Vietnamese is sino-tibetan Part 2

[qrasy]

Not nessecarily. It is common, in language change, for a number system to shift to a different one. For example, in "Proto-Ainu", a duodecimal (base 20) system was used. In modern Sakhalin Ainu, a duodecimal system is still used, but in Hokkaido Ainu a decimal system (base 10) is now used.

In Old Divehi (Divehi is the national language of the Maldives), there was a duodecimal counting system (if I recall correctly), but in modern Divehi this has shifted, again, to a decimal system.
I think the 20 is going to be abandoned, since the languages around are mostly decimal.
Do you have the Khmer word of 20?

In many languages, the change is instead from a duodecimal to a vigesimal (base 5) system. This usually includes the switching from distinct words for 6-10 to words that are "5 plus 1", "5 plus 2", or "10 minus 4", "10 minus 3", etc.
I didn't know these, but I did know that there are "10min2", "5+1to4"

As I noted above, such reduction is common. Khmer uses a vigesimal system, but all related languages use a decimal system, even though all number systems are obviously interrelated and bear little resemblance to neighbouring language families'.

If you see the Khmer writing, in the unicode database there are the proper names of the number (moy, bar, pram-buon, etc.) and it is very old, stating that this reduction might not happen recently.

*cough*. 1. The proper English terms are "Amis" (not amwi), "Puyuma" (not pou ma), and "Rukai" (not ruc). 2. I suspect the list of Puyuma numbers is actually the result of a misunderstanding. They seem not even a loan but a direct recitation of Chinese. 3. Some Mundari languages used to be in direct contact with Chinese, and have lots of Chinese loans, so this cannot be ruled out as a source for the possible loans.

***ukh ukh ukh*** You are referring to Taiwanese aborigins? I say Southeast Asian dwellers. The names may be similar, but they refer to different ethnic. Like "Yao" this word is also an ethnic group of Africa.
Munda in direct contact with Chinese? Can you give examples?

By "Sino-Vietnamese", I mean the modern language which has the Southern Chinese superstratum and the strong Vietnamese substratum, as opposed to the pure language "Vietnamese".
The core is not South Chinese, but rather Middle Chinese. Are you sure? What is the "Viet substatum"? Is morphology one part of substratum?

There is indeed a "Sino-Japanese" language, and it is used more than the "Japanese" language in Japan. This means it uses many, many Chinese loanwords that even in daily conversation they come up a lot. However, some people occasionally try a sort of linguistic excersise or language play which they call "Speaking in Yamatokotoba" ("Yamato" is a native rather than Chinese way of referring to Japan; "kotoba" is the native word for language rather than Chinese way "go" [as a suffix] or "gengo"), where they replace all Chinese loanwords with more Japanese ways of saying. Sometimes there is a simple alternative, but other times what is one Chinese loanword takes up a whole clause or a few words in Yamatokotoba.

The Japanese do not use more Sino-Japanese than native vocabs. Kanji does not mean Chinese readings. There are Kun readings that are not Chinese anyway.

Numerals are some of the most simple words and they are more unlikely than most words to be replaced entirely with words from other languages. The only cases I have seen so far of a direct loan of all numbers is in Sino-Xenic languages, but they also kept the native
system and have two ways of saying numbers.
Of course it is hard, but it's still possible. The possibility is not 0%

Some linguists believe Thai is a Sino-Xenic language that lost its native numeral system, but I don't think that's very sound of an opinion because other Tai-Kadai languages share the same resemblances to Sino-Tibetan.
Can't some languages be replaced at the same time? Or they are replaced at their proto-Age?

Do you know any Mon-Khmer languages? All of them are tonal, monosyllabic, and all of them have classifiers. The simple fact is, Vietnamese is not Sino-Tibetan and to insist that it is, is a rediculous excercise in tomfoolery.
***ukh ukh hahaha*** Are you kidding? Mon-Khmer are mostly atonal. Only a few are tonal (if you believe Viet is one). Even Tibeto-Burman is not perfect tonal language group. Classifier is a very common thing in Austro/Sino languages. You may not come into a conclusion by this.

