Vietnamese tilde explained

The Vietnamese tilde or apex was a curved diacritic used in the 17th century to mark final nasalization in the early Vietnamese alphabet.^[1] It was an adoption of the Portuguese tilde, and should not be confused with the tone mark ngã, which is mistakenly encoded as a tilde in Unicode but is actually an adoption of the Greek perispomeni. Apex is the name used in contemporary Latin texts.

In his 1651 Latin: [[Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]], Alexandre de Rhodes describes the diacritic:^{[2] [3] [4]}

The apex appears atop,, and less commonly . As with other accent marks, a tone mark can appear atop the apex.^[5]

According to canon law historian Roland Jacques, the apex indicated a final labial-velar nasal pronounced as /[ŋ͡m]/, an allophone of pronounced as //ŋ// that is peculiar to the Hanoi dialect to the present day. The apex apparently fell out of use during the mid-18th century, being unified with (representing pronounced as //ŋ//), in a major simplification of the orthography, though the Vietnamese Jesuit Vietnamese: [[Philipphê Bỉnh]] (Portuguese: Philiphê do Rosario) continued to use the old orthography into the early 19th century.^[6] In Pierre Pigneau de Behaine and Jean-Louis Taberd's 1838 Latin: Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum,^[7] the words Vietnamese: ao᷄ and Vietnamese: ou᷄ became Vietnamese: ong and Vietnamese: ông, respectively.

The Middle Vietnamese apex is known as Vietnamese: dấu sóng or Vietnamese: dấu lưỡi câu in modern Vietnamese. The apex is often mistaken for a tilde in modern reproductions of early Vietnamese writing, such as in Phạm Thế Ngũ's Vietnamese: Việt Nam văn học sử.^{[8] [9]}

Examples

Obtained from Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum, a trilingual Vietnamese, Portuguese and Latin dictionary by Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes.

Notes and References

1. Book: Jacques, Roland . Portuguese Pioneers of Vietnamese Linguistics . Bangkok . Orchid Press . 2002 . 91 . The accent mark written by the amanuensis on the first word can be read as the apex (or tilde), an abbreviation sign used in 17th and 18th century Vietnamese: Quốc Ngữ to represent the rounded nasal finals: 'Vietnamese: -aõ' (spelt today 'Vietnamese: -ong'); 'Vietnamese: -oũ' (= 'Vietnamese: -ông'), and 'Vietnamese: -ũ' (= 'Vietnamese: -ung'). Thus 'Vietnamese: chã' would stand for the word presently spelt 'Vietnamese: chẳng.'. Note that de Rhodes called the tilde a "circumflex".
2. Book: Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Việt của Đắc Lộ 1651. De Rhodes's Vietnamese grammar of 1651 . Nguyễn Khắc Xuyên . . Thời điểm . 1993 . 32129692 . https://web.archive.org/web/20111112002450/http://vantuyen.net/index.php?view=story&subjectid=22131 . November 12, 2011 . vi .
3. Book: de Rhodes, Alexandre . Về các dấu và dấu hiệu khác trên nguyên âm . Từ điển Annam-Lusitan-Latinh (Thường gọi Từ điển Việt-Bồ-La) . Hồ Lê . Cao Xuân Hạo . Hồ Tuyết Mai . Thanh Lãnh . Hoàng Xuân Việt . Đỗ Quang Chính . Ho Chi Minh City . . 1991 . 1651 . 11 . vi .
4. Sự biến đổi các hình thức chữ quốc ngữ từ 1620 đến 1877 . Changes in the Vietnamese alphabet's form from 1629 to 1877 . PTSKH . Nguyễn Thị Bạch Nhạn . Hà Nội . . 1994 . vi . 2014-03-08 . https://web.archive.org/web/20140309004127/http://www.vns.edu.vn/vns/images/stories/Bai_NCKH/5_LeKhacCuong/7_lekhaccuong.pdf . 2014-03-09 . dead .
5. [{{fullurl:File:Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum.pdf|page=71}} cou᷒̀ la]. Dictionarium annamiticum lusitanum, et latinum . Alexandre . de Rhodes . Rome . . 1651 . 135 . la .
6. Le Portugal et la romanisation de la langue vietnamienne. Faut-il réécrire l'histoire ? . Portugal and the romanization of the Vietnamese language. Should we rewrite history? . Roland . Jacques . Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer . Société française d'histoire d'outre-mer . 85 . 318 . 1998 . 52 . fr . 10.3406/outre.1998.3600 .
7. Book: Pigneaux, Pierre Joseph . Litterarum anamiticarum ex ordine disposita series . Dictionarium anamitico-latinum . Jean-Louis . Taberd . . 1838 . https://books.google.com/books?id=CylHAAAAcAAJ&pg=PR3 . la .
8. Book: Việt Nam Văn Học Sử: Giản Ước Tân Biên. History of Vietnamese Literature: New Survey. Phạm Thế Ngũ. Saigon. Quốc Học Tùng Thư. 1961. 61. vi. Google Books.
9. Việt-Nam khảo-cổ tập-san: Bulletin de l'Institut de recherches historiques. Vietnam Historical Research Institute. 1961. 86. Bulletin de l'Institut de recherches archéologiques. vi. Google Books.