The Evils of Quốc Ngữ #4 continued again
Blogger Quach Hien has a nice response to this issue of how modern Vietnamese translations of the [Đại] Việt sử lược do not note that the original has the character…
Blogger Quach Hien has a nice response to this issue of how modern Vietnamese translations of the [Đại] Việt sử lược do not note that the original has the character…
Yet another problem with Vietnamese translations of classical Chinese writings is that translators have left out parts of old texts which they do not like. Take, for instance, the case…
Can a trip to the movies in Rangoon in 1954 tell us anything about Burma at the time? I think it can. In fact, I think it sheds a good…
I was reading the Rangoon Gazette for 10 January 1890 where I found an article on “Slavery in Rangoon.” It is an article about Indian girls, from Madras in particular,…
I recently came across a journal that was published in colonial Vietnam called the Official Bulletin in the Indigenous Language. It was an official publication for Tonkin (Bắc Kỳ) which…
In the 1950s, historical scholarship in the DRV was part of an international world of scholarship. First and foremost, Vietnamese historians in the DRV were in dialog with their Communist…
I was looking at this Chinese newspaper from Burma in the early 1950s and came across this advertisement below. It is an advertisement for a product which claims to be…
Aren’t Buddhists not supposed to harm living things? Isn’t that one of the most basic concepts of Buddhism? That’s what I thought anyway. Then I read the following passage about…
Ever wonder what people in Laos were smoking in the 1960s as they cruised around in their new Mazdas? Well here is the answer. Consulate cigarettes, for one, a brand…
One of the first problems I noticed with quốc ngữ translations is that they add the words “China” (nước Tàu or Trung Quốc) or “in China” (ở bên Tàu, etc.)…