Vietnamese tilde

The Vietnamese tilde or apex was a curved diacritic used in the 17th century to mark final nasalization in the early Vietnamese alphabet.^[1] It was an adoption of the Portuguese tilde, and should not be confused with the tone mark ngã, which is mistakenly encoded as a tilde in Unicode but is actually an adoption of the Greek perispomeni. Apex is the name used in contemporary Latin texts.

In his 1651 Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum, Alexandre de Rhodes describes the diacritic:^[2][3][4]

The third sign, finally, is the apex, which in this language is entirely necessary because of a difference in the ending [i.e. of a word], which the apex makes entirely distinct from the ending that m or n makes, with a meaning entirely diverse in words in which it is employed. However, this sign, namely the apex, only affects o᷄ and u᷄, at the end of a word, as ao᷄ "bee", ou᷄ "grandfather" or "lord". It is pronounced, however, such that neither the lips touch together nor the tongue touches the palate.

— Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum^[5]

The apex appears atop ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩, and less commonly ⟨ơ⟩. As with other accent marks, a tone mark can appear atop the apex.^[6]

According to canon law historian Roland Jacques, the apex indicated a final labial-velar nasal [ŋ͡m], an allophone of /ŋ/ that is peculiar to the Hanoi dialect to the present day. The apex apparently fell out of use during the mid-18th century, being unified with ⟨-ng⟩ (representing /ŋ/), in a major simplification of the orthography, though the Vietnamese Jesuit Philipphê Bỉnh (Philiphê do Rosario) continued to use the old orthography into the early 19th century.^[7] In Pierre Pigneau de Behaine and Jean-Louis Taberd's 1838 Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum,^[8] the words ao᷄ and ou᷄ became ong and ông, respectively.

The Middle Vietnamese apex is known as dấu sóng or dấu lưỡi câu in modern Vietnamese. The apex is often mistaken for a tilde in modern reproductions of early Vietnamese writing, such as in Phạm Thế Ngũ's Việt Nam văn học sử.^[9][10]

Examples

Obtained from Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum, a trilingual Vietnamese, Portuguese and Latin dictionary by Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes.

• 
  The entry for dĕóu᷄ shows distinct breves (ĕ), acutes (ó), and apices (u᷄).
• 
  The entry for blu᷄́ shows that a vowel with an apex can take on an additional tone mark, in this case an acute.
• 
  The entry for bao giơ᷄ đến illustrates the difference between a horn and an apex.

References

1. Jacques, Roland (2002). Portuguese Pioneers of Vietnamese Linguistics. Bangkok: Orchid Press. p. 91. The accent mark written by the amanuensis on the first word can be read as the apex (or tilde), an abbreviation sign used in 17th and 18th century Quốc Ngữ to represent the rounded nasal finals: '-aõ' (spelt today '-ong'); '-oũ' (= '-ông'), and '-ũ' (= '-ung'). Thus 'chã' would stand for the word presently spelt 'chẳng.' Note that de Rhodes called the tilde a "circumflex".
2. Nguyễn Khắc Xuyên (1993). Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Việt của Đắc Lộ 1651 [De Rhodes's Vietnamese grammar of 1651] (in Vietnamese). Garden Grove, California: Thời điểm. OCLC 32129692. Archived from the original on November 12, 2011.
3. de Rhodes, Alexandre (1991) [1651]. "Về các dấu và dấu hiệu khác trên nguyên âm". In Hồ Lê; Cao Xuân Hạo; Hồ Tuyết Mai (eds.). Từ điển Annam-Lusitan-Latinh (Thường gọi Từ điển Việt-Bồ-La) (in Vietnamese). Translated by Thanh Lãnh; Hoàng Xuân Việt; Đỗ Quang Chính. Ho Chi Minh City: Social Science Publishing House. p. 11.
4. Nguyễn Thị Bạch Nhạn (1994). Sự biến đổi các hình thức chữ quốc ngữ từ 1620 đến 1877 [Changes in the Vietnamese alphabet's form from 1629 to 1877] (PDF) (PTSKH) (in Vietnamese). Hà Nội: Hanoi National University of Education. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-03-09. Retrieved 2014-03-08.
5. de Rhodes, Alexandre (1651). "De Accentibus & aliis signis in vocalibus.". Dictionarium annamiticum lusitanum, et latinum (in Latin). Rome: Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. p. 10.
6. de Rhodes, Alexandre (1651). cou᷒̀ la (in Latin). Rome: Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. p. 135. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |work= ignored (help)
7. Jacques, Roland (1998). "Le Portugal et la romanisation de la langue vietnamienne. Faut-il réécrire l'histoire ?" [Portugal and the romanization of the Vietnamese language. Should we rewrite history?]. Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer (in French). 85 (318). Société française d'histoire d'outre-mer: 52. doi:10.3406/outre.1998.3600.
8. Pigneaux, Pierre Joseph (1838). "Litterarum anamiticarum ex ordine disposita series". In Taberd, Jean-Louis (ed.). Dictionarium anamitico-latinum (in Latin). Joshua C. Marshman.
9. Phạm Thế Ngũ (1961). Việt Nam Văn Học Sử: Giản Ước Tân Biên [History of Vietnamese Literature: New Survey] (in Vietnamese). Saigon: Quốc Học Tùng Thư. p. 61 – via Google Books.
10. "Bulletin de l'Institut de recherches archéologiques". Việt-Nam khảo-cổ tập-san: Bulletin de l'Institut de recherches historiques (in Vietnamese). Vietnam Historical Research Institute: 86. 1961 – via Google Books.