USSH — Article by Professor Dinh Van Duc (printed in “100 portraits of a century of National University” – 2006) about Professor Nguyen Tai Can - the person who shed light on the origin of the Vietnamese language.
My teacher - Professor Nguyen Tai Can is a special and unique teacher. According to the story, when he was in school, he was very mischievous but smart and had a good memory. Once, in a folk song reading competition in class, he was able to recite 500 verses in a row.
When entering the resistance war, he had just finished his high school diploma. Following the advice of his elder brother (doctor Nguyen Tai Chat), he returned to Nghe An to join the resistance war. After experiencing many hardships and poverty in youth and farmer association work, then joining the Propaganda Department of the Zone IV Party Committee, in 1949, he joined the Party in Thanh Chuong district. His predecessors saw that he had professional abilities, so they decided to put him in the education sector and Mr. Dang Thai Mai directly trained him. From then on, he was attached to the education sector for 42 years until his retirement. His life went through many ups and downs, but his strong will and principles helped him stay steadfast in all hardships. He was a simple and frugal person, although he did not lack anything. He always maintained the style of being from Nghe An and a scientific cadre of a poor country. However, in daily life, he was extremely funny, wherever he went, there was hearty laughter from everyone, especially his fellow students. Now I remember... Ten years ago, when he was 70, I wrote the first short piece. We said to him: "
Remember the fun today,
Cheers to the day you turn eighty.Then that day came very quickly. As fast as time accelerated. The teacher is now 80 years old. His figure is still agile, although his back is more bent, his hair is more gray, but in science his thinking is still youthful, passionately creative. The volume of his work is enormous. He received the Ho Chi Minh Prize, stepping up to the podium of honor with his predecessors: Dao Duy Anh, Hoang Xuan Han, Tran Duc Thao, Dang Thai Mai, Tran Van Giau... It started from a literary suggestion by scholar Hoang Xuan Han more than 10 years ago, is it possible to rely on the taboo words in the text?
"The Tale of Kieu"but to study the origin of the original Kieu through its developments. The teacher struggled, agonized, and decided to tackle a problem that no one had done before: using the method of historical linguistics to study the text. The teacher started with the Kieu Duy Minh Thi (1872). A massive documentary study was published. Then came a large book series studying the Kieu Nom texts. The teacher, by continuing to study the taboo words in the work, was the first to make a new proposal about the time Nguyen Du composed it.
"The Tale of Kieu"when the poet was over 30 years old (1787 - 1790). His recent groundbreaking writings have stirred up public opinion in the field of classical studies with new, bold and scientifically based ideas. His continuous academic success lies in the fact that he has a very modern and correct way of thinking. He has a firm grasp of linguistic theoretical sources in different historical contexts. Boldly but cautiously, he has successfully applied linguistic theories to native materials, both modern and historical, opening up very new ideas. I recall events from more than 40 years ago. In 1961, he returned to Vietnam after years of teaching Vietnamese language and culture at the Faculty of Sinology, Leningrad State University. He actively participated in the beginning of the Department of Vietnamese Studies there and the school considered him one of the founders of the Vietnamese language major. He defended our country's first doctoral thesis in Literature in the Soviet Union (1960). "
Vietnamese noun classes" is a linguistic treatise written at a time when Structuralism was in vogue but was not encouraged because of the Cold War. Although he wrote in Europe, he was not drawn into the "Eurocentric" view of "classical morphology" thinking, which is very suitable for the tradition of inflectional languages. He tried to start from the native language, skillfully combining it with the distribution method of Descriptive Theory and the tradition of Sinology to propose the concept of Nouns and a structural model of it as has been in textbooks for decades. He only published this treatise (1975) when its ideas had been established through ups and downs in reality. Professor A. Xapchenko, my thesis supervisor, in a seminar on Word Types (1976), told the graduate students: "
At the beginning of the 60s, Nguyen Tai Can wrote Vietnamese Grammar under the influence of Structuralism, which was very new and very bold in Oriental Studies.". Returning to the university lecture hall in the country (1961), he persistently and step by step popularized the advanced ideas of Oriental studies. Our class of students at that time first learned the names of Meillet, Bodouin De Courtenay, Sherba, Polivanov, Dragunov Kholodovich... through his grammar lectures. He suggested and disseminated very important academic ideas related to Vietnamese, but not in the classical way of purely theoretical lectures, but he did very specific things. I remember... In the fall of 1962, my class was supposed to study Vietnamese grammar, but he did not come to class immediately, did not introduce what he had researched, including in his thesis. As the Head of the Department, he asked us to study Vietnamese Phonetics first. He assigned Mr. Nguyen Phan Canh, a young, agile lecturer with good teaching methods, to give us a series of lectures, after which we learned that it was the content of his research work. Gordina, a student of Soviet Orientalism. We understood how important the syllable is in Vietnamese, its structure, the contrast between initial and final, the theory of tones... he also introduced other solutions, such as those of Andreev, Haudricourt, Le Van Li... Learning goes hand in hand with practice, he trained us in the skills of recording Phonology and Phonetics. The latter was very difficult because we needed good ears and good hearing, which I did not have. After finishing this subject, one day he called a few of us up and gave us a responsibility: the Ministry of Education had just asked him and Mr. Hoang Tue to finish compiling a set of books.
