Have you ever wondered why a table is called a "bàn," a tree is called a "cây," while a cat meows like the way we call them "mèo," and sobbing is described as "rưng rức," and so on? I have. Four years ago (and I have the research to prove it!), my curiosity about the formation of words was almost "extinguished" when I came across an article about the arbitrariness of language: "...there is no inherent connection between a word and the object it signifies" – Later, I confirmed this idea; it's in the introductory linguistics curriculum. Although those naive questions almost stopped, my pondering about the feelings that Vietnamese evokes remained. This game is precisely to continue that unfinished story.

I've prepared a list of 10 Muong words, each paired with a set of 4-6 answer choices that my anonymous collaborator and I wrote down based on our feelings during a discussion. The rules are very simple: players listen and choose the answers that feel closest to their own sensations.

An early version of the game on Kahoot!

An updated version on web app.

Oh, those days spent poring over Nguyễn Văn Khang's Muong-Vietnamese Dictionary to curate words! The chosen words are those with familiar enough phonetic structures but still capable of disorienting players so they can't easily guess the meaning. Once the word list was ready, it was time to prepare the audio. Coincidentally, my next-door neighbor is a Muong Hoa Binh native (a sub-ethnic group of Muong in Hoa Binh), and I immediately seized this opportunity to ask her to pronounce the words I had selected. The results of the recording session quite surprised me; the way she pronounced the tones was completely different from how we pronounce them in Vietnamese.

Participants: A group of non-Muong speakers sharing their perceptions of the sounds and potential meanings of Muong words.

Game rule: The discussion unfolded through a game where players listened to Muong words and offered their impressions, solely based on the pronunciation sounds. They ought to guess the meaning and describe the feelings the sounds evoked before learning the actual definitions.


Đông Trúc hosted a game session at 3nam Studio"

"nhộch nhộch"



Đông-Trúc: "Hearing this word, I got a feeling like the sound of insects chirping at night, like after a rain shower. So, I put down 'tiếng kêu đêm' (night sounds) as an answer. It's probably because of the two 'nh' sounds. The meaning of this word is 'tired,' similar to the word 'nhọc' in modern Vietnamese. For this word, the participants' choices were quite scattered; there wasn't much 'overlap' in their feelings, huh?"

Participants: "I chose 'châm chọc' (to tease, to provoke) because it sounds like 'nhột nhột' (ticklish)." "I hear it like the sound of water dripping from a tap, drop by drop by drop."



"dãl chóch lóch"



Đông-Trúc: "Many of you chose 'đứng ngồi không yên' (restless, unable to sit still)! This word means 'towering, very high (mountains),' but listening to its sounds, I imagine something round that flicks or bounces, like in video games every time a character jumps, there's that 'chóc chóc' sound. It might be because the word has two sharp tones and two 'óc' sounds."

Participants: "I chose 'đứng ngồi không yên' because the sound of this word feels like continuous movement, like something is bouncing and can't stop. It's like a ball being thrown down and bouncing back up immediately." "I hear it like 'nhảy lóc chóc' (hopping around busily)..." "It sounds energetic, craving for activities." "I think 'chóc lóc' sounds more like splattering oil; I agree that the sharp tones make it sound like something is scattering." "It sounds like boiling water to me." "The two sharp tones give me an uncomfortable feeling."



"khẻo lẻo"



Đông-Trúc: "The next word means 'skillful, clever'. However, when I hear the sound of this word, I feel it's a bit 'winding, curving,' maybe it's the 'hỏi' (mid dipping-rising) tone that distorts the feeling, making it not 'straight' anymore. So, I put down answers like a winding mountain pass or precarious, twisting images. When I think about it more, I start to notice the 'kh' sound; it feels a bit dry, a bit difficult, slightly challenging. Here, I posed a question to everyone: for you, what influences your feeling more – the 'eo' rhyme, the hỏi tone, or the 'kh-l' consonants?"

