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Symbols and conventions

Rainwash from the Austroasiatic west

The role of Mandarin

The Zen of Sinitic-Vietnamese

On the one-size-fits-all conspiracy

Adaption of the reconstructed ancient sound values

Vietnamese and Chinese commonalities

Humans like to hear what they believe in

Dongtinghu, birthplace of rice

MAP OF...

the Austroasiatic languages

proto-Chinese immigration routes

territories of dynasties in China

DaiViet in the 11th century

Dongson bronze drums in Indonesia

the ancient states in China

the Qin Empire in ancient China

the historical ancient Yue States

the historical ancient Yue migrations

What Makes Vietnamese So Chinese?

An Introduction To Sinitic-Vietnamese Studies

DRAFT
Table of Contents

dchph

Chapter One

I) INTRODUCTION

A) Prologue

(1) What makes Vietnamese so Chinese

In this research I am going to introduce some new findings in the study field of a vast stock of Vietnamese vocabularies of Chinese origin in Vietnamese, to be called Sinitic-Vietnamese (VS). It may also implicate another class of etymology best known as Sino-Vietnamese (SV), or HánViệt (HV), a localized systematic pronunciation of Chinese words having evolved directly from a variety of Middle Chinese (MC) of the Tang Dynasty, of which the SV sound change patterns follow strict phonological schemes. In a broader sense the term Sinitic-Vietnamese (VS) could encompass all other "Yue" loanwords in Chinese originating from some indigenous ancestral Yue speeches that were once spoken widely by the aboriginals inhabiting a vast region from Hoanam 華南 Huanan, or China South, to faraway areas north of the Yang-Tze River, all positively identified as ranging habitats of the Yue in ancient times. (華)

Map of the Austroasiatic languages per the AA view
Source: Multiple sources on the internet

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Methodologically, in contrast with synchronic views and geographically southern perspective employed by the Austroasiatic (AA) camp, diachronic approaches to history used in this paper are like fast-forwarding motion frames in time concurrently pivoted from China's ancient northeast encompassing southwards spanning from today's Yunnan to Fujian provinces. To understand such a historical scope we need to crack the nutshell of the history of both China and Vietnam while the accompanied collective maps would better illustrate major historical time frames. Let's first pin down with the period of 6000 years ago in which the Yue aboriginals — pro-Yue — had been living in China South prior to the arrival of itinerant proto-Chinese who later resettled and intermingled with natives in established vassals which would evolve into those strong states of Xia, Shang, Zhou, and then Qin, Chu, Wu, Yue, etc., all subjugated by the kings of the Zhou who ruled from 1045-256 BC. These states finally were to be conquered and unified by the Qin in 221 BC, that in turn was toppled by the succeeding Han in 206 BC. During the period of war-ravaged turmoils those breakaway Yue states in China South were conquered and formed the new NanYue State (南越 NánYuè; or NamViệt) in 204 BC under the rule of King Triệu Đà (趙佗 Zhào Tuó), formerly a Qin's general, and his successors. In 111 BC the NanYue was eventually conquered by the Han Empire (206 BC - 220 AD) thereupon. In 936 near the end of the Tang Dynasty, the subjects of the Annam 'Pacified South' Proctectorate broke away from the Middle Kingdom and became an independent state since then, best known as Vietnam today.

In other words, views on the whole picture of formation of Vietnam respective of her peoples — including her 54 ethnic groups at present time — and their speech changes depending on which geographical sphere historians are looking at, either from the northern or the southern pivot. And I am following the northern lights tracking steps taken by early emigrants from China South — the indigenous Yues (namely, OuYue, XiYue, MinYue, etc.), Qin-mutated Shu (BaThục 巴屬 BaShǔ, or possibly 'BaTàu'(秦)), Yue-mutated Chu 楚 Chǔ 'Sở', Yue-mutated Han (Hakka 'Hẹ' 客家 Kèjia or 'Cácchú'), etc. — from vast regions of China South had further advanced southward and continued to mix with those aboriginals known as Yue of the South all along the way more activetly start from about 300 BC in the face of Qin's army advances (Lu Shih Peng, 1964). Hence comes the related name Vietnam. In the meanwhile, the AA theorists contrarily approach the issues from that of the southern geo-sphere where the AA borderlines overlap those of Austronesian (AT) racial stocks in today's Indonesia's and Malaysia's islands and that will pose hinderance to reconcilbility of the fact that the Yue were the creators of the bronze drums, for which the notthern geo-sphere point of view could expand all the way to the southern hemisphere without taking into consideration of the newly generated theory on the origin of the Austronesian — oh my goodness, another Western theory! (The Westerners keep ignoring the historical Yue artifacts because they were reluctant to learn old things, so they created new things, building them from the start!) — As we can guess such assertion by the AA hypothesis alienates views of the proto-Yue exisstence in the farther northeastern side of the Yangtze River, i.e., in ancient Lu State in today's China's Shandong Province, out of the overall ethnological picture of the Yue stock of Chu State, i.e., in the vicinity of today's Hubei and Anhui provinces, that constitutes racial principality, of Taic stock, that had spread in all directions to account also for the racial compositon of the later Han Chinese that was actually product of the Southern Yue mixed with other prior proto-Chinese mixed populace in all six ancient states unified by the Qin, hence comes the related term China.

Map of the historical ancient proto-Chinese migratory routes
Source: Multiple sources on the internet

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Map of territories of Dynasties in China
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Territories_of_Dynasties_in_China.gif

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Map of the NanYue State in China South
Source: Modofied map from http://en.wikipedia.org

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Overall in this introductory chapter, I will go over some of major points to be covered in this research, including antitheses against existing Austroasiatic (Austro-Asiatic, or AA, as broadly defined per se) theory in addition to statement of purposes and background for this research, but first, let's do some housekeeping for terminologies and conventions, and only then, build rapports, throwing in some examples of Sinitic-Vietnamese (VS, Nôm, or HánNôm) etyma as a preliminary preview of what should be to be expected throughout, namely, anything Vietnamese appearing to be Sinitic.

On the sideline, for scores of elementally foreign glosses from other regional languages, such as those of Dai, Thai, Cham, Malay, Mon, Khmer, etc., that the V language had gradually acquired over hundreds of years as its speakers were advancing towards the south, their references will be limited minimally for comparative analysis purpose only within the VS scope, i.e., only those cited etyma concurrently existing in both the Chinese (C, Chin., Han, or Sinitic) and Vietnamese (V, Viet.) languages are being elaborated. For example, "mắt" (eye) 目 mù (SV mục) may be related to Malay 'mata', or "gạo" (rice) 稻 dào vs. Thai /gaw/, etc., plus a few other foreign words such as SV "kỹsư" 技師 jìshī ('engineer', from Japanese 'gishi', modern C usage 'techinician'), "ưumặc" 幽默 yōumò (English 'humor'), "câulạcbộ" 俱樂部 jùlèbù ('club'), or Anh (英), Pháp (法), Mỹ (美), Đức (德), etc., which entered V via C medium. In fact the rate of foreign lexical infiltration in V is very slow and scanty, for example, 10 years of American presence in Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1963-1973) having not been not enough to assist the then English learners to know what a hamburger is and American-English left a very small amount of words as such in Vietnamese. French words, as remnants of the legacy of nearly 100 years under the French rule ended in 1954, that appear in V could amount to well over hundreds of items (see APPENDIX A), many times more than all of identified MK lexicons combined, but of course their frequency of usage is pretty low and have no genetic relationship, whatsoever.

Technical arrangement for this writing is suitable for both starter learners of V historical linguistics and specialists in C and V philologies alike. Yet those V learners with good command in Mandarin (M, QT, or Quanthoại 官話 Guanhua, known officially as present "Putonghua" 普通話) and some knowledge of historical linguistics will benefit greatly from this study. So said please bear with me should I explain too much of anything, which is so obvious to specialists, or too little of everything, which would be difficult for general readers to follow (普). (See "Bibliography" in the end of this paper for some primers on historical linguistics.)

(2) The background

The purpose of this passage is to build up a rapport on the author and this piece of writing, establishing a connection of some sorts but not pretending this type of research is a serious scientific one, paper perfect. You may want to treat this as a story of the V language. People tend to like to hear what they want to believe. So with what you have read so far and found no amusement at all, you can stop reading now. It is imperatively a must that in order to appreciate this writing, you must be highly interested in the subject and seriously enough and possess certain knowledge of Vietnam's and China's histories. Alternatively, should you still be skeptical but curiously want to learn more about this V etymology of C origin, you better wait to read a book of this research in print for a good reason that people are more open-minded -- trying to get the most for their money -- given the fact that nobody will have the patience of the author's having gone through writing this paper. That said, only then would you have an impartial judgment about what you read, especially, with your intention to quote about it. And all this will not happen until a prestigious publisher contact me! Else, you are free to stop now. I seriously do not want to engage in recruiment of any VS followers and I promise not to argue with all those who have voiced against my argumentation. I know darned too well that what exactly inside their mind.

How have I gone about this etymological affair this far? Admittedly I am no V historical linguist by training except for having, fortunately enough, taken a few introductory linguistics courses taught by Profs. Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, Hoàng Tuệ, and Bùi Khánh Thế, all being best well-known linguists, at the Ho Chi Minh University in Saigon back in the late 1970's. In my spare time but more than a hobby I have devoted in the field of research wholeheartedly. I had also been exposed to the C language in some scholarly fields for quite a time and possess a mastery command of the modern M for more than 22 years now by daily conservation with Chinese-native wife, reading C, listening to the news and watching C soap operas from sattelite Chinese TV broadcast, etc., all having put me in an authoritive position to state something with expertise regarding the C and V etymology matters. How could I be so confident with my Sinitic and so disrespectful of the AA views? Well, I am always amazed at how close many modern M expressions are to those of V in practical situations as I have often observed from a series of C soap operas. This is a muddy C and V affair with a tongue-in-cheek attitude and no one likes to be fully engaged in because its linguistic theory on any affiliation may not work in the AA's Indo-European framework. Putting it another way, people naturally believe only in what they are born with.

The encounter with the C historical linguistics over the years has aroused inside me so arousing a curiosity for the C linguistic past. And that experience — analogically the same as that of English learners who know well Greek, the Latin and other Roman languages — has widened my knowlege of the C historical linguistics and V etymology of C origin. Hence from there arose my conviction of the ST connection with V, in the sense that all other variants of the descendant Yue languages, e.g., Zhuang, Daic being regarded as of the same linguistic family, and that has grown much more firmly.

Being fascinated by this subject I have spent enormous time teaching myself V and C and their respective historical linguistics and devoted all the time that I could spare and energy to the commitment of tracing etymological proofs one at a time for many Nôm words of C origin. Just like a pilgrim, spiritually and metaphorically, who is in constant search for sacred revelation in his or her life, I have set out on this etymological journey. Although I have unexpectedly stumbled upon hitches and hits in the ancient world of C linguistic sound bits, they have enlightened my soul with a new insight into the V etymology world. For all new discoveries back in the pre-internet era I have jotted them down in the old-fashioned index cards starting more than 20 years ago. Mentally putting all things together in perspective a whole new picture of the V etymological structure and essence has sprung into a full view of a long gone by linguistic past.

Prior to all this affair I also used to believed in what the V philologists said about V and its MK connection. It is no longer so since I have finally come to terms that the V and C languages have so much more commonalities — even more than what they share among the ST languages themselves — than those of any other MK languages as have been suggested so far that they all originated from the same root as that of V. If all the V linguistic characteristics are to be tabulated systematically in detail comparatively side by side with those of the C historical linguistics, one cannot but reckon that it is simply a cousin of the other. It is from this conviction that I have begun sorting things out 10 years later, literally out of my index cards that are numbered 20,000 plus, and now I am, entering the internet era, in the process of gathering supporting data to nurture my hypothesis that most of V words have either a C origin or both languages originate from the same linguistic root because so many V basic vocabularies appear to be cognate to those of ST, or C for that matter.

It is from my findings that they have enticed me to believe that the AA-MK camp is wrong. To be specific, in the process of working on this project, with plenty of recorded substantial evidences at hand I have started to theorize them and will, gradually, post them on the internet as I am progressing. This is my life-long goal that I am determined to pursue, setting forth a new linguistic expedition going for the ST direction with the perspective that languages ought to be viewed as a holistic living thing as what actually appears to us with all its characteristics other than what originally had started from the beginning, let's say, five thousand years ago. With the results found and its genetic affinity proven in the ST chapter of this research, V could probably once again be reconsidered and officially reclassified as a language that belongs to the ST linguistic family given the common linguistic peculiarities existing in both V and C.

Such classification is made possible from new methodologies in V historical linguistics approached from a much more different and broader pespective as presented here and they can be concurrently used with other research tools and accompishments in C linguistic studies made available to us to apply not only in V historical linguistics or etymology but also, the reaped benefits, be utilized in various fields of V studies, such as anthropology and archaeology regarding the origin and biological composition of Vietnamese people and their state. Those benefits are tangible. As we all have known, most larger linguistic institutions on earth all have devoted and invested tremendous resources and expertise in the field of studying the C historical linguistics, so any progress in any fields of C linguistics per se can be equally applied to V etymology research without much reservation. Say C is now treated as a polysyllabic language and that linguistic characteristic has faithfully reflected in its popular "pinyin", or romanized C transcription system devised by smart linguists, so should be the V orthography in the context of reform of its current inefficient monosyllabic writing system which had been created instantly on the ad hoc basis for the need of spreading religious propaganda by European missionaries in the late 18th centry. Besides, I hope that my final work will give the V etymology another application with concrete results for future lexicographers to make use of and corporate them into a V dictionary with all etymological list for each word, which a V dictionary has never had before.

Again, my Sinitic theory is based on history, anthropology, and archaeology, not just solely on 400 fundamental cognates with ST etymologies as you will see in the chapter on ST, let alone scores of MK basic words. Historically, as shortly briefed in this introductory chapter, you will at least have some ideas on how the V language have come about this far and how it relates to those of 'Sinitic', which is so called out of conventional convenience since it is related to Sinitic linguistic sub-family in ST. Additionally, as you could image, if the Qin and Han had been defeated by the Chu, China — hence comes the term 'Chinese' — would had been called Chu then, and in the meanwhile Chu had been an Yue state so it could possibly have been called Yue or even Viet! Hence comes the term Vietic. (Lu Shih-Peng, 1964, Bai-Yang, 1979-1989). So everything is in the name, and the substance is virtually the same, just like what the Manchurians called China 'Qing' for more than 300 years. If the Japanese had won the war in WWII, China might have been renamed Great DongA already. Where is the beef?

For reference, in the end of this research paper you will find a long list of the bibliography and many related resourceful linguistic websites. Even though the electronic forms have proven their superior advantages, the problem of their reliabilty and durability lies in the fact they are in constant changes as their authors see fit and that down the line for the next 20 years, who knows how many of them will still be around and available as they are in existence today in the cyberspace, aka the www. (You may need to look for any quoted sources no longer existant at http://archive.org/).

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(3) Symbols and conventions

The unconventional research protocol taken in this paper is that there will not be a whole section fully systematically devoted to listing all the rules of sound changes, natural or unnatural, from C to VS for those supposedly loanwords as one usually would expect, instead only a synopsis on phonological patterns will be provided under the form of samples in the last chapter. The reason is that, firstly, that is tantamount to a minutely detailed and complicated task since the frequency-dependent sound changes have occurred somewhat rather erratically, not in batches and shifts and drifts, etc., as one would expect as in the case of the SV sound system as having been quite well documented (see Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, 1979, 2001). The sound changes did happen, though. In the examples cited in this research you will see that C words have incessantly infiltrated the V vocabulary in all shapes and sounds since the ancient time throughout different periods of linguistic development, including a viariety of C dialects colloquially. Specifically, Mandarin, as the official language of the imperial court in C throughout its history including those of dynasties long after V had gained it independence since the 10th century, has prominently taken special role, which was revived during a short period she was under the rule of Ming Dynasty in 1410. Those identified sound changes, to a certain degree, gave rise to multiple V variants, which could be treated similarly just like those different readings, comparatively, in Japanese Kanji for each of C word. Let's take 道 dào (way) as an example, we can identify several different "readings" in V to convey different concepts, mostly matching most of the meanings as those equivalents in C, e.g., 'đạo' (way, religion, sect, morals, skill, line), 'dạo' (time), 'đường' (road, line), 'tưởng' (suppose), 'nẽo' (path), 'nói' (speak), 'bảo' (tell), etc. This rationalization would have been easier to understand if the Chinese-based Nôm characters were still being in use in writing the V language, which unfortunately is not the case. Should my work later prove to be of any value, specialists in categorization will need to tabulate and systemize all the possible sound change patterns and their rules accordingly for the linguistic world to see.

Secondly, this research, for the time being, should be treated only as a demonstration of how the application of my two new etymological approaches has been utilized and how their positive results have come about throughout the whole process in searching for those V words of C origin, or Sinitic-Vietnamese (VS). In the meanwhile, underlined rules of phonological changes illustrated here by no means can be treated as a complete reference because this study, as a matter of fact, is still an on-going work that is constantly being edited and modified in the days to come until at least it's first edition in print hits bookstores.

