buôn bán thì suy vốn tính lời, người nông phu thì lo cày cấy ‘the scholar indeed studies books, the merchant instead calculates capital and profit, the farmer on his side thinks about plowing and transplanting’; sometimes it means ‘consequently, regularly’, for example, ai giữ bấy nhiêu đều, thì đặng rỗi mà chớ ‘whoever observes these many things, consequently, or regularly, will surely obtain salvation’; sometimes it marks a separation from the previous clause when placed at the beginning of the following clause, as often seen. Thì thôi and thì chớ, have the same meaning, differ in that thì chớ is a particle that either seriously, ironically, or harshly concedes, and always requires the following clause to be equivalent to ‘otherwise, else,’ or to express something even worse, for example, làm nên thì chớ, bằng chẳng nên ‘if it succeeds, then fine; otherwise...’; đã đánh người thì chớ, lại còn đốt nhà cùng cướp của người ‘he has already beaten people, then fine [p. xxxv] (this should be enough for him), but instead, he also burned their house and robbed their belongings’; đã chẳng sợ phép quan thì chớ, lại chẳng sợ phép Đức Chúa trời ‘he already does not fear public authority, then fine (this should be enough for him), but instead, he does not fear divine authority either’. Thì thôi, however, is a particle that seriously concedes and requires the next clause as a transition to another matter, for example, đã vậy thì thôi, từ nầy về sau, phải... ‘since that is the case, then fine, from now on it must be...’; sau thì ‘later, then, next’. A general rule is that the nominal element is placed after the verb and before its compound particle if there is one. However, if someone wants to place the noun before a simple or compound verb, they must immediately attach the particle thì after that noun, for example, việc ấy thì tôi chẳng biết ‘as for that matter, I do not know’ instead of tôi chẳng biết việc ấy ‘I do not know that matter.’ Thứ sometimes signifies series or order, and when placed before numerical nouns nhứt, hai, ba, etc., it turns them into ordinal numbers, for example, thứ nhứt ‘first’; thứ hai ‘second’ thứ ba ‘third’, etc. Thương, thương hại, interjection of compassion or sorrow; thương hỡi, the same; thương hẽ, the same; thương ôi, interjection of lamentation, compassion, or sorrow. Tới same as đến, and one can be used in place of the other, except that tới, with the verb đi understood, means ‘to approach, let us approach’, while đến does not have this meaning. Tấn tới ‘to make progress.’ Trái sometimes means ‘against or contrary’: e.g., trái ý ‘against the will, intention, or judgment’; trái thế ‘against the occasion’; trái cảo ‘against the manner or form’; trái cách the same; trái mùa ‘against the weather’; mùa trái ‘a season that is unfavorable for crops, or adverse weather’. Sometimes it means ‘incorrect’ [masculine, feminine, neutral]: e.g., sự trái ‘an unfortunate or adverse event’; cắt nghĩa trái ‘to interpret incorrectly or in a distorted way’. Sometimes it functions as a preposition meaning ‘in’ when used with certain words that indicate reversal: for example, lộn trái ‘to turn inside out, such as pants, leggings, or bags’. Trên sometimes means ‘above’: e.g., trên vai ‘above the shoulder’; sometimes means over: trên đầu có Chúa ‘above the head is God’; sometimes means in, referring to a higher place: trên trời ‘in the sky’; trên không ‘in the airspace’. When placed after certain verbs indicating movement, it is equivalent to the preposition ‘over’ or ‘on top of’ in repetition: đi lên trên núi ‘to go up the mountain’. Trong sometimes means ‘within or among’: for example trong hai ngày ‘within two days’; trong ba người ấy ‘among those three people’. Sometimes it means ‘in’, referring to an interior place: trong bụng ‘in the stomach’; trong lòng ‘in the heart’. When placed after verbs indicating movement and combined with the particle vào or vô, it is equivalent to the preposition ‘in’ or ‘into’ in repetition: đi vào trong nhà ‘to enter the house’; đi vô trong phòng ‘to go into the room’. Trổng, ‘generally, indeterminate, indistinctly.’ Trước, sometimes corresponds to the preposition ‘before’ or ‘in front of’, or to compound forms: for example, nói trước ‘to foretell’; đi trước ‘to go ahead’; trước khi ‘before’; sau khi ‘after’; or to separate expressions: for example, trước hết ‘above all’, ‘before anything’; trước mặt ‘in front of’. Sometimes it corresponds to the preposition ‘in’, namely ‘in a forward location’: for example, trước mũi ‘at the bow’. Sometimes it corresponds to nouns such as ‘the past’, ‘ancient time’ or ‘what precedes’: for example, khi trước ‘a previous time’ or formerly’; thuở trước ‘ancient time’ or ‘in ancient times’; triều vua trước ‘the reign of the previous king’. Sometimes it corresponds to ‘beforehand’: for example, ai muốn xưng tội thì trước phải xét mình ‘whoever wants to confess sins must first examine themselves’. Tự, ‘own, oneself, himself, herself, itself. It is of Chinese origin and is used only with Chinese compounds: such as tự vận ‘to commit suicide’; tự ái ‘to hang oneself’; tự ý ‘one’s own will, intention, decision’. Sometimes it means ‘by’ or ‘due to’: such as tự nhiên ‘naturally, necessarily’, whether due to an external cause or not.43 Từ, ‘from, by, since, out of’, referring to time, place, quantity, or a limit, which may sometimes be explicitly stated or implied: such as từ cha lìa khỏi quê hương ‘from the time the father left the homeland’; từ ấy ‘from that time, quantity, limit’; từ nầy ‘from now on, from this quantity, from this time, etc.’; từ ngày ‘from the day’; từ thuở ‘since ancient times’; từ nầy về trước ‘from now and before, from this point backward’; từ nầy về sau ‘from now on, from this point forward’; từ xưa nhẫn nay or đến nay ‘since ancient times until now, until the present’. This particle, when placed before certain nouns, can mean ‘per’ or function as an adverb ending in -im [in Latin]: such as từ đoạn ‘by groups, per groups’; từ bậc ‘step by step, per step’; từ ngằn ‘by quantity’; từ từ ‘gradually, little by little.’ [p. xxxvi] Tuy, ‘although, even though’; tuy là, the same or ‘even though it is’; tuy rằng, the same. Tùy ‘according to’; e.g., tùy ý ‘according to one’s will; if it is placed before theo, then it means ‘to follow, to comply’; theo is a preposition meaning ‘according to’: e.g., tùy theo ý kẻ lớn ‘to comply according to the will of the elders’. Tuyệt ‘completely, absolutely’; e.g., chết tuyệt ‘all completely die’; tuyệt kì ‘absolutely marvelous’. Ư interjection of agreement, meaning ‘yes’, used in relation to equals or inferiors’. Ua interjection of admiration from something sudden and unexpected happening. Ưa, alone, or ưa là, placed before a verb, signifies an action happening by chance or unintentionally: for example, ưa là nói mà nhằm ‘fortuitously speaks and not deliberately, yet happens to touch upon the matter correctly’; ưa là làm mà nên việc ‘acting in the above manner, yet the work turns out successfully.’ Và sometimes means ‘and’, and it is always found repeated: e.g., nhơn danh cha, và con, và xi phi ri tô sang tô ‘in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit’; mất và lời và vốn ‘losing both interest and principal, or both profit and capital’; và ăn và nói ‘both eating and speaking’. It sometimes means ‘several’: for example và lời ‘several words’; cả và ‘entire, whole’. It is always singular in number, sometimes plural, but that plurality when taken collectively is singular: mười người dại cả và mười ‘ten ignorant people, all equally foolish’. Vã sometimes means ‘moreover’, sometimes ‘besides’; vã lại, the same; vã sometimes means ‘since’ or ‘because’: e.g., vã tôi là người khó đói ‘since I am a poor and hungry man’. Vay interrogative particle like [the Latin] ne: for example vậy vay? ‘is it so?’