"Vietnamese Grammar"for high schools to teach on trial in Hanoi and will be taught at Trung Vuong school and a few other schools. We had to go back and read this book carefully, then follow the teachers to practice. That book is really good. Up to now, I have not seen any better book because the concept of this book is very new, very Vietnamese, highly pedagogical, especially there are many good and practical exercises. Unfortunately, at that time, the Ministry of Education refused to widely distribute the book and did not allow it to be taught widely. At that time, printing was very difficult, the teacher often gave us valuable documents to copy by hand. I remember the teacher gave me a typewritten copy of the Russian book "
Chinese Grammar" by A. Dragunov (1941). He spent a large sum of money to have it typed and brought back to the country because this book contained very important ideas about Oriental studies, including the evaluation of "
shape" (Morphosyllabema) is a type of "
quality unit" of the grammar of an isolating language. After copying it by hand, I practiced translating it into Vietnamese, learning both knowledge and foreign languages. Thanks to that, I still remember it to this day. During the difficult war years, when the school was evacuated to Dai Tu district, Bac Thai province (now Thai Nguyen), the teacher entered his 40s. Now, anyone who is 40 years old seems very young, but at that time he looked old and austere. He had many wrinkles on his forehead because of thinking. In Dai Tu, he continued to develop the ideas that had been formed: An article about
from the section(Slovomorphema) has been published, confirming the intermediate nature of Vietnamese syllables in the relationship between words and traditional morphemes. A paper devoted to the use of
shortas a distribution standard, to "improve the work" of classifying Vietnamese word classes. I still remember those two reports were presented by the teacher in turn in the bamboo hut of the elementary class in Hung Dao hamlet, Van Tho commune at the Faculty's scientific conference, in the summer of 1966. The book "
Vietnamese Grammar"
The famous (words - compound words - short phrases) (1975) was drafted by the teacher from 1967 in Dai Tu until the end of the evacuation and returning to Hanoi (1969). But the teacher struggled for a long time, gave the handwritten copy to us to read, held seminars for students in many courses, he was careful with every detail and wording. The most memorable thing was the teacher struggled when proposing the solution "one center, two positions (V.1, V.2)" for the noun structure. Only when he was really assured did he allow it to be printed. Professor V. Sonxev once said: "
Nguyen Tai Can, he really created a school of Vietnamese linguistics.". We wanted him to continue writing about Vietnamese syntax, but he said: "
Teaching is fine. I still teach, but research takes time, and international theory is changing rapidly. Even N. Chomsky (1957, 1965) has changed. Perhaps we should let the next generation be more sensitive!". In fact, he sought a stronger specialty that was difficult for anyone of his time and even after him to do without capital: "
Historical Vietnamese Linguistics".The three research fields that the teacher deployed at the same time were: Han - Nom, Vietnamese historical phonetics and Vietnamese historical grammar. The teacher advocated that both students and colleagues work together. Half of his Ho Chi Minh Prize was in this field. During the hot summer of the war in 1972, we had to evacuate to avoid American bombs. At the beginning of the summer, we followed the teacher to teach a university class of Information - Culture evacuated to Dan Phuong, Ha Tay. At noon, everyone often played chess or took a nap to rest at people's houses, while the teacher took the opportunity to bring books and pens to hang out at the village tea shop to work. The tea shop was next to an old temple, seeing Chinese characters, the teacher immediately found a ladder to climb up to the roof to see and saw some boards with ancient characters. As a seasoned scientist, the teacher quickly discovered a valuable treasure of woodblocks from the early Le dynasty that the history of printing only knew about at a later time. That was the woodblock "
The Noble Jade Emperor's Original Conduct Sutra"Very valuable. You have devoted your efforts to researching this edition and writing a series of contributions that have attracted the attention of historians and ancient scholars. I know that you have turned your attention to the field of Sinology. The late 70s was a difficult period for our country in foreign affairs. With your courage and understanding of the situation, you decided to publish
:"
Origin of the formation of Sino-Vietnamese reading"
(1979).
Everyone felt hesitant in the sensitive and very complicated context at that time. This book with very rich and scientific content quickly received very high evaluation at home and abroad. To this day, this is still the best book in this field. The book "
Some issues about Nom script" (1983) showed a new approach of the teacher compared to the existing traditional analysis. Using historical phonetics and historical comparisons, he further clarified the origin, the ways of writing Nom characters as well as determining the center and limits of the borders of Nom characters. He also compared Nom and Quoc Ngu after hand-copying the entire dictionary of Alexandre De Rhodes with his wife (Prof. Nona Stankevich - his wife, also a staff member of the Linguistics Department). 10 years later, he published the book "
Chinese literature of Ly - Tran period (through Nguyen Trung Ngan's poetry)"
,introduces a way of studying ancient and medieval Vietnamese literature according to the textual approach of Linguistics. The book was warmly received by the literature community. In the late 80s and early 90s, he began to prepare to write the textbook "
Vietnamese History Phonetics"After a long time of accumulating documents for this field. He had very useful scientific exchanges with famous scientists such as Haudricourt, Diffloth, Ferlus... about Viet - Muong, Mon - Khmer, South Asia, Meo - Dao money, during teaching and research trips in France and the US. He also had a group of students interested in and studying with him: Sokolovskaja, Nguyen Van Loi, Tran Tri Doi, Barbara... "
Historical phonetics of Vietnamese" (1995) is a textbook "
History of Vietnamese"A very profound and serious introduction to this subject at Hanoi National University. He retired in 1992, but he did not rest. The number of pages he wrote in the past 10 years was longer than when he was working. He was still diligent, creative and thorough in academics but very gentle in dealing with people. He still advised us to be honest and humble. He was not happy when he heard his students being subjective and not studying thoroughly. I remember his words: "
Always innovate but be truly open-minded. Debate is to learn from each other and develop. Don't be too competitive for fame. Even if people say something different from you, you can still learn something.". Dear teacher, we understand that there are times when we still cannot satisfy you, but we are always assured that you are there to guide us. We always say to each other: you are a gentleman, all your life when you line up you always stand behind, but in fact you stand in front. Now you are in your eighties, looking at you, you are still strong and clear-headed. We feel warm inside.
