Sino-Vietnamese initials reflected in the phonetic components of 15th-century Nôm characters

Abstract

The Chữ Nôm (CN) characters contained in the Sino-Vietnamese (SV) version of the apocryphal scripture Phật Thuyết Đại Báo Phu ̣Mẫu Ân Trọng Kinh 佛説大報父母恩重經 are quite unique in that they show obvious evidence of the ancient sesqui-syllabicity of the Vietnamese language. This study aims to point out their utility in the study of Vietnamese and SV history and to conduct a tentative reconstruction of 15th-century SV initials through comparisons of the CN readings and the SV readings of their phonetic components.