Thirdly, as a result, even though the methodologies utilized here are more experimentally suggestive than conclusive, unless stated otherwise, they always should be considered valuable and used extensively as one of the most useful etymological tools to explore tentative rules of sound changes from one word to another, that is, what changes into what and how it has happened. They are what I used to build the case of 道 dào.

Fourthly, to avoid boredom, like many others who skim information on the internet looking for quick, short, and concise format, you may want to jump here and there, or just bore deeply areas where you are interested most. However, please do not quote any passage herein out of the context or just pull out some erroneous data — which are unavoidable while this paper is being edited constantly — and jump into some conclusion about the whole matter as some have already done.

Lastly, and again, it would become a long and boring paper as I have seen in many writings should we just cite long list of rules of sound changes — which would mostly go by unchecked or unread — instead of focusing on exploring interesting case studies by examples and discussing about certain processes of how to reach a conclusion about particular cases of sound changes for specific newly-discovered words found to be of C origin, and through this, in the end you can learn how to do the same yourself after understanding how I have manipulated my approaches to reach certain conclusions. Therefore, sound change rules will be discussed only in a scattering, but not sparingly though, manner throughout this paper, that can be found in any sections or paragraphs as needs arise and a demand for explanation of how the final sound changes have actually occurred. The whole process could be only applicable and limited to certain cases and why they did not occur to the other sounds of the same nature. The important thing is to let you understand how the sound changes have occurred in certain ways either by linguistic rules or just a matter of speculation. Similarly, you can learn to apply the same methods yourself just like the way I will be doing in the next sections.

Do expect to see a very small portion of exciting words listed here and the rule of the thumb is if they look so similar then the chance is that that V word, known as loanword, is borrowed from C.

In this paper I will use common conventions utilized in the fields of historical linguistics in addition to their alternate usages and some made-up signs and symbols of my own. The reader should already be familiar with most of commonly used linguistic symbols, the International Phonetic Symbol (IPA), and Vietnamese (V) orthography (Quốcngữ) (Q). Abbreviations and acronyms will be noted once when they first appear. Cited examples within a paragraph will be wrapped to the next separate line and numbered or bulleted () for better illustration. Also, in most of the cases, there may be lengthy comments about patterns of sound changes and evolution of those V words under scrutiny, to be put in between square brackets like [ xxx yyy zzz ], as how they have come about in order to support arguments about the C origin of those words. After all, that is the purpose of this etymological research.

English meanings of cited vocabularies will be noted once or more as needed after each one and they are by no means exhaustive. Sometimes they will be omitted if deemed irrelevant. The commonly used symbols include

• “>” denoting “evolves into” (diachronically),
• “<” sign “derived from” (diachronically),
• “=>” “giving rise to” (by a phonetic rule),
• “~>” “giving rise to” (by analogy),
• “<=” "built with",
• “~” “alternating with” or "is cognate to" (synchronically),
• "$" for literarary use only, as opposed to a vernacular or colloquial form
• "#" metathesis or in reverse order ("iro"),
• "@" associated with, identified with, assimilated with ("liêntưởng", "đồnghoá")
• "©" archaic, old usage, obsolete
• "®" contraction, sound dropped, fallen, or deleted
• "§", cf., compare
• "¶", |P, pattern of sound change
• "%" possible alternate
• "&" in combination with
• "/" under the condition of, being conditioned by,
• "\" alternatively, under the influence of, or the same "/"
• "[xxx]" exact phonetic value, else, indicating an insertion to further explain the case under discussion,
• "/xxx/" approximate phonetic value,
• /ã/, /ẽ/, /õ/, etc. nasalized vowels,
• "X- , -Y-, Z-" capital letters signify arbitrary consonants of similar class of articulation in phonetic transcriptions,
• "=" equal to, equivalent of,
• "(?)" unidentifiable or unknown element or source,
• "|" "syllabic divider" or "hononymous or parallel elements", also, the same as || a separator
• "{x- ~ y-}" and/or "~" sound change patterns, also, being conditioned by
• “*” and “**” hypothetically reconstructed (* ancient — denoting the AD period to the Middle Age — and ** archaic, Proto- form — BC and maybe dated as far back as to the pre-historic age) sound”.

Since the resemblance of both V and C in terms of linguistic traits, to be discussed later throughout this paper, in many cases, is closer than those of a great number of ST languages as they appear to C, I will use the term Sinitic-Vietnamese (VS) or the HánNôm, including Nôm (those supposedly indigenous or "pure" Vietic, but actually not, Vietnamese words, some variation of quasi-Sino-Vietnamese, which may also include all other Nôm characters written with C components), to signify the C linguistic attributes that exist in those V words, mostly, of C origin. It is because for those etyma under investigation the V counterparts of those C roots are holistically conformable to all phonetic, phonological, semantic, syntactic, lexical, and other linguistic characteristics such as the tonal system that exist in the C grammar. However, as I have said, the closer they resemble, chances are that they are loaned.

In the lexical aspect, in contrast with VS, is the term Sino-Vietnamese (SV), or HánViệt as it is commonly used mostly to refer to the systematic V pronunciation of massive C vocabulary essentially used in modern V. Analogically SV words are just like those of Latin or Greek origin in English. There is a consensus that SV is a slight variation of Middle Chinese (MC) sounds. Sometimes the term SV loosely embraces some other variants of SV lexicons found in the Old Chinese (OC) (also called Archaic Chinese (ArC)), the Ancient Chinese (AC) (sometimes called the Early Middle Chinese (EMC)) loanwords or Tiền-HánViệt (“the pre-Sino-Vietnamese” (pre-SV)), and their variants in V which are found dated as far back to the proto-Chinese (pro-C) source, for instance,

• (1) bụt, (2) Phật, (3) vãi: 佛  Fó (SV Phật) [ M 佛 fó < MC but, phut < OC *bjət, *phjət | Note: from 'Buddha' (Sanskrit), cf. VS 'Bụt' > SV 'Phật' | Cant.: fat42, Wenzhou 溫州 : vai42, ]: Buddha, buddhist, buddhist monk,
• (1) vợ, (2) phụ, (3) bụa: 婦  fù (SV phụ) [ M 婦 fù < MC bjəw < *OC bjəʔ ] : wife, lady, woman,
• (1) chài, (2) lưới, (3) chàilưới, (4) là: 羅 luó (SV la) [ @& '羅 luó (la)' + '羅 luó (lưới)' | M 羅 luó < MC lɑ < OC *jraih ]: fish by net, Also:, bird-net, net,
• (1) cộ, (2) xe, (3) xecộ, (4) cỗ, (5) cỗxe: 車 chē (SV xa) [ @& '車 chē (xe)' + '車 chē (cộ)' ~ M 車 chē, jū < MC kʊ < OC *kla | Note: that "cỗxe" could have also orginated from Cant. 架車 /kache/. (車) ],

etc.

In this paper, except where the term SV clearly applies to words as best exhibited in a "HánViệt từđiển", i.e., a Sino-Vietnamese dictionary, the VS lexicons will include all mono- and dissyllabic words of C origin, including those that appear and sound like a SV term, for example,

• cuộc in côngcuộc (< 工作 gōngzuò ‘task’)

is not a SV word, but it is an innovation of the sound change, by association, from

• 作 zuò [tswɔ4] ‘task’ to cuộc [kwok8] [ M 作 zuō, zuó, zuò < MC cʌk < OC *ɕa:k | FQ 則落 ],

merely a local development in V. In all probability it, of which its characteristic similarity will be extended to other words of the same nature, was originally derived either from a vernacular form of Northern C dialects (represented by Mandarin (M)) by changing [tsw-] to [kw-] and by keeping the old final labiovelar [-ɔk] as demonstrated by the Cant. /dzwɔk/. Another scenario is that it could be a result of association of the sound and meaning of cục [kʊkʷ] (局 jú), as in 世局 shìjú (SV thếcục) # 'cuộcđời', which I call the 'sandhi process of assimilation', or association. This phenomenon has commonly taken place in the V etymology of C origin, to be discussed in detail later.

As illustrated in the above examples and throughout this paper, I will provide with related C characters to be accompanied by Pinyin (拼音) for the purpose of identifying the related sounds even though in many circumstances Pinyin transcription is enough and actually less distracting than those illustrated C characters constructed with jiăjiē 假借 (SV giảtá, also a mechanism in creating Chinese-based Nôm characters, hence, deciphering the embedded-phonetic code), or loangraphs. Loangraphs in C mean something like homophones having different meanings such as English ‘yard’, ‘glass’, ‘page’, ‘lie’ and the like. Pinyin is the People's Republic of China’s official romanization system utilized to transcribe Mandarin or “Pŭtōnghuà” 普通話 and it now has been widely adapted thoughout the world, including Taiwan as lately as of recency.

For exact sound transcriptions International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols are mostly used to transcribe dialectal, ancient sounds, as well as precise phonetic value (to be put in square brackets “[xxx]”, as opposed to the two slashes "/xxx /" to indicate only an approximate sound value) in certain circumstances to emphasize the true phonetic values of cited lexicons, such as the case of V dung , that is [jʊŋʷ1 ] /joung/, but not [dung], or thìn [t'ɤn4], /tʰin21/, /thein/, but not [thin4], or or thu [t'ʊ1] /thou/, /tʰu33/, but not exactly [thu1] /thu/, etc. for the sake of clarity where subtle phonemes need to be identified as dipthongs for a comparative analysis (cf. tin [tin1] /tin/, /tɪn/, not [tɤn1] /tein/). (音) To be easier for typography, the above cited symbols are also transcribed as [ow] and [ejn] or /ou/ and /ein/, respectively, whenever true sound values could not be mistaken for something else. This way of transcriptions will be applied to other sound values, too, which will be noted and illustrated as needs arise.

In fact, with the IPA transcriptions, in many cases it will be easier to see the relationship of those exact V phonetic values with those of C characters than with conventionalized pinyin transcriptions, for example, d for [t], t for [t'] or /th/, or r for /j/, or "gu" and "ku" are actually pronounced [ku] and [k'u], not [gu] and [ku], respectively, etc.

This mechanism is also utilized by Pulleyblank (1984) in his reconstruction work of OC with his discussion of the possibility of certain phonetic values of OC which were seen as vaguely described in the ancient C materials. Also, to avoid typographical complications and confusion with IPA diacritical symbols, just as illustrated in the above examples, different tonal indications of numbers 1 to 9 to follow after each sound transcription, may be used to specifically designate for each of respective C dialects, such as Fukienese (Fuzhou), Tchiewchow (Chaozhou), Hainanese, or other languages, i.e., Daic, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. Per convention, in fact, these tonal symbols are commonly used in transcribing Cantonese (Cant.), Fukienese, and other C dialects and even in V, of which tones specifically are numebred according to the old traditional 8-toned, or to be exact, 4 tones in 2 registers, classification as described in Guăngyùn 廣韻, Jerry Norman (1988. p.55) Chinese, and other historical linguistic books including modern Nguồngốc và Quátrình Hìnhthành Cáchđọc Âm HánViệt ('The Origin and Transformational Process of the Sino-Vietnamese Pronunciation') by Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1979, 2001). Specifically, they are:

However, the tonal numbered system will be used sparingly only when essentially needed, mainly to avoid confusion with the exact tonal values that are commonly used with other C dialects, each of which may carry a slight different tonal value even with the same numbering denotation.

As a result, in transcribing V sound and tonal values, its modern diacritics will be the first choice to be used in combination with the IPA system, e.g., [à], [ả], [ã], etc. if they are not to be confused with other phonetic IPA values such as a nasalized /ã/. Therefore, for a precise tone value of V or Mandarin the reader can always refer to Quốcngữ diacritics or Pinyin tonal marks, respectively, e.g., ā, á, ă, à, a, etc., which certainly take on different tonal values than those of V diacritical look-alikes.

However, there will be cases of tonal omissions. The reason for that is the tonal indication is their irrelevancy which the author believes that the tones of many SV and VS words, like the C dialectal counterparts, must have been changed completely after having gone through so many cycles of inevitable tonal deviations over the span of past hundreds of years. In many cases they might have changed back to the exact values of the initial ones. This phenomenon is found common in C historical linguistics in par with other phonological aspects such as initials or syllabic finals.

Phonemically, like their initial and medial counterparts in V, such as ch- [c], kh- [k'], ph- [pf], r- [rh], th- [t'], tr- [ʈ], and nh -[ɲ], sometimes to be transcribed herein as c-, kh-, f-, r-, th-, tr-, and ɲ- or nh-, respectively, and -uy - [wej] or -iê - [iə], which are transcribed in IPA, respectively, as [wej] and [iə], not [wi] and [ie], ending consonants in V orthography do not always represent exact phonetic values, especially those ending with unaspirated —p [-p], -t [-t], -ch [-jt], -c [-k], and -nh [-jŋ], which will be assigned with the IPA symbols -p, -t, -jt, -k, -jŋ, respectively. Variant labiovelars preceded by a rounded vowel, e.g. o- or ɔ-, or a glide medial -w-, will be transcribed in IPA either as -kw, -wk or -kʷ for [kʷ], either -wŋ, -ŋw, -ŋʷ for [ŋʷ ], respectively. Similarly ng of the velar [ŋ] will also be transcribed as both [ŋ] or [ng]. This convention applies equally to Cant. or any other C dialects that share the same articulation.

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B) Rainwash on the Austroasiatic Western front

Before we get to the Zen of our Vietic matter, let's position our stand first to make sure we know where we are heading from here. Actually anybody who know well of history of the Asian eastern regions would grasp the whole rationalization of the following argumerntation quickly. That is, in effect, the Sinitic has the beef with the AA on the native habitat where the Yue originated and spread out southward to Malay and Indonesian islands; otherwise, we will never be able to explain the existence of the Vietnam's Dongson-style bronze drums — also found in today's China's Sichuan Province — excavated in those regions where the AA theorists said the Austroasictic migrated northward, a faulty claim which obviously goes against evidences found in 3000-year old history writen in Chinese and recent regional excavations by archaeologists. Therefore an explanation for the AA theoretical impostors, like their predecessors, is their ignorance and laziness in studying Eastern history and just wanted to start something new without exerting much efforts to make a shortcut, that will be exactly what I could do with in theorizing on the origin of today's Europeaean peoples who I would state that their ancestors had come from the Middle East regions where Iraq is now located, who had been forced to flee from the aggression of the Tartars from southern Siberia since the emergence of the Chinese in the ancient times! But don't worry, I just make a hint of how the AA hypothesis has been built and will not bombard you with this argument. Let's focus on what AA camp has had to offer.

I suppose you know what I mean by "rainwash" here in the contextual conspiracy of the AA camp. For the Viets of Vietnam on a philosophical perspective, or "the Zen of the Vietic matter", the AA-theoried mindset has elevated gradually into popular rapport now after years of brainwash with everything good by Western measures. They might be right telling the Viets where their ancestral roots were from. Conspiracy or not, unfortunately, on the one hand, the sole recognition from the Viets of the principal purport of AA theory on the MK origin (AA-MK) of V is not simply a matter of whether or not to accept its newly generated supposition in general, but that implicates a bitter acknowledgement that a sense of their own national identity, or nationality, might be at stake. The history of Vietnam has been rewritten again and again as dictated by rulers of the country to reflect changing viewpoints on Sino-Vietnamese relationship; hence theories on the origin of their people have also changed accordingly regardless of history. In general, the winner writes history. Such degrading and threatening sentiment would then pass down to individuals of the nation's next generations — as best exemplified by current events in the early first-half of the 21st century — and they become part of the popular race in quests of the truth of the matter. As always the Viets are particularly obsessed with and very proud of their legendary past of over 4000 years on becoming statehood for their fellow Yue out of the "Hundreds of the Yue", or BáchViệt (BV, 百越 BăiYuè, 'Viet', Cantonese 'Yuet', or 越, 鉞, 粵 Yuè), specifically, the NamViệt State, or 南越國 NánYuè Guó, meaning literally "the State of the Southern Yue" and that is also the meaning of the contemporary nation of Vietnam. Historically, Vietnam is the only independent country still existing, ever, of the descendants of the ancient Yue people while their other "states", e.g., Changsha, Guangdong, or Fujian, etc., had long been either Sinicized, or absorbed into minority autonomous regions specifically designated for those populous natively ethnic goups such as the Daic or Zhuang people who are still living and inhabiting areas of China South, mostly in its vast mountainous terrains, within vicinities of those provinces such as Guangxi and Yunnan, in modern China in contemporary era.

In the context of Hoanam 華南 Huánán, geographically called 'China South' for historical southern areas of China, the modern term "Vietnam" could be loosely translated as "the Viets of the South", which could also imply the concept "Việtbắc"; that is, "the Viets of the North", which might not exist, only a speculative entity to pair those southern Yue with those ancient Yue habitats in today's China's northern area where Hubei and Anhui provinces are located, stretching all the way to the northeastern peninsular Shandong Province.

Nevertheless, unlike those long lost Yue cousins in China South, it is no doubt that for the Vietnamese the old inferno of deep obsession and overly pride of the Yue ancestral heritage are still being funneled inside the heart of those younger Vietnamese the same way as those of older generations (who had mostly died of fighting in previous wars one after another). Those nationally simmering flames have been re-energized, yet they kept returning to haunt them time and time again with increasingly intriguing questions about their ancestral origin, hence their language, and they feel that AA-MK threats are so eminently real and imminent.

