Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

[Eng Wai]

hi grasy

First from how you use the words negroid and mongloid, I assume you have the concept of negroid-mongloid-caucasan-indian. I am opposed to this. This is an oversimplication but I am not going to detail about this.

"I saw some Mongolians dissimilar to Chinese, even to Northern ones. Also, What do you mean by "IndoCina"? Vietnamese people? My message 11-18-04 indicates my wrong thought about IndoCina. I thought
"Indocina" is white, fair but actually I saw wrong people.
How could you determine which was the "national" tribe, if there lives some tribes whose population is more than 10% of total population?"

Northen Chinese look more like Mongolian than the southern Chinese. Mongolian and northern Chinese can be obviously dissimilar but comparatively more similar than mongolian-southern chinese. Ya, I equate vietnamese to Indocina. Bar the minority, vietnamese look very alike to Cantonese and hokkien. I got the image of Vietnames from media and my own vietnamese friends. How do you define mongloid then?

And I did mixed up the words east n west. Sorry.

Can you spot Indian gene easily? Are you refereing to Aryan Indian (Hindi, north)or Dravidian (Tamil, Malayalam etc south) Indians? Aryan Indian can look like Aryan europeans (eg German) while Dravidians are quite distinct from other races. And can you spot Arabic gene easily? World footballer Zidane could be considered as Arabic, but can you spot his Arabic gene? Before I came to know some "pure" Arabics, I used to think that Zidane look very european.

Melayu has never been a tribe before, at least for written history. If you define Melayu = +-(mongloid + negroid) / 2, then the arguement of look of Melayu doesn't mean anything anymore because you construct the question according to your answer. With this definition, iban is melayu, orang asli are melayu, siamese are melayu, etc etc.

As you said, the word Melayu itself is quite ambiguos. But the word Melayu were first used to describe to Melaka people who came from Jambi. Normally a term is used to describe a collective stuff whose majority share the same characteristic, eg Chinese, japanese, hokkien etc. If you include Bugis, Java, Phillipino into Malay family, then you could say Malay = +- (mongloid + negroid)/2.

If you mean the Malay in Malaysia, then I have to say that the Malays in Malaysia are no longer pure jambi descendant. Substantial amount of foreigners (chinese, arabs, dravidian indians, thais, indonesians, indigenous) have mixed with pure Jambi descendant. The current Malays sometimes look similar to me, sometimes similar to my malayalam friends, sometimes to my Arabic friends. So the Malay look like Malay because they somehow look like everyone else.

Hope you don't mind my unscientific descriptions.

And sorry to other readers of this thread, this is a bit too much off topic already

Eng Wai

[%sig%]

[Dylan Sung]

qrasy wrote:

> Dylan,
> You wrote: "See also the section in that link on syntax,
> something which is hard to acquire in
> linguistic borrowing, which leads linguists to say Vietnamese
> is not of Chinese/Sinitic origin."
> Who wrote that Vietnamese is Chinese/Sinitic?


See the many postings of AlexNg.

AlexNg> 10-19-04 09:56
AlexNg>
AlexNg> Does the vietnamese language really belong
AlexNg> to the sino-tibetan language group ? Some
AlexNg> linguists say that vietnamese belongs to the
AlexNg> mon-khmer group, I think this is a mistake !
AlexNg>
AlexNg> .....
AlexNg> I believe it is the other way round, the vietnamese
AlexNg> incorporated the khmer grammar but retained their
AlexNg> vocabulary and tone. So it is considered a
AlexNg> sino-tibetan language.

It is the very first message in this thread. Read everything he writes. I have been trying to tell him he is plainly wrong, but he does not think so.

> I think Vietnamese can never be Chinese/Sinitic. Their syntax
> are very different. May be Vietnamese is closer to
> Miao-Yao/Tibeto-Burman.

It is closer to MonKhmer as linguists have already mentioned in the links I gave.


> I would like to know where you got the information about the
> Hangul.

The information comes directly from the unihan database of Unicode. The old 16 Megabyte file is searched for all Sino-Korean syllables, then sorted, and all unique syllables are listed above in my message.

> I think losing tones are easier than generating tones.

Tones actually develop, rather than being lost in the sense of it being there today and gone tomorrow. For instance the 'loss' or Ru type tones in northern Mandarin is due to the development of the endings of words ending in -p, -t, -k probably to a glottal stop -? as an intermediary final stop before the loss of the stop so that these syllables end in vowels or offglides. The syllables then enter the other tonal categories by this development.

Dyl.

[Taishan Ren]

There is a Sino-Tibetan language tree @

http://www.stanford.edu/~zong/psproj/

which may help you in establishing the perameter of your research.

The best way to solve your question regarding genetic origins is really to do gene sampling.

