Quốc âm thi tập

The Quốc âm thi tập (國音詩集 "National pronunciation poetry collection") is a collection of Vietnamese poetry written in the vernacular chữ Nôm script attributed to Nguyễn Trãi (chữ Hán: 阮廌). The collection of 254 poems was traditionally written after Nguyễn Trãi's retirement from court life. It was complied around the reign of emperor Lê Thánh Tông (1460–1497).



Background
Quốc âm thi tập helped lead the development of chữ Nôm as a script for Vietnamese, but also to progress it as a tool for representing the Vietnamese language and its poetic themes not found in Literary Chinese poems. The text itself contains approximately 12,500 different Nôm characters that were used during the 15th century. The text tended to use characters for their sound rather than use phono-semantic characters that were later created as the chữ Nôm was being developed. An example would be the phrase, 濁濁, normally it would be read as trọc trọc, but will be read in Quốc âm thi tập as đục đục according to the Nôm reading.

Influence
The original Quốc âm thi tập influenced emperor-reformer Lê Thánh Tông, best known for his Hồng Đức legal code. Lê Thánh Tông was also a poet, and organized a literary group in 1495, the group was called Tao Đàn nhị thập bát tú (chữ Hán: 騷壇二十八秀), they then produced another vernacular chữ Nôm collection, the Hồng Đức Quốc Âm thi tập (Hồng Đức National pronunciation poetry collection"; 洪德國音詩集).