Symbolistically the proportion of racial transmutation could be a formulated for the Viets by assigning some wights to its properties as (4Y6Z8HCMK) based on historical records such as census data of population increasing from 400,000 to 980,000 people — Annamese (2Y3Z4H) — in Han's three prefectures of Jiaozhi 交趾 (Giaochỉ), Jiuzhen 九真 (Cửuchân), and Rinan 日南 (Nhậtnam), respectively, during 100 year period from 111 BC to 11 BC, and historical records showing that in Qin Danysty NamViet's 15,000 to 30,000 unmarried women were forced to marry with Qin foot solders (Lu Shih-Peng, 1964, Eng. p. 11, Chin. p. 47). The composition of their racial transmutation is much more similar like that of Han-Chinese, that is, a process during which the early proto-Chinese (X) intermingled with the proto-Yue aboriginals (YY) — on the proportional scale of 2 to 1 — to become parts of ancient Yue indigenous populace represented by (ZZZ) in those ancient states of Wu, Yue, Chu, etc., who were later to be called the Han symbolized as (HHHH) — that is, 3 x Z, 4 x H, repectively — in a unified Middle Kingdom of the Han Dynasty, or a united states of China, analogously. Composition of the later Han-Chinese as (X2Y3Z4H), in effect, are results of mutated racial mixture of (X)(YY)(ZZZ)(HHHH), so to speak, while racial composition of the Viets is made of the proto-Yue (YY) and later Yue (ZZZ) to become the proto-Vietic Viets (YYZZZ), ancestors of the Vietic, or early Annamese (2Y3Z4H), who would later become Vietnamese (4Y6Z8H+CMK) of the modern Vietnam where C is for Cham and MK Mon-Khmer, a componental double of (2Y3Z4H) plus (CK) taking place with a series of similar events that had brought about the same composition of the Fukienese or Cantonese populace, that is, they had the same racial transmutation as that of the Vietic mixture during the same period of Han Dynasty. If it was so, then symbolistic formula for AA could be assigned as (6YCMK).

Concurrently, a whole new contemporary episode theorized by AA-MK initiates has painted a picture of a people who used to visualize and see themselves quite differently. Those AA scientifically-minded specialists could not care much less about factual data, let alone spiritual values for any particular issue, say, they would not buy into interpretive numbers such as 18 reigns ruled by legendary King Hungs of the Viets, One of the ironies of history of Vietnam is that her people do not know how to say the names of their revered legendary ancestral King correctly! That is, King Hùng or King Lạc? Two of the important, but intriguing, names are those of the kings called King "Hùng" 雄 (M Xióng) and King "Lạc" 雒 (M Luó). "Hùng" is the SV pronunciation mainly based on 'ĐạiViệt Sửký Toànthư" (Complete History of DaiViet) by "Ngô Sĩ Liên" in which "Lạc" 雒 might have been mistaken as "Hùng" 雄 as recorded in Chinese historical books. which has left a large gap of hundreds of years in the speculative span of more than 4000 years since, supposedly, the birth of their nation, simply all numbers not adding up logically, and so on. In the meanwhile their national history has been rewritten one way or another; otherwise, the matter must have been settled by now for a people whose members are sharing a common language and should not have been easily disturbed until the last century. For such complexity now the whole populace of Vietnam in their collective subconsciousness feel pressing threats encroaching with ideological brainstorms with AA amenities from Western-bound intruders who did not hesitate to forge forward aggressively. Metaphysically their fear is not surrealistic, the reality in the physical world is analogous to transformation of shows of deployment of invasive forces as having been demonstrated by true historical events such as that of what had been triumphantly orchestrated by the Western powers in a showdown between new and old forces with their fierce attacks against the two most symbolistic defensive frontlines of Eastern culture by then, the Annam's Hue Imperial Walled Citadel and the Qing's Peking's Forbidden City, both having taken place almost concurrently in the late 19th century. In our modern time, on the Western front, the popular collective consciousness has sensed that the true incentive underlining the enemies' ideological guises is intellectualistic dominion in the name of progress in humanity in disciplines such as historical linguistics or archaeaology. They have already sprung into actions with multiple cultural prongs including that of imposition of the supposedly superior western intellectuality on those complexed inferiors. Their firm postulates have challenged the credibility of their existing oral history of the well-establised nation being passed down by one generation after another. In other words, the ideological AA-MK predators have somehow colonized the way the Viets perceive their own national history given historical linguistics being viewed as a historical science, exactly just like what the "Chinese" had done to them before, which had, ironically, become impartial parts of their national mentality and identity.

The agony endured by the Viets who have undergone such process of spiritual AA colonization is comparably just like that of forced compromise of one's own Eastern philosophy on 'the Way of life' ('Nhânsinhquan' 人生觀 or Dao 道), for instance, to be replaced by different values of an eminent Western philosophy while characteristically their approaches to and views of respective values are not of the same nature. Analogically for the Viets ancestral worship is always sacred, the belief spiritually comparable to that of forming religious perception of God, even with such a nominal concept that sHe, the one and only one, apparently is not revered the same way by different religions and, accordingly, as we ought to readily admit, and of the whole system their behaviorism historically has fallen short of those Buddhist followers with much less of aggressiveness. From such analogy we could also further suplement it in terms of economics for those with a practical mind to appreciate the whole motives behind the AA-MK-ism, that the whole mentality is just like that of abatement of one's own traditional pop-n-mom and state-run economic system — inarguably that used to be ways of life in both Vietnam and China — to adopt the free-wheeled capitalism originating from the West where in effect Western ways mostly could work much more efficiently. Unfortunately they are not always truthful in essence to humanities and the adaptors are still timidly selective. In other words, AA-MK affair could end as, metaphorically, an eastern arranged marriage with western-style gown.

So in any case, even if you think you have understood well enough the underlined purposes of the foregoing prologue, and, to be on the right track, you must be alert for other hidden threats with tempting affiliation as well, i.e., enticements of being prestigiously identified with great ancient cultures ever existing on earth that have left vestiges of highly developed civilization are so great to ignore, and in this case the temptation of affiliating oneself with the Khmer Kingdom who built the great wonder of Angkor Wat, hence, the MK in the AA-MK scheme. Do not take this warning lightly, given that Dongsonian bronze drums are of such lure that even though the Khmer did make it and they are found not only in 'Dongson' but also throughout Indonesian islands. The AA theorists do not care about that but the Austronesian camp comes to embrace them. More than once the Vietnamese archeologists accept credit for not only the bronzes but also artifacts excavated thoughout the lately acquired suthern lands, claimed they all were created by their great ancestors even though their ancestral linkage to the other respects of the Ốc-Eo culture and civilization is zeroed. If that were the case, theorization on the AA and the Yue hypotheses soon would not be mutually exclusive then.

For practical purposes with regards to the aforementioned, I could not cut loose into deeper arguments, philosophically too cumbersome to fit in this introductory space. Nevertheless you can actually comprehend all once you are actually already prepared yourself a true open mind by rebooting it by means of visualization with the help of the illustrated maps herein, then meditate on the Vietic ancestral spirituality like praticing that of Zen, and, Graphically collections of all the unmodified maps and illustrations incorporated herein, ironically most of them having been prepared by the AA-MK advocates themselves, will sufficiently tell you a whole lot more, but a different story. You could however vividly visualize the picto-geography and will realize that in effect all its history roads diverged from some "Yue thoroughfare" in the upper northern sphere occupying most of China South areas, not deep down from the southermost Indochinese peninsula. breaking away from the AA-MK hypothesis afterward if your mindset has already deeply engaged before your encounter with a Sinitic theory. Only then could you appreciate the essence of Vietic, or VS, core matters as to be highlighted primly in this chapter via reinstatements of an Yue ethnological and geo-historical setting for a VS theory, and be prepared for argumentation on controversial issues starting from fundermental groundwork of the AA theory on the MK origin (AA-MK) of the V language.

As we all know, the already well-publicized AA camp currently is still holding out on high ground for its MK theory on the origin of V; however, it is no reason for much ado for all antitheses raised here. The whole sync simply had been exhileratedly jazzed up just from a personal experience as great discoveries of a lifetime when I was on a roll in the expedition in the VS field, which had continually led me to discover more than 400 fundamental words in a wide range of Sino-Tibetan (ST) etymologies also proved to be cognate to those in V including many etyma used to be emphathetically grouped within MK realm by AA-MK specialists. Based on such discoveries, many V basic words with MK cognates mainly have originated from linguistic contacts. For quite some time now AA-MK makeovers have been presented by a few prominent field-players, such as Maspero or Thomas, have come into spotlights with MK crossovers in all shapes and sounds and all fitted nicely in western structural framework at the right time when Western ideas were enjoying high popularity reckoned for their novelty in scientific methodologies, which were effectively utilized in many scholarly disciplines and have brought about numerous academically methological breakthroughs, including historical linguistics started with languages in the Indo-European linguistic family, in the East from the late 19th century onward. Alors, as a result, their views have been echoed repeatedly by followers, rediculously even for many fallacies simply because they were stated by westeners. Ironically scholarships of their fellows have never enjoyed such acclamations with high respects. That will explain why this paper is being written wholy in English.

As a matter of fact, personally I could only view the AA theory on MK origin of V imposed on its identity matter as a bullpucky act and my counter reactions are just a spontaneous temperament during the course of my putting together the notes for this VS study. Since the early 1990's while working on theorization of my Sinitic hypothesis, I have been constantly reminded verbally by some veterans in the field of the fact that it would be extremely difficult to uproot an AA cornerstone to debunk its old myths. On recognition of the existence of a real formidable obstacle and for such apparent reason I shift my goal now, not to court the veterans but try to educate newcomers in this VS philological field should they happen to come accross right at their first encounter with these newly discovered Sinitic evidences while they have still not been contaminated by the AA whatsoever. Hopefully their focus will be hooked firmly onto a new anchor before being awash with MK currents and then carried away with fallacies. It is so said because these conclusions were drawn from growing debates among netters in related V linguistic forums on the world wide web ever since my first postings of this preliminary research for more than a decade already.

On possible changes in acquisition of knowledge in our modern age, internet-savvied learners of V historical linguistics nowadays would normally scout online for quick , but unfortunately mixed, results virtually on any related topics. With only a few keystrokes and hits, alors, they would become either shrewd or rainwashed with teeming data, which would have left many revered theorists envy holding on to their books cold in the dark which many of us do read but not available online at all. On the negative effect of that phenomenon, cognitive inception of our newcomers with their lifelong acquisitive discipline would be easily molded by predetermined suppositions, mostly from theorized and bridged versions of unverifiably-mixed articles on the www usually in forms of very short, but often detrimental, pieces of information. For such a matter, specifically, the same process would later repeat itself and dictate their prominence in subsequent querying patterns on the V subject matters, which would become order of the day, for example, by simply keying in keywords such as "Austroasiatic and Viet", "Khmer and Viet", and so on, covertly in their subconsciousness without their being bothered to know anything else, the returns are factually associated with what they have learnt, and probably conditioned, from the very first internet hits, whether it is accurate or not. Naturally humans tend to hear only what fits into their existing belief, usually formed at an early cognitive stage when they were first exposed to a new realm of knowledge, which mostly would have taken roots at one's preliminary encounter in an unknown field. Love strikes at first sight, so to speak. It is those first googled returns, usually within the first few lines, of queries about AA-MK that would be all it needs to impact permanently on a blank spot of imumerous innocent brains. Therefore for those hi-tech readers and newcomer scholars, in our modern time there appears a dragging force that is resisting different views offered only in lengthy printed books, especifically those posted on the internet, and there are not many readers patiently spending time to read a long dissertation online nowadays. Just relate this matter to your own child in terms of how s/he pick up knowledge in a new field, then you would see how enermously scary it is the www will dominate and control our life, including spreading fallacies globally.

In my case personally, I myself used to follow AA-MK map paths from beginning in my early V college years and believed in what predecessors said as many young readers do now. However, those were the days when I, like other people, mostly acquired knowledge from books after school, to be read one at a time. At a later time I have emgered as a netter and been a guru myself to change the course of currents and I have to compete with the influx of triumphant AA-MK 'theorists' in the cyberspace. Restrospectively, even though I have long disengaged myself from sacred gospels preached by the old school of AA, including those of my own respectable teachers — some being the most noted world-class linguists in V of our time — permanent dens had put in my nerve and they would still epidemically scare the heck out of me before I could say a word about an apposing Sinitic theory. Over the time thoughout my own venture in the field of etymological philology of VS that I started some 25 years ago I have become an initiate warrior myself doing the retooling of reconstructive mechanics for some traditional historical phonological linguistics and, no need for heeding on any trails left by veterans in the field any longer, I have found something much more interesting pointing explicitly instead to the Yue direction of the Sinitic route in the ST linguistic family, it being totally contrary to what the AA camp has been trumpeting about all along these years.

A rose is a rose is a rose. With my views drastically changed after my discovery of ST richly basic vocabulary stock I would imagine the same enlightenment that has elated me would also entertain newcomers with all excitement of revelation and it could even serve as a wake-up call to those oldtimers in V historical linguistics who are still resting on business-as-usual MK routine inside the same old AA framework without knowing that old Sinitic linguistic spectra of V have changed. In fact their new insights could unveil a whole new horizon, with it, for instance, if you review again geographical divides where the MK roots originated in the southeasternmost stretches of land in the Asian continent you may now see that they are quite different from those northern regions in China South where Vietnam and her speakers had logistically started and completed their migratory journey beginning long time ago.

Map of DaiViet in the 11th century
(Source: multiple sources on the internet)

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With such critical points in mind, in this research, hence, on the one hand, I will counter the hyperous AA-MK theorists with my solid findings of V basic etyma, of which equally matched V and C forms — not just quantitatively limited to those MK lexical items usually listed in each and every publication by AA authors — are consistently in turn found universally cognate to those of other ST etymologies and, at the same time, each form complemented with subtle traits which are certainly absent from those V basic share in the MK lexical stock as we happen to know of(T). For such matter as it might be argued, the reason for all similarities is inevitable consequences of dominantly C cultural factors that had perpetually permeated into the V language throughout the history of 1000 years of Chinese occupation of Vietnam and beyond. Insomuch as factually stated, nevertheless, even though Vietnam adopted the Chinese feudalist model after her independence in 936 AD, what actually happened afterward is neutral — that is, without much of consciously human intervention, unlike that of the cases of Japan, for instance — continuity of what has been going on for hundreds of years, not that at all a repetitive process of a series of the same events as they had previously occurred in the other two East Asian Confucian countries, i.e. Korea and Japan. "Japan had much more intently imported the Confucian system and whole-heartedly adopted it during China's Tang Dynasty." Japan had much more intently imported the Confucian system and whole-heartedly adopted it during China's Tang Dynasty. Similarly in the same perspective, 20 million plus people of the Zhuang minority, another descended branch of the Yue, inside China have purportedly strived to adapt the Chinese ways for a long time. As a result, linguistically, even though their language contains distinctively hereditary strains as manifested in 2 sets of vocabularies of which neither matches those C characteristics in VS etyma on such a massive scale even though, interestingly, their variant speeches are affirmatively cascaded into the ST linguistic family without a single argumentative shot. In comparison, after so many centuries no matter how strong C cultural influences have asserted on any people, those births given by a "surrogate mother" would not of course make different peoples or languages be genetically related unless they are completely racially mutated like in the cases of the Han and Viet, and in another case, inaddition to genetic mutation, one language have become history for having been totally replaced by the other as in the case of Manchurian-Mandarin in contemporary China; other similar cases can be easily found in histories of those Latin nations and their citizens in contemporary era.

For the case of the Viet, we should specially take into consideration of additional historical factors such as what makes up Vietnam as a nation with all the racial composition of her populace, including, for the purpose of comparative resconstruction in the linguistic perspective, 54 minority groups and their speeches altogether at the same time. It is important for a historical linguist to remember that, geographically, Annam, as such called since the Wu (220AD) of the Three Kingdom period, in reality, had not expanded that much from her ancient northern motherland in areas crossing perimeters of the ancient NamViet (NanYue) State in China South to stretches of fertile land further beyond the Red River Delta of today's Vietnam's northern part. What are known as southern territories as marked by contemporary boundaries below south of the 16th parallel had been annexed to the nation only after the 12th century by the territorial concession from the ancient Champa Kingdom. Curiously enough, such plain fact alone would keep those V and MK genetic and linguistic affiliation at bay because the MK isoglosses that bordered the lately acquired southern and southwestern mountainous regions had already existed long before the Annamese, that is, the earlier ancestral "Vietnamese" pioneers, originally having been inhabiting only areas in Northern part of Vietnam and China South as forementioned, had migrated there. That is to say, their speech that contains the new mixture of several southern vocabulary stocks must have been formed accordingly since that 12th century period onward.