. This is often used by scholars when interpreting certain Chinese characters.44 Vậy or làm vậy, whether placed at the beginning or end of a clause, means ‘thus, so, this way,’ indicating a state of affairs: for example đã vậy thì thôi ‘since it has happened this way, that is enough’; ấy vậy ‘things being thus’; vậy or ấy vậy, thể vậy, often mean ‘therefore’ with particle thì frequently implied or explicitly stated: ấy vậy thì, sao vậy ‘why so?’ or ‘whatever happens’; bỡi vậy ‘therefore’; vậy chúc ‘likewise.’ It can also mean ‘confusedly, promiscuously,’ such as đánh vậy ‘to hit randomly’; đánh vậy can also mean to mix or stir various things, especially liquids, together; dầu vậy ‘to stir.’ Vầy or làm vầy, means ‘in this way,’ referring to a manner that one sees as it is. See Làm. Vào, when placed after verbs or their nouns, is equivalent to the particle ‘into’ or ‘inside’ in composition: e.g., đút vào or nhét vào ‘to insert, to force in’; đam vào ‘to introduce’; coi vào ‘to look inside’; chảy vào ‘to flow into’; thấm vào ‘to absorb’; đi vào ‘to enter’. The verbs đi or chảy are often implied: e.g., nước vào ghe ‘water flows into or is admitted into the boat’; vào nhà ‘to enter the house’; vào đạo ‘to join the Christian religion.’ After this particle, whether in composition or as a substitute for a verb, the particle trong, meaning ‘inside,’ is often found: vào trong rừng ‘to enter into the forest.’ Vặt, when placed after certain verbs, either makes them frequentative or indicates that the action is done on something of minimal importance: giổ vặt ‘to spit frequently’; trộm vặt ‘to often steal small things’; thề vặt ‘to swear frequently about trivial matters’; thù vặt ‘to frequently seek revenge for minor issues’; gian vặt ‘to be unjust in minor matters.’ Về, sometimes means ‘about’: such as nói về ‘to talk about’; gẫm về ‘to meditate on.’ Sometimes it means ‘toward’ in relation to a thing, person, time, or place: e.g., thuộc về ai ‘to belong to someone’; tóm về hai nầy ‘to sum up into two parts’; về đâu ‘where to’; sự việc ấy ăn về lâu dài ‘that matter takes a long time to settle, or requires persistence.’ Sometimes it means ‘backward’ or ‘returning’: về trước ‘back to the past’ or ‘before’; về sau ‘later on’ or ‘from now on.’ This particle, when placed after certain verbs, especially those indicating movement, means ‘returning to one’s place of origin’: for example bắt về làm tôi ‘to capture and bring back someone to their homeland, house, kingdom, etc., as a servant’; đam về ‘to lead back home’; chạy về ‘to run back’; trả về ‘to return something’; đi về ‘to go back home, country, etc., or to return.’ The verb đi is often implied: like về nhà ‘to return home.’ Ven means ‘to or near a place’: such as ven tai ‘to the ear’; ven thềm ‘to the vestibule’ or ‘to the pavement surrounding the house’. [p. xxxvii] Ví means ‘for example’ or ‘as follows’, so ví dụ, ví dụ như ‘for instance.’ It can also mean ‘supposing’: so ví như ‘suppose that’; ví bằng, the same. Additionally, it can mean ‘in the likeness of’: ví dường ‘in the likeness of a road’; ví thể ‘in the manner of that’. Vì, sometimes stands for ‘cause’ or ‘reason’, or ‘that which causes’, or ‘the causing thing’: as in, vì ai ‘because of whom?’ or vì cớ nào ‘for what causing reason’, or ‘on account of what cause?’, bởi vì sự ấy, or nhơn vì sự ấy because of that thing’, or ‘on account of the cause of that matter, or therefore, wherefore’. Sometimes it stands for ‘because’: as in vì anh chẳng rõ ‘because you, brother, do not clearly know’; vì chưng for ‘because’, is almost never found among the common people, and perhaps is difficult to understand by them, therefore it is better to avoid it. Vô has the same meaning as vào, and one can be used in place of the other. Furthermore, since it is of Chinese origin, when placed before Chinese-derived words, it either means ‘without,’ as in vô tội ‘without sin’; vô tình ‘without affection’; or it functions as a prefix indicating negation or deprivation, as in vô nhân ‘inhuman’; vô ơn ‘ungrateful’; vô số ‘countless’; vô cùng ‘infinite’.45 Vơ, ‘absurdly, indifferently’. Vốn, ‘by nature, by its essence, intrinsically, essentially, principally’: e.g., vốn Đức Chúa trời lòng lành vô cùng ‘God is essentially, intrinsically, infinitely merciful’; those who use this particle for another meaning never use it correctly. Vừa sometimes means ‘according to, in accordance with’; e.g., vừa ý ‘according to or in accordance with one’s will or intention’; vừa chừng ‘in accordance with the limit, measure, or quantity of time, place, or thing’. Sometimes it means ‘moderately’; e.g., vừa vừa, doubled; or vừa vậy or vừa vừa vậy ‘moderately so, nothing excessive’. Sometimes it means ‘proportionately’; e.g., vừa đôi or vừa cặp ‘equally proportioned’; áo này chẳng vừa ‘this garment is not proportionate’. Sometimes it means ‘sufficient, sufficiently’; e.g., một bữa ăn một bát cơm thì vừa ‘for one meal, one bowl of rice is sufficient.’ Sometimes it means ‘suitably’; e.g., vừa con mắt ‘suitably or pleasing to the eyes’; vừa tính mỗi người ‘suitably or in accordance with each person’s nature’; vừa lỗ miệng ‘suitably or pleasing to the palate’; vừa phải ‘fair, just’; làm cho vừa phải ‘to act as is fair’; vừa khi ‘just when, at the instant when’; vừa thuở, the same. Vuối is the same as cùng, and one can be used in place of the other except for vuối tôi, which also means ‘we,’ that is, ‘I and those who are with me,’ excluding the second person who is listening. Với tôi, in this meaning, also differs from chúng ta, which means ‘we,’ namely I, the speaker, and those who are with me and also listening to me.’ Those who speak politely and humbly to superiors or elders add chúng to refer to themselves, e.g., chúng vuối tôi. Some people pronounce it as vối, với, or mới instead of vuối.’ Xong, since this word means ‘extricated’ [masculine, feminine, neutral], when in common speech it is placed absolutely at the end of a phrase, and is sometimes heard pronounced as xỏng, it means: ‘and thus the matter in question will be extricated and settled.’ Xưa, ‘once, in the past’: xưa kia, the same; thuở xưa, the same; khi xưa, the same; ngày xưa ‘few days ago’; năm xưa ‘in the past years’. Xuống, this particle placed after certain verbs or their objects, signifies movement from a higher place or level to a lower one and thus is equivalent to the prefix de- meaning ‘downward’: for example chảy xuống ‘a liquid flowing down’; chạy xuống ‘running down’; ngã xuống ‘falling down’; hạ xuống ‘lowering down’; để xuống, the same; đi xuống ‘descending, going down’. Very often the verb đi or chảy is understood implicitly: e.g., nước xuống đây ‘water flowing down here’; xuống thế ‘descending into the world’; đi xuống dưới hang ‘descending into the cave’; xuống dưới lòng vét ‘descending into the trench.’ Finally, having been raised by the ancestors to the highest level of philology in this language, let us now present the very elements of Annamese versification itself. [p. xxxviii] References Alves, Mark J. 2007. Sino-Vietnamese grammatical borrowing: An overview. In Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic perspective, ed. by Yaron Matras and Jeanette Sakel, Berlin – New York: Mouton De Gruyter, pp. 343–361. Alves, Mark J. 2017. Chinese loanwords in Vietnamese. In Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics, volume 1, ed. by Rint Sybesma, et al. Leiden-Boston: Brill, pp. 585–592. Alves, Mark J. 2022. Vietic Etyma versus Early Chinese Loanwords in the Domain of Grammatical Vocabulary. In Papers from the 30th of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (2021), ed. by Mark J. Alves, Paul Sidwell. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 1–24. Anoge, Antonio. 1948. Entry “Taberd”, in AA. VV. Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. 11, Firenze: Sansoni, 1948, p. 1678. Aymonier, Étienne. 1890. La langue française et l’enseignement en Indochine. Paris: A. Colin. Auroux, Sylvain. 1994. La révolution technologique de la grammatisation. Liège: Mardaga. Bossard, Antoine. 2022. Traduction commentée de la première partie du Dictionarium anamitico-latinum de Jean-Louis Taberd. Tokyo: Maruzen Brocheux, Pierre & Daniel Hémery. 2001. Indochine: la colonisation ambiguë, 1858–1954. Paris: La Découverte. DeFrancis, John. 1977. Colonialism and Language Policy in Viet Nam. The Hague/Paris/New York: Mouton. Dutton, George. 2006. The Tây Son Uprising: Society and Rebellion in Eighteenth-Century Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Ferry, Jules. 1890. Le Tonkin et la mèrepatrie. Paris: V. Havard. Huình Tịnh Paulus Của (1895-1896), Đại Nam quấc âm tự vị, 2 volumes, Saigon: Imprimerie Rey, Curiol & Cie. Jacques, Roland. 2002. L’œuvre de quelques pionniers portugais dans le domaine de la linguistique vietnamienne jusqu’en 1650. Bangkok: Orchid Press. Launay, Adrien. 1916. Mémorial de la Société des Missions-Étrangères. 2 vols. Paris: Séminaire des Missions-Étrangères. Lê Ngọc Trụ. 1959. Việtngữ chánhtả tự vị (Vietnamese Orthographic Dictionary). Sài Gòn: Thanh Tân. Lê Ngọc Trụ. 1993. Tầm nguyên tự điển ViệtNam (Vietnamese EtymologicaDictionary). Hồ Chí Minh City: Hồ Chí Minh City Publisher. Mantienne, Frédéric. 1999. Monseigneur Pigneau de Béhaine. Paris: Editions Eglises d'Asie. Marillier, André. 1995. Nos pères dans la foi: notes sur le clergé catholique du Tonkin de 1666 à 1765, vol. 1. Paris: Églises d’Asie. Nguyễn, Đình Hoà. 1959. Chữ Nôm: the demotic system of writing in Vietnam, Journal of the American Oriental Society 79.4:270–274. Nguyễn, Khắc Xuyên. 1994. Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt của Taberd 1838. Thời Điểm Publishing House, CA. Osborne, Milton E. 1969. The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia: Rule and Response (1859–1905). Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press. Phạm, Thị Kiều Ly. 2018. La grammatisation du vietnamien (1615–1919): histoire des grammaires et de l’écriture romanisée du vietnamien. PhD dissertation, Paris: Université Sorbonne Paris Cité. Phạm, Thị Kiều Ly. 2020. “Les deux premières grammaires vietnamiennes écrites en latin (1651 et 1838)”. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwisenschaft 30.1:88–102. Phạm, Thị Kiều Ly & Mariangela Albano. 2023. The Romanized writing of Vietnamese: A unique case in the Far East. In Language Learning and Teaching in Missionary and Colonial Contexts, pp. 367–387. Amsterdam University Press. Rhodes, Alexandre de. 1651. Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum; Linguae Annamiticae seu Tunchinensis Brevis Declaratio. Rome: Propaganda Fide. Roucoules, Émile. 1889. Étude sur l’Instruction publique en Cochinchine. Bulletin de la Société des études indochinoises de Saïgon, 2nd semester, pp. 25–44. Roucoules, Émile. 