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Welcome to chunom.org! This site is about Chữ Nôm, the ancient writing system of Vietnam. Use the search box to find information about a word or a character. Also try the online editor which allows you to type Chu Nom online.

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Start Learning Chu Nom!
Choose a grade to start with. The grades are sorted by frequency, so that you will be learning the most common characters in Grade 1 which covers about 35% of contemporary Vietnamese writing. With Grade 2 you can achieve about 60% coverage, and with Grade 3 it is about 75% with less than 500 characters.

Recent Changes

  • 10/18/2019 - IPA for northern and southern pronunciation added
  • 08/19/2017 - IDS data added
    Ideographic description sequences are now available for each character. All IDS data from https://github.com/cjkvi/cjkvi-ids.
  • 01/28/2017 - Phonetic annotation
    Pronunciations are now available as phonetic annotation, it can be used on flash cards for learning purposes.
  • 07/09/2015 - Handwriting on Mobile Devices
    The handwriting app now does work on smartphones and tablets, too.
  • 08/11/2014 - Type Chu Nom in Search Box
    You can now type Chu Nom in the search box. Use the number keys or click/touch on the character to select from the candidate list. This also works on android mobile devices.
  • 01/19/2014 - Radical Strokes Index
    You can now search by radical/strokes.
  • 12/18/2013 - Mobile Version of Online Editor
    On mobile phones you are now asked if you want to use the new mobile version of the online editor. It has fewer features but it allows basic writing of Nôm characters on mobile phones.
  • 12/12/2013 - Easier Compound Writing
    In the text fields it is now easier to write compounds. E.g. if you try to type "cảmơn" it does not become "camởn" as before. I had to hack into the awsome vietUni.js by nthachus.
  • 11/27/2013 - New Languages
    The website is now available with interfaces in Vietnamese and German. Additionally the Vietnamese interface exists in Latin script and in Nom-Script. Despite these changes the main language will remain English.
  • 11/27/2013 - Levels introduced
    As the number of characters on this site has increased I have introduced a level system. So the level pages are now smaller and load faster than the previous character index.
  • 11/24/2013 - New Frequency Data
    I have updated and improved the Frequency Data. The most frequent word is now "吧 " and not "羅 " as before. Some homonyms have been resolved to different frequencies instead of the same frequency for all characters with the same pronounciation. The frequency data is based on news articles of Vietnamese websites.

Page 3 of 3  New Dictionary Items

02/22/2018 𡀯 tale, story  câu chuyện
02/20/2018 𨷑 𠰘 to speak out, to pipe up  mở miệng
02/20/2018 𨷑 𩈘 to be better off  mở mặt
02/20/2018 𨷑 to pave the way for, to initiate  mở đường
02/20/2018 𨷑 to initiate, to begin, to start  mở đầu
02/20/2018 𨷑 to open  mở
02/20/2018 𫯳 the husbands family  nhà chồng
02/20/2018 𫯳 brother in law, sister in law  em chồng
02/20/2018 𫯳 to be married  có chồng
02/20/2018 𫯳 husband  chồng