I know that there are many linguist experts in here so if you are kind enough please help me verify to whether Vietnamese is a Sino-Tibetan language or not. This is the site that I came across to:
http://vny2k.com/vny2k/SiniticVietnamese.htm
About Sino-Tibetan languages
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Dylan Sung
Re: About Sino-Tibetan languages
Hung Dao Dai Vuong ,
No it isn't. Vietnamese has a large vocabulary which derives from Chinese. This is due to the long influence of China over the area of Annam. The Vietnamese once only occupied the northern part of what is now Vietnam. Historically, Chinese influence began during Han times with Chinese beaurocracy, philosophy and other influences. They overthrew Chinese control not long after the fall of the Tang Dynasty and they stayed independent since.
I think it was Maspero or Haudricourt who first realised that you had to remove all the Chinese vocabulary to see what is left and then try and figure out the linguistic relationship between it and other languages. It is not related to Chinese but part of the Mon-Khmer group of languages.
Have a look at
http://www.anu.edu.au/~u9907217/languag ... uages.html
The tones in Vietnamese is very interesting in its development. Chinese tones have four classes of tone, Ping (I), Shang (II), Qu (III) and Ru (IV), and these are split into upper (Ying, A) and lower (Yang, B) registers. Mandarin has lost the Ru tone altogether, whilst many southern Chinese dialects maintain it. Vietnamese tones have the Ying and Yang splitting, with Ru tones merged with other tones.
http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/tones/viet.htm
Dyl.
No it isn't. Vietnamese has a large vocabulary which derives from Chinese. This is due to the long influence of China over the area of Annam. The Vietnamese once only occupied the northern part of what is now Vietnam. Historically, Chinese influence began during Han times with Chinese beaurocracy, philosophy and other influences. They overthrew Chinese control not long after the fall of the Tang Dynasty and they stayed independent since.
I think it was Maspero or Haudricourt who first realised that you had to remove all the Chinese vocabulary to see what is left and then try and figure out the linguistic relationship between it and other languages. It is not related to Chinese but part of the Mon-Khmer group of languages.
Have a look at
http://www.anu.edu.au/~u9907217/languag ... uages.html
The tones in Vietnamese is very interesting in its development. Chinese tones have four classes of tone, Ping (I), Shang (II), Qu (III) and Ru (IV), and these are split into upper (Ying, A) and lower (Yang, B) registers. Mandarin has lost the Ru tone altogether, whilst many southern Chinese dialects maintain it. Vietnamese tones have the Ying and Yang splitting, with Ru tones merged with other tones.
http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/tones/viet.htm
Dyl.
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Hung Dao Dai Vuong
Re: About Sino-Tibetan languages
Dyl, thanks for replying. I just wonder why it is that when there is some Vietnamese vocabs that have some similarities with the Chinese vocabs, people always say that Vietnamese loan those from the Chinese; is there any evidence to prove this?
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quangtrunghoangde
Re: About Sino-Tibetan languages
Some Teochew vocabs sound like Vietnamese such as :to climb, to scold, goose, to hold, to beg, cow, hungry, to draw, to touch, mountain, river, eye, to tire of, to saftekeep, I,me. Here is the site:
http://teochiu.tripod.com/language.htm
http://teochiu.tripod.com/language.htm
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quangtrunghoangde
Re: About Sino-Tibetan languages
"......I think it was Maspero or Haudricourt who first realised that you had to remove all the Chinese vocabulary to see what is left....."
Dyl, do you mean "what is left" are the basic daily physical nouns, basic verbs and basic adjectives of the Vietnamese language???????
Dyl, do you mean "what is left" are the basic daily physical nouns, basic verbs and basic adjectives of the Vietnamese language???????
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xxxx
Re: About Sino-Tibetan languages
i think if u just take the simple items ... (yes daily physical nouns, basic adjectives, verbs.... even the syntax such as putting the adjective behind the noun) and leave out the more abstract and cultural terms, Vietnamese will be quite different from Chinese, even Hokkien , Cantonese or Teochew ...
1 thing that struck me though .... the Teochew language spoken by Vietnamese Teochews sounds so much like Vietnamese itself... (the intonations are so similar!) makes me wonder if there r some kind of historical connection....
1 thing that struck me though .... the Teochew language spoken by Vietnamese Teochews sounds so much like Vietnamese itself... (the intonations are so similar!) makes me wonder if there r some kind of historical connection....
