About Sino-Tibetan languages

[ppk]

it's always "true" that other languages loaned vocabs from the chinese but it's never the other way around; how pathetic!

thats not true. terms like pagoda, grapes, melons, pi'pa(a musical instrument), buddha and buddhism, are all from the west. a lot of modern chinese terms, esp technical terms are from japanese.

[Leng]

Thai is actually in the Sino-Tibentan family same as Chinese.

[Aurelio]

Hi!

The discussion of whether words that are similar in Chinese and Vietnamese are of Chinese or of Vietnamese origin seems to have died and maybe I should just let it rest in peace On the other hand, Hung Dao Dai Vuong's question is still open: Is there any way to determine which language borrowed from which (apart from one's respective ideological convictions?).

Now, I don't speak any Vietnamese but I'll guess from what I know from other languages, e.g. English: The majority of all loanwords (though not all) that one language borrows from another are composed of more than one element in the source language. Yes, English borrowed words like "pure", "cone", "line" from Latin/ French, which are 'single-character'-words, so to say, but the majority of all borrowings are complex. So we borrowed the "strategy" from the Greek, but the basic words "stratos" (army) and "agein" (to lead) did not make it into English: You cannot agein your stratos into battle, but the Greek can. Staying with military matters for a while, both English and Latin share the word "military". The root word "miles" (soldier), however, does only exist in Latin. Same for the majority of the other borrowings: we can "omit", "emit", talk about somebody's "demise", "missions", "admissions" etc., but the root word of these all, "mittere" (to send) does not have any meaning in English. The same holds true for most Chinese loanwords in Japanese, etc.

By conclusion, there should be a simple criterion to determine which way the borrowing went: If the borrowed word can be divided into subunits, those subunits will most likely make sense in only ONE of the two languages (if they are not direct descendents of one language). The language they make sense in is most likely to be the parent languags.

It should be noted that borrowing a lot of words does not mean inferiority of the borrowing language or its speakers. It doesn't imply that this language could not have formed expressions built from its own material for the same concepts, either. In fact, if you look at German and English (which can be considered sister languages), you'll find that German frequently choses to build a word from its own material where English borrows from French/ Latin. Before the massive borrowing started (following the Norman invasion), English used Germanic roots only, as well - and their literature was by no means shallow.

Regards,
Aurelio

[Hung Dao Dai Vuong]

Aurellio,

this discussion ended because it will not go anywhere afterall

btw, talking about languages, i remember long ago, Western linguists name called the Japanese as "stupid" because the Japanese refused to believe in what Western linguists told them!

[Sim Lee]

Aurelio,

I've been away for a while, and I hadn't seen you posting for a while anyway. Good to see you here again.

I've created a new topic with some links, which (if I remember correctly) you asked for in the forum before.

Regards,
Sim.

[Jack MacDaddy]

I noticed very quickly that there are a load of Chinese words in Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese... but I think they're from Yue period, as they sound much more like Cantonese than Putonghua or anything else.

like the numbers:

6:
PTH: lv
Can: luk
Jap: roku
Kor: yuk
VNM: tu

in that and so many words the final consonant sound in Cantonese seems to be sort of replicated in Jap and Kor

PTH Shi
Can Jit
Jap Jutsu

I think the PTH is Chinese that's been modified by Manchu and Mongol influence over the last few centuries, to become more "harsh" sounding.
even in less ob

P HuiHua
C WuiWaa
J KaiWa
K KaeWa
V HoiThoai

Interesting how in Thai the words that seem connected to Chinese dialects seem more selective.

I'm really most interested in the Thai-related langs of China and other places outside Thailand, like Zhuang and Nung... it's hard to find much about them anywhere...

[%sig%]

[qrasy]

6 should be:
PTH: liu (not lü)
Can: luk
Jap: roku
Kor: yuk
VN: l[u.]c

And about the -t -p -k endings, they still exist in Hakka and Min.

And from these:
P HuiHua
C WuiWaa
J KaiWa
K KaeWa
V HoiThoai

You can see that "H" is more similar to "K". I think "Hua" is "Hwa" in Korean (Like "ShinHwa").

Chinese has been modified by Manchu and Mongol by losing "-m, -t, -p, -k"
since they do not exist in Manchu and Mongol

[niucls]

Hi Grasy

Do you have any info why Korean can retain "-m, -t, -p, -k" finals (become like "-m, -l, -p, -k") but not Japanese (become like "-n/ng, -to/-chi, -pu, -ku etc")? Also why neither Manchurian nor Mongolian? Aren't they more or less related to Korean? Thank you.

[%sig%]

[oew]

I read Hung Dao Dai Vuong's comment about the similarity between Chinese language and Vietnamese.

I am a Malaysian Chinese by the way.

China is a vast country and Chinese languages is system of language where the mjor languages (normally refered as dialect, eg Cantonese, PTH, Jin etc) shared the same written language but different spoken language.

Hence, it is very likely for Vietnamese to borrow most of the vocabularies from Chinese, not the other way round, because the Chinese written language is used by so many people in such a vast land. It doesn't appeal to logic that Vietnamese could cast such a big influence to the Chinese written language.

What I think in my mind is Vietnamese settlement in Vietnam is as early as Chinese in China, thus their languages are not under the same tree. But eventually China came out to be more influential and civilised, it is not surprising actively or passively the vocab of Chinese become the vocab of Vietnamese. But grammar and language structure is hard to change. So no doubt Vietnames does not belong to SIno-Tibetan language family.

There are loan words in Malay originated from Chinese too. But ultimately Malay is an Austronesian language (similar to those spoken by Polynesian/micronesian indigenous.

Malaysia was proctected and influenced by Chinese too, though never ruled. It is no shame to it. It is what constitute to the current Vietnamese or Malay you n the Malay are proud of. You deserve your pride.

[%sig%]

[C. Sidiras]

Dear friends please help me with the following, I know it is not so relevant, but I cannot find any proper answer.

Could you please let me know what is the meaning of the word "Tibet" or "Thibet" ?


Thank you

C. Sidiras