If you do, you should compare gene samples from Vietnamese with the Yao, Zhuang, Cantonese, and the Hill Tribes of Vietnam.

The Yao people originally came from the Changjiang Area (Yangzi River) and then fled to Yunnan but then many other Tibeto-Burman minorities also fled Southward from the Yangzi Area 2000 years ago during Han expansionism. Not only did they settled in SW & SE China include Hainan, they also went to Burma, Thailand, Laos, & Vietnam. And then there are those ethnic minorities who just stayed behind and intermarried with the Han people thus contributing to Han culture as we know it today.

http://berclo.net/page00/00en-sea-people.html#Yao

Personally, I don't believe the present Vietnamese people are 100% pure decendents of the ancient Dong Son Culture from the Red River area but a hybrid of non-Han tribal people that fled south from the Yangzi River Region and intermarried there with the Dong Son/Yue people. The same for Guangdong people as well, as they are not pure decendents of Yue Culture either but an intermarriage between Yue (a branch of Tai which Thai too is a branch of Tai) & Han.

http://www.vwam.com/vets/tribes/ethnicminorities.html

Another point of reference for your research, I would recommend you to discover the native ethnic-Chinese people inhabiting the coastal areas of Haiphong to the Chinese boarder who speak dialects resembling country-side dialects of Cantonese, the Ngai tribes (who are also classified as ethnic Han) and Nung & Tay tribes who also identify with aboriginal Yue culture.

http://www.orient-tours.nl/2vietnaminsi ... nics7.html

Another interesting area of study that might interest you is Chu Nom Character writing.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/chunom.htm

Hope this helps you towards your Way to Enlightenment.

Taishan Ren

[Taishan Ren]

Hoang Nhat wrote:

> Southern accent has no “v” sound and high-pitched ~
> tone, and neither does Cantonese.

Actually, Western Cantonese has a "v"-sound streatching from Taishan, Guangdong to Haiphong, Vietnam. It is not as pronounced as the "v" spoken in Vietnamese but it's there in dialectal Cantonese if you listen carefully for it as a substitute for "w" (just like the Germans speaking English).

Taishan Ren

[%sig%]

[Taishan Ren]

Here is a related discussion:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=980

Taishan Ren

[AlexNg]

Ok. I know that the han people intermarried the local bai yue people to form some of the cantonese people here today in guangdong province.

Does that mean that the cantonese and the vietnamese have a common ancestors ?

[qrasy]

Look at the calssification of French. They seems Nordic, like English, while their language is classified with Romance. I think they are very different people. This is an explanation that makes genetic-language unneccessary:
First, Franks could be Germanic speakers. Since they lived closely to a group of speakers of Romance, the Franks were able to learn the language. But, after span of several generations, despite the fact that they are still pure Nordics, the Franks forgot their own language and they spoke their own variety of Romance as their mother tongue. Their language developed in their own way, so their language can be considered as a separate language that is now called "French"
Having seen this, one could think, why not Nordic->Mongoloid, Germanic->Sino-Tibetan, French->Vietnamese, English->Chinese, Romance-> Mon-Khmer?
Why not the substituting-hypothesis rather than mixing-hypothesis for the Viets?
The answer lies on the history. Franks were part of Germans. It seems that Viets are the most direct descendants of the BaiYue. The descendants of BaiYue now speak Tai-Kadai mostly.
The mixing theorem seems to be good for:
Indians~Europeans, Chinese Daic~Indochinese Daic (it seems that the Zhuang people are similar to Japanese, if I didn't see the wrong people), but does it apply to Viets?

Sometimes, an oversimplication made linguists think BaiYue->Austroasiatic. "Austroasiatic" can make someone think of dark-skinned people. Let's discuss what would happen if the BaiYue were dark-skinned people:
If they mixed, the result are dark-skinned South Chinese. But rather the Han Chinese would mix with them, since they seemed to dislike dark people, and the south Chinese would be perfectly the same as Han Chinese or be black.
We know that above 2 choices above (the same as Han Chinese or be black) are wrong. (South Chinese are not black, and they have a little differences with "Middle" one)It implies that BaiYue were white people, and "Austroasiatic ancestors" were just like Vietnamese. BaiYue were not Tai-Kadai speakers, because we have historical evidence that the language were somehow similar to Austroasiatic. But rather, I will consider BaiYue as Viets, not Mon-Khmer people.
Also, there are some people that claim that Miao-Yao are member of Austroasiatic. It seems that they found the similarities of Miao-Yao with Austroasiatic. If it could be, Miao-Yao should be classified in the same group with Vietnamese, and one who still resists Vietnamese are Austroasiatic can give a claim that Vietnamese are Miao-Yao.
Now, even some linguists propose the relationship of Malay with Vietnamese. As far as I know, the similar words of Malay-Viet comes from Chinese, since in my list (of about 30 words) all Malay-Viet related words have clear correspondences with Chinese. I also included Sundanese and Javanese in my list, but none have clear correspondences with Malays. It can be seen that Malay is more Chinese than any Sundic or Austronesian. Also, we can find Chinese-Malay shared words that are not avalaible in Vietnamese. Like:
Old Chinese *kak, Malay kaki
We can discuss the validity of the classification of Viets in Mon-Khmer later.

