Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

Discussions on the Cantonese language.
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Dylan Sung

Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

Post by Dylan Sung »

EngWai wrote:
> So, in my opinion, the present Vietnamese is certainly
> under the group of Sino-Tibetan because the language
> has had so much influence of sinitic languages. Maybe
> the proto vietnamese might belong to the Mon-Khmer,
> the current Vietnamese certainly not.

Two other significant languages have a good deal of Chinese vocabulary. Korean and Japanese. How do you view these two with respect to the statements you make above? Would that make these significantly Sino-Tibetan? I think not, and the same argument goes for Vietnamese.

Vietnamese belongs to the Mon-Khmer group of languages, not Sino-Tibetan, likewise Korean and Japanese are not related to Chinese, despite the overwhelming amount of Chinese vocabulary they all have.

AlexNg wrote
> Different word order alone does not mean it belongs to
> different family. In fact, cantonese has some word order
> different from mandarin, eg. male chicken is "kai kung"
> and not "kung kai". The same order as vietnamese, so
> I believe it is an influence from the bai yue people.

You mean Mandarin gong ji 公雞 as opposed to Cantonese gaai gung 雞公? Hakka has gai gung 雞公 as well. Moreover Cantonese and Mandarin have 熱鬧 yit lau/re nao, but Hakka uses lau ngiet 鬧熱. Word order does not mean it comes from Baiyue, but it may suggest it comes from an older stage in Chinese, which may have been borrowed wholesale into Vietnamese. Mandarin is a relatively recent language, and the changes in word order can be seen in other terms as well.

So gai gung/gongji does not mean that Cantonese and Vietnamese are sister languages, but that both derive vocabulary from an earlier stage in Chinese.

Dyl.
Eng Wai

Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

Post by Eng Wai »

***Alex*** Wrote

1. Actually it should be australoid not indian. Each major group has sub division of race. It is not wrong to say the north indians are indo european because they are a sub branch of the main group.

2. There is no such thing as a malaysian chinese look. So you are saying that all malaysian chinese are short and dark ? Although I am short but I am very fair, similar to the north chinese. The younger generation are all very tall, similar to north chinese too. My nephews/nieces are all tall, > 175 cm

3. There are pure chinese. Not all northerners are pure because some of them intermarried with northern people like mongol, manchu, korea. But they look similar anyway. Not all southerners are impure because not all of them intermarried with the bai yue people. Maybe I am not one of them, because I am very fair.

4. If you know how languages evolve through migration then you will know that genetics are related.

5. Different word order alone does not mean it belongs to different family.
In fact, cantonese has some word order different from mandarin, eg.
male chicken is "kai kung" and not "kung kai". The same order as vietnamese, so I believe it is an influence from the bai yue people.

************************

***Response*** by me
1. Well I am not going into technical details about the loids as I am not expert. Clearly no one in the present world looks exactly like the so-called "mongloids negroid australoid caucasoid". Everyone in the world is bastard (literally). It is the custom, culture, language, and to some extend, geography location and looks that determine the "race". As you have pointed out, you look so different from me, yet we are all south Chinese descendant, still Chinese. A fairer Malay/SIamese/Burmese/Iban/etc might look more similar to me, yet we are of different race. Hence, I ultimately disagree with that look determine the race, thus language. I can't agree with Grasy's view about Malay= +-(Austroloid + Mongloid)/2.

2. There you go. So ther is no such look as Malay look, such look as Chinese look. THere will be some facial and physical similarities, but more vitally it is the culture, practice, customs, langauge etc that determine races. Jewish are considered a race by many people, yet indeed Jewish residing in Arabic Penisular look so different from Jewish residing in Russia. In Israel, north African origin Jewish are sometimes regarded as secondary Jewish because they are poorer. Now more people consider Jewish as a religion bounded group of people. Yet in Torah Jewish are the people from the 12 tribes living in Israel area. See, they might originally look very assimilar, but interactions with other race, tribes, cultures etc make them more n more diverse, but culturally still a race.

