Vietnamese

[magid]

Today's language ended up being Vietnamese. This is the first language I've proofed that's got a Roman alphabet (though with a variety of accents and under-letter marks in great profusion) but isn't a Romance language*; I have no idea how any of it is pronounced. "See" is "xem," which looks like a unit of money from Abarat more than anything else. Oddly, the boldface font is quite rough, despite being the same basic letters as English.

* It's interesting that it's not glyphs like Chinese or Japanese, nor an alphabet like Cambodian and Laotian. I assume it's due to French influence in Vietnam, but I'd've thought there would've been a standard writing system in place before the French arrived.

Comments

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

According to omniglot.com, Vietnam used their own version of Chinese characters from the 10th century AD until the beginning of the 20th century. The script you've seen, based on Roman letters, was introduced in the 17th century and has now defeated the Chinese-style script.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I wonder why that shift happened.