Participants: "I hear this word and feel like it's something slender but challenging, like a winding curve. When I found out it means 'skillful,' I was quite surprised because the feeling of its sound doesn't reflect that." "I relate to the word 'quanh co' (winding, meandering); I also feel the rhyme has a stronger impact." "For me, the 'eo' sound has a stronger impact. When I hear the 'eo' sound, I think of something narrow and very twisty." "It feels kind of similar to the word 'heo hút' (desolate, remote). Also, the way she reads it sounds a bit sad. The 'eo' sound, it occurs in words like 'heo hút,' 'cheo leo' (precarious), and such, which also carry a feeling of emptiness."



"pòng pỏng"



Đông-Trúc: "When I hear this word, I think of something taut and round, like a balloon full of water or containing something. The two 'ong' sounds together create a feeling of inflation (of a balloon), and then the huyền (low falling) and hỏi (mid dipping-rising) tones make it start to sound like water. This word is very interesting; its meaning is 'bladder,' which is indeed something that contains water and can expand. I really like this word."

Participants: "'Pòng pỏng' makes me relate to water and roundness." "I feel it expanding, going from low to high, small to big." "I associate it with the water balloon fight, that balloon with water inside, a water balloon that's placed on a table, for example, and then it kind of fills up and overflows." "When I hear this word, I think of raindrops falling into a puddle, like it's falling drop by drop." "Such an effective word; it conveys the sense of swelling and splashing. Whoever came up with this word must be very clever, as they knew how to seize the opportunity. Many words are less effective and don't convey so much."

Initial Thought:



Hmm, good question. Posing the question itself is a step towards finding the answer.



Self-Reflection:



Someone once asked me that, when I was talking about the projects I'd been involved in, was currently working on, and had planned for the future. I've also asked myself that same thing a few times – why am I limited to Vietnamese? There are moments when I worry I'm getting stuck in a rut with things that are comfortable and familiar, things that others elsewhere have already explored and executed brilliantly. I also fear that my ideas might not be original. Those anxieties are always there, whether they're just a vague feeling or have taken concrete form, always ready to pounce when I feel uncertain. Asking a series of questions is also a path to discovering the answers. So, let's keep exploring with these questions.

Initial Thought:



This project is a continuation of my lifelong journey of relentless curiosity, from childhood to now – a graphic/type designer who feels more connected to words than images, more than any other medium.



Self-Reflection:



My curiosity about Vietnamese sparked quite early: in my initial years of elementary school, during a lunch break. There's a story I often tell. I really loved eating floss or chà bông (which is called ruốc in the North) with white rice. One time, while I was engrossed in eating, I heard my teacher, holding a bowl of something in her hand and standing far down at the end of the row of tables, calling out, "Anyone want more ruốc?" I misheard it as "đuốc" (torch) and furrowed my brow, not understanding what she was asking.

My classmates eagerly asked for it, and the bowl of ruốc was completely empty before she even reached my table. It wasn't until much later (because I was shy, so the story dragged on) that I finally understood: ruốc was the same as chà bông, the way my mother always called it. The ruốc-chà bông story, along with a few other stories about different hometowns, gradually made me pay attention to the differences in accents, vocabulary, and lifestyles of people from various regions.

Time passed, and it wasn't until I found joy in reading that I became captivated by the expressions of Bùi Giáng, Hồ Dzếnh, Phùng Cung (and so many other names). The Vietnamese in their poetry and prose was enough to create a world for me to take refuge in and replenish myself whenever I felt my soul becoming barren. Then came the time when I also found pleasure in writing, especially when I felt weary. Listening, reading, and then writing – all of it made Vietnamese, the tones and timbres of Vietnamese, become the most intimate space for me. I see writing, writing in Vietnamese, as the form of expression that makes me feel most at ease. And then, I also create fonts, drawing each letter and meticulously caring for every diacritical mark. So, yes, I want to journey alongside Vietnamese.

Initial Thought:



All my projects originate from what I read, purely stemming from the written words, never beginning with images, sounds, or any other medium. An observation, an opinion, a viewpoint can all lead me to curiosities and a desire to find answers. This time is no different; I encountered numerous assertions about the musicality of Vietnamese.



