ON THE OPTIMIZATION OF THE STANDARD COMMONLY USED HÁN-NÔM CHARACTER SYSTEM

In order to enhance the practicality of the standardized Hán-Nôm characters while ensuring the principle of "Balance between Heritage and Modernization", the Society has decided to comprehensively optimize the current Standard Commonly Used Hán-Nôm Character List.

Optimization Principles

Balance between Heritage and Modernization.

Requirement of heritage preservation: Learners of standardized Hán-Nôm should be able to recognize at least 60% of the characters appearing in any ancient Vietnamese text.
Requirement of modern adaptation: The system should meet the demands of new vocabulary emerging since the 20th century, including Sino-Vietnamese words of native origin, Japan-made Sino-Vietnamese terms, and words borrowed from French and English, ensuring no semantic ambiguity in the modern context.

Specific character selection principles:

1. Top 500 most frequent characters (covering about 60% of daily reading and writing):

When no ambiguity arises, select the historically most frequent form. The standard character must exactly correspond to the most common historical form.
Detailed regulations are provided in Principles for Selecting Standard Hán-Nôm Characters among the 500 Most Frequent Ones.

2. Characters ranked 501–1500 (covering about 90% of daily reading and writing):

First priority: Choose the historically most frequent character;
Second priority: Choose the historically most frequent radicals/components and combine them with other appropriate elements to create new characters. Newly created characters must contain the historically most common parts, allowing readers to easily recognize the connection between the new and historical forms.

3. Characters ranked 1501 and beyond (covering nearly 100% of daily reading and writing):

Provided that no misunderstanding occurs,
First priority: Choose the historically most frequent character;
Second priority: Create new characters using historically frequent radicals/components;
Third priority: Select other phonetic components with identical or similar readings to those historically frequent, or choose other semantic components close in meaning to historically frequent ones, to form new characters.

Voting Instructions

The list of proposed revisions for each character, following the above principles, has been published below. If you oppose any proposed change (if you agree, no vote is required), please cast your vote under the “bỏ phiếu” section using the following format: # ~~~~ | Reason for opposing this proposal. (Optional)

Voting period:

Deadline: 23:59, October 26, 2025.

Eligible voters:

Core members of the Society; Active Vinawiki contributors. (Total of 7 people.)

Voting results processing:

If a proposal receives 4 or more opposing votes, the revision for that character will be suspended and discussed in detail before a final decision is made. The optimization proposal will be automatically approved if it receives fewer than 4 opposing votes.