Hasn't anyone here thought of borrowing words from another language. Look at modern Chinese, and the word for 'lift' the elevator that transports people from one floor level of a building to another. When China was the cultural centre of Asia, other languages began absorbing words from Chinese. Vietnam, before it became the long thin country it is now was concentrated in the north when it was under Chinese control in the country of Annam. It was so for a whole 1000 years or so, and during that time they acquired so much Sino-Vietnamese borrowed words. The underlying language of Vietnamese is not Sino-Tibetan but Mon-Khmer, despite the evidence of 'tones'.
Dyl.
Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?
-
montela77
Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?
A few more comments:
* Maybe the controversy comes from the different weight one puts on languages family. English and French have different word orders and are both indo-european languages. But the first one is germanic and the second one is italic. It is not clear to me whether there exist objective criteria that are used to decide what size language family should be and where to split languages between two families. I mean: merge austro-asiatic and sino-tibetan and there won't be any further discussion! From each individual language upto the concept of "human language" you have a continuum that you can split in many ways. In my opinion language families have one purpose: to settle a common way of classification.
* grasy gives interesting comments. However I should point out something wrong in its discussion about tones: there are plenty of tone languages outside Asia, especially in Africa. Obviously they are not related to chinese or sino-tibetan ...
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.c ... l+language
* Maybe the controversy comes from the different weight one puts on languages family. English and French have different word orders and are both indo-european languages. But the first one is germanic and the second one is italic. It is not clear to me whether there exist objective criteria that are used to decide what size language family should be and where to split languages between two families. I mean: merge austro-asiatic and sino-tibetan and there won't be any further discussion! From each individual language upto the concept of "human language" you have a continuum that you can split in many ways. In my opinion language families have one purpose: to settle a common way of classification.
* grasy gives interesting comments. However I should point out something wrong in its discussion about tones: there are plenty of tone languages outside Asia, especially in Africa. Obviously they are not related to chinese or sino-tibetan ...
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.c ... l+language
-
Pham chinh Trung
Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?
Vietnamese, Khmer...have the origin of Malayo-polynesian (Austronesian) language, before any contact with Sino-tibetan language.
Example : Vietnamese "mắt cá" (ankle) is from Malay mata kaki (mata: eye, kaki: leg).....
Others :
Vietnamese : cửa sông (mouth of river), is from Malay Kuala sungai (Kuala:door; sungai:river)
Vietnamese: gò nổng (hillside) is from M. gunung (low mountain)
V. mặt trăng; M.mata bulang
V.Sông Mã. M.sungai emas (river having gold)
V.cây (tree); M.kayu
.........AlexNg wrote:
>
>
> Does the vietnamese language really belong to the sino-tibetan
> language group ? Some linguists say that vietnamese belongs to
> the mon-khmer group, I think this is a mistake !
>
> If you judge the vietnamese people by their skin color and
> shape of the eyes, they are indistinguishable from the southern
> chinese people. Their culture, food and religion all points to
> a chinese origin. If you look at the khmer people from
> cambodia, you will notice that they are different in terms of
> eye shape (rounder) and skin color (darker) from the chinese.
>
> While it is true that annam (northern vietnam) territory was
> under chinese rule for one thousand years, but from my
> research, before the chinese rule over annam started, a chinese
> general named yuen escaped to the south (for some reason I
> cannot remember) and founded that area called annam.
> That is why a lot of people in vietnam has a surname of nguyen
> which is a slight mispronounciation of the original word yuen
> in mandarin or yuin in cantonese.
>
> This analogy is similar to the taiwan chinese who are
> originally from china.
>
> The intermarriage between the chinese and the khmer people
> might have resulted in the present language called vietnamese.
> Remember that southern vietnam was inhabited mostly by the
> mon-khmer group and was actually part of the CAMBODIA(KHMER)
> empire at that time. Some basic words from khmer could have
> been integrated into the chinese language forming the present
> vietnamese language due to the lack of communication between
> china and annam at that time (paper was not invented then)
>
> The fact that the vietnamese language contains the unique tone
> differentiation (6 to 9 tones) that is unique to sino-tibetan
> group strongly suggest that it has a chinese origin rather than
> a khmer origin.
>
> A language that is non-tonic cannot gain tonic ability if they
> were just to borrow foreign vocabulary (for example, japanese
> which is non-tonic but borrows from chinese) because tonic
> ability is extremely difficult to learn for people whose basic
> language is non-tonic (just ask european language speakers).
>
> I believe it is the other way round, the vietnamese
> incorporated the khmer grammar but retained their vocabulary
> and tone. So it is considered a sino-tibetan language.
