Toward the standardization of the spelling of place names in Son La province

Abstract

Due to lack of national standards, the same Vietnamese place name could be written differently in administrative, scientific, journalistic texts as well as pronounced differently in broadcasting, television and stage. Taking  part  in  the  the  project Building the system of  Vietnamese and international place names system used for the mapmaking  in Son La province, we compare various writtings of place names (defined in co -ordinates) collected in four documents: Topographic map (Vb 1), Land use’s present condition  map (Vb 2), List of villages and humlets (Vb  3)  and  Dossiers  of  border  lines (Vb 4) and the results clearly show that the variations in writting have roots in two languages: Vietnamese and Thai. This has been confirmed by evidences from the field research on the writing of all the place names in province.