(Bilingual Edition) There's no doubt, "The Story of Kieu" is an important and great poetical work of the Vietnamese Poetry History. Most of the Vietnamese knows from one to many verses in it and some knows by heart from long paragraphs to even all the work. In everyday relationships, the vietnamese today is still sometimes using words and verses excerpted from this work in writing, talking, chattering, allthough perhaps some don't know that they're using words and verses coming from that source. After nearly 300 years in existence, "The Story of Kieu" has become the most popular poetical work of the Vietnamese Litterature up to nowaday. From the first edition, "The Story of Kieu" spread quickly over the country by many many folk songs, recitals and plays in popular rites that were usually organized in all parts of the country. Furthermore, it can be said that the meanings and the language of "The Story of Kieu" have lifted the cultural life and even the language of the Vietnamese to become more abundant over mouth to mouth folk songs, from lullabies of the mothers to short poems sung liberally on dialogic form between vietnameses. Improvised ang dialogic song is a characteristic point in cultural life of the Vietnamese. This perhaps is originated from specific characters in the vietnamese language and history. One of the linguistic characters of the Vietnamese is the distinction of the meaning of a word upon its pitch and, thus, the Vietnamese speaks like they are singing. Perhaps because of these linguistic features, the Vietnamese is still really a people that has had always a special fondness in music and poetry. Furthermore, over more than a thousand years living under the domination of the Chinese (3rd century BC to 10th century AD), this is likely the real reason for the Vietnamese used mouth to mouth poetry and music as a means to conserve and preserve their own language as same as their civilisation and history. Up to 19th century, the Vietnamese was still using chinese in administration and education allthough from 15th century they had had really their own writing system - a writing system that was cherisched over 13 centuries from the last years of 3rd century BC when the domination of the Chinese was just begun. Over thousand years being dominated under the ruling of the chinese civilisation, the Vietnamese was not assimilated in but still tried to preserve their own language and furthermore made really profit from chinese to enrich the vietnamese vocabulary. After taking back the independency in 10th century AD, the Vietnamese must still struggled in more than 400 years again to perfect and achieve in building a new writing system which was able to express their own language. The one now has become very wealthy with a splendig warehouse of vocabulary up to hundred thousand words which gave the Vietnamese an endless possibility to medictate and to express their feelings. From these fat and dreamful lands, the real litterary works of the Vietnamese were really created.
About the Author: An author, translator, specialized in marketing and self-help books, who had several books published in Vietnam, HCMC.