>
> And due to their proximity to guangdong province or general
> yuan might be from that province itself (need to confirm this
> later), is it any wonder that the vietnamese language is very
> similar to the cantonese language ? I do not know vietnamese
> language itself to compare with any of the southern chinese
> dialects to compare but my strong guess is that it is most
> similar to cantonese !
>
> Any arguments and feedback on this is welcome.
Example : Vietnamese "mắt cá" (ankle) is from Malay mata kaki (mata: eye, kaki: leg).....
Others :
Vietnamese : cửa sông (mouth of river), is from Malay Kuala sungai (Kuala:door; sungai:river)
Vietnamese: gò nổng (hillside) is from M. gunung (low mountain)
V. mặt trăng; M.mata bulang
V.Sông Mã. M.sungai emas (river having gold)
V.cây (tree); M.kayu
.........AlexNg wrote:
>
>
> Does the vietnamese language really belong to the sino-tibetan
> language group ? Some linguists say that vietnamese belongs to
> the mon-khmer group, I think this is a mistake !
>
> If you judge the vietnamese people by their skin color and
> shape of the eyes, they are indistinguishable from the southern
> chinese people. Their culture, food and religion all points to
> a chinese origin. If you look at the khmer people from
> cambodia, you will notice that they are different in terms of
> eye shape (rounder) and skin color (darker) from the chinese.
>
> While it is true that annam (northern vietnam) territory was
> under chinese rule for one thousand years, but from my
> research, before the chinese rule over annam started, a chinese
> general named yuen escaped to the south (for some reason I
> cannot remember) and founded that area called annam.
> That is why a lot of people in vietnam has a surname of nguyen
> which is a slight mispronounciation of the original word yuen
> in mandarin or yuin in cantonese.
>
> This analogy is similar to the taiwan chinese who are
> originally from china.
>
> The intermarriage between the chinese and the khmer people
> might have resulted in the present language called vietnamese.
> Remember that southern vietnam was inhabited mostly by the
> mon-khmer group and was actually part of the CAMBODIA(KHMER)
> empire at that time. Some basic words from khmer could have
> been integrated into the chinese language forming the present
> vietnamese language due to the lack of communication between
> china and annam at that time (paper was not invented then)
>
> The fact that the vietnamese language contains the unique tone
> differentiation (6 to 9 tones) that is unique to sino-tibetan
> group strongly suggest that it has a chinese origin rather than
> a khmer origin.
>
> A language that is non-tonic cannot gain tonic ability if they
> were just to borrow foreign vocabulary (for example, japanese
> which is non-tonic but borrows from chinese) because tonic
> ability is extremely difficult to learn for people whose basic
> language is non-tonic (just ask european language speakers).
>
> I believe it is the other way round, the vietnamese
> incorporated the khmer grammar but retained their vocabulary
> and tone. So it is considered a sino-tibetan language.
>
> And due to their proximity to guangdong province or general
> yuan might be from that province itself (need to confirm this
> later), is it any wonder that the vietnamese language is very
> similar to the cantonese language ? I do not know vietnamese
> language itself to compare with any of the southern chinese
> dialects to compare but my strong guess is that it is most
> similar to cantonese !
>
> Any arguments and feedback on this is welcome.
-
AlexNg
Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?
Grasy,
Not all thai people are fair skinned. 25% of thais are actually pure ethnic chinese. There is high amount of intermarriage between ethnic chinese and thai which explains the perceived fair skin. Pure thais are darker skin just like the malays and the shape of the eyes are different from the chinese. I know of a local chinese here who married a thai woman, just by seeing the shape of her eyes and color of her skin, i knew that she wasn't local chinese.
I am living in malaysia, so I know this fact.
Not all thai people are fair skinned. 25% of thais are actually pure ethnic chinese. There is high amount of intermarriage between ethnic chinese and thai which explains the perceived fair skin. Pure thais are darker skin just like the malays and the shape of the eyes are different from the chinese. I know of a local chinese here who married a thai woman, just by seeing the shape of her eyes and color of her skin, i knew that she wasn't local chinese.
I am living in malaysia, so I know this fact.
-
AlexNg
Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?
Whether a language falls under one family or another depends on the following.
1. Tonal or non-tonal.
--------------------------
Tonal (frequency) languages were developed so that the same word can mean different things to increase the vocabulary differentiation. Non-tonal languages usually need longer words to distinguish one another as they do not have tones to distinguish the meaning.
Eg. japanese have long words because it is non tonal - "arigato" (4 sound) as opposed to "do jeh" (2 sound).
2. Short or Long words.
----------------------------
Chinese languages are basically short languages where one sound or two sound conveys one meaning. Each sound has an idea behind it.
