Published in 2000 by Walter de Gruyter (Berlin and New York) in Volume 1 of History of the Language Sciences / Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften / Histoire des sciences du langage: An International Handbook on the Evolution of the Study of Language from the Beginnings to the Present, this French-language chapter by Nonna V. Stankevic is titled “La tradition linguistique vietnamienne et ses contacts avec la tradition chinoise” (“The Vietnamese Linguistic Tradition and Its Contacts with the Chinese Tradition”). The volume was edited by Sylvain Auroux, E. F. K. Koerner, Hans-Josef Niederehe, and Kees Versteegh. The chapter provides a historical overview of the development of Vietnamese linguistic thought and scholarship, with particular attention to its long-standing interaction with the Chinese linguistic tradition. The author organizes this history around several major stages, beginning with the period preceding intensive Chinese influence, followed by the centuries of Chinese linguistic and cultural influence, and finally the period of French influence. The chapter emphasizes that Vietnamese scholars did not simply adopt Chinese linguistic practices but adapted them to the distinctive phonological, grammatical, and lexical characteristics of Vietnamese. A major part of the chapter examines the Chinese period and Sino-Vietnamese linguistic contact. The author discusses successive layers of Chinese vocabulary in Vietnamese and different traditions of reading Chinese characters, including ancient Sino-Vietnamese, standard Sino-Vietnamese, and Vietnamese adaptations of Sino-Vietnamese readings. The comparative table on the chapter's opening page illustrates these layers through words such as those for “season,” “room,” “near,” and “plank.” The discussion also considers how contact with Chinese influenced Vietnamese phonology, including historical changes involving consonants and tones. The chapter then turns to the development of Vietnamese lexicography and linguistic scholarship. It surveys dictionaries and other reference works produced by Vietnamese scholars, including bilingual Chinese–Vietnamese dictionaries and works devoted to chữ Nôm. The author argues that traditional Vietnamese linguistic knowledge was strongly practical in orientation but nevertheless incorporated sophisticated observations concerning syllable structure, tones, rhyme, lexical categories, writing, dialectal pronunciation, and semantic relationships. This material demonstrates the existence of a substantial indigenous tradition of reflection on the Vietnamese language, even though it was not always formulated as an explicit theoretical system. Particular attention is devoted to chữ Nôm, which the author describes as a writing system developed by Vietnamese speakers on the basis of Chinese characters and their graphic and phonetic principles. The chapter analyzes several mechanisms used to create and employ Nôm characters, including the borrowing of Chinese characters according to their sound or meaning and the creation of new characters combining semantic and phonetic components. The diagram in the chapter classifies different types of Nôm characters and illustrates how the script reflects both Chinese writing principles and specifically Vietnamese linguistic developments. The final section discusses the modern period and the emergence of Quốc Ngữ. The author traces the development of the Romanized Vietnamese writing system to the work of Western missionaries in the seventeenth century and highlights Alexandre de Rhodes's 1651 dictionary as an important milestone. The chapter then describes the gradual expansion of Quốc Ngữ under French colonial rule, the decline of traditional instruction in Chinese characters, and the emergence of modern Vietnamese dictionaries and linguistic scholarship. It also notes the later incorporation of concepts from European linguistics into Vietnamese grammatical analysis. More broadly, the chapter presents the history of Vietnamese linguistic scholarship as the product of long-term interaction between indigenous Vietnamese practices, the Chinese scholarly tradition, and later European linguistic traditions. Rather than treating Vietnamese linguistic thought as merely derivative, it highlights processes of adaptation through which imported concepts and writing practices were reshaped to address the particular characteristics of Vietnamese. The chapter is therefore especially valuable for research on the history of Vietnamese linguistics, Sino-Vietnamese linguistic contact, Vietnamese lexicography, chữ Nôm, Quốc Ngữ, historical phonology, and the intellectual history of language study in Vietnam.