1890. “Le français, le quốcngữ et l’enseignement public en Indochine,” Bulletin de la Société des études indochinoises de Saïgon, 1st semester, pp. 5–17. Trịnh, Văn Thảo. 1995. L’école française en Indochine. Paris: Karthala. Trương, Vĩnh Ký. 1876. Manuel des écoles primaires. Saigon: Imprimerie du Gouvernement. Trương, Vĩnh Ký. 1888. Écriture en Annam, Bulletin de la Société des études indochinoises de Saïgon, Premier semestre, pp. 5–9. Reviewed: Received 4 October 2025, revised text accepted 7 February 2026, published 1 May 2026 Editors: Editor-In-Chief Dr Mark Alves | Managing Eds. Dr Paul Sidwell, Dr Sigrid Lew, Dr Mathias Jenny 1 This paper is the outcome of collaboration between the two authors throughout its preparation. Nevertheless, specific contributions can be distinguished: Trang Phan is primarily responsible for sections 2 and 4, the Vietnamese transcriptions, and the revision and verification of all annotations on Vietnamese in section 5. Luisa M. Paternicò is primarily responsible for sections 1 and 3, the Latin translation in section 5, and the accompanying annotations. We also wish to express our gratitude to Mark Alves and Nguyễn Tuấn Cường for their valuable discussion regarding information on words of Chinese origin and to Masaaki Shimizu for his kind help in providing access to the Vietnamese and French translations of Taberd’s preface. 2 Taberd’s given name is Jean-Louis (not Jean-Baptiste, as stated in error in some secondary accounts). 3 This section does not aim to provide a full history of quốc ngữ. For a comprehensive history and detailed archival references, see Phạm & Albano (2023). Here we highlight only the key events most relevant to the present paper and to understanding Taberd’s work. 4 Neither text was printed; they survive only in manuscript form. For detailed archival references, see Phạm & Albano (2023). 5 For a more accurate history of Vietnamese grammaticization and a comparison between De Rhodes and Taberd’s ‘grammars see Phạm 2018 and Phạm 2020. 6 For the life and work on Taberd, see the biography on the IRFA (Institut de Recherche France-Asie) website: https://irfa.paris/en/missionnaire/0340-taberd-jean-louis/ [last access Sept. 23, 2025] which is based on a rich list of primary sources. 7 Taberd’s category “triphthongs” is orthographic: it reflects sequences written with three vowel letters in early quốc ngữ, not necessarily a distinct phonemic class. Modern Vietnamese phonological descriptions typically analyze many such sequences as diphthongs plus glide or as vowel–glide combinations rather than as phonemic “triphthongs.”. We thank Mark Alves for discussing this point. 8 For discussion of Sino-Vietnamese grammatical vocabulary, see Alves (2007, 2017, 2022). 9 Pierre-Joseph-Georges Pigneau de Béhaine (1741-1779) was a French Catholic Bishop and missionary of the Paris Foreign Missions Society (Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris, MEP) in Vietnam who is mainly remembered for helping Nguyễn Ánh (the later Emperor Gia Long) to establish the Nguyễn Dynasty after the Tây Sơn rebellion. (Mantienne, 1999). 10 The fire happened during the conquest of the southern regions in the last years of the Tây Sơn Rebellion, which eventually led to the overthrow of the Nguyễn Lords and the establishment of the Tây Sơn Dynasty (1778-1802), see Dutton, 2006. 11 The Latin expression Horto Florido is here used to refer to a glossary of botanical and medical terms which can be found at pp. 622-660 of the Dictionarium. 12 The author stresses the fact that Chinese and Vietnamese people can communicate only by writing the common Chinese characters, but they do not understand each other when they talk. 13 Hereafter, the pinyin transcription will be added if needed in square brackets after the original transcription of the text. In general Hanyu Pinyin is used in this paper for the transcription of Mandarin Chinese. 