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 book that teaches Chinese characters (chữ Hán) through chữ Nôm.^[1] It was complied by the emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, Tự Đức (1848–1883), around the 19th century. The book itself contains 13 volumes which are organized into 7 major categories.^[2][3] It is written in the Vietnamese lục bát 六八 verse form.^[4][5] It is considered to be an important dictionary for chữ Nôm researchers as it is a fairly complete Hán-Nôm dictionary with no ambiguous characters.^[6][a]

Tự Đức thánh chế tự học giải nghĩa ca
嗣德聖製字學解義歌
The first page of 嗣德聖製字學解義歌 - Tự Đức thánh chế tự học giải nghĩa ca.
Compiled by	Tự Đức 嗣德
Language	Vietnamese (Written in chữ Nôm) and Literary Chinese
First printed edition	19th century
Verse form	Lục bát 六八

Background

The book and its 13 volumes contains 4,572 verses written in lục bát 六八 verse form. Within all of these verses, contains 32,004 characters with 9,028 of them being Chinese characters.^[7] It can be considered as a bilingual Literary Chinese - Vietnamese character dictionary.^[2] The book shows Chinese characters being glossed with chữ Nôm in smaller print. The annotations can range from one character to multiple characters, for example on the fifth line, 月 and 日 are annotated with 𩈘𦝄 and 𩈘𡗶 respectively.

• Kham dư loại 堪輿類: (Volumes 1–2; 上-下)^[b] contains characters about both astronomy and geography.^[8]
• Nhân sự loại 人事類: (Volumes 3–5; 上-中-下) contains characters about human relationships and society.^[8]
• Chính hóa loại 政化類: (Volumes 6–7; 上-下) contains characters about education.^[8]
• Khí dụng loại 器用類: (Volumes 8–9; 上-下) contains characters about object of everyday use.^[8]
• Thảo mộc loại 草木類: (Volumes 10–11; 上-下) contains characters about plants and trees.^[8]
• Cầm thú loại 禽獸類: (Volume 12) contains characters about wild animals.^[8]
• Trùng ngư loại 虫魚類: (Volume 13) contains characters about insects, shrimp, and fishes.^[8]

The first and second pages of 嗣德聖製字學解義歌 - Tự Đức thánh chế tự học giải nghĩa ca.

According to statistics by Nguyễn Thị Lan, Tự Đức thánh chế tự học giải nghĩa ca holds the largest collection of Chinese characters that are annotated with chữ Nôm.^[9] Hà Đăng Việt states that the Nôm in the book mainly uses three methods of creating characters, giả tá 假借 (phonetic loan), hình thanh 形聲 (phonosemantic compounding), and hội ý 會意 (compound ideographs).^[10] But most characters fall into the method of hình thanh 形聲 (phonosemantic compounding) as it was seen as the correct way of writing chữ Nôm.^[6]

The first and second page of Thiên tự văn giải âm 千字文解音, which compared a thousand Chinese characters to chữ Nôm similar to how it is done in Tự Đức Thánh chế tự học giải nghĩa ca.

Book	Number of Chinese characters
嗣德聖製字學解義歌 Tự Đức thánh chế tự học giải nghĩa ca	9,028
大南國語 Đại Nam quốc ngữ	4779
南方名物備考 Nam phương danh vật bị khảo	4461
指南玉音解義 Chỉ nam ngọc âm giải nghĩa	3394
三千字解音 Tam thiên tự giải âm	2988
日用常談 Nhật dụng thường đàm	2560
難字解音 Nan tự giải âm	1066
千字文解音 Thiên tự văn giải âm	1000

The book itself has been transliterated into the Vietnamese alphabet by Trần Kinh Hòa and was republished by Chinese University of Hong Kong (香港中文大學) in 1971.^[11]

Text

The first few lines of the book

Chinese characters and chữ Nôm	Vietnamese alphabet	English translation
天𡗶地𡐙位𡾵	Thiên trời địa đất vị ngôi	"Thiên" heaven, "Địa" earth, "Vị" seat
覆𩂏載𬩅流㵢滿𣹓	Phú che tái chở lưu trôi mãn đầy	"Phú" to cover, "tái" to deliver, "lưu" to flow, "mãn" to overflow
高高博𢌌厚𠫆	Cao cao bác rộng hậu dầy	"Cao" tall, "bác" wide, "hậu" thick
晨𣈕暮𣋁轉搓移移[c]	Thần mai mộ tối chuyển xây di dời	"Thần" dawn, "mộ" dusk, "chuyển" to revolve, "di" to move
月𩈘𦝄日𩈘𡗶	Nguyệt mặt trăng nhật mặt trời	"Nguyệt" the moon, "nhật" the sun
照𥋸臨細世𠁀年𢆥[d]	Chiếu soi lâm tới thế đời niên năm	"Chiếu" to shine, "lâm" to arrive, "thế" generation, "niên" year

Naming taboo during the Nguyễn dynasty.

• Words in bold are words that rhyme. The book is written in lục bát 六八 verse form as can be seen with these lines (six and eight syllable alternating verses). Words are rhymed every sixth and eighth syllable.^[5]

See also

• Tam thiên tự
• Chữ Nôm
• Chữ Hán
• Tự Đức thánh chế luận ngữ thích nghĩa ca

Notes

1. An example would be the character annotating 地, instead of 坦 (a commonly used character, but is also found in Literary Chinese texts; thản), the character 𡐙 is used instead.
2. The characters 上-下 refers to the first and second parts of the volume. 中 refers to the middle part of the volume. Such as in the title of first volume, 卷之一　堪輿類　上 (in smaller print).
3. Both of the characters (移) are marked with the nháy diacritic 𖿱. This means that dời is a Non-Sino-Vietnamese reading of 移 di.
4. The character is ⿱召灬 for 照, but is not currently encoded into Unicode. It is used instead of 照 because of a naming taboo since a lot of characters are missing their 日 radical such as in 照 and 𣈜.

Further reading

• 嗣德聖製字學解義歌 - Tự Đức thánh chế tự học giải nghĩa ca (q.01-03)
• 嗣德聖製字學解義歌 - Tự Đức thánh chế tự học giải nghĩa ca (q.04-06)
• Tự-Đức Thánh-chế tự-học giải-nghĩa-ca
• 陳荆和 - 嗣德聖製字學解義歌譯註-香港中文大學 (1971)