Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in a patriotic slogan

Poster in Saigon:

(Source)

Communist flag with a nationalist message, "FIRMLY PROTECT THE OWNERSHIP OF VIETNAMESE SEA AND ISLANDS."

This is outside a community education center. Among the classes and lectures advertised on the banner is a talk on "GENDER EDUCATION."

Eric Henry points out that, of the ten words in the slogan, seven are simply Chinese words with Vietnamese pronunciations:

Bảo vệ vững chắc chủ quyền biển dảo Việt Nam.

bảo = 保 ("ensure; insure guarantee"); vệ= 衛 ("guard; defend; protect"); chủ = 主 ("owner; lord; host"); quyền = 權 ("right; authority; power"); dảo = 島 ("island"); việt = 越 (name of an ancient state and its people); and nam = 南 ("south").

Of the three words that don’t appear to be Chinese, “vững” means “stable, secure”; “chắc” means “for sure,” and “biển” means “sea, ocean.”

The proportion of Chinese to Vietnamese words (70%) is typical of a Vietnamese sentence or paragraph.

I would add that, of the seven Sino-Vietnamese morphemes in the slogan, despite the fact that they are written separately in Vietnamese, in Sinitic six of them would form three disyllabic words:

bǎowèi 保衛 ("defend; protect; safeguard")

zhǔquán 主權 ("sovereignty; sovereign rights; dominion")

Yuènán 越南 ("Vietnam")

Moreover, the average length of a word in Mandarin is almost exactly two syllables.  I suspect that the average length of a word in Vietnamese would be roughly the same, though perhaps slightly less.  Apparently, however, Vietnamese speakers / writers don't think their language has words, only syllables, but I'd be happy to be enlightened further on this matter.

The figures would be roughly similar for Korean (around 60% Sino-Korean vocabulary in South Korea, with English words rapidly gaining in colloquial usage [source]) and Japanese (around 60% Sino-Japanese vocabulary in a modern Japanese dictionary, but only about 18% of words used in speech [source]).

There are other interesting aspects to the poster as a whole.  Eric writes:

I am rather astonished to see the slogan “Bảo vệ vững chắc chủ quyền biển đảo Việt Nam (Firmly protect the ownership of Vietnamese sea islands) on a placard publicly displayed in Vietnam. The current regime in Vietnam behaves in general like China’s obedient little puppy and treats its own citizens with contempt. The regime has chosen not to protest China’s take-over of the South China Sea; therefore it doesn’t want any other entity within the country, individual or collective, to protest either — to make such a protest is to show “disloyalty to the party.”

As Nguyễn Hưng Quốc (a Vietnamese-Australian literary scholar) puts it:

Chính Quyền Việt Nam hiện nay không tin vào chủ nghĩa xã hội, không tin vào chủ nghĩa tư bản, và cũng không tin vào lý thuyết kinh tế thị trường theo định hướng xã hội chủ nghĩa: họ chỉ tin vào tiền, nhất là tiền trong túi họ. Họ không bảo vệ giai cấp vô sản, không bảo vệ đất nước, không bảo vệ độc lập, không bảo vệ tự do: Họ chỉ bảo vệ chính quyền. Họ không chống Mỹ, không chống Trung Quốc, không chống lại nước nào cả. Họ chỉ chống lại nhân dân.

Translation:

Those who administer the government of Vietnam these days don’t believe in any ideology. They don’t believe in socialism, don’t believe in capitalism, and don’t believe in a market economy with socialist characteristics. They believe only in money, especially money in their own pockets. They don’t safeguard the proletariat, they don’t safeguard the country, they don’t safeguard independence, they don’t safeguard freedom; they safeguard only the government. They don’t resist the United States, they don’t resist China. They resist only one thing: the people.

Here’s another trenchant observation by Nguyễn Hưng Quốc:

Khi chính phủ hèn, họ muốn cả nước hèn. (translation: When the government is cowardly, they want the whole country to be cowardly.)

The bit about a “gender education” course on the placard is also astonishing and praiseworthy. Overall my assessment is that these two elements — islands and gender education — are coming “from below,” not “from above.”

Steve O'Harrow adds:

This is indeed an interesting look into the underlying dynamics of today's Viet Nam.  The venue is the South, the wall painting is amateur, all of which points to a rising nationalist sentiment on the part of civil society rather than any official position.  But that it has been allowed to occur and is still up and running also tells us something about the localauthorities and the possibility that what some see as monolithic Communist Party control is not the whole story.

Steve further remarks:

The amazing part is that the motorcyclist actually stopped on the road to make his call — in Hawaii, our moped students keep on going (wearing flip-flops & no helmet) while phoning (and sometimes smoking) — so do skateboarders, but they have no brakes.

Here's another colorful expression of Vietnamese patriotism, a coloring book featuring Vietnam's claim to the Paracel and Spratly Islands:

(Source)

"Sea Islands My Nation".

As a colleague of mine trenchantly put it:  "They have been fighting the bastards for 2000 years."

Selected readings

• "Sinographic memory in Vietnamese writing" (4/16/14)
• "Words in Vietnamese" (10/2/18)
• "Sino-Vietnamese poster" (12/4/17)
• "On the propinquity of Vietnamese and Sinitic" (5/11/18)
• "Vietnamese in Chinese and Nom characters" (5/28/13)