Often translated asSino-Vietnamese, and even such broadly understood English term may be defined with the above strict definition.
Hán Việt refers to a specific class of lexical items lifted from Classical Chinese texts, or text used by the bureaucratic and educated class. These items were borrowed with systematically derived pronunciations, with very few exceptions.
Not all Chinese-borrowed items are consideredHán Việt. Comparehè(non-Hán Việt) andhạ(Hán Việt), both of which mean "summer", but the former was borrowed from spoken Chinese. Due to the systematic method (fanqie) with whichHán Việt pronunciations were and are still derived fromMiddle Chinese, the vowel/ɛ/ in the former item is not valid, but the vowel/a/ in the latter item is. Items borrowed from spoken Chinese varieties or languages like the Cantonesetả pín lù do not count, either.
CompareJapanese漢語(kango), which refers to the Japanese equivalent lexical class that also disregards non-Classical-Chinese Chinese-borrowed items.