I don't know for sure, but I speculate the same sort of game exists in Korean
You need not to speculate, since it really exists. Did you read the previous posts?

[Mark Andrew Williamson]

I think the 20 is going to be abandoned, since the languages around are mostly decimal.

Most "major" languages are, but then again most major languages come from a small number of different language families - Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Uralic, Altaic, Austro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan. That isn't very diverse.

If you see the Khmer writing, in the unicode database there are the proper names of the number (moy, bar, pram-buon, etc.) and it is very old, stating that this reduction might not happen recently.

"Old Khmer" does not date back to 100000 years BC... it dates back to perhaps 700s AD, while divergence of Mon-Khmer languages is placed at 5000 BC... that's a lot of time it has for the number system to collapse to a vigesimal system.

The core is not South Chinese, but rather Middle Chinese. Are you sure? What is the "Viet substatum"? Is morphology one part of substratum?

So, Vietnam directly borders Shanghai? Or do you mean Middle Chinese, as the time period? Still, even if you mean the time period, it is Southern rather than Northern - it is attested that even in Middle Chinese times, there existed Northern speeches.

"substratum" and "superstratum" refer to vocabulary only. Morphology is entirely separate from all lexical strata. In this case however the morphology is clearly Mon-Khmer.

The Japanese do not use more Sino-Japanese than native vocabs. Kanji does not mean Chinese readings. There are Kun readings that are not Chinese anyway.

Yes, they do. Random sentence from Yahoo! Japan: デジタル家電の新製品、お買い得商品が満載！ ("New digital appliances, loads of bargains!"). All kanjis in there with exception of 買 use a Chinese reading. My attempt at Yamatokotoba of this is 指使い的家稲妻物の新しく売り物、お買いやすく商い物が数々あります！ (literally, "New selling-things of finger-using home lightningbolt-thing, we have many easy-to-buy trading-things" - it sounds horrible in English but it makes more sense in Japanese), I had to resort to one Chinese word 的 as a suffix to turn 指使い (finger-usage) into an adjective (finger-using -> digital).

Of course it is hard, but it's still possible. The possibility is not 0%

True. But remember that in the Swadesh list, numbers rank among the most static of all words, especially "one" and "two" iirc ("five" as well I think?), and are very very very unlikely to be replaced by loanwords.

Can't some languages be replaced at the same time? Or they are replaced at their proto-Age?

It could be possible, but the nature of the resemblances (ie, phonetical correspondences between Tai-Kadai languages that match the rest of the language too, not just numbers) and the geographical distribution (some of these languages had no contact with Sino-Tibetan speakers) make it unlikely - that they weren't replaced at all, but in fact are related.

***ukh ukh hahaha*** Are you kidding? Mon-Khmer are mostly atonal. Only a few are tonal (if you believe Viet is one). Even Tibeto-Burman is not perfect tonal language group. Classifier is a very common thing in Austro/Sino languages. You may not come into a conclusion by this.

Khmer has tones, as does Mon... Not as strong as Vietnamese, but there is also a happening in Sinitic languages which shows that tone degradation is relatively common : Wu ends up with 8 (arguably 10) tones, Dungan ends up with 3, and Canadian Youth Cantonese ends up with 0. (I don't know if there is a detailed explanation of CYC on the internet, so I will provide it: The children and grandchildren of Cantonese-speaking immigrants to Canada, especially in Ontario and B.C., have a high level of native language retention - most speak Cantonese well as their first language and are bilingual in English or French. However, there is an anomaly which is that when they learned the language from their parents, they did not pick up on the tone, and in playgroups and other minglings of Chinese-Canadian kids, this atonality was reinforced by their peers. In most cases, it can be figured out by context, but if it is ambiguous they will use a disyllabic word instead of a monosyllabic one, or a trisyllabic word instead of a disyllabic one. The grandparents complain that it is very difficult to understand, but the kids have no problem talking to each other in it)

You need not to speculate, since it really exists. Did you read the previous posts?

