Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

[AlexNg]

The characteristics of the sino-tibetan group not sinic branch are as follows:

1. Tonal

That means the same sound can have different meanings by speaking in different frequency.

This does not include those languages (english, french) where you can OPTIONALLY raise the tone as a question. Because that applies to the whole sentence and not the word itself.

2. Monosyllabic

That means each sound by itself has its own meaning usually represented by an ideogram, and that the combination of 2 different ideogram modifies the meaning slightly.

This does not include those languages who has a few so-called monosyllabic words such as the english "fit" because most english words are still polysyllabic.

3. No verb changes

Verbs are not modified according to the time (present, past, future tense) or the person doing the action,
The sense of time is always expressed in terms of "in the future, before, after, in the past".

4. No noun changes

The plural form of noun is the same as the singular form. There is also no noun gender too as in latin languages.

The noun does not change by adding an "s" to the end or repeating the noun such as "bird bird".

5. All nouns have a grouping.

For example, a "piece" of paper, a "bunch" of people.

This would also exclude those languages in which the grouping is missing for a lot of nouns such as english (a computer etc)


Do Thai and vietnamese fall under this family language then ?

Can anybody who is an expert on these 2 languages contribute ?

I have always wondered why thai is in a different language family, I know it is tonal but is it monosyllabic ?

[QRASY]

The topic has grown very large. It has more than 100 replies. This is the 101st reply.

There are some links that say that Thai is Sino-Tibetan and not separate family.

www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0848333.html
www.lib.umt.edu/guide/lang/sinizhuh.htm
www.krysstal.com/langfams_sinotibe.html
www.gurunet.com/ t1-method-4-dsid-2040-dekey-SinoTibe-prodid-basic-curtab-2040_1
www.flw.com/languages/thai.htm
lakrabo.tripod.com/thai.htm
reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/T/Thailang.html

[AlexNg]

Grasy,

If you look at

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0861106.html

it says that vietnamese belong to the tai subfamily of sino-tibetan language family.

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Some considered tai as separate language family just like vietnamese:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai-Kadai_languages

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The only thing to resolve all these ambiguities is to list down the characteristics of the language family like what I did.

Do thai and vietnamese sound alike or do cantonese and vietnamese sound more like each other ?

[qrasy]

About these Characteristics
>>1. Tonal
It was greatly possible that proto-Sino-Tibetan was also atonal, or even as late as proto-Chinese. Notice that outside Asia there are also tonal language, and even in Austronesian there tonal variants of Cham.
>>2. Monosyllabic
The words are MOSTLY monosyllabic not all. Perhaps the proto-Sino-Tibetan was perfectly monoyllabic, but this may not hold any longer.
example: Dimasa: Sini "Seven"
Also, tonal languages tends to be monosyllabic, they are many reductions in Phan Rang Cham compared to atonal Chams
>>3. No verb changes, 4. No noun changes
But there could be some verb<->noun change.
example: Mandarin: Broom "Sao4" <-> Sweep "Sao3"
>>5. All nouns have a grouping.
Since this is also shared by Indonesian, this does not contribute anything to our discussion since this is shared by all Southeast Asians.

>>Do Thai and vietnamese fall under this family language then ?
>>Can anybody who is an expert on these 2 languages contribute ?
>>I have always wondered why thai is in a different language family, I know it is tonal but is it monosyllabic ?
I know that Thai and Miao-Yao perfectly matches the description, and Phan Rang Cham fails on the 4th description. Unfortunately I am not an expert. Those "experts" will add something more at the descriptions like "adjective changes" or "noun phrase order" but if you add these descriptions you will make too small a group, and this would be "Branch" instead of "Family".

>>Do thai and vietnamese sound alike or do cantonese and vietnamese sound more like each other ?
Thai, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Teochew hears the "same" to one who don't understand.
If you hear Japanese, Indian, Arabian, Mongolian, you could also say that they are the "same".
This is due to pitch & pace.
In FAST speech, the atonal languages I listed lowers the average pitch in every fragment, so every fragment hears "555444333222111". Only between each fragments and at the end of a sentence there are a considerable pitch change. (Maybe in slow speech there also exists)
The tonal languages I listed shares 1 same feature, the pitch rises and falls very often, since they have >=5 tones.

[MrFez]

First of all it Cantonese, Hokkien, and Mandarin are all languages not dialects. They are all mutually unintelligible. They all came from one language a long time ago, but now they split off and are mutually unintelligible. American and British English are dialects, but Cantonese and Mandarin are as different as Spanish and French.

Also, the similarities between Vietnamese and Cantonese are due to the fact that when Vietnam was ruled by China, the mainstream Chinese language was much closer to Cantonese than Mandarin. Therefore all borrowed words maintained their Middle Chinese characteristics.

As for the language family issue, whether it is Sino-Tibetan or not is still up for debate but has anyone considered the possibility that Khmers borrowed some basic words from the Vietnamese instead of vice versa? Also noun-adjective order is not the defining thing in ordering languages. Just look at English and Spanish; they're both Indo-European. There is also a more "Chinese" way to count in Vietnamese (which has fell into disuse).

[qrasy]

MrFez,

I agree with you that Mandarin, Cantonese etc... Are different languages, most splits from Middle Chinese.
If the Hakkas had not merged shang ands qu, their language would be more similar to Middle Chinese than are Cantonese.
There are some Old Chinese words found in Vietnamese and there are not many people that realise them.
They are more similar to native Viet than the Middle Chinese loans (the Sino-Vietnamese) so they are often called Vietnamized Chinese.
These Vietnamized Chinese are also loanwords.

However, we must look into Tibetan/Burmese-like words in Vietnamese. They are even more "unrealised". But I don't think these are loanwords.

[Viet_in_Madison_Wisconsi]

"And do you watch Hong Kong drama? The Hong Kong actresses are all so fair. Are they pure south Chinese?"

--don't forget that Asian women, particularly Hong Kong, and other S.E. Asian countries are using skin lightening chemicals. This is terrible in my opinion. In America, Black women use it. And that freak Michael Jackson uses it to the point where he is now whiter than WHITE! It is never openly discussed but the social pressures for black women to lighten their skin is pretty significant. Black-owned companies selling this stuff are making a killing at it. The pressures are of course much greater if a black woman wants to get into the entertainment industry. Just look at rap videos. Hong Kong actresses are probably under similar pressures. To what extent Asian women are using skin lightening chemicals is, I don't know, but CNN did a story on it a few months ago. Although they treated it in a genteel way adding that while Asian women were lightening their skins to get that milky white look, white women were tanning to get that bronzed look.

[AlexNg]

Most pure chinese either south or north doesn't need skin whitening lotion !

They just stay out of the sun and will maintain their natural white skin, we are talking about the skin when they were born....

[.]

Hahahahah! I've never heard of people not being born without skin!

This thread ought to cease, and a new thread started. Takes too long to download.

[Viet_in_Madison_Wisconsi]

Note: AlexNg has moved this thread to: "Vietnamese is sino-tibetan Part 2"

and the URL is:

viewtopic.php?p=3503#3503

It's part of the "Cantonese language forum" and its URL is:

http://www.chinalanguage.com/forums/list.php?f=1

Accordingly, all new posts should go to the new thread; the original should be read of course...

And yes Alex, you're welcome... :- )