What has been exaggerated much about the MK inheritance by the AA theorists is not much different from those bogus claims of ancestral ownership for those cultural relics from the ancient Sahuỳnh to Ốc-Eo civilizations, which were unearthed in today's Vietnam central and southern regions. Many of those claims mostly have been made by Vietnamese authors, who have habitually forgotten the timelines of Vietnam's history and just repeated what were said by archaeologists who have even gone that far to accept all the given credits for those aboriginal cultural artifacts as if they had been actually created by their "Vietnamese ancestral forefathers". They might actually not even know the first Vietnamese resettlers had actually set their feet in those southwesternmost regions in the old Khmer Kingdom only as recently as merely 400 years ago. For national pride they simply pretend that aboriginals were ancestors of the present Vietnamese who happen to live on the land of those ancient creators of such artistically and skillfully cultural artifacts. In other words, their "forefathers" had inhabited those regions for thousands of years before the first arrivals of Annamese descendants, or Vietnamese as being called until the early 20th century, after they took over the Khmer western flank south of their country's boder.

Such proud acclamation, unsurprisingly, sounds similar like other old cases as well, such as claims on ancestral heritage of the culture of Dongsonian bronze drums which have been also widely found in vast areas spreading all over Southeast Asian landscape. Amusingly enough, the latecomers, i.e., Vietnamese, do not know a thing about any techniques on how to make them or to relate them to those similar drums still being used by the Zhuang (Tráng, or Nùng in V) people. To defend their ignorance the Han invaders were to blame for the annihilation of their original culture two thousand years ago, so to speak. If we take such claim at its face value for their being truly heirs of bronze-cultured peoples presumably as of the ancient Yue, then the whole paradigm should put the Vietnamese squarely with the Zhuang — who are at present time still using such bronze drums to perform ancestral sacrifice ceremonials, and they even have a meaningful folklore depicting the origin of their bronze drums — in the Vietmuong equation. Unfortunately, the truth is that the Vietnamese are not descendants of all those creators of all the above cultural artifacts as claimed because they are not of the same race originally. Creators of such broze drums found across Southeast Asia had been the former proto-Yue — hence later being renamed "Austroasiatic" by the AA theorists — and then whoever ever had migrated from the north and lived there 10,000 years or more ago had nothing to do with those later Yue who had become parts of the transmutational process that genetically formed the later Han and Viets. So said, it is because the forementioned fallacies are not simply a matter of feeling good. Well, it is good to have inherited all the good things from those "forefathers"; however, the above arguments will lead to another debate: "Vietnamese, who are they?" Characteristically, composition and history of the V language should have developed in the very same manner as that of the evolutional path of its speakers racially. Just like the names given to them, for each period in history, similarly applied to the names of their people, either the Yue, the Viet, the Vietmuong, the Annamese, or the Vietnamese, they should be what is implicated in each name itself without all the good things as forementioned.

Dongson Bronze Drums found in Indonesia
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dong_Son_drums)

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With regards to linguistic affiliation, in effect, had Vietnam not established her independence from the Tang Dynasty since the 10th century and were still a prefecture of China's subsequent dynasties thereafter till these days, the V language, even with its present appearance, undoubtedly would have been dubbed as just another C dialect, specifically just like what Fukienese (Amoy) and Cantonese (Cant.) are classified, by the very same western linguistic world which has grouped V into AA today. Comparatively the development of V, Amoy, and Cant., all presumed having evolved from the same proto-Yue language originally, had gone different ways each since 202 BC when territories of the NamViet State (南越國 NánYuè Guó, including today's Vietnam's Red River Delta and her northernmost regions, and China's Guangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, and Fujian provinces) were annexed by the newly emerged Han Dynasty after the defeat of the Qin Empire — hence, hereupon the name "China" has been used in the continuity of its history until now no matter which dynasty was ruling that empire in any particular period. In fact, V basic etyma still show strikingly similarities in what remains in their common Yue linguistic substratum. For example, it is undeniable that items such as "con" (child) 子 (仔) Amoy /kẽ/, "mợ" (mother) 母 mǔ Hainanese /maj/, "biết" (know) (?) Hai. /bat/, "soài" (mango) (?) Amoy /swãj/, "dê" (goat) 羊 Chaozhou /jẽw/, "gàcồ" (rooster) 雞公 jīgōng Hai. /kōjkoŋ/, "gàmái" (hen) 雞母 jīmǔ Hai. /kōjmaj/, etc., are of the same Yue roots. While the other two Yue isoglosses had been siniticized much more rapidly in dialectal actualization of Han and Tang speeches, respectively, than what of the same process had happened to V after its most important county of Giaochi (or 交趾 Jiaozhi) became one of nine others in Han Dynasty (111BC), the development of the V language thereon had gone south separately with its mixed speakers, a blend of the aboriginals and the racially mixed Han officials and their foot soldiers from the north. They all along the way inevitably stumbled upon some other foreign elements on its emigrating routes.

If you have problems to reconcile that fact with subsequent rationalization, you may want to stop reading now whether you are a linguist or not; otherwise, let's continue and pause here momentarily for a short note regarding the syntactically reverse order (stem + modifier) of their syllables in their structurally lexical formation of those cited dissyllabic examples above in comparison with those of other C dialects. Their etyma were fossilized in the Yue substratum at some point on the archaic timeline through which a VS historical linguist in the ST camp may excitedly exclaim that those C dialects and V are all from the same root, not to mention distinctive C cultural factors that have strongly influenced the V language such as Confucianism, e.g., sound changes due to taboo such as avoidance of the use of sound homonymous to the royal names or even resprectable elders, or adoption of C scripts for well over 2000 years in the past, e.g., transcribing the Nom by using C characters where dialectal sounds were concurrently adopted such as "Nôm" 喃 and "Nam" 南, "tử" and "tý" for 子, "xú" and "sửu" for 丑, or "tơ" and "ty" for 絲, etc. Naturally, in any cases, the V and C linguistic similarities are still credibly the closest, especially in their syllabic structure and syntax, closeness in semantics, equalness in ranges of tonal registered values, or use of lexical classifiers, grammatical prepositions and conjunctions, and so on. Compare the overtly straightforward state of C loanwords borrowed into Japanese and Korean and you will see that their intimately associated attributes are missing and that sound of those C loanwords had to be heavily modified one way or another tonelessly to fit into local speech habits.

On the other hand, nevertheless, unarguably specialists of V in the MK camp of the AA are apparently ha-ha in gaining a stronghold on their offensive position while more and more instutional linguistic graduates keep joining forces. The more the merrier idiom seems to apply here, and undoubtedly the larger crowd has made this happen. The AA theorists hence appear to be quite confidently complacent with their theoretical interpretation, as said, built on the plausibility of scores of V basic words considered to be totally in agreement with those etymologies found present across several different MK glosses. It should be noted that they have been distributed scatteringly, though, spanning unequally MK linguistic sub-branches. That is, every MK language may or may not carry the similar forms. In the meanwhile, in order to nail on this lexical aspect as their strong base, attention of our AA specialists has been avertly working on lexical surveys and categorization of etymologies ("etymology harvesting") among Vietmuong's sibling speeches, e.g., Muong, Ruc, Thavung, etc., equating them with those of MK linguistic sub-family, e.g., Banahric, Katuic, etc.

Etymologically, in general, as for those nearly identical phonologies of all languages considered, one caveat, though, behold at the fact that similar lexical forms exist in different languages, as perfectly cognate as they appear, goes against an old wisdom which states simply to the effect that the closer their sounds mirror each other phonetically the remoter they are in terms of genetic affiliation for those etyma posited as of the same root, especially of those of tonality versus tonelessness. Etymological linguistic sciences, if there exists such a field, are neither that of bio-technology nor of any natural sciences for the same matter at any measures, seriously.

As a result, the development of V language, as we shall see more later in the next chapters, has evolved in concordance with racial formation of its speakers (4Y6Z8HCMK). Historically, inhabitants (2Y3Z2H) from northern regions around Độngđìnhhồ in present China's Hunan Province had emigrated en masse to the Red River Delta areas in today's northern Vietnam and racially mixed with aboriginals (MK) and later resettlers (2Y3Z2H) who had been there before them (2Y3Z2H). Thence coming into the picture are the Vietmuong ancestors of those who fled to the southwestern mountainous regions in the wake of advancement of the Han's army from the 3rd century B.C. where their Vietmuong (VM) speeches had been put in direct contacts with those local MK speakers (2YMK) at a later timeline. That is one of the reasons why those VM dialects appear so close to those of MK languages. If you will ever happen to visit Muong villages in Hoabinh Province in the north and those of MK in Gialai and Kontum provinces on the Central Highlands, observe their speeches carefully, you will easily understand the above rationalization. Until these days such close contacts are still intact and recurring and rarely the Vietnamese need to borrow any local lexicons, even from their close Muong ancient siblings, but the reverse scenario has been always true. Despite of such important historical factors, it is of no secrecy of the fact that AA pioneers have focused mainly on the task of compiling the VM wordlist similar to those MK glosses — with virtually no work on many other linguistic aspects having been done simply because no other linguistic similarities, like those of V and C, could be found among V and MK languages — so as to group V into the AA linguistic family.

Geographically concepts of AA have been cleverly repositioned at a later date to encompass not only remnants of Indo-Chinese languages left in every remote corner of today's Vietnam's western mountainous flanks in the south of its 16th parallel, but also including those dialectal pockets inhabiting in regions south of the Yangtse River that had previously appeared not to fit in any way into some other linguistic genetic schemes otherwise. Consequently, virtually all VM dialects originally from the Red River Delta areas in the far north have been mapped nicely into those northeastern MK languages spoken in regions faraway to the south of Vietnam's border which had not belonged to her prior to the 12th century. Nevertheless the whole AA affair had made its way into the MK basic wordlist for lexicons cognate to those of V, which happened at a much later period well into the next millenium that follows and only then that areas of Vietnam's territories would start to expand to the south.

Methodologically, for those AA specialists, it is a very neat way to present MK etymological linguistics with existing Indo-European linguistic tools, seemingly to be scientific enough under the perception of an innocent linguist. Their new classification compensates fairly most of discrepancies in the V language with other VM speeches since their separation from a common root of the Yue language in China South to the northern part of today's Vietnam in ancient times. However, before the 12th century, as far as we know the VM group had not had anything to do with the MK peoples, let alone with the Khmer Kingdom, historically or linguistically. Such MK claim that has been asserted onto V by the AA camp amusingly reminds us of similar bogus exclamation made by some western grammarians in the early 20th century that orginally the V language had not possessed a set of grammatical rules until those of French was utilized and adapted, and since then it exists! Compare the analogy of chicken and egg genesis and then you will see clearly how their logics has been manipulated and where our stands are heading from here now.

C) Sinitic-Vietnamese studies

(1) The Zen Sinitic-Vietnamese

From their perspective what contemporary AA avant-gardes so far have exaggerated much about is mostly on the lexical scale, minus tonality and the like as compared to other prominent Sinitic linguistic attributes. They have simply ignored what has originally been essentially in store on the Sinitic-Vietic side of the story. All those etymological evidences of the Yue etyma are actually buried deeply in historically ancient C literature of which the plausibility of proven cognates are manifested by phonetic keys or clues amply noted in numerous ancient classical materials with notation such as "dúruò" 讀若 (pronunciation), the "fanqie" 反切 (spelling), or the "xíngshēng" 形聲 (phonetic) in traditional C linguistics, for instance, VS "cộ" (carriage) ~ 車 chē in HòuHànshū 後漢書 "dúruò" (is pronounced as) 居 jū (SV cư), evidenced by the phonetic sign of 古 gǔ (SV cổ). Many characters as etyma lexicographically are listed in the Kangxi Dictionary 康熙字典 with over 50 thousand out of more than the possible 70 thousand single C characters ever recorded. Archaeologically, excavations have revealed a vast amount of the ancient "Yue" vestiges in forms of proto-Taic fossilized elements have been gradually unearthed across China South in recent years. Those champions in AA camp have been inadvertently unaware of such linguistic traces of interrelationship among archaic Yue and Sinitic languages, etymologically connected in all shapes and forms gradually being unveiled. They could be proto- and archaic scripts which had later on evolved into Sinitic etyma for both of those C lexical items and their VS cognates as well, for example, 川 chuān, 水 shuǐ, or 江 jiānng 'sông' for rivers or streams. In this etymological realm alone, as the time goes on more of them have been gradually tagged, revealed, and reconstructed. That kind of work appears to be a painstaking task, like sieving tiny gold dust from rocky sand in streams of C classics for every single etymon which cannot be identified with modern set of common lexicons, for example, "ngọt" (sweet) '飠宛' (or 𩜌) yuē (SV ngạt) or "lợn" (pig) 腞 dùn (SV độn). Whether or not my new discoveries could finally uproot those well-laid cornerstones of MK theory, at least they would possibly be complementary to what the current VS field of studies may be lacking, which is still based mainly on systematic HanViet readings of C etyma.

In this paper for those identified V etyma of C origin, either being cognate to those of Sinitic or being derived from Sinitic-Yue — the terminology being analogous to an arbitrary pick of Qin (China) or Zhongguo (Middle Kingdom) in our contemporary time to refer to all dynasties (states?) in China instead of Chu, or even Yue (should Chu have defeated the Han) — all will be cited as if they were from Sinitic sub-family thanks to their directly relationship with C, e.g., Sinitic-Yue 狗 gǒu for 'chó' (dog) co-existing with Sinitic 犬 quán for 'cún' (puppy) or 眼 yăn and 目 mù for 'mắt' (eye), etc. Credibility of those findings are direct results of applying my two new etymological techniques called (1) dissyllabic and (2) analogical approaches. For the first approach, that of dissyllabicity, it requires that historical linguists treat sound changes from those two-syllabled C words into those V dissyllabic variants as a synchronic event where each syllable could independently act on its own capacity as a stand-alone allophonic entity with its own generative characteristics. Generalization of that rule is based on recognition of multiple sound change patterns, morphemically or syllabically, as resulted from lexical mutation and metamorphosis. They are characteristically synchronous processes in which each morphemic syllable individually had diverged into multiple phonemic forms. In fact, as the same syllable has evolved differently from those of monosyllabics as their natural adaption in V, the whole process seemingly has not to be restricted to general rules of sound changes that govern phonologically-deposited diachronism.

Our new dissyllabic method, in turn, would help us analogize sibling etyma as they could have been materialized within the same categorical group in cultural context, that is, if a word characteristically has a C origin of the same linguistic traits and attributes, chances are that its related forms could be the same, too, for example, "đất" 土 tǔ (soil) vs. 地 dì (land), "nặng" (heavy) 重 zhòng vs. "nhẹ" (light) 輕 qīng, etc. Hence, the second postulated analogical approach is a subsequent methodology with which many V etyma of C origin could be possibly posited, including those camouflaged underneath some basic MK vocabulary substratum and vice versa, otherwise, they could have easily slipped away unnoticed, such as those of "chim" (bird) 禽 qín, "chuột" (mouse) 鼠 shǔ, "ngựa" (horse) 午 wǔ, "heo" (boar) 亥 hài, etc., (for more examples refer to the chapter on MK.)

The bottom line of implications posed by these two methods is that evidences on C linguistic traits found in V would lay out the foundation for classifying V into the new VS linguistic sub-family and putting it on par with other languages in the Sinitic of the larger Sino-Tibetan (ST) linguistic family:

		  Sinitic > Seven major Chinese dialectal groups
		 /
  Sino-Tibetan <
		 \
		  Sinitic-Yue > Sinitic Vietnamese

		  Sinitic-Yue > Sinitic > Sinitic Vietnamese* > Annamese > Vietnamese
		 /
  **proto-Taic <
		 \
		  Austroasiatic*** > Mon-Khmer > Vietmuong > Vietic > Vietnamese****

----------------------
   (*) including Sino-Vietnamese
  (**) linguistic elements already existed prior to the class of Austroasiatic
 (***) could be interpreted as the Yue without Sinitic elements
(****) which is redundantly the same as the above and can be omitted

The above Sinitic-Yue theorization are to be interpreted that those Yue linguistic forms descended from a common proto-Taic family that, at the same time, might also have given birth to the "proto-Austroasiatic" group probably at least more than 4000-6000 years ago, hence the spreading of Dongsonian bronze drums brought to Indonesia islands later on by earlier Yue emigrants as we see it today (while the Yue-Sinitic entities had been formed with the fusion of those elemental forms transmutated with those of the "stay-behind" aboriginals and the "newcomer" Sino-Tibetan resettlers, hence the becoming of a gene for those early "Chinese" elements with the common shares of mythologies of Yandi (Viêmđế), Chennong (Thầnnông), and "children of dragon" (dòngdõi tiênrồng, etc.) Linguistically postulates of those AA designated languages as of ancestral speeches of the Yue are based on what has been affirmed by those of the Daic or "China South" languages, or proto-Taic derivatives, spoken by ethnic groups living there, which is possibly applicable also to even more of those newly concept such as Austro-Thai, or Austronesian, etc., all being just breakdowns of those of the ancient Yue by those who are ignorant of the Yue history and mythodology. So be it either big fish (the Yue) or that of small catches (the AA-MK), each of these species, in sum, all has evolved from a common root, the proto-Taic, so to speak, at the very early stage approximately 4000 to 8000 years ago, where the boundary among them was still a matter of intepretation and speculation relied mainly on pre-historic artifacts excavated by archaeology. Historically, while sometheories are still hypothetical, the existence of the state of Yelangguo 夜朗國 and the Yue State 越國 Yuèguó (VS nướcViệt) and their subjects in the Warring Period in terms of genetic affiliation with those early Yue people who spoke some form of proto-Yue, etc., are lending some supporting evidences of the early proto-Daic natives and their habitats, hence, their speeches for that matter.