The game of using only native Korean words where one would normally use Chinese and other foreign words? Or the huge number of loanwords from Chinese? I know many loanwords exist in Korean from Chinese, but I found nothing in this thread about such a game as I explained for Japanese.

[qrasy]

Most "major" languages are, but then again most major languages come from a small number of different language families - Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Uralic, Altaic, Austro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan. That isn't very diverse.

"Old Khmer" does not date back to 100000 years BC... it dates back to perhaps 700s AD, while divergence of Mon-Khmer languages is placed at 5000 BC... that's a lot of time it has for the number system to collapse to a vigesimal system.
But with only Indo-European, Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan (need not to add the remaining), you can even make 2000+ languages (and the population using them is very large, it may be larger than 40% of total human population). It "isn't very diverse" compared with all several-thousand languages, but it's very diverse, even Sundanese and Indonesian of Austronesian are appreciably different.
About the age, may be you're true, but in 5000 BC I think that even the proto-Austroasiatic had not existed (and the name "Khmer" in that age was very dubious). In that time may be we can still recognize "old-time-families" that now has become "Superfamilies".

So, Vietnam directly borders Shanghai? Or do you mean Middle Chinese, as the time period? Still, even if you mean the time period, it is Southern rather than Northern - it is attested that even in Middle Chinese times, there existed Northern speeches.

"substratum" and "superstratum" refer to vocabulary only. Morphology is entirely separate from all lexical strata. In this case however the morphology is clearly Mon-Khmer.
Oh, I meant Middle Chinese times. Northern speeches are speeches modified by Altaic languages. Yet, it comes out to be the standard language now. The base system of Middle Chinese is also used in Korean and Japanese. You can see that Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese (also Sino-Japanese) are more similar to each other if compared with Mandarin. Also, in that age it's the "Middle/Central" speech. If you consider "now", it's true that this kind of language is "Southern Chinese".
If the stratum does not contain Morphology, then it means that Sino-Viet is 100% Chinese in stratum. Morphology of Viet does not really match either Mon-Khmer or Cantonese. The "v", "f" reading are not found in non-Viet-Muong Mon-Khmer (of course in southern Viet "v" is not found"), and "no p" this also doesn't match either. "No p" matches Arabian but there should be no correspondence with it. The voiced initials may match Wu languages, but I don't really know about them. If you want to compare majority of Mon-Khmer~Viet~Chinese, you can have more Chinese morphology than Mon-Khmer morphology. But that doesn't really matter. Some Tibeto-Burman languages' morphologies are as complex as Khmer.

Yes, they do. Random sentence from Yahoo! Japan: デジタル家電の新製品、お買い得商品が満載! ("New digital appliances, loads of bargains!"). All kanjis in there with exception of 買 use a Chinese reading. My attempt at Yamatokotoba of this is 指使い的家稲妻物の新しく売り物、お買いやすく商い物が数々あります! (literally, "New selling-things of finger-using home lightningbolt-thing, we have many easy-to-buy trading-things" - it sounds horrible in English but it makes more sense in Japanese), I had to resort to one Chinese word 的 as a suffix to turn 指使い (finger-usage) into an adjective (finger-using -> digital).
You may know that most(I think) new (modern) things in Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese uses Chinese readings. Examples: điện thoại "telephone", thanh kiệt "clean". Lots of these words can be found at random Vietnamese speech. Go to www.vny2k.net and see lots of Chinese words. I know that Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese use less Chinese in daily speech.
I don't really know Japanese verb grammatization, but 指使い can surely by changed into adjactive without using "的". Usually the "-teki" is used after a loaned Chinese word, making it "loaned with grammatization", but after that the compounding uses non-Chinese formula. I've never seen "Kanji"+"Kana tail"+"Kanji again" in single, suffixed VERB.
The "grammatized-loans" also exist in Vietnamese, where they have to use Chinese grammar in compounding some words.
One thing that many does not realize (of course, not including you): Kanji can be read very differently from Chinese readings. Non-infix languages can be written with Kanji+special script, despite the readings would be 99.9999999% different ("Cut" and "Burn" are also read similar to Chinese.)

