The printed article reads, “Vietnam’s tourist visa policy, especially the complicated procedures to apply for a tourist visa, is one of the important reasons why the number of international visitors to Vietnam has continuously decreased over the past time...” (Disadvantage of tourist visas, Youth Newspaper, Saturday, April 18, 2015).

A piece of television news goes, “The People’s Committee of Bac Lieu province has just issued a decision to withdraw the garbage factory project in Vinh Loi district. This is a project that is slowly implemented, causing environmental pollution. Specifically, Bac Lieu province will recover the garbage factory of ANT Bac Lieu company with the entire area of more than 110,000 square meters and then hand it over to the Housing and Land Fund Development Center for management. The province will also find capable investors to build a new waste treatment plant next year.” (19h News on VTV1, 17 December, 2018).

And a news on the radio goes like this: “The work of handling all kinds of cases, considering types of cases and considering the application of administrative measures at the courts has seen many substantive changes in both timing and quality. Many large cases, especially serious economic and corruption cases, were brought to trial quickly and seriously. (News - Politics – General Channel of VOV1, Current News 1.2.2018).

We can see that Sino-Vietnamese words are frequently used in journalism. Most of them have no Vietnamese equivalents. If you want to replace them with purely Vietnamese words, you will have to use a longer phrase than the Sino-Vietnamese words, which may make the journalistic work longer and sometimes inaccurate.

In some cases, some borrowed Sino-Vietnamese words are accepted and used equally by Vietnamese people in their vocabulary. It is not difficult for the public to receive these words. For example, locality, potential, average, criteria, results, phenomenon, progress, development, production, investment, renovation, breakthrough, thinking, leadership, participation, support, link, argue, assert, model, witness, assert, launch, research, consciousness, and so on.

Another advantage of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary is that it sounds formal, elegant, general, abstract, or antique. Therefore, Sino-Vietnamese words are used to increase formality, reduce negative connotations, shorten and specify the form of presentation. For example, to describe the casualties in the recent earthquake in Nepal, many authors used Sino-Vietnamese words such as “thiet mang” for death, “tu thi” for corpse, “nan nhan” for victim, etc., that make a more solemn and neutral shade than Vietnamese words “chet” for killed, and died. The usage of Sino-Vietnamese words in this situation aims to ease the pain of the Nepal and their people during the disaster.

When talking about the US President’s wife, Hillary Clinton, the authors use Sino-Vietnamese words “De nhat phu nhan nuoc My”, “Ngoai truong My” which mean “The First Lady of the United States” and “the US State Secretary” respectively (Pictures of the four visits to Vietnam, April 13, 2015, 15:56 (GMT+7), Nongnghiep.vn) instead of the pure Vietnamese words of the same meaning to show respect, brevity, and efficiency in expression.

In many cases, Sino-Vietnamese words are used in the press due to its general and abstract shade. For example, “ngoai truong” for foreign minister instead of “bo truong bo ngoai giao” (minister of foreign affairs); “kieu bao” for overseas Vietnamese instead of “Vietnamese living outside the country”; “chien dau co” for fighter instead of “fighting jet.” The use of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary produces the effect of brevity, accuracy, and efficiency of the article.

Besides, the press also uses old Sino-Vietnamese words, such as “nghia vi”, “luc dich”- enemy’s capability, “vuong quyen”- throne, “long sang”- royal bed, “hoang toc”- royal family, “thuoc ha”- subordinates, “Ngoc Hoang”- king of heaven, “an kiem”- seal and sword, “thang thien”-ascend heaven, “chan dong”- landslide, “that kinh” - terrified, “anh hung hao kiet tu nghia”- many heroes assemble, “truyen thuyet”- legend, “cong lao”- merit, “khoi nghia”- uprising. Those words are rarely seen in the current Vietnamese language. However, they help to create the sacred atmosphere of the royal rite. Journalists have to explain the meaning of those Sino- Vietnamese words by subtitle or images on the television so that the audience can understand the information better.

In Sports and Football newspapers, some Sino-Vietnamese words are used, such as “lao phu nhan”- the old lady, “ha son” – leave the mountain, “ke vi” – succession, “da bai” – defeat, “dai kinh dich” – the great opponent, “khai hoa” – open fire, “dong thu”- new move, “trieu dai” – the reign, “dao tau” – escape, “man nhan” – spectacular, “tu huyet” – Achilles’ heel (Sports newspaper, 2017). Those words demonstrate the solemn, respected and ancient shade in the sport competitions, and thus, can make a completely new and interesting impression. Following are some examples:

- In fact, for the past two years, Ferguson has searched everywhere in the hope that he will find a player who can “succeed” (ke vi) Scholes (Man United: Who replaces Scholes, Vietnam Sports, No.146, Friday, June 3, 2011);