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Hung Dao Dai Vuong
Re: About Sino-Tibetan languages
it's always "true" that other languages loaned vocabs from the chinese but it's never the other way around; how pathetic!
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Dylan Sung
Re: About Sino-Tibetan languages
With regard to quangtrunghoangde's post,
> "......I think it was Maspero or Haudricourt who first
> realised that you had to remove all the Chinese
> vocabulary to see what is left....."
>
> Dyl, do you mean "what is left" are the basic daily
> physical nouns, basic verbs and basic adjectives of the > Vietnamese language???????
I don't speak Vietnamese, but words like the numeral mot, and ong and ba for male and female folks are what I'm on about. For instance, the Sino-Vietnamese numerals are
零一二三四五六七八九十百千萬億
ling, nha^'t, ngi`, tam, tu+', ngu~, lu.c, tha~t, ba't, cu+?u, tha^.p, ba'ch, thie^n, va.n, u+'c
(I hope I got that right)
derive from a Chinese source.
Compare Cantonese, we have
ling, yat, yi, sam, sei, ng, luk, chat, bat, gau, sap, bak, cheen, man, yik
and in my Hakka Chinese language, it is,
lang, yit, ngi, sam, si, ng, luk, chit, bat, giu, sip, bak, chien, van, yit.
In order to figure out the "genetic" (in a linguistic sense, language family-wise) relationship between Vietnamese and other languages, you first take out what is known to be from one source, Chinese, and see what is left. Then you can do this with other languages around SE Asia, and compare lexical terms. Some terms may be more stable than others, for example words for family members, parts of the human body, etc, and linguists have gone through the process and link Vietnamese with the Mon-Khmer group of languages.
With regard to Hung Dao Dai Vuong's final comment,
Chinese has influenced other languages, but it is true also that Chinese has absorbed vocabulary from non-Chinese sources. Austronesian, for example is thought to be one source. In early Zhou language (which is known from bronze inscriptions) the word for river is nearly always exclusively he2 河. The HuangHe or Yellow River basin is where Chinese civilisation is thought to have flourished during Early Zhou. When Chinese later invaded the south, we find the term jiang1 江 appearing in the language - in the text of later Zhou. In Southern Chinese, 江 is "gong" and I think Vietnamese is kang isn't it?
Later, we find Buddhism entering China, and with it a lot of buddhist words. During the Tang, we know it was cosmpolitan, and even Islam is to be found there together with Nestorian Christianity. China has one of the earliest Islamic mosques dating to the Tang era.
There are influences thought to have come from Mongolian as well, and as westerners enter China we find western science and philosophy beginning to make an inpact. For instance, after the Opium wars, we find lexical terms in science and engineering, and with Japanese occupation, Japanese terms bring absorbed.
In more recent times, we find modern western items entering the language. For instance, "lift" (or elevator) is rendered as "lip" in Cantonese, formed of the characters 車立. So as new words are entering the language, new characters have also been created.
As a Chinese myself interested in language issues, I find this exciting. My website, if you care to visit, is
http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk
Cheers,
Dyl.
> "......I think it was Maspero or Haudricourt who first
> realised that you had to remove all the Chinese
> vocabulary to see what is left....."
>
> Dyl, do you mean "what is left" are the basic daily
> physical nouns, basic verbs and basic adjectives of the > Vietnamese language???????
I don't speak Vietnamese, but words like the numeral mot, and ong and ba for male and female folks are what I'm on about. For instance, the Sino-Vietnamese numerals are
零一二三四五六七八九十百千萬億
ling, nha^'t, ngi`, tam, tu+', ngu~, lu.c, tha~t, ba't, cu+?u, tha^.p, ba'ch, thie^n, va.n, u+'c
(I hope I got that right)
derive from a Chinese source.
Compare Cantonese, we have
ling, yat, yi, sam, sei, ng, luk, chat, bat, gau, sap, bak, cheen, man, yik
and in my Hakka Chinese language, it is,
lang, yit, ngi, sam, si, ng, luk, chit, bat, giu, sip, bak, chien, van, yit.
In order to figure out the "genetic" (in a linguistic sense, language family-wise) relationship between Vietnamese and other languages, you first take out what is known to be from one source, Chinese, and see what is left. Then you can do this with other languages around SE Asia, and compare lexical terms. Some terms may be more stable than others, for example words for family members, parts of the human body, etc, and linguists have gone through the process and link Vietnamese with the Mon-Khmer group of languages.
