How did the language end up with a Latin alphabet?
I mean I note that there are some Chinese languages, with millions of speakers, where the largest written text they have is a bible written in a Roman script. If those are a challenge surely Vietnamese must be as well.
Not very well. The old vietnamese script with Chinese characters had a lot of custom additions not in Chinese to make it work. It clearly was ducktaped.
The colonial administration didn't have to push too hard to make people switch, the customized chinese script wasn't very popular.
Every now and then it will pop up in the news due to politicians using it as a tool to cause racial divide.
Vietnamese used to be written using Chinese orthography just like Japanese.
The French forcibly cracked down on this form of orthography, and following independence, later modernists attempting to copy Ataturk along with latent Sinophobia due to the Chinese colonial era meant this for of orthography has largely been relegated to ceremonial usage.
A similar thing happened with Bahasa Indonesia, as Indonesia's founding leadership was more secular and socialist in mindset compared to neighboring Malaysia where Jawi remained prominent because of the Islamist movement's role in Malaysian independence.
Is that just because you define "colonization" as "by western countries"?
There is evidence that Parameswara converted to Islam following his infatuation with and marriage to a girl from the Samudera Pasai Sultanate.
Doesn't that seem like the silliest thing you ever read? When the infatuation ended ( like all infatuations do ), did he convert back? The only thing royals are infatuated with is wealth and power. If anything, don't you think the guy converted to get preferable treatment from the arab traders or get special access to the arab trading network? There is more to the story for sure. But I'm not buying that fanciful story.
Not even close to be frankly honest.
Leaving aside the delibrate silliness of Edward Lear, Roald Dahl, et al and focusing just on origin stories relating to the spread of various beliefs ...
* Have you heard the one about the Buddist Monk, the Monkey, Pig, Fish, Dragon, and Horse spirits ?
* the tale of a great snake that carved rivers ?
* maybe that fishing boat passenger that got out and walked across the water ?
> If anything, don't you think the guy converted to get preferable treatment from the arab traders
I suspect the marriage was political .. but he wasn't marrying into a family of arab traders, Sultan Malikussaleh (the progenitor of the Samudera Pasai Sultanate) was an Acehnese man from part of what is now called Sumatra, a part of Indonesia.
> special access to the arab trading network
Was pretty low key wrt volume between the modern middle east and Indonesia back in the time we are looking at - the trade advantages by volume (ie. that which mattered) was all local to the greater archipelago.
Moreover, returning to the original point upthread, there's no evidence of colonisation by arabs in the sense of colonisation by the British of India or various parts of Africa, colonisation by the Dutch in the East Indies, colonisation by the Germans in Africa and PNG, by the French in Vietnam, etc.
The difference being that nobody believes those silly things. Or are you saying you believe these nonsense also?
> I suspect the marriage was political ..
Why didn't you say so in the first place.
> but he wasn't marrying into a family of arab traders
Did I say he married into a family of arab traders? Stop with your bullshit already.