And:

Eng Wai,
I think most Indocina were not Vietnamese. I think the combined Thais are the largest group in Indocina.
And do you think the North Chinese were the same as Han Chinese? I think not, since they have been long in close contacts with Mongols/Manchus, Altaic speakers. SO we have one more question: Which are purer Chinese, South or North? It seems that neither are pure. "Which are the purest" can be determined by comparisons to Hakkas, who claims that they are the purest Chinese. Which one do you think?
Talking about Malays, there are found many Chinese basic words, like I stated above, and prove that they are more Chinese than the other groups. I can spot Arabic genes easily if they are in mix with Malays.Did I write it in the context of Malays? Dravidians, Indians, Arabs, I think that they are a different ratio of Negroid-Caucasoid. The interaction between Negroid and Caucasoid seems to be more complicated than Mongoloid-Negroid. 3 races mixes in your message seems to be very complicated that some can be similar to you. I don't think there are more than 3 basics, since there seems to be only Causacoid-Mongoloid-Negroid. And one more off-topic question: do you look like Mongoloid-Causcasoid mix (you are not similar to Malay majority.)?

Dylan,
I am not really sure, but it seems that Thai and Khmer has the same order, while they are reverse to Viet and Pacoh. Now, do you think that same order means same classification? If Thai could be classified outside Mon-Khmer despite the same order with Khmer, why could Viet be not (despite the same order with Pacoh)? Also I read somewhere, that even there are Register-Loss in some Mon-Khmer languages.
And also, I searched the Character Map, but I found nothing is called 'tonal mark' for Hangul, while I found many obsolete jamos like kapyeounphieuph and yeorinhieuh.

[AlexNg]

There is an interesting article about the similarity between cantonese and vietnames.

http://www.travelogues.net/Vietnam_vani ... nguage.htm

[Eng Wai]

Hi Grasy

I really disagree with your mongloid-negroid-caucausiod theory. There was one another theory prevailing before, that is human can be subdivided into mongloid-negroid-caucasiod-indian. I guess you get your own theory from this outdated one. The 4 subdivision theory was simply an invention of some white trying to superiorify caucasoid. Caucasoid refer to the people living in central Asia. Pakistan is located in central Asia. But Pakistani and Norwegian look so different while according to the 4 division theory, they are the same people. The inventors certainly did not realise the truth, that though Pakistani look Indian, originally they should be closser to scandinavian (indo european) rather than dravidian south indians.

Of course you can assume the mongloid-negroid-caucasiod theory and dictate that every present race is the mixture of these three premitive races. But this assumption I m afraid is too audacious and baseless. The look of a certain group of people should be related to the continous consumption of certain diet, continuous exposure to certain weather, and other factors.

About my look, I don't look like northern Chinese, I still have the oriental look. I am short, dark, with pimples. I look like Malaysian Chinese (I am) according to a friend from China. He says the Malaysian Chinese has a certain look. You see, this is another oversimplification. Some Malaysian CHinese having pimples, being darker n shorter than northern chinese are easier to have their facial features remembered because we look different from inland Chinese. I might be a Bai-Yue descendant, I don't know, nobody knows. I don't look like Malay because I don't dress like Malay, I don't speak Malay, I am not Muslim. If a fairer Malay is naked beside me (naked as well), nobody can be sure if I were malay or not, vice versa.

I look like southern chinese in short. I don't look like indian or european at all. The issue of pure Chinese is completely silly. If you insist, then first you have to define the meaning of purest. Who should be the "pure" chinese? Hakka are genetically closer to southern chinese rather than northern chinese (www.hoklo.com). Hakka certainly look more like southern chinese than northern chinese, my mum is short, my boss is short. Both are Hakka, and northern and inland chinese are slightly taller than southern chinese.

Genetic certainly cannot be a valid claim of the origin of a language, though it can provide traces of hints. If you can easily spot the Arab gene in Malay, then you should be able to spot the Chinese, indigenous and other genes in Malay. SO what are left for the Malay?

About Vietnamese. I am not a linguist. But I read all the debates with great interest (legends, stories, histories, assumptions) and great confusions (linguist terms). But it is certain that Vietnamese has a lot of loan words from Chinese (70%).