All in all under the perspective of Sinitic linguistic development — regarded as having evolved from linguistic fusion of speeches spoken by the indegenous Yue and those first Sino-Tibetan speakers, possibly agressively powerful and intelligent normadic people, had come and resettled in the habitat of the Yue in today's China South — I shall confine myself to examination of those etyma of supposedly related forms originally evolved from some ancient speeches of the Yue, virtually all classed as of ST linguistic family as of present still being spoken by the Zhuang, the Dai, the Dong, the Miao, etc., who are still living in the southern part of today's China. In the meanwhile V has distinctively emerged as a special case of siniticization — that of an Yue language being largely mixed with C elements — due to its speakers living in an independent country but its case is different from the same process that has made Cantonese or Fukienese as Chinese dialects. Metaphorically the MK is only a small fish in such larger catches whether be it AA, Yue, or Daic. I hope that fruition of this research one way or another, brushing aside all bitterness and sarcasm moked here and there to score a point or two, will pave the way for new development with breakthrough nature in the field of VS historical linguistics. In any case, arguments in this study will be deviated greatly from the cyclone of theories on the AA origin of V and class it into that of the ST (see chapter on Sino-Tibetan etyma.)

This is not a matter of favoring larger catches over small fish, with the existence of many basic AA cognates, scarce yet importantly fundamental etymologically, among V and those neighboring MK, and even faraway Munda languages in India. The explanation for such phenomenon would be a metaphor comparatively more like that of chicken or egg first genesis in nature, guessing whether the hatched fowl will come out its shell a chicken, hen, rooster, or cock. The status quo as we have seen so far is an end result in a chain of anti-antithesis theories, the AA-MK origin of a solidly underlined substratum of its fundamentally basic vocabularies, including that of the Austro-Thai, Austro-this and -that. Needless to say, naturally overwhelming acceptance of its classification is an inevitable reaction derived from trustworthy proofs presented to support those V etyma as they were plausibly supported with those solid MK cognates as much as they appear. Consequently, the current classification of V into AA linguistic family, or to be exact, the MK linguistic sub-family, has become trendy and fashionable theories and hypotheses on their linguistic genetic affiliation in our time.

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(2) On the one-size-fits-all conspiracy

The whole concensus reached by AA theorists in the V historical linguistics was built on the premise that there had first existed the MK languages themselves physically — ethnic entities that spread throughout in Southeast Asia — and then, subsequently, there appeared (the modern term) "Austroasiatic", the one that they just built to fill in all the gaps with bridges — where the Sinitic elements crept in — in between linguitic pockets scattered all over the regions within a generous timeframe approximately 6000 ~ 10,000 years ago. It is simpler and straightforward going that way than spending time taking the challenges to dig under mountains of Chinese historical records mostly written in archaic classical styles — well, comparatively what they had done was just like that of the invention of Latinized Vietnamese wrtiting orthography by missionaries in the late 18th century when none of them had the guts to study the Chinese-based Nôm characters, and remember that they had never succeded in China with such similar approaches.

Let's put the whole rationalization in another way to illustrate the case analogously. Suppose that we, now taking the role as historical linguists, were armed to our teeth with Indo-European linguistic tools and used them to apply to an imaginary African case as illustrated below in order to see how the AA theorists had approached the V language from beginning, as discussed above. In any case the arguments served for a Sintic anti-thesis herein is based on their approaches. A highly hypothetical theorization mocked below would serve the purpose of proving the point. As cases of African tribes to be discussed here would be approached with a perspective view of the early 19th century by western colonists. Even though what is going to happen is in our modern time, the African tribes described here were supposedly less advanced culturally, far part from the real scenario that has contributed to the development of the V language, such as those of C cultural factors of Confucianism, in order to compare with the initial view that the Westerners had first had about their colonized Vietnam when they first had set their feet on the Vietnam's soil nearly two centuries ago.

We would now start to venture deeply into some remotely backward region in the African continent to conduct some survey on some unknown tribal languages — being so chosen is truly for that very reason because until then, we had not had an academically recognized name yet for all these seemingly common languages of the same root — and then subsequently discover that there exist some basic words by which those speakers (of villages B) of different dialects under investigation are sharing with other speeches in neighboring villages (A) which had previously been known. Problem now is that we do not know much about the history of related tribes, so what is next? Well, we can work the way the western methodology has taught us that since we had already known the names of their other neighbors (A), we would make up one and conveniently lump those newly discovered speeches all in one basket, , purportedly, for their own sake and our own sanity as well, assuming they do care, knowing nothing about themselves (?) In order words, we were just treating them like wretched idiots. Eventually now we are able to come up with a new name for a linguistic family where we had envisioned that the B speeches must have been descendant branches of the A ancestral languages and until then we just had barely learned very little about the B languages. In effect all tribal speakers had already had different names for their own speeches — whether or not they are genetically related (they must have been, but remotely further into the distant past) — embedded in their history, which was recorded in their own unique way. And here we go, we, consciously or not, all in a silent conspiracy, have never bothered to find out their real history until and after we had cleverly classed every language spoken therein with what, to our best belief, is far more scientific and superior to theirs. As needs arise, we would accordingly modify our theories, mostly at our convenience. That is how it had happened to the case of AA versus the Yue-Sinitic theorization. Some where along the line someone thought it was clever to use Austro- to mean "south" and Asiatic a linguistic family of Asia, everything would have encompassed everything else in that sphere of the earth. Now that the linguistic world had already had and been comfy with the term "Austroasiatic", then the whole world-class linguists started to join in more and more doing research about its languages as time goes by.

Reversedly, as opposed to scenario of supposedly those AA ~ V basic words cognates, what if the same etyma come up with reference to similar cases of those of the ST instead? In fact, they do. In real world, theories will surely change over time, just like any linguistic changes that we all now come to recognition of its volatile, unlike those of natural sciences. For the same reason, by now any early conclusion thereof is still inconclusive and hypothetical should there emerge any other new notable theory, specifically in the VS and ST study, until all is settled down eventually in a way fairly acceptable to all. For examle, which tool is being used to interpret the Indo-European origin of the Roman languages, or that of grouping all C dialects into the ST linguistic family whereas Cantonese and Fukienese — what if V is included were Vietnam still a prefecture of China? — are best examples of that kind of convenient lump, not to mention those Zhuang or Daic languages or even the Tibetan itself. lt is then a matter of technicality in coining a new terminology when the AA specialists have not known the true nature of the etymological roots of V and its genetic affiliation basically still lies dormant buried here and there in ancient C classical books as well as archaeological geo-substrata — long before the arrival of the new concept of AA — and they are the sources that I have gathered all evidences for this paper to support my theories, that is, they are not solely drawn from conclusions in research books written on historical linguistics by other authors, which are mostly used as springboards to jump into one's arguments as other authors usually do, which is not logical to prove a case. That is, to put put that ideas forementiond simply, nowadays historical linguists of V work their research starting from AA theories as premises. In the meantime, there exists something else much more exciting than those dull repetitions.

Therefore, the western methodolody is logical and rational but not not always truthful. For the fact that today's belief in the historical linguistic world is going strongly more for theories of MK root in the AA linguistic family (AA-MK) to account for the genetic origin of V rather than for those of older ST theories, we could add that its conclusion is somewhat mechanical for the reason that information for the AA theory have been solely based on tabulation from data supplied by "seasonal linguists of summer's institute" who had been in turn provided by local informants and interpreters. Even though those data have actually been prepared by methodologically well-equipped scholar who had been funded by some foundation for a summer's field trip to survey languages, e.g., those of the MK, they were in effect virtually incommunicable in languages involved. Contrarily, their well prepared word-lists would inspire and turn out next batches of college-graduated linguists. They would simply trust the truthfulness of the MK theories taught by their teachers, using their provoded with data as starting points for their new research development. And the circle will then starts over again and again.

Be it the AA way, one may be inclined to believe so if the same story is retold by a linguistic institutionally-trained Khmer native speaker who, conditionally, is completely competent in, at the very least, both V and a MK language of his own, and, better yet, familiar with other MK speeches and a deep knowledge of modern C dialect with an ability to decipher Ancient Chinese (AC) a plus, given that all those living languages are spoken not only at native fluency but also with a true feeling and, creatively, plenty of room for his or her own free interpretation. Having said so I neither mean I know Khmer nor academically trained linguist, but at least my V and Mandarin are competently at native fluency in every linguistic aspect of it to authoritively talk about the V etymological matter in relation with that of C, not to mention AC and some knowledge of other C dialects. And importantly, I speak them with a feeling as being felt by natives who could talk about their own languages. Have there been any of all our Austroasiastic specialists meet some of those requirements yet? Mechanically, it is 'yes', but sentimentally, there is none. If you recognize one differently, let me know. For those I know they just barely know something, most onw or two layers of a V etymon cognate to that of C — probably picked them up from somebody's else — and almost know nothing of other layers of their variants and in other polysyllabic forms. And it is of no coincidence, they are most likely from the AA-MK camp.

As said, terminologically and categorically, the term "Austroasiatic" linguistic family has been coined by western linguists out of such ignorance coupled with their uncertainty about classification of the V language and its linguistic cousins in the early 20th century. Apparently from beginning its AA pioneers might not even know then that those modern Southeast Asian speeches encompassed in their investigation had been classed within a common name known as the "Yue languages", i.e., Vietic, Taic, etc., under different names in ancient Chinese classics. Historically that had been long before they were ever re-named with the newly formulated field later known as AA. In the absence of knowledge of oriental philology, which had been initiated in earnest on the early of the 20th centory, any linguists of course could certainly call it by any other name as he sees fit for his purpose. So did those in the AA camp with "Austro-Asiatic" (AA) while we, seeing AA as a misnomer in this particular field of V etymology of Sinitic origin, just recycle the term "the Yue lingusitic family" specifically for the fact that "Yue" as an ethnicity designation for minorities and their Yue-derived speeches has been customarily referred to virtually in all C historical records. By doing so, we could avoid certain complicit ambiguities caused by their terminological implication. For instance, the designated term of AA originally devised to cleverly mean what its originators had obviously intended to mean — a sure classification implicating genetic affiliation of a deeply rooted Southern Asian linguistic sources with no room for compromise, which alternately could be equally true also for those of C — and, therefore, it does not indicate exactly what we are really up to, i.e., the Sinitic origin of most of V vocabularies. To those well-known pioneers having long been leaders in the field of historical linguistics with their successful approach in Indo-European languages, probably it is time for those newly graduate historical linguists now in turn to follow us in this revised position herein instead of airing a business as usual attitude as what is currently projected by many contemporary linguists.

In any case just bear in mind that despite of its maturity current hypothesis about the MK genetic affinity of V is just another theory and an unfinished work, still far from its finality for it is always an on-going process of theorization, not satisfactorily proven yet. And in the linguistic world there exists no such thing as permanent maxim, especially, in the etymology field of historical linguistics. The ST school of thought and its fruition on researhes are still providing the linguistic world with many of its prior etymological, historical, and theoretical merits, e.g., preliminary identification of most of related ST etymologies, reconstruction of their archaic forms, theorization of OC consonantal clusters, hypotheses on tonal development, etc., still worth being recapped and further explored and applied to our VS studies as will be presented in this research with equally solid linguistic evidences, unprecedentedly, of over 420 fundamental etyma pointing to the direction of ST, partly based on Shafer's list of ST etymologies (Shafer, 1966 - 1974. Refer to Sino-Tibetan etyma next).

Certainly we would return to those theses and anti-theses again and keep dragging on the subjects because etymological affiliation among V, C, and the Yue languages did exist, dated back historically longer than any period that anyone could possibly imagine. In short, in so far as the aforementioned etymology concerns Sinitic philologists in ancient times, within their own expertise and scholarly capacity, have been well aware of all those etymological commonalities in those ancient Yue languages involved, i.e., proto-Taic, proto-Cantonese, proto-Fukienese, etc., which had been recognized long before any new western concepts which has ever come along with their inventors attempting to teach us a thing or two about them. Denying the fact that V belongs to the ST linguistic family is to nullify the validity of the same class for Cantonese, Fukienese, or Dai, Thai, etc. for that matter because they all actually originated fom the same roots. By simply superficially giving it a new name western scholars in the AA camp had already implied which family V would belong to while ignoring its historical place in studies of the Yue languages made by other philologists in ancient times that they had never fully understood until the mid-20th century with those specialists such as Kargren, Forest, Maspero, etc, who right from beginning acknowledged the validity of the Annamese position in line with other ST languages. No new terminology under different guises could overpower and superimpose an already pretty old field of in C philology.

Hopefully you have understood so far all argumentations by and by as we come along and you shall see later on that for the very same reason of what makes those shared basic words in V with other Austroasiatic languages be plausibly cognate it all is equally applied truly to those of ST languages per se, amazingly with numerous cognates (as to be presented in the chapter on the ST) bolted down with etyma amounted to several hundreds of their plausible cognates, embracing inclusively basic categories that have permeated throughout all languages spoken in the regions of not only South and Southeast Asia, but also East Asia. We are going to see their undeniable commonalities in the same etymological base and this paper will even tackle some other issues that raise intriguing questions about their true related ancestral roots as well. I hope that this is the last call on cheering straight records for their linguistic affinity, all novel with newly discovered evidences as to be presented in the next coming chapters.

Historically, while the AA does not have a traceable history and the Khmer one does not fit into the history of the evolution of the Vietnam nation in any way, simply the fact as recorded history shows her history actually had been related to that of the Champa Kingdom, an Indian turned Islamic state in warring periods, which puts a far distance from that of the blend of Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist culture and had acted as an unbreakable cushion between Vietnam and its Mon-Khmer neighbors. Champa had been well established southern tail of Annamese border started from the end of Eastern Han Dynasty, also known as Linyi (or Lamap) in Chinese history, toward the end of the 3rd century.

Actually it doesn't matter much whether initially in the early ancient days it had truly originated from the MK linguistic sub-family of the larger AA linguistic family or not (M), all it counts is what makes it up as a living language holistically as it appears today with all the attributes considered as natural and integral parts of it. Analogically, English can be regarded as such a case, that is, when we look at that popular language, we see the language presents itself in its wholeness, not just only the Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, or the Germanic parts of it, but also those of the Norman, Romanic, and Greek everything of the language as it appears today. Similarly, V is a language that has blended itself beautifully with all traceable C elements, and other Champic and MK for that matter, that are impartible and one can see in it neither only those common peculiarities nor solely AA traces of so limited an amount of their etyma. The same holds true for those of other languages in the AA family such as Munda in spite of the fact that one can even find basic cognates. Even though a few basic words among its languages and V exist, that fact does not bring them closer as a distant second-cousin, as speculated by the AA theorists, of V.

In any cases, regardless of its genetic affiliation when speaking of classes of linguistic families, it is important that one should only study the V language in a holistic approach, practice doing it in the Zen's appreciative and meditative manners in order to pursue the truthfulness of the core matter as it shows in the way the whole language presents itself in its complete wholeness, embracing its linguistic characteristics and traits, like examing genetic materials of the racial composition of its speakers as they are to be in a historical perspective view.

Extraordinarily, as you will see, the nature of linguistic attributes and peculiar traits of V is so similar to C so much in most of the aspects of speech that both share while they are, understandably, apparently absent in most ST languages (the same way as most MK languages being related to V, etymologically.) If soley lexical commonnalitiy is all it takes to make each of those ST language a member of the ST linguistic family, so said to be on the caution side as other linguistic attributes such as syntax could be borrowed, it could also make V one then, or at least a class by itself to be put side by side with the Sinitic branch. While the main objective of this paper is to prove the C origin of most of V words, this study will also demonstrate that characteristically V is much more like C so undeniable in terms of its grammatical markups, classifiers, particles, and instrumental prepositions, along with its tonal system, phonology, peculiar expressions, and, especially, lexical mergers and their monosyllabic stem separators as derived from the very same etyma which independently make up a vast amount of additional V words, which, at first sight, seem to be "pure V", or indigenous, but, actually in most cases, might have C origin. Nobody can say the same with any MK languages. By identifying all other factors as forementioned in addition to etymology, thousands of more V vocabularies can be positively identified methodologically by using the dissyllabic and analogical approaches suggested here. Before now it is noted that undoubtedly many etyma have been either missed or neglected in the field of V historical linguistics, probably from the day those V specialists have started abandoning the ST ship and jumping on the Austroasiatic bandwagon since the second half of the last century because not much of them have been revealed since then.

Techincally, for the term "the Austroasiatic linguistic family" I will identify it with linguistic roots of many indigenous languages being spoken by many ethic groups of the Yue 越, or 粵 (Yueh, or BáchViệt 百越 BăiYuè), descendants, also known as Nanman 南蠻 Nánmán, commonly mentioned in C ancient historical records Southern Barbarians. Those minorities are still living in the southern part of China today, including the Zhuang (Tráng or Nùng in V), the largest one in population whose language is universally classified as that of the ST linguistic family, along with other ethnic groups currently living in those mountainous regions of North Vietnam, Laos, as well as the people of Daic origin in today's Thailand, of which their racial stock is innovatively classed as of 'Austro-Thai' by Benedict (Benedict, 1975). Actually, the whole 'Austro-' perspective has led to the convergence of the notion that all ancient Yue dialectal speakers did have a common ancestor, that has sometimes been referred to as "the larger proto-Tai (or pre-Dai) indigenous stock" that might have split up into many distinct ethnic goups such as the Zhuang 壯 and Dai 泰 as best known in our era. They both have been identified with all the natives who might have lived in habitats which in ancient times used to embrace a vast region below the Yangtze River (揚子江, aka 長江), east and south, all the way to the surrounding northeastern region in today's China's Shandong Province and to all areas south of the river.

