Tam thiên tự (

chữ Hán ( , ) are the Chinese characters that were used to write Literary Chinese in Vietnam, Literary Chinese (; ) and Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in Vietnamese language, Vietnamese. They were officially used in Vietnam after the Red River Delta region ...

: 三千字; literally 'three thousand characters') is a Vietnamese text that was used in the past to teach young children Chinese characters (

) and

chữ Nôm Chữ Nôm (, ) is a logographic writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language. It uses Chinese characters to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, with other words represented by new characters ...

. It was written around the 19th century. The original title of the text was originally Tự học toản yếu (

: 字學纂要; literally 'Compilation of essentials for learning characters') The book was believed to be complied by

Ngô Thì Nhậm Ngô Thì Nhậm or Ngô Thời Nhiệm ( vi-hantu, 吳時任, 1746–1803) was an important Vietnamese scholar and official who served several regimes during the turbulent last decades of the eighteenth century. He had served as an official for t ...

(

: 吳時任; Ngô Thời Nhiệm);

courtesy name A courtesy name ( zh, s=字, p=zì, l=character), also known as a style name, is an additional name bestowed upon individuals at adulthood, complementing their given name. This tradition is prevalent in the East Asian cultural sphere, particula ...

, Hy Doãn (

: 希尹).

Background

The text contains 3000 characters with no specific order with the characters being organized into four character verses (tứ tự; 四字). These verses are different from other texts that were also used during that time. Books lik
Nhất thiên tự
(

: 一千字)
Ngũ thiên tự
(

: 五千字), and

Tự Đức Thánh chế Tự học Giải nghĩa ca ''Tự Đức thánh chế tự học giải nghĩa ca'' (chữ Hán: 嗣德聖製字學解義歌; 'Emperor Tự Đức's sagely creation about character learning and explanation song') is a Vietnamese language, Vietnamese book that teaches Chine ...

(

: 嗣德聖製字學解義歌) were all composed in

lục bát Lục bát (, ) is a traditional Vietnamese verse form – historically first recorded in Chữ Nôm script. "Lục bát" is Sino-Vietnamese for "six-eight", referring to the alternating lines of six and eight syllables. It will always begin with ...

verse unlike Tam thiên tự's four character lines. Each sentence are rhymed every two syllables. The book was organized this way to make it easier for beginner learners to remember the characters. The whole text is essentially a very long rhyme. The Chinese characters are glossed with chữ Nôm in smaller print (consisting of one or two characters). The text includes characters that cover topics such as body parts (bộ phận thân thể), family relationships (quan hệ gia đình), traditional beliefs (tín ngưỡng), colours (màu sắc), plants (cây cỏ), metals and gemstones (kim loại và đá quý), animals species (loài vật), birds (chim chóc), insects, snakes and centipedes, tailless animals (côn trùng, rắn rết, động vật không đuôi), fish and species under water (cá và loài dưới nước), grammatical words (từ ngữ pháp), numerals (số đếm), and words with

reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The cla ...

(từ láy). Ngô Thì Nhậm wrote in his preface, SecondPageOfTamthientugiaidichquocngu

Archaic words

The text also shows several obsolete words that are no longer used in Vietnamese, having a different meaning, or is only used in compound words.

Editions

三千字解音 Tam thiên tự giải âm (1831)
* 三千字纂要 Tam thiên tự toản yếu (1845)
三千字解音 Tam thiên tự giải âm (1886)
* 三千字解譯國語 Tam thiên tự giải dịch quốc ngữ (1908)
三千字解譯國語 Tam thiên tự giải dịch quốc ngữ (1915)
* 三千字 Tam thiên tự (1959) by Đoàn Trung Còn

In media

* A scene in the TV show, Lều Chõng
episode 6
depicts a teacher teaching kids how to read characters using Tam thiên tự.

Notes

References