Around noon on November 24, 2017, I completed the article When 'Vietnamese' is written as 'Tieq Viet' and sent it to the editorial office. The article is about a dedicated research over many years by Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien, 82 years old, former Vice Principal of Hanoi University of Foreign Languages, former Vice Director of the Institute of Content and Methods of General Education.
Accordingly, the study titled "National language and international integration" proposes an improved alphabet with some vowels and consonants written completely differently from the current national language.
In addition to Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien's sharing, I also interviewed two other prestigious linguists to comment on his improved writing to make the content multi-dimensional and objective. The article was approved for publication at 11:45.
After about 15 minutes, I saw some of my friends sharing the article on Facebook. I tried the newspaper’s CMS application and was surprised to see the traffic jump rapidly. Every few minutes, the number of readers increased by thousands, then a moment later increased to tens of thousands.
Social media began to be flooded with posts re-sharing the article from the newspaper's fanpage. I curiously looked at those posts to see what they wrote, and was shocked to see that most of them had strong reactions to his word "reform". It was terrible that so many people used harsh words to protest, even getting angry and insulting Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien.
I feel extremely worried. I wonder if Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien has read those articles or not? What would an 82-year-old man do if he knew that public opinion was stirring because of him, including many young people criticizing him with disrespectful language?
In the evening, I called him and could not believe it when on the other end of the phone, his voice was gentle and calm:
In an email to me the next day, he wrote: "The storm has arisen, not because people are talking about science but because of many different motives and in many different ways. I am completely calm and assured to continue completing the project."
He also affirmed that this research is a personal scientific proposal, aiming to adjust the current alphabet and not to affect the phonemic system to make the speech different, leading to different meanings of the speech. And he is only interested in scientific criticism, he will "ignore" emotional comments.
Amidst the fierce criticism, there were also a few public opinions supporting him at that time, such as economist Dr. Luong Hoai Nam. Mr. Nam said that for those familiar with innovative proposals, Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien's research was very normal and encouraging.
"Not all improvements destroy the purity of Vietnamese. We need improvements that make the already scientific Vietnamese language even more scientific, the already pure language even more pure. We do not want the Vietnamese language to be 'frozen' for hundreds of years," Mr. Nam commented in an interview published in Thanh Nien Newspaper at that time.
In the following days, every time he finished a task related to the improved writing, Mr. Bui Hien emailed me to share.
He happily said that after my article, besides those who opposed it, there were many supporters, such as teachers in Ninh Thuan, Son La, police officers in Quang Ninh, a lawyer in Canada or a motorbike taxi driver who diligently read newspapers and knew his improved writing... He received many messages and emails of encouragement. In particular, there was a student who wrote him a letter in improved writing without a single spelling mistake. "That was my first reward," he said.
Research work is copyrighted
In early January 2018, after the wave of controversy over Associate Professor Dr. Bui Hien's work on improving the national language, perfecting both consonants and vowels, had just subsided, he emailed me to inform me that his entire work had been granted copyright registration.
"The reason I registered for copyright is to prevent the distortion of some people who disagree with my work. It's not because I'm afraid my work will be stolen that I registered. In fact, after the press reported on this research, some people used my writing to distort verses in the Tale of Kieu , but wrote them incorrectly. At the same time, they used my own writing to curse me, and made up arguments to harm me. Therefore, I had to register so that my improved writing would not be distorted for bad purposes," Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien shared.
He sent me the file of the work Truyen Kieu, consisting of 3,254 six-eight verses that had been "converted" into improved writing.
This year, Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien has turned 89 years old. However, through the pictures he sent, through conversations with him on Zalo, Facebook or email, I know that his health is quite good and he is living a very peaceful and happy life with his old friends at the EK Dien Hong 5 nursing home in Xuan Mai, Hanoi.
He said that at the nursing home, he mainly rested and enjoyed his old age, but still did not give up his passion for scientific research and finding ways to bring improved Vietnamese script into the 4.0 industrial revolution.
Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien (wearing glasses) with an elderly friend in a nursing home
One morning he sent me 3-4 photos of him fishing with the elderly and said, "I really like it, I just caught 3 kg of fish in the pond of Dien Hong Nursing Home." Then he said that when he had the chance to go to Hanoi, he would invite me to Dien Hong to do a report on the elderly care model in Vietnam.
He continued to send me articles "The role of the national language in the 4.0 industrial revolution", "Improved national language handbook"... which he had researched, written and edited over the past time.
Perhaps in my years as a journalist, Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien is the most special character, bringing me the most emotions - respect, affection, admiration and even being moved to tears when witnessing the image of an old man at the "old age" who should have been resting but still worked hard, diligently pursued his passion, always unhurried, modest and considered all the noise and hustle and bustle in this life as light as nothing.
An associate professor who is always calm and has a gentle smile.
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