The beautiful Vietnamese characters are called Mandarin characters (ch? Qu?c Ng?).

Does not follow the square shape of other text and cannot be read from right to left like other text. So, a new kind of calligraphy was born, although still retaining the roots of East Asian calligraphy. Some people think Vietnamese calligraphy is unique, striking and beautiful, while others think it is ugly, contradictory and ineffective. This is because the combination of east and west has different effects on the viewer's eyes.

The most basic forms of Vietnamese calligraphy can be divided into five types, namely true square, style, grass, imitation and wooden board. Zhenfang is an easily identifiable and very readable form without any artistic style, like regular script. Style is a more stylized approach that shows personal style.

Grass is a highly personal style. Viewers do not need to see the author's signature, but can recognize the author simply by looking at the calligraphy. Imitation is a form of imitating foreign languages ??such as Chinese, English, and Arabic. The plank is a form that is as if carved into a wooden board, with the words turned over to resemble Han Nom characters, requiring a mirror to recognize the words.

Characteristics of Vietnamese characters

The Vietnamese alphabet has 9 diacritical marks, 4 of which are used to add vowels, and the other 5 symbols represent tones (flat tones) 1 tone) without tone marks. Vietnamese often has two diacritics on a vowel, which makes Vietnamese easy to identify.

In addition, there are 10 digraphs (CH, GH, GI, KH, NG, NH, PH, QU, TH, TR) and one trigraph (NGH). These digraphs and triplets were previously considered separate letters and were itemized in older dictionaries. They are no longer arranged as separate letters, for example "CH" is listed between "CA" and "CO" in today's dictionaries.

Vietnamese itself does not use "F", "J", "W", and "Z", but it is used in foreign languages. "W" is sometimes used instead of "?" in abbreviations. In addition, in informal writing, "W", "F" and "J" are sometimes used instead of "QU", "PH" and "GI".

Reference for the above content: Baidu Encyclopedia-Vietnamese