Why American always write Vietnam together not Viet Nam ?

Question

In Viet Nam <---this is how the way we write doesn't matter in English or in Viet, but everytimes my teacher and other people keep write Vietnam at one word. Viet mean Vietnamese people and Nam mean South they are completely different meaning.

Answer 1

Just a question of habit. Look at maps from different countries and you'll see a lot of city names and country names written differently. It was probably written as it was heard on US maps, one word, and that was that.

Edit : to Wire and String, Vietnam uses the latin alphabet. Alexandre de Rhodes translated phonetically Vietnamese during the 17th century and they adopted that as their alphabet. Before that they used chinese characters.

Answer 2

I am looking at a copy of Viet Nam News. It is published by "Vietnam News Agency". I look inside and see an ad for the "Vietnam Law & Legal Forum", a monthly magazine that is the official gazette, and the English translation of Cong Bao. In that ad there are 5 spellings as Vietnam. Elsewhere there is an Invitation for Bids, placed by the Rural Energy II Project Management Unit (a Vietnamese institution). It has 4 uses of Vietnam and two of Viet Nam (when listing addresses). Generally in tieng Anh it is Vietnam, and in tieng Viet it is Viet Nam.

Why do the Vietnamese use My or Hoa Ky rather than United States? ;^)

Answer 3

1. so that mean I can write Unitedstates <---don't this look better for you?

2. South Viet Nam <---this is another country before the war over and they combine together at one country and call it Vietnam. They aren't realtive anything to Chinese.

3. Vietnam have alot different name..An Nam, Giao Chi, Au Lac, Nam Viet...there is alot more.

4. Long time ago Chinese and Viet live together ( or we can said the Mieu people, the Mieu people include H'mong, Lac. Viet and Au Viet, So, and some other) The war broke out between Chinese and Mieu with a long history. The Mieu people lost their land so they run away. the Lac Viet and Au Viet are two different groups ( before the war broke out, Lac Viet and Au Viet have fought over 100 times, when the Han dynasty invade So country, that is the time Lac Viet and Au viet run away).

5. An Duong Vuong is the first King in Viet Nam (Au Lac) he came to South establish country,make himself a king. On that time Chinese invade Au Lac and give them another name Giao Chi.

talk about history...I agree that Vietnam have many stuff that relate to Chinese...beside that viet Nam also have so many civil war, and war against Chinese, Japanese and event French, ChamPa,Cambodia and Thai. There also some stories said that some chinese gen look very close to Viet people, and Vietnamese is Vietnamese they aren't Chinese or anything.

Answer 4

Because they don't know better.
Americans always mess up others' languages.

Wire and string,

"I would also point out that vietnamese does not use alphabetic characters so either Vietnam or Viet Nam is a phonetic translation anyway,"

Are you serious? Vietnamese does use an alphabet. Just not the one you're using.

Answer 5

The country IS Vietnam. While what you say is true about Viet referring to the ethnicity of the people, and Nam meaning 'the South;, 'the South' does not refer to South Vietnam, it is much, much older. It refers to the sovereignty of the country, differentiating it from China to 'the North'.

Answer 6

we are lazy and ignorant. we dont even put the ' in hawai'i and it is one of our own states. I would also point out that vietnamese does not use alphabetic characters so either Vietnam or Viet Nam is a phonetic translation anyway, likely it was translated that way early and it stuck inspite of itself.

edit for the guy below me: "the alphabet, a system of writing, developed in the ancient Near East and transmitted from the northwest Semites to the Greeks, in which each symbol ideally represents one sound unit in the spoken language, and from which most alphabetical scripts are derived."

I'm refering to it in this definition, i thought that was pretty clear in context...

Answer 7

What sounds better?
Thats why.