Liem Nguyen Dang. Four-syllable idiomatic expressions in Vietnamese

The Australian National University, 1970. — 66 p. — (Pacific Linguistics: Series D 6).Four-syllable idiomatic expressions are very common in Vietnamese. They are frequently used in ordinary conversation as well as in sophisticated literary writings. An indication of sophistication has always been that a person can quote, in a speech or writing, tetra-syllabic sayings and idiomatic expressions.
There are probably over three thousand four-syllable idiomatic expressions known to traditionally educated Vietnamese. The 825 expressions listed here were selected either because they are fairly well known to the average Vietnamese or because of their particular content. They are presented in the hope that, as ready-made, idiomatic expressions in common use, they will prove useful to students of Vietnamese and of interest to cultural anthropologists and linguists.