In the year of our Lord 2026, anybody and everybody can access just about any kind of content they want, ranging from movies, games, to books, news, and others. And of course, chữ Nôm manuscripts of old aren’t exempt from this, as organizations like the VNPF have compiled massive collections of books for you to browse. These digitization efforts arose in conjunction with the need to preserve the language, as the amount of scholars literate in this ancient script and the quantity of surviving scripts is decreasing.
Despite the ease of access of ancient texts to the everyman in the present-day digital age, we see fewer and fewer people talking about this subject matter as time goes on. That’s not to say that nobody is chatting about it, however.
The wisdom exists, but it just can’t be found by the people who need it the most
The few enthusiasts who still talk about them do so in private. Informations, like conversations, resources, and questions, get locked behind invite-only Discord servers (such as the now-defunct Nôm Now! chat), Facebook/Messenger groups (such as the RCV’s) or scattered across various subreddits (such as ours, or the Classical Chinese subreddit), which not only implies pulverization of members over multiple communities, but could also potentially mean a big loss of knowledge bases once any one of these gets shut down.
In modern times, the dispersion of info pertaining to chữ Hán Nôm is often a common frustration experience by beginners of the hobby, especially amongst English speakers whose grasp on Vietnamese and/or Chinese isn’t quite well-developed enough.
The quality of some of the Demotic script posts on various social media websites is often up for debate, since they are often created by hobbyists with no prior experience in the Vietnamese language.
Most discussion about the Vietnamese Demotic script, when not happening in internet forums and chatrooms, takes place inside college classrooms and academic journals, the latter of which are inacessible to most people, as most don’t have the money or pre-requisite knowledge necessary to obtain and understand such papers.
Precisely because of the lack of discussions happening in a central place relating to Hán Nôm, we, The Chữ Nôm Enthusiasts, decided to take matters into our own hands and create the first English-language Nôm-focused digital magazine.
What purpose does Nôm Zine serve?
The Chữ Nôm Enthusiasts aims to provide a centralized hub on which researchers, hobbyists, enthusiasts, linguists and students of the Nôm script from all over the planet may do so. Our organization plans on doing so by creating interlinked resources which may all be gathered from this blog.
The Nôm Zine is NOT, however, an academic journal, or a full-fledged organization of its own, nor does it aim to replace chữ Quóc ngữ outright. It’s also not a nationalist project, and isn’t limited to specialists.
Our website will look for making blog posts on various subjects pertaining to Nôm characters, including but not limited to: characters of the month; hosting contests, competitions and challenges of various kinds; manuscript showcases; interviews with translators and experts; software.
Future thoughts
While the The Chữ Nôm Enthusiasts group may only theoretically exist in paper, our mission is to provide a center where newbies and advanced learners alike can share the same space. We invite, therefore, that translators, students, designers, coders, historians and starters look into this. You do not need to already know Nôm to join our Discord, the subreddit or our upcoming Facebook group.
This ezine was built to make Chữ Nôm characters more accessible, more discoverable and more alive in the information age.