3. Perspectives on the use of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in the press

Given the large proportion of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary used in the Vietnamese press, it is essential to understand and use it effectively. Besides meeting the needs of society’s vocabulary, Sino-Vietnamese words also contribute to creating expressive values and attractiveness for journalistic works. However, there are several objective and subjective factors for the writer to make errors in Sino-Vietnamese words usage in the press that may become challenging to the readership in their receiving the information. Many cases of Sino-Vietnamese words are misused in the press, for example, thua nhan- admit/ tuyen bo - claim, diem yeu-weak point/yeu diem- important point; khuyen mai-promotion for sale/ khuyen mai- promotion to buy; sap nhap/sat nhap-merge; chap but/chap but – to put down in writing, lap lai/ lap lai-repeat, trung lap/ trung lap-repeatation, thap nien/thap ky-decade; viet vi-offside/liet vi-paralyzed; benh man tinh/ benh man tinh- chronic illness; le vat-offerings/ sinh le-marriage gifts.

Some authors have attempted to create new words to produce exotic expressions, for example: am ke (plot and plan); cau tac – dog thief, sua tac – fragrant rosewood thief, xe tac – driver thief; cat tac- sand thief, ngao tac-clam thief, ca tac-fish thief, mo tac-tomb thief, bun tac-mud thief, bui tac-dust thief.

Some used redundant words, for example, cay co thu (“cay” and “thu” mean “tree”), nha nhac cung dinh Hue (“nha nhac” means “Hue Royal music”, de xuat ra (“xuat” and “ra” mean “out”; thuoc tan duoc (“thuoc” and “duoc” mean “medicine”; chua Thien Phuc tu (“chua” and “tu” mean “pagoda”); duong quoc lo (“duong” and “lo” mean “road”).

To fix the misuse of Sino-Vietnamese words and promote the effectiveness of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in the media, it is necessary to keep to some principles as follows:

- Recognize the importance of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in Vietnamese. During its introduction into Vietnamese, it has changed itself according to the laws of the Vietnamese language, concerning phonetics, structure and semantics. Many Sino-Vietnamese words have narrowed their meanings compared to their original ones. On the other hand, many Sino-Vietnamese words have expanded their semantic scope. In addition, the Vietnamese also use elements of Chinese origin to create Sino-Vietnamese compound words; they use the transformation of word order to match the structure of Vietnamese words in order to make the Sino-Vietnamese words closer to or more familiar with the Vietnamese users. Recognizing this class of words does not mean using them too much that may lead to abuse. We should know how to use it properly and effectively, especially in communication and the media.

- The first principle concerns conformity. The Sino-Vietnamese words used must be consistent with the principles and purposes that the journalist’s work complies with, suitable for the public to receive information; consistent with Vietnamese fine customs and culture; relevant to the subject and content covered by the journalistic work.

- It is necessary to understand the semantic characteristics of Sino-Vietnamese words and how to use them. Sino-Vietnamese words inherently have indirect meanings in Vietnamese. Thus, to understand the meaning of Sino-Vietnamese words, we must learn about them, even need to look them up the dictionary. Chinese words have many homonyms, and the Han people distinguish these words by different ideograms. Sino-Vietnamese words were initially distinguished through Chinese ideograms. However, as we use the Romanized script today, we cannot distinguish the original Chinese homonyms without learning about Chinese ideograms. For example, “giai” means “identical”, and “beautiful”; “phu” means husband, and “to rely on”. Being borrowed into Vietnamese, Sino- Vietnamese words became again homophoned with pure Vietnamese words, for example, “yeu” in the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary means “important”, but “yeu” in the pure Vietnamese vocabulary means “weak”. We must rely on dictionaries and the context to distinguish and properly use these homonyms. If we do not know Sino-Vietnamese words well, we may confuse or misuse them.

However, we should be flexible to accept the transformation of word meaning during the process of usage. For example, “bao bien” does not only mean “doing other’s work” according to original Chinese meaning; “qua trinh” does not only mean “the past path”, “khuat tat” does not only mean “bending over” but also means “not transparent, not dignified”. Besides, we need to pay attention to the expression aspect of Sino-Vietnamese words (expressing feelings, attitudes of the speaker towards things, phenomena or people).

- When using Sino-Vietnamese words, it is necessary to create new words and use archaic Sino-Vietnamese words as an artistic element to increase the expressiveness of the press language. However, we need to pay attention to the public receptivity to each type of mass media. For example, in comic newspapers, when using complicated words, it is necessary to combine explanations with pictures; for print and online newspapers, we should have a clear explanation of the meanings of new words; on radio newspapers, we should refrain from using Sino-Vietnamese words that are too difficult for the listeners.