True. But remember that in the Swadesh list, numbers rank among the most static of all words, especially "one" and "two" iirc ("five" as well I think?), and are very very very unlikely to be replaced by loanwords.

It could be possible, but the nature of the resemblances (ie, phonetical correspondences between Tai-Kadai languages that match the rest of the language too, not just numbers) and the geographical distribution (some of these languages had no contact with Sino-Tibetan speakers) make it unlikely - that they weren't replaced at all, but in fact are related.
There were some that use very different terms from the others, and the terms are not very similar to Sino-Tibetan or other Tai languages.
Thai "Song" is related with "Shuang1". But "Neung" doesn't seem related with Sino-Tibetan.

Khmer has tones, as does Mon... Not as strong as Vietnamese, but there is also a happening in Sinitic languages which shows that tone degradation is relatively common : Wu ends up with 8 (arguably 10) tones, Dungan ends up with 3, and Canadian Youth Cantonese ends up with 0. (I don't know if there is a detailed explanation of CYC on the internet, so I will provide it: The children and grandchildren of Cantonese-speaking immigrants to Canada, especially in Ontario and B.C., have a high level of native language retention - most speak Cantonese well as their first language and are bilingual in English or French. However, there is an anomaly which is that when they learned the language from their parents, they did not pick up on the tone, and in playgroups and other minglings of Chinese-Canadian kids, this atonality was reinforced by their peers. In most cases, it can be figured out by context, but if it is ambiguous they will use a disyllabic word instead of a monosyllabic one, or a trisyllabic word instead of a disyllabic one. The grandparents complain that it is very difficult to understand, but the kids have no problem talking to each other in it)
Those are called 'registers' rather than tones. I never heard Mon or Khmer language, but I speculate that they make some different pitches but these are unlikely to be called tones. (Refer to my posts at the transition of Part 1 and Part 2 of this topic)
'Deregistration' occurs in some Mon-Khmer languages.
Well, I thought that detonalisation would be a very hard thing to do, but again there was some probability. But the detonalisation of Modern Chinese languages would result in lots of homonyms.

The game of using only native Korean words where one would normally use Chinese and other foreign words? Or the huge number of loanwords from Chinese? I know many loanwords exist in Korean from Chinese, but I found nothing in this thread about such a game as I explained for Japanese.
Of course I mean a huge number of loanwords. But this does not mean that Korean do not use them in daily speech. But nowadays they ususally don't write the loanwords in Kanji.

[alexNg]

I was in canada for several years. Their cantonese is still tonal although in a slightly different tones than the hongkongers but that is normal considering when people migrate they will develop slightly different dialects.

In malaysia, the cantonese here is also slightly different in tones than hong kong.

The tones are necessary to distinguish the words of meaning. Sometimes you cannot judge based on the context alone. For example, yan yuin and yan yuin has 2 different meanings but can be used in the same context.


As for the claim that mon-khmer languages are tonal, please go to
http://www.krysstal.com/langfams_austroasia.html, if I am not mistaken, i read somewhere that khmer language originates from india and we know that most languages in india are not tonal . As for the claim that vietnamese developed tones under chinese influence, that is debatable, because it is easier to lose tones than to gain 8 tones !

[Dylan Sung]

As for the claim that vietnamese developed tones under chinese influence, that is debatable, because it is easier to lose tones than to gain 8 tones !

