xã hội chủ nghĩa

Etymology
, from. The strictly adjectival use of this word, as opposed to, is evident, although communist teachings may insist on some sort of politically poetic semantic distinction between the two. For example, that is meant to mean "yet to be fully socialist, but on the way there", while  is "the ideology, or the full-fledged socialist reality". The argument is based solely on the order of the compounding elements somehow dictating the meaning of the whole expression, and whether xã hội comes first or last, with no basis on how either Chinese or Vietnamese works regarding. If this is considered as a purely Chinese/Sino-Vietnamese expression, then such interpretation is incorrect, as there's no *主義社會 chủ nghĩa xã hội in Chinese proper; if it is considered a Vietnamese expression (with Chinese elements), it would be analyzed as a compound of +, and its literal meaning would nonsensically be "doctrine society", with xã hội being the head element and chủ nghĩa being the modifier. Earlier adopters of the term, who were well-versed in Chinese learnings, evidently used it (although not exactly in a Marxist-Leninist sense as it's now used) as a Sino-Vietnamese compound with xã hội being the modifier and chủ nghĩa being the head.

Compare other pairs such as /, /, and /.

Noun

 * 1)  socialism