Map of the ancient states in China
Source: Multiple sources on the internet

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Map of the Qin Empire in ancient China
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Dynasty

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Ethnologically Proto-Tai people, notably, coud also have been the ancestors of the kings of Chu 楚, Zhou 周, Wu 吳, and Yue 越 as having been long investigated by many world-class East Asian historians. Those people had not only made up majorly the ethnic composition of Zhongyuan 中原 populace — possibly with the exception of those of the Qin 秦 State if we equate them with direct descendants of "the proto-Chinese" (XYZ), who had mixed with some natives, without the inclusion of the other five states of Chu 楚, Qi 齊, Jin 晉, Yan 燕, and Han 漢 during Warring Period that in the later time all merged with the Qin's subjects to become "the mixed-stock Chinese" populace hundreds of years later – but also, at the same time, further broken down into smaller tribal groups and finally evolved into ethnic diversities, hence the Yue people, of which each would in later time evolved into different seven Yue states (see map below) as later appeared in Chinese historical records over the span of at least two millenia prior to the unification of a vast pre-China's empire under the rule of Qin Shihuang 秦始皇 of the Qin Dynasty.

Map of the historical ancient Yue states
Source: Multiple sources on the internet

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Interestingly enough, similar scenarios repeated again exactly the same process that had happened to both those indigenous people (2YMK) and migrants (4Y6Z8H) who had previously lived or already long resettled in the northern part of today's Vietnam around the Red River's Delta regions when the "composite Han" — or "the Early Chinese" (X2Y3Z4H), as mentioned previously, or the Chinese in Han Dynasty from many regions of those states which had fallen under the umbrella of Qin Dynasty in the previous period — armies came to invade, including those war-savaged immigrants to follow later. Once having reached the outer regions beyond new frontiers those northerners as conquerers mostly had resettled there forever. Undoubtedly their offsprings over the time had numerously multiplied and gave birth to the next generations. Again, all could have mixed up with the indigenous people (2YMK), who in turn would have possibly intermarried with other waves of those mixed-stock Han immigrants (X4Y6Z8H) from the China-North (華北 Huabei) and China-South (華南 Huanan) who have arrived there later throughout the next two millenia until our time to form the new "Kinh" (4Y6Z8HMK), or as known in modern Chinese as Jing 京, i.e., Vietnamese, group.)

Under such historical circumstances, languages in "the Austroasiatic linguistic family" had been formed out of pro-Taic languages more than 3000 years ago, long before the emergence of the Zhou Dynasty. In other words, on the one hand they all had been stemmed from an ancestral proto-Taic linguistic form supposedly spoken by the so-called "larger proto-Tai indigenous people" and finally evolved themselves into linguistic forms of the Yues including those languages currently spoken by the Zhuang, the Dai, the Miao, the Maonan or the Mon, etc. while, on the other hand, they had branched off to become other languages included in what is now universally named as "the Austroasiatic linguistic family". During the reigns of Zhou's Kings proto-Taic glosses had also found their way into, intertwined and interpolated, and merged with the Archaic Chinese (ArC, OC), including Ancient Chinese (AC), that had come a long way since its break-off from the ST route and evolved itself independently (see Brodrick, 1942. Norman, 1988. Wiens, 1967. FitzGerald, 1972). Variants of this early form of Old Chinese (OC) later had been brought by the 'Han' soldiers and emigrants to go south all the way to Annamese ("Tonkin") regions and then blended well gradually with the proto-Vietic language.

Map of the historical ancient Yue migrations
Source: Multiple sources on the internet

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Therefore, the concept of "Austroasiatic" — only implicitly used in this paper — is to be often referred to as "the Yue languages" of which the implication is that this terminology does not include MK languages in the direct sense of genetic affinity that the proto-Vietmuong as ancestral form of the later V had emerged and evolved directly from the same MK ancestral speeches even though its descendant languages, as a whole, constitute another sub-family in the larger Austroasiatic linguistic family as commonly referred to by modern linguists. That is to say, in this paper Austroasiatic languages may mean the same thing as the Yue languages in a broader sense for the proto-Taic stage prior the breakup into those of the Yue and the so-called AA linguistic families. This notion therefore will not put V in line with those popular MK theories, that V originally had started out from a common Austroasiatic linguistic root, but actually from an ancestral form of the Yue, from the "proto-Taic" mainstream to be exact, that equally had given rise to all those of Zhuang, Daic, proto-Vietmuong, and the MK languages.

In fact, the proto-Vietmuong branch had broken off from the "proto-Taic" mainstream hundreds of years to form the VietMuong group with linguistic remnants from the Yue languages which also exist in the MK group. However, the MK languages are not in synchronic connection with the Sinitic scope we are dealing with herein. Any C traces, if any, in the Khmer language are very recent and could be borrowed via the Muong and V. In the meanwhile C elements in ancient V, or Annamese, are seen to have been adopted as raw materials and used profusedly and vehemently to nurture genesis of the new Vietic form of speech, largely by common popupace from all walks of life [ food for your linguistics future doctorate thesis: "Could it have been that Vietnamese is the result of 'pidginization' of some form of Chinese vernacular starting from the Han's time?] Both Daic and AC strata in V solidly support that point of view.

Nothing is contradictory about this idea if we take into consideration that C and Tibetan, despite of their affinity, are two completely different languages, just like the V and any one of the MK languages. Nonetheless, in the case of V and its early formation, the so-called 'indigenous' proto-Vietmuong language originally spoken by those people living in the Red River Delta had begun to split up into those of proto-Muong, that had been carried by other Muong groups having fled into the mountainous regions, and proto-Vietic, with a much further fusion with what appears to be variations of AC brought in by the Han invading army often resulted in new settlers, that had been spoken by those who stayed behind and integrated with Han expansionists and then their descendants as well as many more other "composite Chinese" immigrants who came later en masse, waves after waves as recorded in Chinese history when Annam as Giaochi District still belonged to the Giaochau Prefecture being under the rule of the Han Dynasty. Again, remnants and residues identified as of AC still exist in modern V allow us to see the matter as such (see Wang Li, dchph in Appendix H, Bùi Khánh Thế in Appendix I). From that time on the V language has developed and evolved around the C nucleus, though characteristically unique and separate due to the habit of people's speech, that seems to be parallel to the development and evolution of Zhuang or Tai languages, which are affirmatively, at least by Chinese linguistics, classified as those of ST linguistic family.

Regarding to the "MK origin" of the V language, what has been discussed to date prior to this study mostly has been based on claims that certain V basic words correspond to those basic lexicons scattering throughout many MK languages, a majority of which, amusingly enough, turns out to be cognate to those of C (who had borrowed what from whom?) However, the question of whether those arguments on the matter of MK affinity of V are still valid or not after examing the findings presented in this research is open for further discussion and investigation.

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(3) A revised course in the adaption of the reconstructed ancient sound values:

As you have seen in the foregoing examples, the OC ought to be taken into account when studying either C or V. Philologists in the fields of C historical linguistics all have long followed this approach because languages change over time. Nonetheless, now currently with more than half a dozen versions of OC reconstruction work completed by distinguished linguists in related fields in existence to date, the question is which one represents the best ready for our own use in the VS study? It is hard to resist the temptation to follow Pulleyblank’s reconstruction (1984) which shows many similarities in consonantal vocalism plus the articulation of the finals with modern V. Nevertheless, unless noted otherwise, I will provide a modified version of my own adapted from many sources. This version, having eveloved from my interpretation and adaption from many sources, may certainly disappoint many of those who try to find another interpretation of the sound system of OC because of the relative variations in the presentation of precise values of sounds of many OC words in this paper, for example,

• 羅 luó (net) has given rise to la, rọ, chài, lưới, chàilưới, in both SV and VS, in the OC sounds one may find the values
  (1) *la (Coblin, 1983),
  (2) *jraih (Norman, 1957),
  (3) *lâ (Kagren, GSR:6, 1957)
  (4) *lar (Li, 1976),
  (5) *raj (Schuessler, 1987),
  (6) *la (Zhou, 1973), etc.

Nothing is contradictary about this revised course of reconstruction methodology since each reconstructed pronunciation from different sources can be considered actually as a variation from the same original sound in the OC. In this case let’s assume that they all have originated from the form [lwo]. The important point is that, phonetically, all these possible sounds could have been evolved from /*jraih/, the most plausible sound value — in comparison with other slightly variants reconstructed by several C historical linguists at the same time — at a certain time in ancient days when both "Chinese" and "Vietnamese" had been in contact, which could pretty much likely give rise to chài, then "chài+lưới", a method of innovation, built with the synonymous syllable-word structure, commonly formed like other V compounds composed of two-syllabic words of the same root.

The revised approach used in this paper treats ancient C sounds with such generosity based on the rationalization that no matter how good a reconstruction work of an ancient C language is, as demonstrated by a dozen works of several renowned linguists, actual reconstructed sound values of the OC characters cited in each research work are impossibly absolutely accurate and precise to the exact sound value of what was pronounced hundreds of years ago. Historical phonology is full of relatives. One sound value may be true in a certain period of time and place, but it was not true in other cases. They are, understandably, merely suggestive representations of a sound system of the C language by and large in a particular locality and time frame. That is to say, for a certain C character or word, there likely have existed different versions with several ways of interpretations; however, in general, those reconstructions, in fact, only represent the most generally accepted presentation, each of which merely reconstructed values derived from historical records of linguistic materials such as rhyming books or Buddist canons. As a result, unsurprisingly one version may appear very similar to the others with only minor variations, just like with the same character 羅 of which we have different pronunciations in many C dialects nowadays and the core sound value of it, let's say /xxx/, has given rise to /luó/ in modern M.

To understand this notion better, let's first pick a C word and ask ourselves how it was pronounced or said 2000 years ago in relation to a V word for our purpose. Then after studying this word in depth we would probably have found out that many specialists in this historical linguistic field have already done so and there have been no precise sound values even witith descriptive guidance from C classics. For example, for 車 chē (SV xa, VS xe, cộ) 'carriage', in several classical books including the 後漢書 Hòu Hànshū (Historical Records of the Later Han Dynasty) we are instructed to read it as [tɕy] for /jū/ in modern M ("車讀若居"). In modern time chess players in the popular C chess game still refer the 車 chess piece a [tɕy] like /jū/ in 居 (SV cư), and for now /jū/ is a modern sound. Undoubtedly, 居 carries the sound of 古 [kʊ] that gave rise to V with several words related to 'carriage' : (1) cộ, (2) xe, (3) xecộ, (4) cỗ, (5) cỗxe, etc., all evolved from just the word 車 chē (xa). Naturally we would like to take the face value of one or more interpretations by different authors and incorporate their results into those of our own research. Only then, naturally, could we see that they are only of relatively approximate reconstructed values for which we may end up coming up with the same sound values.

Of course, old sound values of a word cannot be done arbitrarily, as in the case of 'chài+lưới', of which 'chài' is closer to /*jraih/, synonymous to 'lưới' in the synonymous compound construction. Diachronically 'chài' must be an older form of 'lưới', which, in turn, is older than 'la' as in SV, which appears as /luó/ in M of which the sound value might have been close to what was said in MC but undoubtedly given rise to both VS "rỗ" and "rọ" synchronically.

In any cases, “all of them are hypotheses,” as stated in Axel Schuessler’s (1987, p.xi) words, “most of them contain one or other idea which I believe ought to be taken into consideration when attempting to retrieve the Old Chinese language.”

Therefore, taking results completed by renowned specialists — we do not need to re-invent the wheel, do we? — and adapting them to our study in SV field are the right thing to do; it is the right approach and better way to deal with variations of OC historical phonology. If we restrict ourselves to adhere to only one reconstructed value, either of our own or of somebody else, beside the question of its authenticity, sooner or later we will run into problems of sound reconciliation, i.e., phonemic changes, for example, 季 jì (season) for SV 'quí' (VS mùa) or 活 huó (work) for VS 'việc' (SV hoạt), etc. in order to match those etyma under investigation which may appear to be cognates in both C and V but not match into any selected system.

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D) Vietnamese and Chinese commonalities

1) Modern dialectal similarities

The fact that numerous V words are quite similar to those of contemporary C dialects, including M, commonly used in a colloquial manner suggests something not so subtle about their kinship deeply beneath the cultural context that both the V and C have long been sharing, including common basic lexical roots and Sinitic-centric historical development. Let's consider some of these cases lexically with idiomatic expressions excluded for now:

• lòng, tim 'heart, feelings' [ SV tâm | M 心 xīn < MC sjəm < OC *sjəm (< *ljəŋʷ) | Pre-SV *sjʌmʔ, § Cant. /sʌm/, Old Viet. 'lâm' | VS 'lòng' /lɔŋʷ/ and 'tim', SV tâm /tʌm/ | cf. 點心 diănxīn: SV điểmtâm, VS lótlòng 'snack, breakfast' | § tìm: 尋 xún (tầm) < MC tsjim < OC *lhjəm < PC*ljəm ],
• mắt 'eye' [ SV mục | M 目 mù < $ OC *mukʷ, Hai. /mat/, ex. 目鏡 /matkɜng/ mắtkiếng 'eyeglasses' (Hainanese), note also the same word order) ],
• ốm 'skinny' [ SV ân | M 奀 ēn | § M 瘦 shòu: VS gầy ~ sỏ ],
• bụbẫm (mậpphệ) 'healthy (baby), fat' [ SV phìbạn | M 肥胖 féipàn \ @ 'nộm' | @& 肥 féi (phì, mập, bụ) + 肥 féi (phệ, bẩm) | M 肥 féi < MC bwyj < OC *bjəj ],
• chào 'hello' [ SV tảo | M 早 zăo < MC tsaw < OC *tsaw ],
• chúngmình 'we' (inclusive) [ SV tamôn | @ M 咱們 zánmen ],
• đó ('nớ' Huế dialect) 'that' [ SV na | M 那 nà, nuó < MC nʌ < OC ɲa:r ],
• nào 'which' [ SV na | M 哪 něi, nǎi, nā < MC na < OC *na ],
• đừng 'do not' [ M 甭 péng (Beijing dialect) ],
• đuợc 'obtain, get' [ M 得 dé (Beijing dialect) 'OK', Cant /tak/ | M 得 dé < MC tɤk < OC *tjə:k],
• đúng, trúng 'correct', 'hit in right spot' [ M 中 zhòng (C northeastern dialects) ],
• xong 'okay, done' [ M 成 chéng (Beijing dialect) | M 成 chéng < MC ʑeŋ <, OC *deŋ],
• rồi, nổi (grammatical particles indicating 'already' and 'capacity', respectively) [ SV liễu | M 了 lē, liăo | ex. Không quên nổi: 忘不了! Wàng bùliăo! (cannot forget), Quênrồi: 忘了 Wànglē! (already forgot)],
• sẽ 'will' [ SV tương | M 將 jiāng < MC tsjaŋ < OC *tsjaŋ | § 醬油 jiāngyóu (Chaozhou) /sijou/ 'xìdầu' ],
• vẫn 'still' [ SV nhưng | M 仍 réng | Xī'ān dialect (西安話) /vaŋ12/ ],
• hội, họp, hẹn, hụi, hay, hiểu 'meeting, dating, loan, understand' [ SV hội | % @ 會 huì ~ hiểu 曉 xiăo (hiểu) ~ hay 知 zhī (tri) | M 會 huì < MC ɣwʌi < OC *guats ],
• biết 'know' (?) [ Hananese /bat/ | According to Tsu-lin Mei : FC (Fuzhou) paiʔ, AM (Amoy) bat ‘to know, to recognize’. AM b- generally corresponds to FC m-; the upper register tone with a voiced initial is also incongruous. Douglas gives a Tung-an form pat for Southern Min, so we regard the AM form as irregular. We can compare all these forms with VN biết ‘to know, to recognize.’],
• tiếng 'sound, fame, (Viet.) language' [ SV thanh | M 聲 shēng < MC ʂeŋ < OC *xeŋ | Cant. ʃieŋ21, Amoy: sɨŋ11 (literary); siã11, Chaozhou: siã11, Fukienese siŋ11 (literary); Zyyy: ʃijəŋ1],  
• lợn 'litte pig' [ (SV độn) | M 豘 (豚) tún < MC don < AC *lhwǝ̄n < OC *ɫhwǝ̄n < PC **ɫhūn | Cant. tyun4, Hakka tun3 || Kangxi: 《集韻》同豚。本作𠭣。或作㹠。通作肫。|| § Southern V 亥 hài 'heo' (pig) ],
• cún 'puppy' [ (SV khuyển (canine) | M 犬 quăn < MC khwijen < OC *khwyi:nʔ | Cant. hyun2, Hakka kian3 | ex. 犬牙 quănyá 'răngkhểnh' (canine), 犬坐 quănzuò 'chồmhỗm' (squat) ],
• cầy 'dog' [ Also, VS 'chó', SV cẩu [ M 狗 gǒu < MC kjəw < OC *ko:ʔ | § proto-Vietic *klo ],
• đậuphụng 'peanut' 花生 huāshēng [ # /wundou/ (Hainanese), § Northern V 落 luò (SV lạc) for 'peanut' ],
• soài 'mango' (?) [ /suã/ (Fukienese) ],
• cam 'orange' [ SV cam | M 柑 gān <, MC kʌm <, OC *ka:m ],
• quýt 'tangerine' [ SV quất | M 橘 jú <, MC kjwit <, OC *kwit ],
• chanh 'lemon' [ SV trành, also: VS camsành 'orange' @& '柑 gān (cam)' + '橙 chéng (sành)' | M 橙 chéng (=modern M 檸檬 níngméng <~ 'lemon' (Eng.)) ],
• bánh 'cake' [ SV bính | M 餅 bǐng < MC pjɛŋ < OC *peŋʔ ],
• cháo, chè 'rice portridge, sweet soup' [ SV chúc | M 粥 (鬻) zhōu, zhù, yù < MC tʂiwk < OC *tɕuwk ],
• phở (also: bún, bột, bụi) 'noodle soup, noodle, flour' [ SV phấn | M 粉 fěn < MC pʊn < OC *pjənʔ ],

