Another Way Out

[Ah-bin]

What I am interested to know is about languages of those Baiyue 百越. Were they part of Sino-Tibetan? Goujian the King of Yue is said to have a sword graven with "bird & insect" style of writing, which basically is a form of what we now call 漢字/唐人字. Was that Yue Kingdom really part of 百越 or they (at least the rulers) were from 中原?

Ah well.... most scholars in the PRC still say that Tai languages are Sino-Tibetan, whereas that view has been abandoned by non PRC scholars about fifty years ago. There are the beginnings of discussion, but I suspect that the Sino-Tibetan status of Tai may actually be an "official" position, like the number of minorities or the classification of the early Chiu 周 as "slave society" so challenging it might lead to trouble.

Also, some people have used Chinese characters to engrave on objects but might not have spoken Sino-Tibetan languages. 王 I believe is inscribed on all sorts of things. The people who inscribed it might have known it meant "king" but might have used their own words for it. Like reading out "lb" as "pound" or 3 as "three" or "tiga" or "saⁿ". Maybe the description of "bird and insect characters" refers to a Chinese-based characters like Nôm?

There is a song called the 越人歌 "Song of the Man of Oát" supposed to be from the early Spring and Autumn Period, sung by a boatman from Oát (I assume they mean the state at this time) and written down in the Han book Soát oán 說苑. It goes like this:

濫兮抃草濫予昌枑澤予昌州州（飠甚）州州焉乎秦胥胥縵予乎昭澶秦踰滲惿隨河湖。
which is a phonetic rendition into Spring and Autumn Chinese!

The translation is into Classical Chinese is given as:
今夕何夕兮，搴舟中流。 今日何日兮，得與王子同舟。 蒙羞被好兮，不訾詬恥。 心幾煩而不絕兮，得知王子。 山有木兮木有枝，心悅君兮君不知。

I can't find a decent online source, but I know that someone has compared the original and translation and what it would be in "Zhuang" and concluded that it is in some sort of old Tai-Kadai language. I am still a bit dubious about it myself.

百越 was used a bit later than 越, one of the reasons they used to give for calling the 百越 as 越 was that after the state of 越 was destroyed in 479 BC, the rulers all fled to the south and set themselves up as kings and princes along the coast....including the land of Min!

This in one of the best articles I know on the subject of the 百越
http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp017_yue.pdf

in the same series there is one about the scripts...but most of it is conjecture, and it neglects to mention the point that Vietnamese and Thai are unrelated languages, so lumping them all together as Viet is making the same mistake that the Chinese made.

http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/s ... hu_nom.pdf

[amhoanna]

The similarities btw Tai-Kadai language and culture and Hokkiàn-Kúiⁿtang language and culture are tremendous. "Intertwined" is the word. There are so many words that even though they may not be cognates in a technical sense, yet they seem to be based on the same set of phonesthemics ... or something. The deep structures and "semi-deep structures" are tremendously similar. My bullshit-o-meter automatically goes off whenever I hear someone say this is b/c "the Thais received a lot of Chinese influence". But that's an easy conclusion to come to in an era where "national" education is rampant, i.e. in every nation.

I think the Sino-Tibetan/Tai-Kadai debate is kind of a moot point. Personally I don't think the tree theory of linguistics applies 100% unless we're dealing with nomads in the wasteland or settlers out on the Pacific Ocean.

[amhoanna]

Niuc,

In TW Hoklo, 汝 and 我 and lán, gún, goán, etc. all take running tones when used as subjects at the start of a sentence. Interesting that bahasa Bagan works differently!!

I've always wondered how lílâng/lúlâng/línlâng and goálâng work, tonewise.

[Ah-bin]

I think the Sino-Tibetan/Tai-Kadai debate is kind of a moot point. Personally I don't think the tree theory of linguistics applies 100% unless we're dealing with nomads in the wasteland or settlers out on the Pacific Ocean.

Now I certainly can agree with that. I think most PRC scholars just accept the relationship dogmatically.