The issue of whether tones developed because of Chinese may be hard to answer, however dismissing that tones can develop in an otherwise non-tonal language is an idea worthy of dismissal in itself. Actually, the Ru tone is an artifice of Chinese philology. They single out syllables with clipped endings but in all Chinese dialects which have Ru tones, they can be distributed amongst the other tones according to their tone contour. For example, Cantonese credited with 9 tones only has six tonemes. The loss of tonal distinction is does not arise when Cantonese is written with only six distinguishing tone markers.

The Ru tone readings of characters that are "lost" in Mandarin are distributed amongst the four tones, principly the two Ping tones, the Qu and Shang.

As we see with Sino-Viet, the associated Ru tones are in fact merged in to the tones associated with the Qu upper and lower tones. So it has six tonemes, rather than the artificial eight as you continually suggest.

Dyl.

[AlexNg]

It depends on how you look at the number of tones in cantonese (how you classify), it can be around 6 to 9. The same goes for vietnamese. I am not debating on the exact number of tones in vietnamese (6 or but rather the gaining of tones from a non-tonal language to (6 or is definitely an anomaly.

Older chinese languages like cantonese, hoklo will try to retain the number of tones from middle chinese and they are closer to the languages spoken during the middle chinese period.

'Modern' languages such as mandarin tries to simplify the language making it easier to learn by losing the number of tones. Of course, it had some influence from non-tonal altaic languages speakers (mongolian, manchurian dynasty) who found the number of tones overwhelming. So the theory is that it is easier to go from tonal to non-tonal. Ask any non-chinese speakers and they will tell you the tones are the most difficult to master.

Don't you find it strange that the northern vietnamese dialect has 6 tones whereby the southern vietnamese dialect has lost one tone ? We all know that northern vietnam is the original territory. Southern vietnam was only conquered from the "khmer or champa" speakers and with influence from the non-tonal languages just as mandarin was influenced from the altaic languages.

When somebody here argued that one should ONLY look at the numbering system to determine the origins of the language rather than the whole characteristics of the language (that is how it sounds like in general).
I had to ask how does one know which of the 2 numeral system in vietnamese is the original and which is borrowed, instead I got this rather non-professional argument of "because it is". A rather unconvincing argument of someone who wants his beliefs shoved down other people's throats ?

Then there is the rather debatable classification of tai languages into another family grouping (by some linguist) which has a numeral system which sounds so similar to chinese except for 0,1,2,5 if one only looks at the numeral system to determine the origins. The fact that the "1" of sound "neung" is borrowed can also be debatable, seeing as "11" of sound "sip it" is similar to chinese languages such as hakka or hoklo.
same goes for "21" which sounds like "yi sip it" instead of using "song sip neung". The theory that numerals cannot be borrowed is debatable seeing these anomalies in the tai language.

Would it be foolhardy to look at indian languages to determine the origin of 0,1,2 in the tai language ?

[Guest]

Those are called 'registers' rather than tones. I never heard Mon or Khmer language, but I speculate that they make some different pitches but these are unlikely to be called tones. (Refer to my posts at the transition of Part 1 and Part 2 of this topic)
.

Some people here are confused as to the precise definition of tones rather than registers. For example, in english, if you ask a question 'where do you stay?' with a raised tone at the end and without a raised tone, it is still understood. "stay" and "stay?" are not different meanings of the same word !

Whereas in cantonese(or other tonal languages), if you ask "nei sik mei" it can mean "have you eaten?" or have you understood/learned" ?
This 2 "sik" here have different meanings and have their own chinese character. That is what we call tonal and not those 'pseudo-tonal' that people are arguing here.

The definition of monosyllabic means that if a word is broken apart it still has its individual meaning. For example, train = "fo che" meaning fire train. "fo che" is not considered polysyllabic ! Whereas in indo-european languages, you cannot break up most words to have individual meaning.
"individual" breaking up into "in" "di" "vi" "dual" has no related meaning and only "in" and "dual" has meaning in itself.

Do you have such things in khmer languages ?

