Welcome to the next episode of Tìm lại tiếng xưa (Retracing Old Sounds) – a podcast series from the Digitizing Vietnam Project, where we explore the journeys of scholars who safeguard and retrace the evolution of the Vietnamese language, script, and cultural heritage.

In this episode, Dr. Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm speaks with one of the most prominent figures of the younger generation of researchers: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Trần Trọng Dương. He spent many years working at the Institute of Hán–Nôm Studies and is now teaching at the Faculty of Vietnamese Language and Culture, School of Foreign Languages and Tourism, Hanoi University of Industry. With extensive expertise in Hán–Nôm studies, the history of Vietnamese, historiography, and cultural studies, he has published more than 20 books and over 100 scholarly works both in Vietnam and abroad. Beyond his meticulous research on scripts, Confucianism, religious symbols, and ancient architecture, he is also a pioneer in applying digital technology to heritage preservation with the Sen Heritage group, most notably in projects such as reconstructing the One-Pillar Pagoda of the Lý dynasty using VR/AR technology.

Listeners will hear Assoc. Prof. Trần Trọng Dương share how he became deeply engaged with Hán–Nôm and Vietnamese studies, and especially about his ongoing project, Nguồn Từ Tiếng Việt (The Origins of the Vietnamese Lexicon). This is not merely a lexical database but a journey into the genealogies of words: each entry is supported by specific textual sources, with references to date, author, and even page number.

As he observes, from a single “fragment of a character,” one can dig into an entire linguistic and cultural world. For example, the word “tiết” in the dish tiết canh (blood pudding) is in fact an archaic Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation of huyết (“blood”), revealing layers of phonological, cultural, and ritual connections. Or the expression “tréo ngoe”, which originates from the coastal trade of binding crab claws, has become a familiar metaphor for life’s many adversities.

Read Assoc. Prof. Dr. Trần Trọng Dương's Nôm Script: Theory & Practice on Digitizing Việt Nam.