and in dissyllabic forms,

• gàtrống, gàcồ 'rooster' [ SV kêcông | M sound for this dialectal form as 雞公 jīgōng (kêcông) ~ modern M 公雞 gōngjī (côngkê) | Dialects: 雞公 jīgōng (Hainanese /koikong/, Fukienese, Amoy, and archaic Cant. — note the same word order) ],
• gàmái, gàmẹ 'hen' [ SV kêmẫu | M sound for this dialectal form as 雞母 jīmǔ (kêmẫu) ~ modern M 母雞 mǔjī (mẫukê) | 雞母 jīmǔ (Hai. /koimaih/ Fukienese, Amoy, and even Cant. — note the same word order) ],
• luônluôn 'always' [ M 老老 láoláo (Beijing dialect — a case of loangraph or jiăjiē 假借) | M 往 wăng < wɑŋ < OC *waŋʔ | modern M 往往 wángwăng) ],
• đượcrồi 'that's fine' [ SV đắcliễu | M 得了 déle (Beijing dialect, Hainanese /dakljaw/) ],
• khôngsaokểxiết [ M 不可勝計 bùkěshèngjì ],
• hiềnlành, hiềnlương 'good character' [ SV thiệnlương | M 善良 shānliáng \ @ 善 shàn (thiện) ~ hiền 賢 xián (^thiện) | M 善 shàn < MC dʑɜn < OC *ɖarʔ ],
• vấtvả 'work hand to mouth' [ SV bônba | M 奔波 bēnbó | M 奔 bēn < MC pon < OC *pjə:r, *pjə:rs ],
• tắmrữa 'bathe' [ SV tẩytảo | M 洗澡 xízăo /tojat/ (Hainanese) | M 洗 xǐ, xiăn (tẩy, tiển) < MC siej < OC *sjə:rʔ | ¶ x- ~ r- : ex. 婿 xū (tu) rễ, 鬚 xū (tu) râu ],
• rácrưới, rácrến 'garbage' [ SV lạpcấp | M 垃圾 lēsē | @ rác < M 垃圾 lāji \ ¶ l- ~ r- <= ra- + k- ],
• dêxòm 'lecherous' [ SV dâmtrùng | M 淫蟲 yínchóng (hence giving rise to => another alternation "quỹrâuxanh" 淫蟲鬼 yíngchóngguǐ 'sex offender') ],
• đạochích 'burglar' [ SV đạotặc | M 盜賊 dàozéi | M 賊 zéi < MC ʑæk < OC *ʑɦjə:k < PC: **ɕhjə:k ~ ʑhjə:k ],
• đánhcắp 'rob, steal' (~ đánhcướp) 'to rob, steal' [ SV đảkiếp | M 打劫 dăjié | M 劫 < MC kɛp < OC *ka ],
• ănđòn 'get beaten, be punished' [ SV nhaiđả | M 挨打 ăidă | M 挨打 ăidă \ @ 挨 ăi ~ ăn ],
• bênhvực 'be on one's side' [ SV bangmang | M 幫忙 bāngmáng \ @ 忙 máng ~ vực \ ¶ m- ~ v- | M 幫 bāng < MC pwʌŋ < OC *pa:ŋ || M 忙 máng < MC mjəŋ < OC *ma:ŋ | ¶ m- ~ v- ],
• mĩmcười 'smile' (~ ngậmcười) [ SV hàmtiếu | M 含笑 hánxiào | M 含 hán < MC gæm < OC *ghɒm || M 笑 xiào < MC sjew < OC shaws | ¶ x- ~ c-(k-) | cf. 'ngậmcườichínsuối' 含笑九泉 hánxiàojǐuquán (literally, 'smile in the afterworld' ],
• chánngán (~ ngánngẫm) 'dreary, sick of' [ SV yếmquyện | M 厭倦 yànjuān | M 厭 yàn < MC ʔjɜm < OC * ʔems | cf. VS 'chánđời' 厭世 yànshì (SV yếmthế) 'world-weary, pessimistic' ],
• tầmbậy 'nonsense' [ M 三八 sānbā (tầmbạ, sàbát...)(Fukienese, Taiwanese, Hainanese) ],
• cùlét 'tickle' [ /kalɛt/ (Hainanese) (= thọclét, chọccười | M 胳肢 gézhī ],
• mai 'tomorrow' [ M 明兒 mínr (Beijing dialect) ~> mainày | M 明 míng < MC maiŋ < OC *mraŋ (=modern M 明日 míngrì: ngàymai) ],
• riêngtư 'privacy' [ SV ẩntư | M 隐私 yǐnsī | M 隱 yǐn < MC ʔyn < OC *ʔjənʔ ],
• chếtyểu 'die young' [ SV yêuchiết | @# M 夭折 yāozhé ],
• mộttay (~ mộtcây) 'the connoisseur, expert' [ SV nhấtthủ | @ M 一手 yīshǒu ],
• bạttai, bàntay 'spank, palm' [ SV bachưởng' | M 巴掌 bāzhăng (~ bộptai < bàntay | Viet 'tay' <~ ® @ bàntay | M 巴掌 bāzhăng ~ bạttai, | M 掌 zhăng \ Vh @ 掌 zhăng ~ tay 手 shǒu (thủ) | § 巴腳 bājiăo bànchân, bạttai 巴掌 bāzhăng (~ bàntay) — bā => bạt, bộp, and bàn, tai in bạttai~> tay, therefore 掌 zhăng => tay || Dialects: Sichuan, Cant., Amoy : 手板 shǒubăn (thủbản) # 'bàntay' | ex. 一巴掌 yī bāzhăng (một bạttai) || Cf. 批打 pīdă (phêđả) VS 'bạttai' ~ 'táttai' ~ 'bộptai' ],
• bắtcóc 'kidnap' [ SV bảnggiả | M 綁架 băngjià \ @ 綁 băng ~ bắt 捕 bǔ (bổ), @ 架 jià ~ 'cóc' | M 綁 băng < MC pjəŋ ],
• lẽsống 'ideal, raison d'être' [ SV lítưởng | M 理想 líxiăng \ @ 想 xiăng ~ sống 生 shēng ],
• chảlụa [ SV táchục | M 炸肉 fàròu ],
• barọi [ SV phìnhục | M 肥肉 féiròu ],
• tồitệ 'vicious' [ SV tibi /tejbej/ | M 卑鄙 bēibǐ ],
• đáidầm [ SV niệusàng | M 尿床 niàochuáng ],
• đồngbạc 'monetary unit' [ SV đồngbản | M 銅板 tóngbăn > 銅 tóng ~> ® 'đồng' (Vietnamese monetary unit) which has been transliterated back to the modern M as 頓 dùn, with the colocator 'bạc' evolved from 錢幣 qiánbì (SV tiềntệ) 'tiềnbạc' (currency) via a process of association of 幣 bì with 白 bái (bạch) <~ 白金 bái (bạchkim) 'silver'. ],

and so on.

Even though many of those culturally accented words listed above do not include all the basic words, to be discussed later, as one would expect, at least their cognateness suggest some unique linguistic characteristics and subtle pecularities that only exist in both C and V speeches. Neither syntactic and semantic interpolations among any other ST languages in relation to C nor those of MK to V have ever come close in this and any other linguistic aspects.

It is of no surprise that in some of examples above many readers still could not make phonological connection with cited haplologic forms because those etyma may not look like cognates simply because parts of those words, either an initial, medial, final, or ending, had been dropped here and there showing no similarities in sound patterns readers expected as demonstrated by SV systematic correspondences. Remember, though, in SV many vocabularies are put into usage mainly in literary writings but not in spoken language if they happened not of any reproduction by fission at all. In historical phonology of any language sound divergence could commonly go further than what aforementioned.

In fact, in historical linguistics, with a span of more than 3000 years in traceable contact (Zhang. 1990), as in the case of V and C words of the same source, except for those later loans, ancient ones as well as those of local renovation or results of vocabulary development, you cannot always find definite one-to-one correspondence concurrent in all phonetic segments including all initials, medials, endings, and syllabic finals or 'vần' (SV vận),i.e., yùn 韻. 'Vần' is the second syllabic part of a monosyllabic word without the attachment of the consonantal initials, for instance, -at, -ang, -uyên, etc.. an essential phonological elemen and a unique linguistic trait (interestingly enough, mostly consonants), in the field of C and V linguistic studies.

Historically vocabularies in each respective language must have evolved in its own way independently after loanwords found their way into the target one. Any new development for any particular items in the borrowing source, if any, may have been re-introduced in a new form, e.g, 'xe' vs 'cộ' for 車, 'lưới' vs 'chài' 羅, 'chè' vs 'cháo' 粥 zhòu, or 'lam' vs 'chàm' 藍. Many cited examples may be repeated in different context. By the time they finish reading this study readers will find it work in their advantage that they will have memorized them by heart, another case of learning through examples then. Phonologically the V finals retained all the peculiar diphthongs and /-ngw/ or /-kw/ endings, not to mention the MC 8 tones and other characteristics in a wider range of syllabes since the ancient times. However, as loanwords keep coming into the V language they have been always in the state of being ready to change to suit speech habits of local people, e.g., /b/ being substituted with /ɓ/, /p/ ~> /pf/, etc. Such phenomenon of phonemic localization would have likely happened right after the first stage of infiltration of those very words into V, changes of initals at first. As the time went by the rest of sound changes in middles and finals must have taken place, naturally, according to the linguistic internal rules of sound changes, e.g., 蒜 suàn ~ 'tỏi' (SV toán, 'garlic'), 鮮 xiān ~ 'tươi' (SV tiên, 'fresh') . In modern time French and English loanwords in V have illustrated best that statement (See APPENDIX A).

Contrarily, on the Chinese side, extreme cases of syllabic and tonal changes had occurred to those of Early and modern M. To have a better idea how sound changes have their way of affecting on cognates, or words of the same roots, let's examine some other legit forms as follows with most of them intentionally taken from the HánViệt, or SV vocabulary stock which still retaining those of MC linguistic characteristics, for its unquestionable authentic patterns of sound changes:

• é 鵝: nga (VS: ngang, ngỗng) 'goose',
• ér 而: nhi (VS: mà, nhưng) 'but',
• niăo 鳥: điểu (SV) 'bird',
• wān 灣: loan (VS: vịnh ~ vũng [as in Vũngtàu (placename)] ) 'bay',
• qì 氣: hơi (SV: khí, Cant. /hei1/) 'air',
• qián 前: trước (SV: tiền, Hainanese: [taj]) 'front',
• bì 蓽: tốt (VS: rốt) 'final',
• jí 集: tập (VS: gộp) 'collect',
• jì 季 : quí (VS: mùa) 'season',
• lǜ 率: suất (VS: mức, mực) 'rate',
• chéng 承: thừa (VS: dâng) 'submit',
• rè 熱: nhiệt (VS: rát, nhức) 'hot, sore',
• xiè 瀉: tả (VS: chảy, xổ) 'diarhea',
• xué 學: học (Cantonese: /hok/, Hainanese: /fat/) 'learn',
• mín 民: dân 'people',
• míng 名: danh 'name',
• shàn 扇: phiến 'flank',
• yù 愉: thâu, du (VS: ẩu, vui) 'joyous',
• yì 藝: nghệ (VS: nghề) 'arts, profession',
• yì 臆: ngực (SV: ức) 'chest',
• yì 憶: nhớ (SV: ức) 'memory',
• yì 一: nhất (VS: một) 'one',
• yì 義: nghĩa, ngãi 'righteousness',
• yì 億: tỷ (SV: ý) '100 million, V. billion',
• yóu 郵: bưu 'postal',
• yóu 柚: bưu (VS: bưởi, bòng) 'pamelo',
• yóu 游: bơi, lội (SV du) 'swim',
• tìng 聽: nghe (SV: thính, Hainanese: [k'e]) 'hear',
• tìng 廳: sảnh 'hall',
• pīng 娉: sính 'betroth',
• shēng 生: đẻ, sống (SV: sinh, Hainanese: [de]) 'living, give birth',
• xì 惜: tiếc (SV: tích) 'cherish',
• xì 吸: hút (SV: hấp) 'inhale',
• xí 習: tập (VS: thói(quen) 習慣 xíguàn) 'drill, habit',
• xǐ 洗: tẩy [ VS: tắm, rữa, giặt | @ xǐzăo 洗澡: tắmrữa (Hainanese: /tojat/), xǐliăn 洗臉: rữamặt, xǐyī 洗衣: giặtáo | cf. xuěhèn 雪恨 : rữahờn (SV: tuyếthận) 'revenge' ] 'wash',
• chī 吃: ăn (SV: ngật, cf. "ất" radical 乙 yǐ for phonetic, cf. shí 食: VS xơi) 'eat',
• ròu 肉: nhục (VS: ruốc) 'meat' [ cf. (chả)lụa 炸肉 (zhà)ròu, (ba)rọi 肥肉 (féi)ròu) ] ,
and on and on.

Take a closer look at modern V orthography and we will see that many words, in comparison with modern M, have been transformed beyond recognition in all initials, medials, vowels, diphthongs, and finals or endings; they were either changed drastically or dropped completely at the same time. Further compare them with Cant., a fairly close phonological system with today's SV, and you will have an overall picture of such similar sound changes.

The same process of sound changes still continues on even in our great modern time of communication where the web connects everybody else who speaks the same language on the planet and how and why the changes are still occurring is of another subject matter of research.

As a matter of fact, sound changes in SV phonology have likely occurred systematically following strict linguistic rules as their patterns are clearly shown in SV vocabulary stock (từ HánViệt). Obviously their phonological transformation had resulted in less irregularities than what we would have expected from those of VS. It is so said since we cannot always draw patterns for them by simply tracing the exceptional trails that sound changes have left in each language under examination, as shown by examples illustrated above, for the reason that they seem not to be transformed in batches by shifts and bounces like what appear in the scholarly SV phonological system. Changes from C to VS, in effect, had occurred when in need for practical use in real time. For example, people in North Vietnam during the 22 years of wartime separation (between 1956-1975) with the South had borrowed words from adjacent Cant. dialect, probably from China's Guangxi southernmost linguistic pocket called 'Báihuà' 白話 báihuà ('plain speech'), for these specific new items called 'vằnthánh' 餛飩 húndùn (wonton) or 'mìchính' 味精 wèijīng (MSG) which had already existed in the South in other forms as 'hoànhthánh' or SV 'vịtinh', respectively. In general C loanwords in similar circumstances are being at a 'literary' level because the ways those words being pronounced carry an air of MC, or to be exact, the Tang's poetic-style choice of words, for instance, 'bângkhuâng' 彷徨 pánghuáng (melancholy) or 'bỡngỡ' 彆扭 bièniu (feel ill at ease), which could have been mostly spead first by educated people in literature at an earlier days. When SV sounds are transliterated into modern V, probably in writing first following strict phonological rules. It is so mentioned because many of VS words used in daily V common conversations have been first "released" by the literati and then popularized by the mass — possibly with a hint of renunciation of their academic SV pronunciations until settled by mostly used replacements — which may have been created as needs arise such those modern computerese ('kíchhoạt' 擊活 jīhuó 'click on a botton' vs 'bấmchuột' 按鼠 ànshǔ, 'máyđiệntoán' 電算機 diànsuànjī 'máyvitính' 薇算機 wēisuànjī), etc., which are solely an inovation in V and may not correctly comprehended by the C literate.

It is important to note that C to VS sound changes appear irregular and haphazard, partly due to incompetency and poor performance on the majority of the illiterate populace who tried to imitate C loanwords effortfully, especially children of C immigrants and native mothers (See King, 1969). They have played a decisive role in spreading mispronunciation of C loanwords in communication because in the old days after Vietnam's gaining her independence, not so many people had the means to afford formal schooling to study SV literature written in classical C ('文言文') except for quite a few scholars. Even though not every great scholar in the old days was a Nguyễn Du, Shakepeare of Vietnam, word choices in their literature would later be influencing other languistic usage factors such as frequency and overcorrection among many things in re-production of generative grammar. What is why our modern readers do have difficulties in understanding all words used in the past literary works. In other words the whole populace of those two literate classes have contributed greatly to the shaping the ultimate VS lexical forms throughout the V linguistic development.