[qrasy]

I don't really know Japanese verb grammatization, but 指使い can surely by changed into adjactive without using "的". Usually the "-teki" is used after a loaned Chinese word, making it "loaned with grammatization", but after that the compounding uses non-Chinese formula. I've never seen "Kanji"+"Kana tail"+"Kanji again" in single, suffixed VERB.
The "grammatized-loans" also exist in Vietnamese, where they have to use Chinese grammar in compounding some words.
One thing that many does not realize (of course, not including you): Kanji can be read very differently from Chinese readings. Non-infix languages can be written with Kanji+special script, despite the readings would be 99.9999999% different ("Cut" and "Burn" are also read similar to Chinese.) []
Usually when we have adjective in Japanese, there is a な ending. But I found in some strange adjectives it uses の. The head is seemingly noun.
Once, I thought that の had the same function as 的 or 之. I'm not quite sure now, but my attempt is 指使いの家稲妻物の新しく売り物、お買いやすく商い物が数々あります!
In the Japanese version of google you can see usage of Western loans more than original Japanese of Chinese loans.
Sorry, I typed to many 9's. I think there are not more than one billion of words.

I was in canada for several years. Their cantonese is still tonal although in a slightly different tones than the hongkongers but that is normal considering when people migrate they will develop slightly different dialects.
May be the Canadian Youth Cantonese only exist in one city (if the reduction existed more than in 1 city, it would be very strange), and you stayed in another city so you didn't hear them.

The issue of whether tones developed because of Chinese may be hard to answer, however dismissing that tones can develop in an otherwise non-tonal language is an idea worthy of dismissal in itself. Actually, the Ru tone is an artifice of Chinese philology. They single out syllables with clipped endings but in all Chinese dialects which have Ru tones, they can be distributed amongst the other tones according to their tone contour. For example, Cantonese credited with 9 tones only has six tonemes. The loss of tonal distinction is does not arise when Cantonese is written with only six distinguishing tone markers.

The Ru tone readings of characters that are "lost" in Mandarin are distributed amongst the four tones, principly the two Ping tones, the Qu and Shang.

As we see with Sino-Viet, the associated Ru tones are in fact merged in to the tones associated with the Qu upper and lower tones. So it has six tonemes, rather than the artificial eight as you continually suggest.
This kind of "Ru"-register tones seemed to have merged in the early age of tonogenesis, confusing "Shang" register tones.
The Chinese tone changed, but strangely the "Shang" and "Qu" seems to reverse in Middle Chinese.
I'm not sure about what happened. But it seems that in new Sino-Vietnamese: Yang-Qu->Yang-Ru, Yin-Ru-> Yin-Qu (middle Chinese tone base)
As for whether the Ru tones really exists in Modern Viet, I'm quite sure. The rising tone seemed to change when it comes with stops. If I'm not wrong, the tone becomes like /51/ and is glottalized.

Then there is the rather debatable classification of tai languages into another family grouping (by some linguist) which has a numeral system which sounds so similar to chinese except for 0,1,2,5 if one only looks at the numeral system to determine the origins. The fact that the "1" of sound "neung" is borrowed can also be debatable, seeing as "11" of sound "sip it" is similar to chinese languages such as hakka or hoklo.
same goes for "21" which sounds like "yi sip it" instead of using "song sip neung". The theory that numerals cannot be borrowed is debatable seeing these anomalies in the tai language.
In fact only '0' and '1' sounded unlike Chinese. 2 is likely to be "song" 雙. 5 is "Haa", a strange reduction of "Ng-". 0 is not basic number, in many languages it exists as loan. In this case, Tai likely loans from Khmer.
"Neung" this word for '1' is strange, it's dissimilar to 單 or anything I know to have meaning related to '1', but in Zhuang language "deu" seemingly have to do with Hoklo.