14 On the different pronunciations and writing of this word of Chinese origin see Bossard (2022:8). 15 Here Taberd is talking about new phono-semantic characters formed by combining a radical part, providing the semantic area of the word, and a phonological part indicating the pronunciation. This technique was already in use by the Chinese, as the vast majority of Chinese characters are phono-semantic (xingshengzi 形声字). 16 The word key here refers to the radical. 17 As noted earlier, Taberd’s “triphthongs” are defined by orthography (three written vowel letters in early quốc ngữ), not necessarily by phonemic status. Many such sequences are treated in modern analyses as vowel–glide combinations or diphthongs plus glide, rather than as a distinct class of phonemic triphthongs. 18 ‘In Vietnamese, tone and vowel length are marked differently. The base vowel a is considered long, while ă is its short counterpart. Diacritics such as the acute accent (´) in á indicate tone—in this case, the sắc (rising) tone—not vowel length.’ 19 Here and elsewhere in the text, the translations are in square brackets because they were not present in the original text. 20 Bossard 2022:21 supposes that this place might be the Roman city of Cosa in Etruria. However, it seems more likely referred to the city of Kos in Greece. 21 Taberd’s Latin here is very terse (effectively “G is in use”), and a close rendering is here kept to preserve his wording. The intended meaning appears to be simply that the letter g occurs in Vietnamese orthography and has a pronunciation comparable to the European /g/ sound, illustrated by gà. 22 The letter from Hebrew should be ayin ע, however the original text has tsadee צ. 23 The original has óng but it should be ông as in the examples that follow. 24 The correct form should be mình. 25 Dưới should be translated as ‘below’, to contrast with trên (‘above’), rather than ‘in between’. 26 In older Vietnamese, bằng could introduce a topic (meaning ‘as for …’), but this topic function is obsolete in contemporary usage. 27 Taberd uses the word pronoun to refer to measure words or classifiers. 28 An interrogative particle. 29 The original Latin version uses the translation latrunculus, a game piece used in the Roman board game latrunculi (a strategic war game, often compared to chess or checkers). In Vietnamese chess, or Cờ tướng, a game similar to Chinese chess (xiangqi), the game pieces are called con cờ, and each piece has its specific movement rules, much like the pieces in Western chess. 30 The Chinese equivalent of dĩ is yǐ 以 (Le 1959:129), with dĩ hạ corresponding to yǐxià 以下 meaning ‘under’ or ‘from…downwards’. While the Latin rendering of dĩ hạ as ‘all the way down’ can be acceptable, it is not clear why the author adds also the meaning of ‘all the way to every single one’, it might be closer to the sense Taberd had in mind back then. 31 In Taberd’s 19th-century usage, bỡi đây could be taken as ‘from this place’ (locative preposition). Note that in contemporary Vietnamese, bỡi/bởi functions as a causal preposition ‘because of”, not as a locative ‘from’. 32 According to Le 1959:163 and Le 1993:120, đàng originates from tang 唐. Following the Vietnamese Nôm dictionary, Nguyễn Trãi Quốc Âm Từ Điển (15th century), which quotes the Chinese sources Erya and Shijing, in Classical Chinese 唐/塘 could indicate a pathway, a road inside a temple, and by extension ‘in the direction of’, the dictionary is accessible online: https://www.nomfoundation.org/nom-tools/Nguyen-Trai-Quoc-Am-Tu-Dien?item=%C4%91%C3%A0ng&uiLang=en [last access August 14, 2025]. 33 As already noted in Bossard 2022: 61, đồng bào, đồng liêu and đồng tình correspond to the Chinese tóngbāo 同胞, tóngliáo 同僚 and tóngqíng 同情 with the same meaning. 