Self-Reflection:



"Vietnamese is like an unchained melody" (1) and "Vietnamese is a language with beautiful and touchingly melodious tones" (2) are two observations I particularly appreciate from this search. One comes from the notes of an early European missionary about Vietnamese language, and the other from a pre-war Vietnamese author – one from the West, the other Vietnam. I suspect that the musicality of Vietnamese is not merely a subjective sensation, yet not every native speaker is attuned enough to perceive it. At times, I even place more trust in the perceptions of "outsiders" – those still unfamiliar with Vietnamese but possessing a broad enough understanding to offer insightful observations about this phenomenon. I also once encountered someone who placed the five tones of Vietnamese in relation to the five notes of the traditional pentatonic scale, an intriguing connection that led me to the "musicality" of the language. In Vietnamese, each syllable carries a distinct timbre, and when placed together, harmonizing through rhyme, they create undulating melodies present in the form of concise idioms and proverbs, expansive folk songs and poems rich in emotion and meaning. As Đoàn Phú Tứ wrote in his article "On Sound": "Sound inherently possesses the power to express sentiments."

Initial Thought:



A 'rhyme' could be as simple as pronouncing the letters A, B, C out loud. It could also refer to phonetic rhymes like 'ăng' or 'eo.' Or it could even describe the tonal relationships in a rhyme scheme. To me, a rhyme carries two core values: meaning and sound. And it's that less-explored side, the realm of pure sound, that I'm focusing on.



Self-Reflection:



In Vietnamese, "vần" – rhyme – can represent various components. It can be the individual letters within the alphabet. It can be the syllable formed by the vowel and the final consonant, disregarding the initial consonant. Interestingly, in the early decades of the 20th century, when the Romanized Vietnamese script (chữ Quốc Ngữ) was still gaining widespread adoption, many scholars compiled textbooks for learning it with titles like "Vần Quốc Ngữ" (The Rhymes of the Romanized Script). So, I believe the term "vần" can comprehensively encompass all the elements that constitute a single syllable in Vietnamese. As for the name, "The Other Side of Rhyme" came about unexpectedly. A close and trusted friend suggested it. He's someone with a remarkable command of language and has actually named all my projects for the past few years. I also appreciate this imagery – how rhymes connect to form a kind of border. On this side lies the familiar territory of meaning, the semantic landscape we readily navigate. But on the other side is a less-traveled terrain: the realm of sound. We often hear a word and are immediately drawn in by its meaning. And that's precisely where the idea of "blacking out the meaning" originates.

Initial Thought:



To 'black out the meaning' is to focus solely on the sound. For me, communication is the process of conveying information and emotion. These two elements exist in a complex interplay, constantly influencing each other. Information can generate emotion, or emotion can distort information. The possibilities are endless. I want to find a way to detach people from the impact of semantics and guide them towards the pure sensations evoked by sounds.



Self-Reflection:



Truthfully, I've always considered this an impossible task. At an age where semantic connections have become an automatic reflex, I can't simply ignore them at will. There's also a very personal aspect I once attributed to myself. I felt I received and processed information better through written words than through sound. There were times I found myself enjoying the act of gazing at the written word, at passages of text, allowing the voice within me to resonate in silence. Reading and writing gave me ample time to think and contemplate. Back then, I believed I should avoid direct conversations because I didn't express myself well and my ability to interact was significantly diminished.

We often have misconceptions about ourselves. Until one day, I thrust myself into an environment where no one around me spoke the mother tongue I thought I didn't "hear" very well. In the initial days, many nights I felt a nameless, desolate sadness. Then, one day, I was unexpectedly overcome by emotion after a phone call back to Vietnam to discuss work with someone I wasn't particularly close to. It was then I knew what I was truly missing amidst the myriad of longings. And the calls gradually became more frequent; I started choosing to call, using voice chat instead of texting. I no longer avoided verbal communication. That memory, the moment I realized how important the nuances people revealed through their voice were, stayed with me. I became curious: without the meaning, would I still be able to sense the utter despair or the intense longing people embedded in their words? If I could detach myself from semantics, just to listen to each sound landing in my heart, what would I feel?

Even now, to be honest, I haven't found a way to fully satisfy that vague desire. And the project needs to continue. I'm starting again with a different curiosity: do people share common feelings about a particular sound or melody? Can certain sounds or rhymes lead people to the same emotion? I want to know if empathy exists between us, through sound alone.

Initial Thought:



The Muong language shares numerous similarities and a close relationship with Vietnamese. Nguyễn Văn Khang's Muong-Vietnamese Dictionary was an interesting milestone in my research process for the project. The way rhymes are formed has many parallels and feels familiar enough, yet also sufficiently foreign because the meaning is obscured.