3. Tell me who are the pure Chinese? Southern Chinese speak Chinese languages that are more loyal to the ancient one, yet they are considered less pure because they might be the bai-yue descendants? As you have pointed out, northern CHinese and inland CHinese have intermingled with various tribes/races from everywhere. From which basis they are purer? If Hakka are the pure Chinese, why their DNA resemble more similarities to the Hokkien and Cantonese, not the Mandarin speakers? (http://www.hoklo.org/YuetCulture/Articles/?item=7#7)

4. Genetics can give traces of hints but never an authorative stamp on the origin of language. In fact genetic is a great help on this issue.

5. That's why I agree with you especially after you gave the example of French n English, refering to white house as instance. We have people who speak Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka and Mandarin in this forum, we definitely need wu, gan,xiang speakers, not least wu. If in wu cock is chicken male, then your hypothesis about chicken-male a result of influence from Bai-Yue language might not be true. Anyway, you might be right. There should be many influences of Bai-Yue languages on CHinese languages, so as Mongolians, Manchu, Sanskrits etc. It is everything that constitute to sinitic language language branch.

*************************************

***Dylan*** wrote
1. Two other significant languages have a good deal of Chinese vocabulary. Korean and Japanese. How do you view these two with respect to the statements you make above? Would that make these significantly Sino-Tibetan? I think not, and the same argument goes for Vietnamese.

***response*** by me
1. Depends on the extend of influence of Chinese in both other languages. 70% is"scary". If Vietnamese is 70%/60% similar to Chinese, then they should be in the same group as CHinese. Otherwise Vietnamese must be classified as creole.

Eng Wai

Merry Christmas
Dylan Sung

Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

Post by Dylan Sung »

Eng Wai wrote:
>
> ***Dylan*** wrote
> 1. Two other significant languages have a good deal of
> Chinese ?vocabulary. Korean and Japanese. How do
> you view these two with respect to the statements you
> make above? Would that make these significantly
> Sino-Tibetan? I think not, and the same argument
> goes for Vietnamese.
>
> ***response*** by me
> 1. Depends on the extend of influence of Chinese in both
> other languages. 70% is"scary". If Vietnamese is 70%
> /60% similar to Chinese, then they should be in the same
> group as CHinese. Otherwise Vietnamese must be
> classified as creole.

Scary isn't a factor usually used in linguistics to define the affiliation of languages :) Creole? Well, given that true linguists have been shifting the affiliation of V around for the last century, who knows. It might change, but I think they're mostly settled on Mon-Khmer now.


>
> Eng Wai
>
> Merry Christmas


And to you and everyone too.

Dyl.
ly

Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

Post by ly »

Hi guys/gals

i am vietnamese, when i was learning cantonese it was so much easier than learning mandarin....any vietnamese here that think so????


Does vietnamese really have a distinct facial feature????? i dont think so
because vietnamese either look like Thai, Chinese, Cambodian etc. but they never look vietnamese...

im vietnamese and ive been told i look like
1. chinese, 2. mexican, 3. greek, 4. filo, 5. laos, 6. lebanese, 7. mixed 8.thai
but never Vietnamese

eg. u can tell a difference between thais and chinese

but when u put a 1) viet with thai or 2) viet with chinese
u might not tell who is vietnamese, u guys know what i mean ??? :-)


Oh is there such thing as 100% pure vietnamese????
because i always thoguht the surname Nguyen is a pure vietnamese surname, however reading from the forum its is chinese??? hehehe thats really interesting
so do Vietnamese have a pure surname that they can claim it is Vietnamese and not from any other country????

do Vietnamese have anything that they can claim its thiers??

even the traditional costume is similar to the chinese costume very similar the the languages :-)


anyway thats just my opinion, plz dont go hard at me im only in high school kekekeke
Eng Wai

Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

Post by Eng Wai »

"Well, given that true linguists have been shifting the affiliation of V around for the last century, who knows. "

Dylan, I don't understand what you mean. Please explain more.

To Ly,

You see, China, both modern n ancient, are such a vast country, comprising of all looks of oriental people. A foreigner will find it very hard to distinguish Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese and Chinese. Even as an ethnic Chinese myself, I find it difficult to confidently judge a person's racial origin purely from the look.