With regard to Hung Dao Dai Vuong's final comment,
Chinese has influenced other languages, but it is true also that Chinese has absorbed vocabulary from non-Chinese sources. Austronesian, for example is thought to be one source. In early Zhou language (which is known from bronze inscriptions) the word for river is nearly always exclusively he2 河. The HuangHe or Yellow River basin is where Chinese civilisation is thought to have flourished during Early Zhou. When Chinese later invaded the south, we find the term jiang1 江 appearing in the language - in the text of later Zhou. In Southern Chinese, 江 is "gong" and I think Vietnamese is kang isn't it?
Later, we find Buddhism entering China, and with it a lot of buddhist words. During the Tang, we know it was cosmpolitan, and even Islam is to be found there together with Nestorian Christianity. China has one of the earliest Islamic mosques dating to the Tang era.
There are influences thought to have come from Mongolian as well, and as westerners enter China we find western science and philosophy beginning to make an inpact. For instance, after the Opium wars, we find lexical terms in science and engineering, and with Japanese occupation, Japanese terms bring absorbed.
In more recent times, we find modern western items entering the language. For instance, "lift" (or elevator) is rendered as "lip" in Cantonese, formed of the characters 車立. So as new words are entering the language, new characters have also been created.
As a Chinese myself interested in language issues, I find this exciting. My website, if you care to visit, is
http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk
Cheers,
Dyl.
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Hung Dao Dai Vuong
Re: About Sino-Tibetan languages
<< Chinese has influenced other languages, but it is true also that Chinese has absorbed vocabulary from non-Chinese sources. Austronesian, for example is thought to be one source >>
Dyl,
That was what i tried to say. People always have the impression that everyone loans words from the chinese but it's never true that chinese also loan words from other groups. For instance, linguists say that 60 to 70 % of vietnamese vocabs are loaned from the chinese language. I think this is such an offensive statement to the vietnamese people. If there is some similarities between a chinese and vietnamese vocab, at the end of the day linguists will conclude that we vietnamese borrowed it from china; what kind of logic is that? For instance, "sino-vietnamese" is considered as vocabs that were derived from chinese language; i mean do people have ever heard of the word "synonyms" before? Basically everyone is assuming that we vietnamese can't find words to describe many of those abstract adjectives, abstract nouns, abstract verbs that we have to borrow 90% of those vocabs from china. What do you think if i say that 60 to 70% of chinese vocabs was derived from the vietnamese language? Do you believe that is true? If you say that in the beginning the vietnamese and chinese languages were from the same language group and that's the reason why these two languages have many vocabs that are similiar with each other then i will accept that but if you say that 60 to 70% of vietnamese vocabs was derived from chinese vocabs then i won't accept those kind of logic.
Dyl,
That was what i tried to say. People always have the impression that everyone loans words from the chinese but it's never true that chinese also loan words from other groups. For instance, linguists say that 60 to 70 % of vietnamese vocabs are loaned from the chinese language. I think this is such an offensive statement to the vietnamese people. If there is some similarities between a chinese and vietnamese vocab, at the end of the day linguists will conclude that we vietnamese borrowed it from china; what kind of logic is that? For instance, "sino-vietnamese" is considered as vocabs that were derived from chinese language; i mean do people have ever heard of the word "synonyms" before? Basically everyone is assuming that we vietnamese can't find words to describe many of those abstract adjectives, abstract nouns, abstract verbs that we have to borrow 90% of those vocabs from china. What do you think if i say that 60 to 70% of chinese vocabs was derived from the vietnamese language? Do you believe that is true? If you say that in the beginning the vietnamese and chinese languages were from the same language group and that's the reason why these two languages have many vocabs that are similiar with each other then i will accept that but if you say that 60 to 70% of vietnamese vocabs was derived from chinese vocabs then i won't accept those kind of logic.
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xxxx
Re: About Sino-Tibetan languages
hey!! Hung
u said Chinese only influenced other languages and not the other way .. thats way absolutely not true!!
in fact there r instances... in the very archaic age (before chinese een became chinese) that some cultural terms are actually taken from other languages ....Tai, Malayic etc...
u said Chinese only influenced other languages and not the other way .. thats way absolutely not true!!
in fact there r instances... in the very archaic age (before chinese een became chinese) that some cultural terms are actually taken from other languages ....Tai, Malayic etc...