A great example of the amazing mixing that must have gone on for centuries is the sentence I learnt in the Tho language of Loong-tsau 龍州, officially classed as "Zhuang" but actually mutually intelligible with the "Nung" of Vietnam (I saw a Vietnamese Nung and a Loong-tsau "Zhuang" engaged in conversation, but I know for a fact that the people of Loong-tsau can't understand the "Zhuang" that comes out of Nanning). The sentence was "Ngoh kiaang tho-wa" = "I am speaking Tho". and the whole sentence is formed from Sinitic words 我講土話! Now if you negate it, you get "Ngoh mi kiaang tho-wa" or "Ngoh bo kiaang tho-wa" (two different ways to say it in one county!) where the "mi" or "bo" are supposed to be Tai.... and this is where I start to think "is bo/m Tai or Sinitic?". Say something else, and the language is completely Tai. (Luckily I have my little notebook here that I took to Loong-tsau a few years back).

An-nai yaau ka-lang? = What is this called? - purely Tai

Min mi hlu ni kiaang ka-lang. = She doesn't understand what you're saying. (Tai in bold) ni kiaang = 你講

An-nai ki-laai ngön = How much does this cost? (Tai in bold) but then is the ngön really Sinitic when it is common to all Tai languages as well? ki = 幾 ngön = 銀

The similarities btw Tai-Kadai language and culture and Hokkiàn-Kúiⁿtang language and culture are tremendous. "Intertwined" is the word. There are so many words that even though they may not be cognates in a technical sense, yet they seem to be based on the same set of phonesthemics ... or something. The deep structures and "semi-deep structures" are tremendously similar.

Yes, getting down to the nitty-gritty, the only structure that is really different between Southern Sinitic and Tai is the adjective+noun order. Tai being noun+adjective and Sinitic being adjective+noun.....but then in Loong-tsau sometimes they follow Sinitic syntax. When I asked how to say "American" they said "Mi-kwok-kön",(kön=lang) not "kön-Mi-kwok" but they usually say almost everything else the other way around! Hokkien sometimes does it the Tai way (adjective second) with 儂客 lang-kheh and 雞鵤 ke-kak!

[amhoanna]

I think most PRC scholars just accept the relationship dogmatically.

I think the problem with the West is that scholars can just say what they think is true. They can even think on their own. This is very dangerous, and not the Asian way.

Interesting tales from the border, Ah-bin. The "bo" is eye-catching from this Hoklophone perspective of mine. A couple things. First, there seem to be a number of languages in southern China and around it that are hard to pin down as either a Han language or hoanna tongue. If we take, say, Hoklo on one hand and Siamese on the other, it's clear that Hoklo "is Han in a way that Siamese is not". (I expressly hesitate to use Vietnamese in this example.) But there are so many backroads languages that fall btw Hoklo and Siamese on the spectrum that make the "is it or isn't it" question real tough to answer.

Even with Hoklo and Siamese, things could get blurry real quick if either language were to change in a few small ways --- say if Hoklo went to a noun-adjective type of word order (supposedly it has, in Kelantan and south of there!), or if Siamese picked up a typical Chinese pronoun system (not inconceivable--look at lu and gua rippling out from bahasa Betawi)... Changes that could happen, and could've happened, and no doubt did happen even at points in time and space when there no linguists around to write about it and leave a record.

Second, looking at data from the backroads, it's always struck me that most of these backroads languages bring to mind Hoklo more than Yuet/Cantonese, even though they may be spoken to the west of or immediately north or south of the Yuet area. It strikes me that maybe Yuet/Cantonese (along with Hakka) are newcomers to the Deep South, although they do have a substrate from whatever was there before.

[amhoanna]

To clarify, I meant the languages are newcomers. The people, not necessarily --- although it's probably true too that, as I think Andrew has said, the Hakka have a strong Northern element in their DNA.

[Ah-bin]

Second, looking at data from the backroads, it's always struck me that most of these backroads languages bring to mind Hoklo more than Yuet/Cantonese, even though they may be spoken to the west of or immediately north or south of the Yuet area. It strikes me that maybe Yuet/Cantonese (along with Hakka) are newcomers to the Deep South, although they do have a substrate from whatever was there before.

I think this is particularly true of the Cantonese spoken in Canton, Hong Kong and all the major cities up the West River and its tributaries (even the centre of Loong-tsau speaks something quite close to Cantonese. The Cantonese of Canton is fairly "new" and more influenced by the north because there was always a large flow of outsiders into

The other varieties away from the rivers are quite different again. 李锦芳's book 侗台语言与文化 (Kam-Tai Language and Culture), has a few fanciful claims but is mostly very useful. He had the idea that the older Cantonese (perhaps MIng and before) was more similar to Sze Yap 四邑 types of Cantonese (Sin-ning/Lhin-ning/新寧Taishan/Toisaan/Hoisan/台山) and those to the west and inland. The father of Hoan-a studies Hsu Sung-shih 許松石 thought much the same thing, I believe.