Just wanna tell you a story. Last night I was working in a Chinese Restaurant and threre were these 3 oriental looking people. I thought they were Japanese with darker skin, because they look oriental and they were not speaking Chinese, Korean or Thai, Vietnamese or Malay. I spoke with them and they are Nepalese actually.

Everything that Vietnamese are doing are of course Vietnamese. You can trace the origin to Chinese civilisation, but everything that have been practised by the Vietnamese are vietnamese.

Most of the time, a group of Chinese, a group of Vietnamese, a group of Japanese, a group of Thai, a group of korean can be easily spotted whereas individual CHinese, Vietnamese Thai etc is hard to tell. We often get the information through the culture, language and behaviour, not really through the look.

So if you are alone, the wise guess is you are a chinese. Afterall statistically nearly 20% of human are Chinese, or Han.

Eng Wai
Dylan Sung

Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

Post by Dylan Sung »

Eng Wai wrote:
> Dylan wrote:
> > "Well, given that true linguists have been shifting
> > the affiliation of V around for the last century, who
> > knows. "
> >
> Dylan, I don't understand what you mean. Please explain more.

They've affiliated with Thai in the past, on account of the tones, now it's moved over to Mon-Khmer. Whether they'll want to make another classification - who knows? Maybe they might, or they might not. Perhaps, it may have ended up in the right linguistic affiliation after all....

Dyl.
AlexNg

Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

Post by AlexNg »

Eng wai,

Basically, it is not difficult to tell the different subgroups of the mongoloid main race if you know the characteristics. There are essentially 3 groups.

1. Very fair mongoloid

Most chinese, japanese, koreans, mongolian, vietnamese

Very fair skin
single eyelid or thin double eyelid
Oval shaped eyes

2. Tanned mongoloid

Thai, khmer, burmese, other areas around south china.

Tanned skin
single eyelid or thin double eyelid
Oval shaped eyes


3. Brown mongoloid

Filipinos, malays in malaysia and indonesia, maori

Brown skin
Double eyelid and high eyelid crease
Round eyes similar to caucasian
Thicker lips than the two other subgroups



I am talking about the typical or pure race, there are intermarriage between sub-groups which causes hybrid that are difficult to distinguish.

There are also subdivision of the caucasian group, if anyone wants to know.
ly

Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

Post by ly »

Hi Alex

i'd like to know more about the race characteristics can u tell me more???

coz i never thought vietnamese would be part of Very fair mongoloid

i was thinking more of Tanned mongoloid

where did u get ur resources from ?
Eng Wai

Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

Post by Eng Wai »

You group Maori with Mongloid? Maori are austroloid. So the difference between "very fair mongloid" and "tanned monglod" is simply the difference of skin colour? Then a "very fair monglod" from north China might become "tanned mongloid" after he moves to Malaysia.

Where do the Tibetans fit into?

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

I notice also the southern Asian are grouped as tanned mongloid. You know that south Asia are hotter and more exposed to sunlight radiation. Our skin will turn darker to protect ourselve from excessive UV. So what is the difference between a south chinese and north chinese? what is the difference between Burmese and siamese?

You need to give more explanation give better support your classifications, orelse I will simply see this as another proof that north south Chinese and Indocinaians are indistinguishable except through the skin colour.

Malays should be classified under Austronesians. To my observance, the southeast asia archipelagos people are austronesians and Indocinaians are mongloids, if you want to draw a line. The archipelagos languages are austronesians.

O ya, another thing. Now you have classified khmer and southern chinese as tanned monloid but vietnamese as very fair mongloid. Do you mean vietnamese are realted to norht chinese but not south chinese? Then, you are contradicting your first post in this tread.

Eng Wai

[%sig%]
AlexNg

Re: Vietnamese is sino-tibetan ?

Post by AlexNg »

i'd like to know more about the race characteristics can u tell me more???

coz i never thought vietnamese would be part of Very fair mongoloid


Hi ly,

In vietnam, the people there value fair skin, if you say they are dark, it would be an insult to them.

In fact, the popularity of the vietnamese brides by "exporting" to taiwanese, singaporean, malaysian chinese in recent years is due to their fair skin.

We are excluding those who are tanned due to the exposure from the sun.
We are talking about when they are naturally born.
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