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I was looking up the Vietnamese word cửa hàng. Hàng Seems fairly straight forward as it used to be written with the Chinese character 行 and pronunciation is quite similar also. Cửa is not as simple; it seems to be a form of 𨷶 (or perhaps 𨷯) but there is very little info about it.

Wiktionary does say that it is a:

Han character

举 and 门 makes me think that it's got something to do with being 'open' (i.e.: for business) but I'm not sure.

Any ideas?

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  • Wiktionary does say that it is a Han character This definition of "Han character" is very broad, and coincides with the first paragraph in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters. I suppose, if kokuji and gukja are "Han characters", then there is no reason for Chữ Nôm and Sawndip not to be "Han characters". Well, 𨷶 and 𨷯 are definitely Chữ Nôm, and not a "Chinese" "Han character".
    – dROOOze
    Aug 31, 2019 at 13:04

1 Answer 1

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The Vietnamese word for shop is cửa hàng.

Cửa is not Sino-Vietnamese, but a Vietic morpheme. IF (and that's a big IF) cửa in cửa hàng means door, then cửa can be represented by「𨷶」, which just means door, and「舉」is not part of the meaning of cửa.

「𨷶」or「𨷯」(cửa) is made up of semantic「門」(door) and phonetic「舉」(cử).


Chinese has a similar word:「門市」, which is the front of a store.

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