So, in my opinion, the present Vietnamese is certainly under the group of Sino-Tibetan because the language has had so much influence of sinitic languages. Maybe the proto vietnamese might belong to the Mon-Khmer, the current Vietnamese certainly not.

I agree that the tone feature in Vietnamese casts a strong hint about the origin of Vietnamese. Originally I also agree that word sequence is a good guess of language origin. But as pointed out by AlexNg, French n English have different word sequence but they are all indo-european language.

However, I read somewhere that Vietnamese have 2 different counting systems. This is another strong hint on the proto vietnamese origin(non chinese).

Hope you could correct me if I get anything wrong.

Another thing about pure "chinese". If pure chinese are the Han people, then those bai yue descendant who reside in CHina during the Han are pure Chinese, those bai yue residing in Vietnam during Han are not Chinese. You see, they are 2 different races though they share the same ancestors. So, the notion of pure is ridiculous for a culture comprising of vast people over vast land, like Chinese, and Asia Tenggara kepulauan people (Malay).

Eng Wai

O, merry christmas !!

[%sig%]

[AlexNg]

Eng wai,

I really disagree with your mongloid-negroid-caucausiod theory. There was one another theory prevailing before, that is human can be subdivided into mongloid-negroid-caucasiod-indian. I guess you get your own theory from this outdated one. The 4 subdivision theory was simply an invention of some white trying to superiorify caucasoid. Caucasoid refer to the people living in central Asia. Pakistan is located in central Asia. But Pakistani and Norwegian look so different while according to the 4 division theory, they are the same people. The inventors certainly did not realise the truth, that though Pakistani look Indian, originally they should be closser to scandinavian (indo european) rather than dravidian south indians.

1. **********
Actually it should be australoid not indian. Each major group has sub division of race. It is not wrong to say the north indians are indo european because they are a sub branch of the main group.

***************

About my look, I don't look like northern Chinese, I still have the oriental look. I am short, dark, with pimples. I look like Malaysian Chinese (I am) according to a friend from China. He says the Malaysian Chinese has a certain look. You see, this is another oversimplification. Some Malaysian CHinese having pimples, being darker n shorter than northern chinese are easier to have their facial features remembered because we look different from inland Chinese. I might be a Bai-Yue descendant, I don't know, nobody knows. I don't look like Malay because I don't dress like Malay, I don't speak Malay, I am not Muslim. If a fairer Malay is naked beside me (naked as well), nobody can be sure if I were malay or not, vice versa.

2. ****************
There is no such thing as a malaysian chinese look. So you are saying that all malaysian chinese are short and dark ? Although I am short but I am very fair, similar to the north chinese. The younger generation are all very tall, similar to north chinese too. My nephews/nieces are all tall, > 175 cm
*******************

I look like southern chinese in short. I don't look like indian or european at all. The issue of pure Chinese is completely silly. If you insist, then first you have to define the meaning of purest. Who should be the "pure" chinese? Hakka are genetically closer to southern chinese rather than northern chinese (www.hoklo.com). Hakka certainly look more like southern chinese than northern chinese, my mum is short, my boss is short. Both are Hakka, and northern and inland chinese are slightly taller than southern chinese.

3. **************
There are pure chinese. Not all northerners are pure because some of them intermarried with northern people like mongol, manchu, korea. But they look similar anyway. Not all southerners are impure because not all of them intermarried with the bai yue people. Maybe I am not one of them, because I am very fair.
********************

Genetic certainly cannot be a valid claim of the origin of a language, though it can provide traces of hints. If you can easily spot the Arab gene in Malay, then you should be able to spot the Chinese, indigenous and other genes in Malay. SO what are left for the Malay?

4. **************

If you know how languages evolve through migration then you will know that genetics are related.

**************

About Vietnamese. I am not a linguist. But I read all the debates with great interest (legends, stories, histories, assumptions) and great confusions (linguist terms). But it is certain that Vietnamese has a lot of loan words from Chinese (70%).

So, in my opinion, the present Vietnamese is certainly under the group of Sino-Tibetan because the language has had so much influence of sinitic languages. Maybe the proto vietnamese might belong to the Mon-Khmer, the current Vietnamese certainly not.

I agree that the tone feature in Vietnamese casts a strong hint about the origin of Vietnamese. Originally I also agree that word sequence is a good guess of language origin. But as pointed out by AlexNg, French n English have different word sequence but they are all indo-european language.

************
Different word order alone does not mean it belongs to different family.
In fact, cantonese has some word order different from mandarin, eg.
male chicken is "kai kung" and not "kung kai". The same order as vietnamese, so I believe it is an influence from the bai yue people.
**********