About

John Phan is an assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures at Columbia University. His research focuses on the history of Sino-Vietic linguistic contact, with particular attention to the emergence of vernacular literary practices associated with the demotic Vietnamese script known as Chữ Nôm. His work explores the relationship between script and language in East Asia, examining how Vietnamese language and script evolved in relation to Chinese influence, including the development and reinvention of vernacular writing in Vietnam. Phan's scholarship includes analysis of early modern Vietnamese print culture, the history of lexicography in Vietnam, and the cultural and linguistic shifts that occurred during periods of significant political and social change. His research also investigates the role of vernacular writing in shaping Vietnamese cultural identity, especially through the study of key texts such as the Chỉ nam ngọc âm giải nghĩa, a seventeenth-century Sino-Vietnamese dictionary that signifies a pivotal moment in the evolution of Vietnamese vernacular practices. His contributions provide insights into the complex interplay of language, script, and culture in Vietnam's history, emphasizing the importance of vernacular literacy and its transformation over centuries.

Research topics

• History
• Philosophy
• Literature
• Linguistics
• Art
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Editors’ Preface: Special Issue on Vietnam in the Sinographic Cosmopolis

  Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies · 2025-11-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Crisis in the Cosmopolitan: Colonization and the Promotion of the Vernacular in an Early-Twentieth-Century Vietnamese Script Experiment

  BRILL eBooks · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Literature
  • Art

  This article examines an early-twentieth-century attempt to create a non-Latin phonographic script for the Vietnamese language. This alternative writing system, called “New Characters for the Nation’s Sounds,” or Quốc Âm Tân Tự, was created in rejection of the two major forms of written Vietnamese current in the early twentieth century: the Latin-based alphabet known as Quốc Ngữ, and the Sinograph-based morphosyllabary known as Chữ Nôm. I argue that the author of this alternative script was motivated by fears that participation in a broader cosmopolitan system would obliterate the Vietnamese language, and its perceived connection to a cosmological order first articulated by the classical East Asian sages. The mechanics of the script reveal the author’s hopes for the Vietnamese language as a repository for Vietnamese culture, while its preface expresses the fears that motivated the author to create it. The entire text thus provides a snapshot for the language ethics of late colonial Vietnam, as intellectuals wrestled with what they hoped Western civilization might teach them, alongside what they feared it might destroy.

  PublisherDOI

• JSEALS Special Publication No. 9 Vietnamese Linguistics: State of the Field

  DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · 2022-04-01

  articleOpen access

  This volume contains 10 papers from the workshop "Vietnamese Linguistics, Typology and Language Universals" of the Yenching Institute at Harvard on April 16 to 17, 2021.

  Publisher

• Sesquisyllabicity, Chữ Nôm, and the Early Modern embrace of vernacular writing in Vietnam

  Journal of Chinese Writing Systems · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Linguistics
  • History
  • Literature

  In East Asia, the relationship between script and language is determined to a great extent by the typological character of the languages involved. This is particularly so because sinographic writing generally relies on the syllable as the smallest unit of sound expressible. However, many languages that have adapted Sinitic writing throughout history display complex syllable structure not easily expressible by the monosyllabically inclined sinograph. Moreover, some languages have even displayed changing syllable structure throughout documented history. This article examines the so-called “monosyllabicization” of the Vietnamese language, and its impact on the history of the sinographic vernacular script known as Chữ Nôm. I argue that by the 17th century, the emergent monosyllabic character of Vietnamese was remarked upon by elites as a new justification for embracing vernacular writing, previously considered uncouth.