Non-tonal languages tend to be long to increase the combinations and permutations.
Of course, languages with long words can be tonal too (in theory) to increase the vocabulary.
eg.Chinese "Ji Tin" (2 sound) as opposed to english "dictionary" (4 sound).
3. Grammar on word order.
---------------------------------
The order of the words - subject, verb, noun
English "I love you" . (subject verb noun) as opposed to french "Je t'aime"
(subject noun verb)
4. Grammar on different verbs depending on the subject.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is very pronounced especially in latin languages not so much in germanic languages.
Eg English.
He has
I have
You have
There is absent in chinese languages
5. Grammar on different verbs for past, present, future
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Eg English
I had
I have
I will have
This is also absent in chinese languages, chinese languages only use in the past, now, in the future.
6. Gender for nouns
-------------------------
Each noun is distinguished by male, female
Eg .French:
la mer, la voiture
Absent in english and chinese
7. Singular or plural
------------------------
Noun and verb changes according to number.
Eg. English cars/car
Absent in chinese.
8. Structure of the words
-------------------------------
Chinese languages usually have 3 parts to a word.
The beginning sound, the middle or vowel, and the ending sound.
Germanic languages has a richer ending sound than chinese.
Eg. Cantonese - wide means "fut"
F - beginning sound
u - vowel
t - ending sound
Mandarin has essentially lost the ending sound due to the influences of the mongol-manchurian languages (which falls under the same group as japanese)
English - bus
B - beginning sound
u - vowel
s - ending sound
9. Percentage of the similarities of most of the vocabulary
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sounds are similar differing only in either beginning sound vowel or ending sound only.
eg. part in english, partie in french (differing in the ending sound)
For chinese dialects, they are more similar
Eg. sin (mandarin)
sam (cantonese) differing in middle and ending sound from mandarin
sim (hokkien) differing in ending sound from mandarin but differing in middle sound only from cantonese.
Incidentally, vietnamese is
tam (differing in beginning sound from cantonese)
Summary
------------------------------------------------------
We just have to note the similarities of vietnamese to the sino-tibetan and the mon-khmer. More research later.
1. Tonal or non-tonal.
--------------------------
Tonal (frequency) languages were developed so that the same word can mean different things to increase the vocabulary differentiation. Non-tonal languages usually need longer words to distinguish one another as they do not have tones to distinguish the meaning.
Eg. japanese have long words because it is non tonal - "arigato" (4 sound) as opposed to "do jeh" (2 sound).
2. Short or Long words.
----------------------------
Chinese languages are basically short languages where one sound or two sound conveys one meaning. Each sound has an idea behind it.
Non-tonal languages tend to be long to increase the combinations and permutations.
Of course, languages with long words can be tonal too (in theory) to increase the vocabulary.
eg.Chinese "Ji Tin" (2 sound) as opposed to english "dictionary" (4 sound).
3. Grammar on word order.
---------------------------------
The order of the words - subject, verb, noun
English "I love you" . (subject verb noun) as opposed to french "Je t'aime"
(subject noun verb)
4. Grammar on different verbs depending on the subject.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is very pronounced especially in latin languages not so much in germanic languages.
Eg English.
He has
I have
You have
There is absent in chinese languages
5. Grammar on different verbs for past, present, future
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Eg English
I had
I have
I will have
This is also absent in chinese languages, chinese languages only use in the past, now, in the future.
6. Gender for nouns
-------------------------
Each noun is distinguished by male, female
Eg .French:
la mer, la voiture
Absent in english and chinese
7. Singular or plural
------------------------
Noun and verb changes according to number.
Eg. English cars/car
Absent in chinese.
8. Structure of the words
-------------------------------
Chinese languages usually have 3 parts to a word.
The beginning sound, the middle or vowel, and the ending sound.
Germanic languages has a richer ending sound than chinese.
Eg. Cantonese - wide means "fut"
F - beginning sound
u - vowel
t - ending sound
Mandarin has essentially lost the ending sound due to the influences of the mongol-manchurian languages (which falls under the same group as japanese)
English - bus
B - beginning sound
u - vowel
s - ending sound
9. Percentage of the similarities of most of the vocabulary
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sounds are similar differing only in either beginning sound vowel or ending sound only.
eg. part in english, partie in french (differing in the ending sound)
For chinese dialects, they are more similar
Eg. sin (mandarin)
sam (cantonese) differing in middle and ending sound from mandarin
sim (hokkien) differing in ending sound from mandarin but differing in middle sound only from cantonese.
