How do you learn to read Vietnamese using Chữ Nôm?

Question

I am able to read Chinese characters, and have been exposed to Chữ Nôm, which is derived by amalgamating Chinese characters according to their meaning and pronunciation, so as to represent a Native Vietnamese word.

The meaning of some Chữ Nôm has been quite intuitive to me, since I can just break up the character into its constituent parts and infer using my contextual Chinese knowledge.

Is it possible that one can learn to read Vietnamese by mainly studying Chữ Nôm, and are there any major online resources for famous Vietnamese literature written in Chữ Nôm?

Answer 1

You can access the National Library of Vietnam which stores many Nôm and Literary Chinese texts. You can also read the Tale of Kiều, Lục Vân Tiên, etc at the Nôm Foundation.

They also have a digital library that you can access for free without needing an account.

I recommend reading Tam thiên tự since it was used in the past in Vietnam to teach Chinese characters and Nôm characters.

The Chinese characters are glossed with their equivalent Nôm characters.