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Asia Society Hong Kong Center (ASHK) is pleased to present a presentation and dialogue with John
Phan, Associate Professor of Vietnamese Humanities at Columbia University, on his latest book, Lost

Tongues of the Red River: Annamese Middle Chinese & the Origins of the Vietnamese Language, in conversation
with Xing Hang, Associate Professor of History at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Join us to hear from Professor Phan and learn more about the roots of Vietnamese’s extensive
ethnolinguistic diversity, and how the language continues to challenge contemporary conceptions of linguistic identity today.

John Phan is Associate Professor of Vietnamese Humanities in the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. He completed his M.A. at Columbia University in Ming-Qing vernacular fiction in 2005, and his Ph.D. on issues in Sino-Vietnamese contact at Cornell University in 2012. Phan is a language historian focused on the ways in which the history of spoken
language, literary language, and/or writing systems can reveal social, cultural and political realities of the premodern and early modern worlds. He is especially interested in how language reveals histories that challenge and/or complicate our modern, nation-oriented understanding of politics, society, and identity. His first book, entitled Lost Tongues of the Red River: Annamese Middle Chinese & the Origins of the Vietnamese Language, reveals the existence of a dialect of Middle Chinese native to the region of modern-day northern Vietnam, and its role in the development of the Vietnamese language. His second project focuses on the vernacularization of early modern Vietnamese society, as exemplified by a vigorous practice of translation from Literary Sinitic into vernacular Vietnamese over the 17th-18th centuries, amidst the sociopolitical regionalization of that period. In addition to the nature of linguistic contact, and broad issues in linguistic change and historical
phonology as they pertain to broader historical issues, he is keenly interested in the cultural and intellectual ramifications of multiple languages coexisting in single East Asian societies, of linguistic pluralism in general, and of the transformation of oral languages into written literary mediums in historically diglossic cultures of East and Southeast Asia.

Xing Hang is Associate Professor of History at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His interests include early modern maritime East Asia, Eurasian comparative history, and overseas Chinese. He has written two books and several articles and reviews, and is a recipient of many grants and awards, including from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.

About Lost Tongues of the Red River: Annamese Middle Chinese & the Origins of the Vietnamese Language:
Among the world’s languages, Vietnamese provides unique insight into the cosmopolitan dynamism
of premodern Asia. Modern notions of language history are often constrained by nationalist
narratives, focused on bolstering a particular nation’s social, cultural, or political identities. A closer
look at the Vietnamese language reveals a rich record of interaction and transformation that does not
fit easily within modern nation-state lines or boundaries.

the history of a Sinitic language rooted in the Red River Plain of northern Vietnam, which he calls
“Annamese Middle Chinese.” The life and death of this language stimulated dramatic transformations
in the speech of the region, ultimately giving rise to a new and alloyed language over the early centuries
of the second millennium—Vietnamese.
Drawing connections among linguistic, demographic, intellectual, and cultural realities over time,
Phan traces the story of the emergence of Vietnamese within the broader context of a cosmopolitan
East and Southeast Asia. Lost Tongues of the Red River demonstrates how language forms a
surprisingly intimate record of human interaction—one with unique potential to enrich and expand
our understanding of the distant past.