the majority of the characters used in nôm are of chinese origin and are composed phonosemantically. for example, the character "喃" is read as "nôm", whose phonetic component "南" similar to the cantonese pronunciation "naam4" and means “chattering.” this rule is consistent in all chu nôm characters as all vietnamese made characters are composed using this method. the word "nôm" does not have any negative connotation in vietnamese, but rather suggests plain talk, something easy to understand.