Cantonese originally not Chinese???

[anthony]

WHO GIVES A @!#$.

[anthony]

WHO GIVES A SHITT!!

[Sum Won]

Quentin:
Of course the VietNamese don't use it to identify themselves against the Chinese --they use it to define themselves among the other races within their own country. I may not know why they call themselves the Kinh exactly, but you seem to know a significant amount on the issue, so please do tell.

ppk:
-Check your ethnologues, and you'll find that he Kinh are the majority in VietNam instead.
-If the Kinh in China don't correspond to the Kinh in VietNam, what are your theories on who they really are? I'm opened to suggestions...

[HKB]

I might have sent parts of this message twice accidentally, sorry.

Anyways, the Manchurian language is grouped into the family of languages called the Ural-Altaic family. Other languages grouped also in this particular group include Mongolian, all the Turkish languages, and Finnish (in Europe). Unlike Chinese (belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family), the Ural-Altaic languages possess inflection and largely poly-syllable words. They don't distinguish their words by using pitches and intonations. Cantonese does.
On top of that, the Cantonese PEOPLE could have been...mixed...with initially aboriginal peoples in Canton but you can only go so far as to SUPPOSE that they were indeed mixed, there is as of now NO direct substantiated evidence resulted from well-documented research material that suggest the cantonese are not total Han. Furthermore, your arguement only puts the ethnicity of the Cantonese people in question, not the language itself. Well I gotts go and can't say as much as I'd like to but my last comment is that Cantonese is officially grouped by international linguistic researchers as part of the Sino-Tibetan family (it has always been and always will be), whereas Vietnamese is grouped with the Khmer Family and Japanese is its own family (perhaps related to Korean and the Ural-Altaic in certain ways). I trust these scholars and believe Cantonese to be completely Chinese in origin. p.s,. they..the cantonese use more ancient Han Yu than Mandarin does.

[UBB]

I am a Cantonese boy from Hong Kong and I totally consider myself to be completely Chinese. How DARE you say that Cantonese merely have Chinese blood in them and that "we" should seek independence?! This is ridiculous! After all the wars we cantonese fought for China?! TOOOOOISTED!!

[UBB]

the above message was written in response to Sum Won's 04-16-2002 message.

[Sum Won]

HKB:
All of us are already aware of the fact that Cantonese is closest to Tang dynasty Chinese. However, there is also no substantial that the entire race of the aborigines were wiped out. Also, there is some evidence that some words transferred over from the aborigines to the Chinese.




Obviously, no one really figured out the purpose of this thread yet...

[KP]

What is the purpose of this thread?

I would assume the purpose is for people to open their eyes to the past cultures of the Yue people in that area? Or to help present-day Cantonese from just falling into a extremely general classification as being called "Chinese"?

What I wonder is how were those aborigines in the Guangzhou/Guangxi area treated compared to those in the North Vietnam region. All were subdued at the same time, but for some reason or another, only those in Northern Vietnam gained independence 1000 years later.

[ANTHONY]

WHO GIVES A F__K!!

[HKB]

Anthony...um...are you...ok? You've been yelling all over the place:)

[Sum Won]

KP:
The previous would be the main point, while the latter is a side benefit.

The question you posed is very interesting, or is it a pun, noting that the Cantonese were more easily subdued by Chinese, because they thought that "Chinese culture was better" (as the sinocentrics would say)?

Since you've already read, "The Birth of Vietnam", you are aware of the attempts at sinicisation of the VietNamese. True, they were subdued at the same time, but remember the issue of the Lac Lords. As I noted in my other thread, the Xi Ou and Luo Yue alliance (Tay Au and Lac Viet alliance) wasn't a marriage of the prince and princess from both nations. In fact, the leaders may have been in power, but didn't take control like the legends in "King Arthur". Rather, the Regional Lords were in alliance with each other. In other words, the Regional Lords were the ones who elected them. So when the Luo Yue and Xi Ou felt threatened further by China, they came together on both sides, and elected a single leader.

So, the Regional Lords had more significance than was described in the book. They had the power to vote for a leader, but what bounded these
Lords together? Common interests for either political, business, or whatever reasons. Now, we'll also have to take into account the number of Chinese that intermingled with the tribes. Nan-Yue was kind of a "Devil's Island" to the officials, but loved by the many criminals that were sent there, because they could ally themselves with the aborigines against the Chinese, but they still would've gave the proto-Cantonese Lords more exposure to the Chinese culture and hence a tendency to defect to Chinese culture and way of life, for greedy/selfish purposes.

Also, as noted in the book, the VietNamese were harder to assimilate, because the proto-Cantonese (who put up a fight) and other tribes north of modern-day VietNam, acted as a buffer.

[KP]

"The question you posed is very interesting, or is it a pun, noting that the Cantonese were more easily subdued by Chinese, because they thought that "Chinese culture was better" (as the sinocentrics would say)?"

Heh....thats the arguement I use when Cantonese try to act like they are better than Vietnamese because they are "Chinese".

However, I was serious when I asked the question. Taylor's book did mention that the Lac Lords eventually lost power when the Han decided to directly control Vietnam. From what I remember, the Lac lords fell out of influence at least before the end of the Han, so there seem to be plenty of time for the Han Admins to "sinicize" the Vietnamese.

There was direct control and sinicization of the Vietnamese. One would assume that through 1000 years, Vietnamese in a sense would become "Chinese". However, they did not, so that I why I wonder how the Chinese treated the Vietnamese? Maybe they didn't really try to sinicize the Vietnamese unlike what they did in S.E. China.....from the opinions of the majority of the forum, they were obviously very successful. Maybe the Vietnamese saw that their neighbors were not "Chinese", so they did not have to be "Chinese", unlike those people of S.E. China, who were surrounded by "Chinese".

[Sum Won]

First of all, I never implied any inferiority of the VietNamese in any way. Second of all: Just because the you tack on something like citizenship, language, and culture, because you killed another, doesn't make a Cantonese person, Chinese.

I'm not sure if you're ever aware of those TV Series about those famous lawyers from the Qing dynasty, or other scholars from other eras, that can "change white to black". If you are, you'll know a common tool they use is applying the inverse, converse, transverse (and any other word in the dictionary that uses "verse" as a suffix). This case is no exception. The Historians who wrote that the Lac Lords lost their influence, might have actually meant "The Lac Lords' decisions became more scrutinized in the Han court". I don't think their significance was lost to a point of full sinicization. Rather, the deals that the VietNamese received might not have been the same as the proto-Cantonese to the north. What these "deals" were, could range from agreements on material goods, to policies governing the structure of politics &/or life. I don't think there was really much change in either the VietNamese or proto-Cantonese side until the Tang dynasty, when Canton had more significance as a major trade port. This is when you see rivalry between Jiao-zhi (sorry if the name's wrong) and Canton's reputation as the best trade port in the empire begins...

[Sum Won]

...From here, you begin to see the seperations of the two, for competition. Competition not by the people themselves, but from the administrative level (who're the same guys that take the bribes and etc...) Sensing more money coming in (on the Cantonese side), the greedy magistrates obviously couldn't have done it without cooperation --in terms of not overthrowing the guy-- from the leaders who also were/became greedy, and received a significant profit...

[Sum Won]

...Hence, the main reason why the proto-Cantonese stuck with the Chinese empire, began out of greed from the pro-Chinese tribes in the Cantonese regions.

*There could be other explanations, but I'm still looking into them...*

(Sorry I had to divide it in 3 parts: The connection I'm using has a time limit.)