Chữ Nôm (字喃 or 喃 or 喃; literally "southern script") is a now obsolete script for recording the Vietnamese language. It makes use of Chinese characters (known as Hán tự in Vietnamese), and characters coined following the Chinese model. The earliest example of chữ Nôm dates to the 13th century. It was used almost exclusively by the Vietnamese elites, mostly for recording Vietnamese literature (formal writings were, in most cases, not done in Vietnamese, but in classical Chinese). It has now been completely replaced by quốc ngữ, a script based on Latin alphabets.