1. This Chữ Nôm dictionary is organized into two columns: the Chữ Nôm column and the Annotations column. The Chữ Nôm column displays the character's form, pronunciation, and its international Unicode encoding (as per ISO standards) or Vcode (Vietnam's national encoding system). TheAnnotations column provides information on character structure, meaning, and citations from various literary and historical texts. This dictionary contains 9,200 Chữ Nôm characters, directly compiled from 122 carefully selected and analyzed Chữ Nôm texts. The primary method for looking up characters is by pronunciation (transliterated into the modern Vietnamese script), which aligns with contemporary readers' habits. However, an additional radical-based index is included at the end of the dictionary to facilitate searches by radical, as well as to aid cross-referencing between character form and pronunciation—an essential aspect of interpreting Chữ Nôm texts.
2. In this dictionary, Chữ Nôm characters—including both Chinese borrowings and indigenous creations—are the fundamental units of description. Vietnamese lexical items related to each Chữ Nôm character are also recorded and explained in the Annotations section. Characters sharing the same pronunciation (as represented in modern Vietnamese script) are grouped within a single "section," separated from other pronunciation groups by a horizontal line. These groups are arranged alphabetically according to the Vietnamese alphabet. Within each homophonic group, characters with similar phonetic components are placed together, ordered by increasing stroke count. When documenting Chữ Nôm characters in the Chữ Nôm column and when citing textual examples in the Annotations section, the editors have strived to maintain the most accurate representation of their original forms within the constraints of modern typesetting technology.
3. The first component of the Annotations section provides an analysis of character structure, marked by the symbol #{}. This section explains both functional composition (phonetic and semantic components) and structural form, using symbols such as:
⿰ (left-right composition) ⿱ (top-bottom composition), ⿺ (enclosing from the side),
⿸ (enclosing from the left), ⿹ (enclosing from the right)
⿵ (enclosing from above), ⿴ (fully enclosed), etc.
In some cases, a Chữ Nôm character may exhibit structural ambiguity, indicated by the symbol #{}|{}, meaning that multiple interpretations are plausible, and a definitive classification has not yet been established. If a phonetic or semantic component itself is a Chữ Nôm character, its pronunciation is italicized.
There are instances where the functional structure of a Chữ Nôm character is not immediately apparent on the surface but is instead embedded at a deeper structural level. For example, the true composition of the character 𨑮 (mười, meaning "ten") is not (F2: ⻍ "walk radical" + ⿺什 "thập" [ten]), as it might initially seem. Rather, it should be analyzed as (F1: mại 邁 > 迈 > ⻍⿺什 "thập"), revealing a more complex historical and structural evolution.
Letter codes such as A1, A2, B, C1, C2, D1, D2, E1, E2, F1, F2, G1, and G2 represent different structural categories of Chữ Nôm, following the comprehensive classification model applied in this dictionary.
4. The next component of the Annotations section provides a concise definition of the examined Chữ Nôm character, illustrated through textual citations. For characters that appear in multiple contexts, distinctions must be made between citations based on the degree of variation in meaning:
- ◎ Marks the beginning and separation of citation groups where the character‘s meaning is completely different.
- 〄 Separates citation groups where the character's meanings share some similarity.
- 〇 Distinguishes citations within the same group where the character‘s meaning remains identical.
5. The citations included in the dictionary are presented in their original Chữ Nôm form (digitally typeset) and transliterated into modern Chữ Quốc Ngữ. When transcribing, cases of dual possibilities ("lưỡng khả") or phonetic shifts for poetic or rhythmic purposes are noted. One transcription is provided in the main text, while the alternative is enclosed in parentheses () for the reader's reference. For certain cases where pronunciation or meaning is ambiguous, the compiler adds explanatory notes in square brackets [] (in a smaller font size) for clarity. Additional notation includes:
- * marks a reconstructed ancient pronunciation when necessary.
- > indicates the transformation from one form to another (applied to characters, pronunciation, and meanings).
- Cđ - cũng đọc (also read as)
- Cv - cũng viết (also written as)
- Ss - so sánh (compare)
6. A given Vietnamese morpheme (monosyllabic orpolysyllabic) may be represented by multiple variants in writing. These variants can be categorized as follows:
- Structural-functional variants (characters differing in phonetic or semantic components, e.g., Lạy 𥛉 - , Tre 椥 - 𥯌, Bèo 苞 - 䕯, etc.).
- Graphical-form variants (characters with different forms but the same phonetic and semantic function, e.g., Ngày 𣈗 - 𣈜, Ngồi 𡎢 - 𫮋 - 𡎥 - 𡎦, Cửa - 𬮌 - 𫔸 , etc.).