Incidentally, vietnamese is
tam (differing in beginning sound from cantonese)
Summary
------------------------------------------------------
We just have to note the similarities of vietnamese to the sino-tibetan and the mon-khmer. More research later.
-
Phong
Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?
Hey this is interesting! All along I thought Vietnamese was influenced mainly by Chinese and French, how did Malay came into the picture?
Now that you mentioned it, could "anh" arise from "abang"?
Pham chinh Trung wrote:
> Vietnamese, Khmer...have the origin of Malayo-polynesian
> (Austronesian) language, before any contact with Sino-tibetan
> language.
>
> Example : Vietnamese "mắt c�" (ankle) is from Malay mata
> kaki (mata: eye, kaki: leg).....
>
> Others :
>
> Vietnamese : cửa s�g (mouth of river), is from Malay
> Kuala sungai (Kuala:door; sungai:river)
>
> Vietnamese: g� nổng (hillside) is from M. gunung (low
> mountain)
> V. mặt trĨôƠng; M.mata bulang
> V.S�g M�. M.sungai emas (river having gold)
> V.c� (tree); M.kayu
[%sig%]
Now that you mentioned it, could "anh" arise from "abang"?
Pham chinh Trung wrote:
> Vietnamese, Khmer...have the origin of Malayo-polynesian
> (Austronesian) language, before any contact with Sino-tibetan
> language.
>
> Example : Vietnamese "mắt c�" (ankle) is from Malay mata
> kaki (mata: eye, kaki: leg).....
>
> Others :
>
> Vietnamese : cửa s�g (mouth of river), is from Malay
> Kuala sungai (Kuala:door; sungai:river)
>
> Vietnamese: g� nổng (hillside) is from M. gunung (low
> mountain)
> V. mặt trĨôƠng; M.mata bulang
> V.S�g M�. M.sungai emas (river having gold)
> V.c� (tree); M.kayu
[%sig%]
-
drunk_on_tea
Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?
The Vietnamese language varies from north to south. There are words, expressions and accents used by Southerners and Central people that are unintelligible to a Northerner's ears. So, in this respect, the collective Vietnamese language will share commonalities with both Khmer and Chinese language due to historical circumstances. Thus, political history should not be the only criteria to judge. There are other aspects such as geography, culture, physical traits that may be important as well.
Geography and Culture:
Exact origin of where the Vietnamese people came from is unclear but they did occupy the Guangdong and Guangxi areas before coming in contact with China. It's possible that they had start from these regions and moved south or came from further up north, settled and expanded south. Their basic customs and traditions and architecture are very similar to Southern Chinese cultures. How come no one question how much Cantonese borrows from Mandarin and label it a Mon-Khmer language as well? Northern Vietnamese speaks with a higher pitch that resembles more closely to Mandarin than Cantonese, how do we explain that?
Physical Traits:
If one must use physical traits, we can see that the Vietnamese are fair-skinned and have almond-shaped eyes. White beauty is highly-prized in traditional Vietnamese society. You can actually insult a Vietnamese by calling him or her dark, it's true and the people are extremely proud to call themselves yellow-skinned. Someone can say that this is due to 1,000 years of intermarriages with Chinese but this assumption would be fallacious on so many levels. Actually, in that one millenium, there were not a lot of Chinese present in what was the Annam province. Only officials married into the Vietnamese aristocracies who later became Vietnamized were Chinese but the population remained quite free. Vietnamese were left alone and intermarriage did not happen frequently.
Someone mentioned Thais being light--they are not.
Second, the climate in Northern Vietnam is very cold and mountainous like Southern China so having common physical traits would be normal. There are so many minority tribes in Southern China, the ancestors of Vietnamese were probably a mixture of these groups that, at one point in time, decided to "go collective" hehehe. The term "Bai Yue" means that there were 100 group of peoples all under the title Yue or Viet all living beside each other in ancient time. How can one group's language be Mon-Khmer in origin and 99 be Sino-Tibetan?
Vietnam is definitely an anomaly in the Asian context.
Geography and Culture:
Exact origin of where the Vietnamese people came from is unclear but they did occupy the Guangdong and Guangxi areas before coming in contact with China. It's possible that they had start from these regions and moved south or came from further up north, settled and expanded south. Their basic customs and traditions and architecture are very similar to Southern Chinese cultures. How come no one question how much Cantonese borrows from Mandarin and label it a Mon-Khmer language as well? Northern Vietnamese speaks with a higher pitch that resembles more closely to Mandarin than Cantonese, how do we explain that?
