sân khấu
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Etymology
sân (“court; yard”) + khấu (“to kowtow; to prostrate oneself”, 叩).
The modern meaning might be due to the bows often seen with the curtain call at the end of a play or performance. If so, this word most likely first acquired the meaning "stage" after European performance arts started to become familiar to Vietnamese speakers, as Vietnamese performance arts traditionally likely did not feature this kind of respectful bowing at the end of a performance.
Alternatively, as recorded in Petit dictionnaire français-annamite (1885) by Trương Vĩnh Ký, the French word avant-scène was defined as "chỗ thân ngoài nơi giáo đầu làm tuồng; thân ngoài sân khấu", where sân khấu can be interpreted as "where people do a dramatic introduction to a tuồng play", so it referred to the prelude and not the ending bow. It is difficult to pin-point whether the word tuồng here was used for the Vietnamese performance art (giáo đầu is an introduction/prelude in tuồng and chèo) or was just a stand-in for theatre as an art form in general; it was used to translate the word théâtre in the same book.
Pronunciation
Noun
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