This episode marks the beginning of Ancient Vietnam, a sub-series of The Vietnamese Podcast dedicated to examining Vietnam’s early history through the study of language, culture, and archival sources. Host Kenneth Nguyen speaks with Professor John Phan, a linguistic historian at Columbia University and author of Lost Tongues of the Red River. The discussion considers the complex relationship between Vietnamese and Chinese, with particular attention to spoken language, literary traditions, and writing systems in the premodern period.

The conversation highlights how historical linguistics provides evidence for understanding cultural contact, political domination, and local adaptation in early Vietnam. By tracing patterns of borrowing, structural change, and the persistence of indigenous forms, Professor Phan outlines how Vietnamese developed within a multilingual environment shaped by long-term interaction with Chinese. In doing so, the episode situates language as a critical source for reconstructing the social and intellectual history of premodern Vietnam.