  PublisherDOI

• Sesquisyllabicity, Chữ Nôm, and the Early Modern embrace of vernacular writing in Vietnam

  Journal of Chinese Writing Systems · 2020 · 14 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Linguistics
  • History
  • Literature

  In East Asia, the relationship between script and language is determined to a great extent by the typological character of the languages involved. This is particularly so because sinographic writing generally relies on the syllable as the smallest unit of sound expressible. However, many languages that have adapted Sinitic writing throughout history display complex syllable structure not easily expressible by the monosyllabically inclined sinograph. Moreover, some languages have even displayed changing syllable structure throughout documented history. This article examines the so-called “monosyllabicization” of the Vietnamese language, and its impact on the history of the sinographic vernacular script known as Chữ Nôm. I argue that by the 17th century, the emergent monosyllabic character of Vietnamese was remarked upon by elites as a new justification for embracing vernacular writing, previously considered uncouth.

  PublisherDOI

• Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese from c. 1800

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2019-08-22

  book-chapterSenior author

  The story of Japanese and Korean lexicography from the beginnings to the eighteenth century was told in Chapter 10 above as part of the story of the lexicography of the Chinese periphery, and the story of the earliest lexicography of Vietnamese, which was undertaken by European missionaries, is told in Chapter 29 below. The story which this chapter will tell is a complex one, tracing the continuing development of the traditions of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese lexicography, in contact with each other and with Western and Chinese traditions.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Journal of Vietnamese Studies · 2018-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Introduction| August 01 2018 Introduction: Considering “Buddhist Literacy” in Early Modern Vietnamese Print Culture John D. Phan John D. Phan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Vietnamese Studies (2018) 13 (3): 2–8. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2018.13.3.2 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John D. Phan; Introduction: Considering “Buddhist Literacy” in Early Modern Vietnamese Print Culture. Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1 August 2018; 13 (3): 2–8. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2018.13.3.2 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of Vietnamese Studies Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2018 by The Regents of the University of California2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

  PublisherDOI

• The Twentieth-Century Secularization of the Sinograph in Vietnam, and its Demotion from the Cosmological to the Aesthetic

  Journal of World Literature · 2016-01-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article examines David Damrosch’s notion of “scriptworlds”—spheres of cultural and intellectual transfusion, defined by a shared script—as it pertains to early modern Vietnam’s abandonment of sinographic writing in favor of a latinized alphabet. The Vietnamese case demonstrates a surprisingly rapid readjustment of deeply held attitudes concerning the nature of writing, in the wake of the alphabet’s meteoric successes. The fluidity of “language ethics” in early modern Vietnam (a society that had long since developed vernacular writing out of an earlier experience of diglossic literacy) suggests that the durability of a “scriptworld” depends on the nature and history of literacy in the societies under question.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 4 Rebooting the Vernacular in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam

  2014-01-01 · 8 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The history of vernacular writing in Vietnam describes an intimate and evolving relationship with Literary Sinitic. As with other nascent vernacular forms in East Asia, the practice of composing in Vietnamese was long held to be inferior to or unnecessary in the face of Literary Sinitic; at best it was viewed as a pedagogical crutch for learning the classical language. Nevertheless—while Vietnamese did not truly eclipse Literary Sinitic until the twentieth century—vernacular language did experience a rapid ascent after the seventeenth century, when Vietnamese-language works rendered in the morphographic character system known as Chữ Nôm burst into popularity. The relatively dramatic escalation in Nôm composition over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries suggests an equally dramatic shift in the cultural and intellectual attitudes of the literati who practiced it. Vernacular writing had to be reinvented, however, before it could be used for the kind of intellectual and imaginative tasks exemplified by later literature. Remarkably, just such a reinvention is articulated in the prefatory material of a seventeenth-century Sino-Vietnamese dictionary called the Chỉ nam ngọc âm giải nghĩa (Explication of the Guide to Jeweled Sounds 指南語音解義). The Chỉ nam bears two prefaces: one in Literary Sinitic (written in Sinitic characters) and one in Vietnamese (written in Chữ Nôm). Though usually read separately, they in fact combine to form an interlocking argument that redefines Nôm, not as a crude or simplistic facsimile of Sinitic writing, but as a legitimate and authentic extension of the sagely and civilizing technology that Han characters represented. The bilingual prefaces seek to dissolve the linguistic and cultural barriers separating the vernacular from the classical mode and to render Vietnamese intelligible in terms of Literary Sinitic intellectuality. The Chỉ nam was produced at a crossroads in the history of Vietnamese vernacular writing. Although Nôm had gained some momentum as a pedagogical tool over the fourteenth century, the ascent of Neo-Confucianism following the Ming occupation of 1407–1427 led to a revival of classical education that disrupted or even reversed the course of vernacularization. The Chỉ nam therefore represents a “rebooting” of vernacular practices, fueled by a new perception of its place, nature, and function. Its production in the mid-seventeenth century marks a watershed in the evolution of the Vietnamese vernacular—between the limited and proscribed forms of vernacular literature found in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the flourishing traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  PublisherDOI