34 Hà corresponds to the Classical Chinese interrogative pronoun hé 何, see Lê 1993:135. In Taberd’s examples, do hà most plausibly reflects the old literary expression 由何 yóu hé, which can mean “why,” “from what,” or “how”; hà sự = hé shì 何事 “what matter”; hà huống = hé kuàng 何况 “how much more/let alone”. 35 Khiến in modern Vietnamese is a causative verb meaning “to cause” or “to make (someone do something)”. The author here refers to an older usage as a semantic gloss (a helper word to convey cause, command, or enablement) when interpreting or explaining Chinese characters. According to Le 1959:252 and Le 1993:153, it corresponds to the Chinese qiǎn 遣 ‘to send, to dispatch’ (Sino-Vietnamese reading khiển). 36 Lê (1959:299) and Lê (1993:347) identify mặc with the Chinese 默 mò “quiet, silent,” but this meaning does not fit Taberd’s examples semantically. Since no secure etymology can be established here, we do not assign a Chinese source and treat mặc synchronically, on the basis of Taberd’s usage alone. 37 Hai chục is a slightly older or more colloquial way of saying ‘twenty’. The more standard modern form is hai mươi (see below in the text), but hai chục is still widely understood and used, especially in speech or traditional contexts. 38 Giạ is a traditional Vietnamese unit of volume used mainly for measuring rice or other grains. The original has the tone wrongly placed under the i: gịa. 39 De Rhodes (1651:857) distinguishes vạn ‘10,000’ and vàn ‘100,000’, but Béhaine (1772/73) glosses both as 萬 (wàn, ‘10,000’), and Taberd (1838) follows Béhaine in the dictionary (p. 581: vạn = vàn = 10,000; p. 320: muôn = 10,000). In the Preface, however, Taberd seems to echo De Rhodes’ earlier distinction. According to Lê (1959:313; 1993:352, 424), muôn, vạn, and vàn all derive from wàn 萬, which in Chinese consistently means 10,000. We thank Nguyễn Tuấn Cường for the discussion. 40 As already noted before, what here is called ‘pronoun’ must be intended as classifier or measure word. 41 The question mark seems to be a mistake. 42 Tái, a Sino-Vietnamese reading, is comparable to the Chinese adverb zài 再, with the general meaning of repetition: tái hoàn [zài huán 再还], ‘to return, to restore’; tái hồi [zài huí 再回], ‘to revert’; tái phát [zài fā 再发], ‘to recur’, see also Le 1959:442, Le 1993:391. 43 Tự (Sino-Vietnamese reading tự) corresponds to the Chinese zì 自 ‘oneself’ or ‘by oneself and appears in many compounds with similar meanings, such as zìwěn 自刎 ‘to commit suicide’, zìyì 自縊 ‘to hang oneself’, zìyì 自意 ‘one’s own will’ (though this compound is uncommon in Chinese and zìyuàn 自愿is rather used), and zìrán 自然 ‘naturally’. See also Le 1993:213; Bossard 2022:110. 44 Taberd’s example suggests that vay functioned as a sentence-final particle used to ask for confirmation. Although Lê (1959:105) and Lê (1993:424) connect it with the Chinese final particle 哉 zāi, that etymology is phonologically problematic, so we do not adopt it here. 45 Vô, a Sino-Vietnamese reading, corresponds to the literary Chinese adverb of negation wú 無 ‘there is not, have not, without’. The following examples would correspond to Chinese as follows: Vô tội = wú zuì 無罪 ‘innocent, without guilt; vô tình = wú qíng 無情 ‘without emotion’; vô nhân = wú rèn 無仁 ‘inhuman’; vô ơn = wú ēn 無恩 ‘ungrateful’, ‘without gratitude’; vô số = wú shù 無數 ‘countless’； vô cùng = wú qióng 無窮: ‘without end’. See also Le 1959:129, Le 1993:426, Bossard 2022: 115. --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ Phan & Paternicò | Jean-Louis Taberd’s Treatise on Vietnamese Function Words | JSEALS 19.1 (2026) 3 Copyright vested in the author; Creative Commons Attribution License