In the first episode of the series Tìm Lại Tiếng Xưa (“Retracing Old Sounds”), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyễn Thị Phương Trang joins host Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm to share the journey of researching, transliterating, and producing an annotated study of Philiphê Bỉnh’s Sách sổ sang chép các việc.

In the second episode of "Retracing Old Sounds", Dr. Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm speaks with one of the most prominent figures of the younger generation of researchers: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Trần Trọng Dương. He spent many years working at the Institute of Hán–Nôm Studies and is now teaching at the Faculty of Vietnamese Language and Culture, School of Foreign Languages and Tourism, Hanoi University of Industry. With extensive expertise in Hán–Nôm studies, the history of Vietnamese, historiography, and cultural studies, he has published more than 20 books and over 100 scholarly works both in Vietnam and abroad.

In the third episode of Retracing Old Sounds, Dr. Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm speaks with Associate Professor Dr. Xian Manxue about her work Historical Stratification of Sino-Root Elements in Vietnamese—a study that demonstrates how the familiar layer of Sino-Vietnamese readings represents only one part of the long and complex history of contact between Vietnamese and Chinese. The research reveals that beneath the Tang-period standardized Sino-Vietnamese layer lie much older strata of vocabulary, borrowed across multiple historical stages.

In this podcast episode, Dr. Nguyễn Thị Phương Trân speaks with Associate Professor Nhiếp Tân, who currently teaches and conducts research at the Department of Vietnamese Language, the School of Foreign Languages, Beijing International Studies University. Assoc. Prof. Nhiếp Tân is the author of Nghiên cứu chữ Nôm tự tạo trong văn bản giải âm Truyền Kỳ Mạn Lục (Vietnam National University Press, Hanoi), a monograph that offers an in-depth study of self-created Nôm characters and a methodology for distinguishing Han-borrowed Nôm characters from those with internal structural logic.

This episode features a recorded speech by Professor Nguyễn Quang Hồng delivered at the ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of the passing of Professor Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, held on November 15, 2021. The event was organized by the Department of Linguistics (as it was then) at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. This audio recording is a valuable document: it preserves not only the personal memories of a junior colleague and fellow scholar, but also offers profound academic reflections on the scholarly legacy of one of the most important pillars of modern Vietnamese linguistics and Hán–Nôm studies.

At the beginning of the Year of the Horse, we will be in conversation with Dr. Phan Diễm Phương, Doctor of Literature, on the occasion of the publication of her new book, Four Representative Poetic Forms of the Vietnamese. Dr. Phan Diễm Phương previously taught at the Faculty of Literature, Vinh University of Education, and later worked at the Department of Modern Vietnamese Literature, Institute of Literature (Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences). Over several decades of research, she has made a significant mark with monographs such as Lục bát and Song thất lục bát (1998), The Self-Explanations of Literature (2000), along with many other important contributions to the field of Vietnamese literary studies. Four Representative Poetic Forms of the Vietnamese is the result of her sustained, in-depth research in the field of poetic prosody. The book focuses on four major verse forms—lục bát, song thất lục bát, hát nói, and the eight-syllable verse form—distinctive creations of Vietnam’s national poetic tradition.