Self-Reflection:



To black out meaning, I believe there are many approaches. One could use sound combinations that adhere to Vietnamese spelling rules but aren't actually used in the language, or one could use Vietnamese phonetic transcriptions of foreign words. I lean towards using words that actually carry meaning, albeit in another language, rather than meaningless sound combinations. Because trying to express feelings through a nonsensical word, structured without any foundation, feels like searching for a needle in a haystack. The range of emotions could be vast, and I can't imagine how I would navigate them. The idea of borrowing Muong words came to me while I was reading an essay on the rhyming patterns in Vietnamese lục bát poetry. The writer used a Muong folk verse as an example, which surprised me because the rhyme scheme and tonal rules were completely familiar: "Chim quen xỏn lại một canh / Tế con chim lả rắp rành choi môi" (The familiar bird returns to a branch / For the strange bird to cunningly snatch bait). Furthermore, the similarity in word structure surprised me no less. There are many words that are the same or very close, differing slightly in tone or sound. I began to research the Muong language further and learned that it has the closest ties to Vietnamese among the languages of Vietnam's ethnic minority groups. I immediately seized this idea. I decided to design a game that uses Muong as an intermediary to guide participants in sharing their feelings about words whose meaning they don't know.

I dedicate this section to gather the words that have led me to this topic.

While Vietnamese presents linguistic complexities, it exhibits notable "melodiousness and harmony," likened to a "continuous musical composition." Borri posited that individuals possessing an innate musical aptitude and the capacity for auditory discrimination would find Vietnamese to be comparatively facile. When discussing the sounds and rhythms in poetry, the poet Tản Đà Nguyễn Khắc Hiếu wrote: "Poetry is not an orchestra, yet it possesses the beauty of an orchestra; without strings, without wind instruments, without metal, without stone, without earth, without skin drums, when read aloud, the sound entering the ear is truly like the vibrant, interwoven melodies of a zither."

— excerpt from Nghệ thuật chữ trang trí & quảng cáo (The Art of Decorative & Advertisement Fonts) - Hồ Xuân Hạnh

Primarily, one must recognize Vietnamese as a linguistic system endowed with remarkable sonic beauty and an inherent euphony, qualities which Vietnamese speakers have, over successive epochs, intuitively harnessed for expressive vocalization, notably in recitation and chant. A global survey of human languages suggests a potential rarity in the expansive and sustained auditory resonance characteristic of Vietnamese.

— Bàn về kịch thơ (On Play in Verse) - Thao Thao

Participants' reactions



Associating with the closest Vietnamese word: This scenario occurs when encountering words that sound somewhat similar to Vietnamese: for example, 'pòng pỏng' easily connects with 'lõng bõng' (the sound of splashing water), and 'chóch lóch' resembles 'lóc chóc' (a clattering or bustling sound). It's observable that players tend to search for words with the same or similar final rhymes to the given word, rather than associating with words that share the same initial consonant or maintain the syllable structure while changing the tone.

Associating with images and movements: This often happens when the given word is a reduplicative or echoic word that evokes sound. Players create vivid mental images based purely on the auditory experience.

Focus on overall feeling: When unable to connect with any Vietnamese word or to break down the parts of the word for association, players will focus on the overall feeling they experience. At this point, players tend to listen more intently. This is also the state I aim for players to reach when encountering the vocabulary that has had its meaning 'blacked out'.



Linguistic observations



Vietnamese is a language that tends to reduce aspirated sounds during its evolution (information provided by Yui Nguyen). From the discussions during and after the game, I have a feeling that rhymes and tones exert a stronger influence on the listener's feelings compared to the initial consonants. The tendency to drop aspirated sounds in Vietnamese also occurs with single/double consonants at the beginning of words, such as 'bl' changing to 'tr' in 'blời' becoming 'trời' (sky). Besides the reduction of aspiration, there are also cases of sound shifts like 'b' becoming 'v' in 'bua' becoming 'vua' (king). From this, we can propose a hypothesis about the level of influence/importance of the two factors: tones and final rhymes play a more significant role in Vietnamese.