Physical Traits:
If one must use physical traits, we can see that the Vietnamese are fair-skinned and have almond-shaped eyes. White beauty is highly-prized in traditional Vietnamese society. You can actually insult a Vietnamese by calling him or her dark, it's true and the people are extremely proud to call themselves yellow-skinned. Someone can say that this is due to 1,000 years of intermarriages with Chinese but this assumption would be fallacious on so many levels. Actually, in that one millenium, there were not a lot of Chinese present in what was the Annam province. Only officials married into the Vietnamese aristocracies who later became Vietnamized were Chinese but the population remained quite free. Vietnamese were left alone and intermarriage did not happen frequently.
Someone mentioned Thais being light--they are not.
Second, the climate in Northern Vietnam is very cold and mountainous like Southern China so having common physical traits would be normal. There are so many minority tribes in Southern China, the ancestors of Vietnamese were probably a mixture of these groups that, at one point in time, decided to "go collective" hehehe. The term "Bai Yue" means that there were 100 group of peoples all under the title Yue or Viet all living beside each other in ancient time. How can one group's language be Mon-Khmer in origin and 99 be Sino-Tibetan?
Vietnam is definitely an anomaly in the Asian context.
-
AlexNg
Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?
Drunk_on_tea,
Your explanation on the differences between north and south vietnamese dialects is easy to explain looking at their history.
The pure vietnamese as we know from recent recorded history only occupied the annam province (north vietnam) before invading south vietnam which was part of the khmer empire when that empire grew weak.
It is not illogical to assume that the khmer language may have influenced the pure vietnamese language to the south.
We should look at the north vietnamese dialect to determine the origin of the language instead.
All indications suggest that it is NOT a mon-khmer language as that language family do not have tones which is an intrinsic property of a language family.
Furthermore, PURE mon-khmer people (such as cambodians) are dark skinned just like the malayo-polynesian people.
Your explanation on the differences between north and south vietnamese dialects is easy to explain looking at their history.
The pure vietnamese as we know from recent recorded history only occupied the annam province (north vietnam) before invading south vietnam which was part of the khmer empire when that empire grew weak.
It is not illogical to assume that the khmer language may have influenced the pure vietnamese language to the south.
We should look at the north vietnamese dialect to determine the origin of the language instead.
All indications suggest that it is NOT a mon-khmer language as that language family do not have tones which is an intrinsic property of a language family.
Furthermore, PURE mon-khmer people (such as cambodians) are dark skinned just like the malayo-polynesian people.
-
AlexNg
Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?
There is more evidence that vietnamese is more sino-tibetan
than mon-khmer, please read below.
http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/dialectv.htm
I just found out that the tone system in vietnamese are very similar to the cantonese - 8 tones. If the tone system develop separately , why
does it have 8 instead of 4 like the mandarin or different like the hokkiens?
Can somebody confirm whether vietnamese 3 is pronounced as "tam" ?
It seems that wherever the cantonese word start with s, it is replaced with t in vietnamese.
For example.
Heart - sam (cantonese), tam (vietnamese)
than mon-khmer, please read below.
http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/dialectv.htm
I just found out that the tone system in vietnamese are very similar to the cantonese - 8 tones. If the tone system develop separately , why
does it have 8 instead of 4 like the mandarin or different like the hokkiens?
Can somebody confirm whether vietnamese 3 is pronounced as "tam" ?
It seems that wherever the cantonese word start with s, it is replaced with t in vietnamese.
For example.
Heart - sam (cantonese), tam (vietnamese)
-
phong
Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?
Hi Alex
>I just found out that the tone system in vietnamese are very similar to the cantonese - 8 tones.
Actually there are just 6 tones in Vietnamese.
>Can somebody confirm whether vietnamese 3 is pronounced as "tam" ?
'3' in Vietnamese is 'ba', but you're right, in sino-Vietnamese, it is known as 'tam.'
Here are 1 - 10 in sino-Vietnamese:
1 - nhất
2 - nhị
3 - tam
4 - tứ
5 - ngĨôỡ
6 - lục
7 - thất
8 - bĨôĂt
9 - cửu
10 - thập
Sounds remarkably like cantonese pronounciations, eh?
>I just found out that the tone system in vietnamese are very similar to the cantonese - 8 tones.
Actually there are just 6 tones in Vietnamese.
>Can somebody confirm whether vietnamese 3 is pronounced as "tam" ?
'3' in Vietnamese is 'ba', but you're right, in sino-Vietnamese, it is known as 'tam.'
Here are 1 - 10 in sino-Vietnamese:
1 - nhất
2 - nhị
3 - tam
4 - tứ
5 - ngĨôỡ
6 - lục
7 - thất
8 - bĨôĂt
9 - cửu
10 - thập
Sounds remarkably like cantonese pronounciations, eh?