[6] This composite script was therefore highly complex and was accessible to less than five percent of the Vietnamese population who had mastered written Chinese.

One of the best-known pieces of Vietnamese literature, The Tale of Kiều, was written in chữ Nôm by Nguyễn Du.

While Chinese characters are still used for decorative, historic and ceremonial value, chữ Nôm has fallen out of mainstream use in modern Vietnam.

It is based on the Chinese writing system but adds a large number of new characters to make it fit the Vietnamese language.

[24] The Buddhist history Cổ Châu Pháp Vân phật bản hạnh ngữ lục (1752) gives the story of early Buddhism in Vietnam both in Hán script and in a parallel Nôm translation.

[26] For most of the period up to the early 20th century, formal writing was indistinguishable from contemporaneous classical Chinese works produced in China, Korea, and Japan.

In order to record their native language, they applied the structural principles of Chinese characters to develop chữ Nôm.

[28] Vietnamese written in chữ Nôm briefly replaced Chinese for official purposes under the Hồ dynasty (1400–1407) and under the Tây Sơn (1778–1802), but in both cases this was swiftly reversed.

[37][40] The first literary writing in Vietnamese is said to have been an incantation in verse composed in 1282 by the Minister of Justice Nguyễn Thuyên and thrown into the Red River to expel a menacing crocodile.

[37] Four poems written in Nom from the Tran dynasty, two by Trần Nhân Tông and one each by Huyền Quang and Mạc Đĩnh Chi, were collected and published in 1805.

[41] The Nôm text Phật thuyết đại báo phụ mẫu ân trọng kinh ('Sūtra explained by the Buddha on the Great Repayment of the Heavy Debt to Parents') was printed around 1730, but conspicuously avoids the character 利 lợi, suggesting that it was written (or copied) during the reign of Lê Lợi (1428–1433).

Based on archaic features of the text compared with the Tran dynasty poems, including an exceptional number of words with initial consonant clusters written with pairs of characters, some scholars suggest that it is a copy of an earlier original, perhaps as early as the 12th century.

[43] During the seven years of the Hồ dynasty (1400–07) Classical Chinese was discouraged in favor of vernacular Vietnamese written in Nôm, which became the official script.

[40] These efforts were reversed with the fall of the Hồ and Chinese conquest of 1407, lasting twenty years, during which use of the vernacular language and demotic script were suppressed.

Trịnh Thị Ngọc Trúc [vi], consort of King Lê Thần Tông, is generally given credit for Chỉ nam ngọc âm giải nghĩa [vi] (指南玉音解義; 'guide to Southern Jade sounds: explanations and meanings'), a 24,000-character bilingual Hán-to-Nôm dictionary compiled between the 15th and 18th centuries, most likely in 1641 or 1761.

[47][48] While almost all official writings and documents continued to be written in classical Chinese until the early 20th century, Nôm was the preferred script for literary compositions of the cultural elites.

Nôm reached its golden period with the Nguyễn dynasty in the 19th century as it became a vehicle for diverse genres, from novels to theatrical pieces, and instructional manuals.

Although it was prohibited during the reign of Minh Mạng (1820–1840),[49] apogees of Vietnamese literature emerged with Nguyễn Du's The Tale of Kiều[50] and Hồ Xuân Hương's poetry.

[55] The reformist Catholic scholar Nguyễn Trường Tộ presented the Emperor Tự Đức with a series of unsuccessful petitions (written in classical Chinese, like all court documents) proposing reforms in several areas of government and society.

According to a polemic by writer Phan Châu Trinh, "so-called Confucian scholars" lacked knowledge of the modern world, as well as real understanding of Han literature.

[60] The traditional Civil Service Examination, which emphasized the command of classical Chinese, was dismantled in 1915 in Tonkin and was given for the last time at the imperial capital of Huế on January 4, 1919.

[65] The Gin people, descendants of 16th-century migrants from Vietnam to islands off Dongxing in southern China, now speak a form of Yue Chinese and Vietnamese, but their priests use songbooks and scriptures written in chữ Nôm in their ceremonies.

[66] Here is a line in Tam tự kinh lục bát diễn âm (三字經六八演音), a Vietnamese translation of the Three Character Classic.

[26] In chữ Nôm, each monosyllabic word of Vietnamese was represented by a character, either borrowed from Chinese or locally created.

[52] Partly for this reason, there was no development of a phonetic system that could be taught to the general public, like Japanese kana syllabary or the Korean hangul alphabet.

For example, As an example of the way chữ Nôm was used to record Vietnamese, the first two lines of the Tale of Kiều (1871 edition), written in the traditional six-eight form of Vietnamese verse, consist of 14 characters:[87] 𤾓Trămhundred𢆥nămyear𥪞trongin𡎝cõiworld𠊛ngườiperson些ta,our𤾓 𢆥 𥪞 𡎝 𠊛 些Trăm năm trong cõi người ta,hundred year in world person ourA hundred years—in this life span on earth,𡨸Chữword才tàitalent𡨸chữword命mệnhdestiny窖khéoclever𱺵làto be恄ghéthate饒nhau.each other𡨸 才 𡨸 命 窖 𱺵 恄 饒Chữ tài chữ mệnh khéo là ghét nhau.word talent word destiny clever {to be} hate {each other}talent and destiny are apt to feud.

Characters were extracted from the following sources: The V2, V3, and V4 proposals were developed by a group at the Han-Nom Research Institute led by Nguyễn Quang Hồng.