It depends on how you look at the number of tones in cantonese (how you classify), it can be around 6 to 9. The same goes for vietnamese. I am not debating on the exact number of tones in vietnamese (6 or Cool but rather the gaining of tones from a non-tonal language to (6 or Cool is definitely an anomaly.
Gaining of tones like Chinese, i.e. the "Chinese tonogenesis", only appeared around China in the age around Han. The endings etc. were lost and become pitch contours. I don't know which language group started it, but their tone product is very similar to each other, it has 8 tones (of course, including 1 registers of "Ru"). Its very unlike African tonogenesis, which makes only 2 tones and these very very few tones may not hear like other group of tonal languages. Nowadays the tone reduce and reduce, but there are found 9~15-tonal languages, and I don't know how the languages get >8 tones.

Don't you find it strange that the northern vietnamese dialect has 6 tones whereby the southern vietnamese dialect has lost one tone ? We all know that northern vietnam is the original territory. Southern vietnam was only conquered from the "khmer or champa" speakers and with influence from the non-tonal languages just as mandarin was influenced from the altaic languages.
It is not strange. Tonal reduction is common everywhere. In Burmese you have 3 tones. Do you know that Hakka and Hoklo have less than 8 tones, despite the languages around them are tonal? (The languages around them even have 8-9(?) tones)

Some people here are confused as to the precise definition of tones rather than registers. For example, in english, if you ask a question 'where do you stay?' with a raised tone at the end and without a raised tone, it is still understood. "stay" and "stay?" are not different meanings of the same word ![]
"Stay" and "Stay?" will have the same meanings if you add "5W1H" (What WHen Where Who How). But if it is "free", "Stay" means to order someone to stay, and "Stay?" means that the speaker are confused why the other person want to stay.
It seems that I have to make clear my definition of tones.
I'm not comparing tones with registers, but with normal kind of pitch. In tonal syllable, it have to go definite change of pitch relative to itself, not to the sentence. or word. If you want to say tonal languages, all syllables are tonal.

The definition of monosyllabic means that if a word is broken apart it still has its individual meaning. For example, train = "fo che" meaning fire train. "fo che" is not considered polysyllabic ! Whereas in indo-european languages, you cannot break up most words to have individual meaning.
"individual" breaking up into "in" "di" "vi" "dual" has no related meaning and only "in" and "dual" has meaning in itself.
I don't know what it should be called, but I guess I'll call it "Polymonosyllabic" or "Compound monosyllabic", i.e. it consists of some monosyllabic component. Its difference with an ordinary polysyllabic word is clear, it can be broken apart to its syllables and still have meaning. In Khmer lanugaes there are many monosyllabic words, but there are found an appreciable number of polysyllabic words, although usually it's only 2. It seems like basic-English, which has mostly monosyllabic words.

[Guest]

Grasy,

Yes, you are right, it is highly likely that the tai numeral 2 "song" is another version of "siong" (cantonese) as they sound very similar.

But "Ha" for numeral 5 is too different from "ng" (cantonese), "goh" (hokkien) or "wu" (mandarin) in sino languages and cannot be sinitic in origin.

Doesn't this prove that numerals only cannot determine the linguistic origin and can be borrowed ? Why is it that 0, 1, 5 are non-sinitic and the rest are sinitic ? Anybody can explain in a rational manner this anomaly ?

[qrasy]

Actually, there are some Tibeto-Burman languages that call '5' 'Nga', 'Hnga' or even 'Ha' itself. In the Kam-Sui branch of Tai-Kadai, it is around 'Ngo'.

'0' is not a basic number, even in Indonesian we use 'nol' that seems related to 'null' or any other Indo-European languages. Or we use 'kosong' but actually that means 'empty'.
Thai and Lao seem to take '0' from Khmer, and Viet from Chinese (if I'm not wrong).

In some languages of Tibeto-Burman there are some numbers that are of unclear origin at once. But they could be false negatives.

But if you look at some Indo-European terms in some Tibeto-Burman languages, it's indisputable that numbers can be loaned.

Sometimes I feel that numbers in different language families are 'coupled', i.e. they seem to be cognates.