• Lacquered Words: The Evolution of Vietnamese under Sinitic Influences from the 1st Century B.C.E. through the 17th Century C.E.

  eCommons (Cornell University) · 2013-01-28 · 16 citations

  dissertation1st authorCorresponding

  As much as three quarters of the modern Vietnamese lexicon is of Chinese origin. The majority of these words are often assumed to have originated in much the same manner as late Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese borrowed forms: by rote memorization of reading glosses that were acquired through limited exposure to spoken Sinitic. However, under closer scrutiny, this model fails to account for a broad range of features in the Vietnamese language. Through an examination of the intellectual, cultural, and political terms of Sino-Vietic contact from the 1st century B.C.E. through the 17th century C.E., as well as an analysis of the phonological forms of Sino-Vietnamese lexica that were transacted as a result, I formulate a new history of Sino-Vietic contact that differs sharply from the prevailing model. This new model departs from current concepts of Vietnamese linguistic history at three major points. First, rather than limited exposure to Sinitic language, Sino-Vietnamese phonological forms suggest that pervasive and sustained bilingual contact obtained over most of the first millennium, between the immediate ancestor of modern Vietnamese on one hand, and a local variety of Middle Chinese rooted in the river plains of northern Vietnam on the other. This requires the existence of a thriving, Sinitic speaking population in the regions of northern Vietnam that flourished over the course of the first millennium. Chapters 2, 4, and 6 are devoted to the three primary chronological layers of Sinitic vocabulary in modern Vietnamese, two of which resulted from the increasing bilingualism of this ethnolinguistically complex society. Second, based on new data from fieldwork I conducted in 2009-2010, I claim that the closest living relatives of modern Vietnamese-the so-called M!"ng varieties-in fact do not constitute a linguistic subgroup of their own, but represent distinct languages as distantly related to each other as they are to Vietnamese. As discussed in chapter 5, this model of speciation bears significant consequences for our understanding of the life and death of Sinitic language in the region. Third, I argue that the emergence of a vernacular literary tradition in Vietnam, in the form of the logographic script called Ch! Nôm, was propelled by a desire to fuse local forms with the prevailing cosmopolitan mode (i.e. Literary Sinitic), and to synthetically reproduce the kind of diglossic social architecture that had developed in medieval China over the course of the Sui and Tang dynasties. Chapter 3 examines the roots of this Sinitic diglossia in the 7th century production of the immensely influential rime dictionary called the Qieyun, while Chapter 7 investigates the rise of a vernacular literary tradition in Vietnam over the course of the second millennium, and shows how the elevation of vernacular language was justified by re-imagining it-not as a vulgar copy of Literary Sinitic, nor as a rising competitor-but simply as an extension of the domesticative and civilizing technology of Sinitic writing. By examining both the cultural and structural dimensions of language history, this dissertation provides unified account of the evolution of Vietnamese under various Sinitic influences which redefines our current understanding of Sino-Vietic contact over the last two millennia.

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Mark Alves

  1 shared

• Trang Phan

  1 shared

• Heokseung Kwon

  1 shared

• David Lurié

  1 shared