You can have a look at the book "Kam-Tai Language and Culture" here:
http://wenku.baidu.com/view/c8800e7e5ac ... 0ccd5.html
She describes the spread of Cantonese from p. 121 after a lengthy analysis of Tai loans into Cantonese.

Hokkien on p. 97

The song of the man from 越 mentioned earlier is from p. 29

I would LOVE to get more information on all the languages spoken south of the West River. At the moment I have some homophone lists and a few descriptions, but I'm always on the look out for detailed descriptions and vocabularies.

[niuc]

Ah-bin, thank you for the answers and links!

Also, some people have used Chinese characters to engrave on objects but might not have spoken Sino-Tibetan languages. 王 I believe is inscribed on all sorts of things. The people who inscribed it might have known it meant "king" but might have used their own words for it. Like reading out "lb" as "pound" or 3 as "three" or "tiga" or "saⁿ".

Yes, very probable.

Maybe the description of "bird and insect characters" refers to a Chinese-based characters like Nôm?

鳥蟲書 seems to be a form of 漢字, ornamented with lots of curves. According to Chinese Wikipedia, 鳥蟲書（或稱鳥蟲文、鳥蟲篆，又名蟲書、鳥書、鳥篆、魚書），是中國春秋中期至戰國時代盛行於中國南方的一種文字。它的特點是其字型類似鳥蟲魚的形狀，故有此命名。

For the picture of the sword of Goujian & its 鳥蟲文, please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Goujian , part of the text is "越王自作". The text itself seems to be wholly Chinese, but you are right that non-Chinese sometimes used 漢字 e.g.

Seal of Ilkhan Ghazan, over the last two lines of his 1302 letter to Pope Boniface VIII. It reads "王府定國理民之寶".

Above is quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(Chinese) , please refer there for the picture of the seal.

There is a song called the 越人歌 "Song of the Man of Oát"

I see. So it was definitely not Sinitic.

p.s.: I know that wikipedia is not the best source since anyone can update it, but kindly bear with me as I only have access to freebies like wikipedia and not academic sources.

[niuc]

In TW Hoklo, 汝 and 我 and lán, gún, goán, etc. all take running tones when used as subjects at the start of a sentence. Interesting that bahasa Bagan works differently!!

Thank you, Amhoanna! Hmmm, it's a bit complicated! Usually the RT (running tone) of ST (standing tone) 2 in Bagan-ue is not ST7, it's not one of the STs. However, there are times when RT2 = ST7, when we talk fast. Someone from 同安, the origin of most Bagan-lang, told me that there RT2 = ST7. For the case of 汝 and 我, some do pronounce it as ST7 (as RT2?), some (most, if I am right) ST2.

I've always wondered how lílâng/lúlâng/línlâng and goálâng work, tonewise.

In my variant we don't say lílâng/lúlâng or goálâng, but línlâng, gúnlâng, lánlâng and inlâng (or often without lâng). The tone of lán, gún, goán, in and lín are also either ST7 (as RT2 & RT1?) or mostly ST2, with or without lâng. This is true also of all pronouns in front of ê.

However, if they are used as possessive adjectives, e.g. gúntau (our place/house), gún is pronounced with RT2 (not ST7 or ST2).

Though I basically know almost nothing, I "feel" that what you and Ah-bin say about Sino(Hokkien etc) and Tai-Kadai sound very reasonable. Thank you both for sharing!

[Ah-bin]

p.s.: I know that wikipedia is not the best source since anyone can update it, but kindly bear with me as I only have access to freebies like wikipedia and not academic sources.

Well, I wouldn't underestimate wikipedia, and it is at least the best for pictures of things like swords! I know what you mean though, some stuff is just impossible to track down, but luckily, more and more academic resources are coming online, it's just a matter of knowing where to dig and what to type in. That's why I try try to post as many links to them on here as I can, and when subjects come up that I have some materials on, (I have piles of stuff that I never ended up using!) I'll try to get them scanned so I can send them to anyone who is interested.