In our modern time, comparatively, let's consider the case the penetration of French words, amounting to more than 400 rarely-used items, into the V vocabulary during the period of approximately less than one hundred years of French colonialization until the middle of the last century. Phonemically they had evolved in such a way that it is somewhat in disarray than what happened to the transformation from Sinitic into VS. In fact French words entering the V language had been further seasoned to suit the taste of the locals, that is, they had been phonemicized, actualized, and accented by local pronunciation to fit into local speakers' habit, of which such process has been dissimilar to both SV and VS scenarios. For the same matter, nevertheless, the English loans have gone through the same process as that of the French in the last few decades in our time, very slowly though. (See APPENDIX A).

Specialists in V phonological linguistics therefore may need to deal with different intriguing questions for such French to V domain such as how and why of sound change phenomenon. However, their synchronic characteristics of those under investigation could help characterize patterns of OC etyma and confirm those loanwords which had crept into V as well as to determine which ones are not. Some of the lexical matters may include syllabicization and vocalization of complex intial consonant cluster system in both OC and proto-V, i.e. diphthongs and triphthongs, e.g., 'cờlê' (for French 'clé', or 'wrench') as compared to 'chàilưới' ('net fishing') hypothetically from OC *jraih, or 'xecộ' ('cổxe'? 'carriage') OC *kla, Historically vocabularies in each respective language also could have evolved in its own way independently after loanwords found their way into the target one. Any new development for any particular items in the borrowing source, if any, may have been re-introduced in a new form, e.g, 'xe' vs 'cộ' for 車, 'lưới' vs 'chài' 羅 or 'lam' vs 'chàm' 藍. or we can even posit 'khủnglong' ('dinasaur', or 'conrồng'? 'dragon') as 恐龍 kǒnglóng **PC klong, etc. dissyllac word such as 'cùichỏ' (elbow), 'bảvai' (shoulders), 'đầugối' (knee), etc., could be theorized such as being evolved from the same words started with complex initial consonantal clusters. In general, based on such rationalized theorization over all we can even postulate the existence of tones in V long and long beforee the 12th century as having been speculated by the AA camp due to the ignorance of history of its initiators which is totally unconvincible and really absurb because the V words would have all sounded tonelessly like Japanese Kanji or Korean Hanja.

For the later period of phonological development, the phenomenal dissyllabicization of homonymous monosyllabic words, starting from what appeared in the Tang Dynasty's vocabulary system, phenomenon of active dissyllabic stablization and semantic synchronization which had caused the metathesis or syntatic reverse of order to have taken place, e.g., 'đảmbảo' vs. 'bảođảm' (guarantee), 'đấutranh' vs. 'tranhđấu' (struggle), etc. In short, all these subject matters will be under the scope of discussion in this paper.

In the meanwhile, for those old C loanwords, it is not difficult to see that many of those V words of C origin appear to be much older than their SV cognates such as

• lúa, gạo (SV đạo) 'rice, paddy' [ M 稻 dào < MC dɑw < OC *lhu:ʔ, *ɫhu:ʔ < PC **ly:wH | Schuessler : MC dâu < OC *gləwʔ or *mləwʔ ],
• buồng (SV phòng) 'room' [ M 房 fáng < MC baŋ < OC *bwɒŋ ],
• buồm (SV phàm) 'sail mast' [ M 帆 fán < MC bwɒm < OC *bram ],
• bè (SV phà) ‘raft’ [ M 筏 fá < MC bwjət < OC *bhat ],
• chè (SV trà) 'tea' [ M 茶 chá < MC ɖa < OC *ɫa: < PC **ɫe | FQ 宅加 ],
• bụt, vãi (SV Phật) 佛 'Buddha, monk' [ M 佛 fó < MC but < *OC bjət ] ,
• bua, vua (SV vương) 'king' [ M 王 wáng < MC waŋ < *OC wuaŋ | dialects: Shanghai uã2, Taiyuan (Thn): vã1 ],
• bụa, vợ (SV phụ) 'wife, lady' [ M 婦 fù | cf. goábụa 寡婦 guăfù (SV quảphụ) ],
• cha, tía (SV đa) 'father' [ M 爹 diē, duò (ta, đa, đà) | cf. M 多 duō (đa) < MC ta < OC *tāj | Pt 得何 ],
• bố (SV phụ) 'father' [ M 父 < pu < paʔ < OC *paʔ (VS bự) < PC **pah (respectful way to address an older person), 父, 甫 (> bố, ex. Bốcái Ðạivương: 父母大王 Fùmmǔ Dàwáng) | Tibetan: dba 'Your Honorable, Sir' ],
• mái, mạ, mệ, mẹ (SV mẫu) 'mother' [ M mǔ 母 < MC myw < OC * mjəʔ | MC reading 流開一上厚明 | Cant. /mouh/, Hai. /mai/ (~ mái) | See © nạ ~ 妳 nǐ (nhĩ) > 娘 niáng (nương) | cf. Amoy bo3, Chaozhou bo3 ],
• nạ, nàng, nường (SV nương) 'lady' [ M 娘 niáng (Beijing dialect 'mom', cf. ancient V 'nạ' means "mother") < MC naŋ < OC* nraŋ | Pk: nuəŋ12, Zyyy: niaŋ12, Amoy nĩu12, Chaozhou niẽ12, Shanghai niã32 | see © nạ | <~ © 妳 nǐ (nhĩ) > Beijing 娘兒 niár ],
• lời (SV từ) 'word' [ M 辭 cí < MC zjɤ < OC *lhjə ],
• lẽ (SV lý) '(eason [ Also 'thớ' ~ 'sớ' ((wood), grain, (jade), vein) | M 理 lǐ < MC lɤ, ly < OC *rhjəʔ, *rhjəs
• việc, róc (SV hoạt) 'work' [ Also: 'rócrách' (sound of running water), M 活 huó, guō (hoạt, quạt) < MC ɠwʌt, kwʌt < OC *ghwa:t ],
• đánh (SV đả) 'strike' [ M 打 dă, dá, děng < MC tiɛŋ, taiŋ < OC *ta, *te:ŋ, *tre:ŋʔ ],
• rương (SV sương) 'suitcase' [ Also: 'hòm' (case) | M 箱 xiāng < MC sjaŋ < OC *saŋ | ¶ s-, x- ~ r-: ex. 鬚 xū (tu) râu ],
• tìm, kiếm (SV tầm) 'look for' [ M 尋 xún < MC tsjim < OC *lhjəm < PC **ljəm ],
• đạc, đo (SV độ) 'measure' [ V 'đođạc' @ & 度 dù 'đo' + 度 dù 'đạc' | M 度 dù < MC dʌk <OC *dha:k, *da:s < PC **dha: ],

and so on.

Some of the etyma cited above may need more enumeration that what is shown, but it would be too elaborate. To illustrate, let's try the case of VS 'ban-' as in:

• bantrưa 'noon time' [ SV bạchtrú | M 白晝 báizhòu | M 白 bái, bó, bà, băi, zì < MC bɐk < OC *brak || M 晝 zhòu < MC ʈǝw < OC *triws | Pulleyblank: LMC triw < EMC: *trow ],
• banngày 'daytime' [ SV bạchnhật | M 白日 báirì | M 日 rì, mì < MC rit < OC *ɲit < PC **nĭj ]

Note: In V "ban", a syllabic morpheme used as prefix and a semantic marker to indicate a period during the day, as in "banngày" or "banđêm" (night time), might have been derived from, interestingly enough,

• 飯 fàn [ SV phạn, 'meal' for 'bữa' ~> 'ban', cf. 'bữacóbữakhông', 'ăn bữatrưa lo 'bữatối', V idioms, literally meaning 'make do with or without meals' and 'having something to eat for lunch but worrying about food for the dinner', respectively ]


and then associated the concept with 'banngày' for 白日 báirì. The same notion of "ban" is further expanded to other dissyllabic words such as


• 晚間 wănjiān (night time) for "banđêm"


while "ban" is not actually 白 bái or 晚 wăn and "đêm" certainly not from 間 jiān but probably from 宵 xiāo (SV tiêu, 'evening'). The sound for that word might have been picked up, altered, and spread by the common mass — previously mentioned as the illiterate populace — first with the concept of "time" as in "daytime" and "night time". Similarly, that is how


• "banmai" 平明 píngmíng (dawn),
• "bantrưa" 白晝 báizhòu (day time),
• "bantối" 半夜 bànyè (midnight) [ or 'bankhuya' ? ],
• "banchiều" 傍晚 bángwăng (dusk),
• "bannảy" 方才 fāngcái (just)


had come about, a product of association with "ban" or "bữa" (Cf. 'bữasáng', 'bữatrưa', 'bữachiều', 'bữatối' with an implication of meals depending on the context.) The same rationalization can be equally applied to


• "banngàybanmặt" (in broad daylight) and "banđêmbanhôm" (in the depth of the night), which are the sound change variants of 青天白日 qīngtiān báirì and 三更半夜 sāngēng bànyè, respectively.

As we can see, "ban", unlike its variant "bữa", in all cited illustrations appears only in dissyllabic formation, and, in fact, as a morphemic syllable, it cannot be used independently. From this deduction, we can hypothesize that the morpheme "ban-" had been associated with other lexical forms to convey the connotation of period during the day, hence, a late new morphemic prefix 'ban-' was born for a segmental concept of time. In the meanwhile the older monosyllabic forms "ngày" and "đêm" (day and night) could also have arisen from the same roots with those languages in the MK linguistic family or they could have been posited as cognates to the C rì 日 and xiāo 宵 (etymology of these two words is another issue to be dealt with later.)

Despite of such daunting challenges in making out the true identity of those C and V cognates, sound changes in the designated VS sphere, including the basic vocabulary set in V, are much more noteworthy for their unconventional varieties, though. They have occurred to VS words synchronically, so to speak, but they are not directly derived from those of SV of diachronic nature. On the surface for both vocabulary sets their correspondent cognates at times might appear to be close in modern orthography, that is C Pinyin vs. V Quốcngữ, sounding similarly acoustically, yet each of them could have originated independently from various sources of one or more major C dialects in different places and times over the long past in history, as diversed as cited previously in some sampled cases, all from the same roots, genetically affiliated, so to speak. The main reason for such congruous course of development is that the then "Vietnamese" ancestors, namely, those who spoke some form of proto-Vietic speech, had been in much closer contact with other tribes of the Yue people such as those of NanYue 南越 or 東越 DongYue who, at a certain period in the ancient time, also spoke similar speeches which might have been understood by other ancient Yue groups, including the people of LạcViệt (雒越 LuòYuè) origin. They are Vietnamese, who, until and even now currently, have been still oftentimes being referred to as "Annamese" firstly by early western scholars who happened to know only the term 'Annamese' and no significant others, the same way they always call 'China' indiscriminately for any dynasties in the Middle Kingdom, including those states of Mongolian and Manchurian rulers — just like nowadays we normally refer to 'America' (refering to only the US while the concept supposedly to include North and South), or Europe for anything European to EU regardless of what national historical strains we are talking about, either in the current affairs of East, Western, Turkey, Poland, or matters of bailing out financially Greece, Portugal, for the good sake of the union. Nonetheless in a respect the case of Vietnam is much more analogous to that of Great Britain, for the same analogical rationalization, whereas her English language belongs to Indo-European languistic family, like Vietnamese to that of ST while, anthropologically, while China's people are comparable to that of the US, so to speak. If the AA initiators knew history of China or Vietnam they maight have been aware some time around the year 'Vietnam' (then called the Wu State, 936) was bound to become an independent state broken away from the NamHan 南漢 NánHàn Dynasty, King Liu of the NanHan had adopted the name for it as 'ĐạiViệt' or 大越 DàYyuè ('The Great Viet') prior to the name 'NamHan 南漢 NanHan (Lu Shih-Peng, 1964, Chin. p. 147) ...some time around the year 'Vietnam' (then called the Wu State, 936) was bound to become an independent state broken away from the NamHan 南漢 NánHàn Dynasty, King Liu of the NanHan had adopted the name for it as 'ĐạiViệt' or 大越 DàYuè ('The Great Viet') prior to the name 'NamHan 南漢 NanHan! — which was destined to become the name of the independent Vietnam nation later on! — What is the point for all these extra moral lessons here? Well, in short, the AA specialists are nouveau colonists, knowing all about themselves but nothing about those LạcViệt from the Yue, when the Yue and the proto-Chinese were in first contact, who the ancient Viets were, 大越 DàYyuè or NamHan 南漢, they being just name, just like AA and BachViet, etc. At their convenience, the new term AA had been made debut abruptly thanks to their ignorance. And now that they expect us to follow them is an absurdity.

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2) The role of Mandarin

As you can see, pinyin transcription for modern Mandarin (M) is chosen here to illustrate examples throughout this paper. One may ask how on earth V has to do with M long after Vietnam had already gained its independence from China in the 10th century? The answer is, firstly, V had been still a copycat of China, from everything to everything until present day. Secondly, while OC reconstructed phonology is still used to trace their cognate trails. M, a spoken northern C dialect, actually had just taken its later forms and shapes bearing similarity with its present state some time after the Northern Song Dynasty in the 11th century. In C historical phonology M is in fact a direct descendant of MC, which in turn descended from OC but the phonological system of M has undergone a great deal of changes due to its long historical contacts with northern Tartar people from the north after hundreds of years. For example, even though modern M is still keeping 4 tones, a drop from the ancient 8-tone system, its syllabic final stock, or yùn 韻 vần, i.e. the syllabic final parts without the initials, have decreased greatly. (Zhou Zumo. 1991. Zhōngyuán Yīnyùn 中原音韻) For ancient sound reconstruction M may not be an ideal pick to do the comparative work in historical linguistics; however, its correspondences in sound change patterns can still be traced and tabulated. Its modern pinyin is so chosen because its Romanized transliteration is familiar to most C learners and can conveniently serve as a guide to pronunciation of cited words that are under investigation.

Regarding historical Tartaric linguistic influence on M with extraordinary linguistic deviatory sound changes werer attributed to strong interpolation with those non-Han northern languages, probably of Altaic origin (Bo Yang 1983. Zī Zhì Tōngjiàn 資治通鑑) which were spoken by the Tartars, the Kim (the Jīn 金), the Mongolians, and the Manchurians. Those normadic Tartaric people had long controlled vast areas of northern territories of China for nearly 1000 years — interestingly similar to China's reins on the Vietnam in ancient times for approximately almost the same period until early 10th century — which, as it is known in China's history as the Yuan Dynasty, was at its height with the conquer and rule of the whole Middle Kingdom led by Genghis Khan in the early 12th century for the next 100 years until its being replaced by the Ming Dynasty. Then came the Machurians who in turn overthrew the Ming Dynasty and established the Qing Dynasty in the 16th century and had been ruling China until 1911. Throughout those periods M had always been the official language, also known as 官話 Guanhua, the official language used by the mandarins at the imperial court. This "lingua franca", probably the mixture of spoken northern dialects — already altered and shortened syllabic — with classical Chinese, has evolved into a relatively different appearance in comparison with its MC predecessor.

M is therefore being used here, beside what is mentioned above, for a good reason that it is presumably a popular C speech that C learners should know and, for our purpose as an illustrative tool, it is convenient to relate to it's contemporary forms despite of its deviatory sound system from ancient sounds. Additionally, interestingly enough, it is from this popular Mandarin, among other variations, represented loosely by the Beijing dialect as a very close variant of it, that I have found all living proofs showing both intrinsic subtleness and uniqueness of C linguistic elements that perpetually exist in VS as well, for example, bênh 幫 bāng 'to side with', chào 早 zǎo 'hello', mai 明兒 mínr 'tomorrow', đừng 甭 péng 'do not', đuợc 得 dé 'okay', xong 成 chéng 'done, fine' (Beijing), luônluôn 老老 láoláo (Beijing), xịn 新 xīn 'brand new', keokiệt 小氣 xiǎoqì 'stingy', bàxã 媳婦 xífù 'wife, honey (husband to call his wife)', etc. That undeniable connection implicitly suggests that many of VS words probably have something pretty much to do with this northern vernacular M in the same manner colloquially as it is to Cant., Fukienese, or any C dialects after excluding those of very basic aboriginal linguistic strata (see Cant. examples below). All other related etyma directly evolved from the MC which also had given rise to the systematic transformation of its sounds into the existing SV lexicons and they all co-exist and blend well with all other VS words as we have come to know today.

With regards to colloquial exclusion, as a southern C dialect, also known as Yue speech (粵語 Cant. /jetyh/), with a 9 tone system, which its speakers usually referred to as the Tang's language '唐話' (Cant. /toŋwa/), Cant. still reserves the most C ancient linguistic features and characteristics more than its M counterpart. It is a C dialect and officially classified as of the ST linguistic family even though, interestingly, it is obvious that this C "dialect" was built on top of a base of indigenous Yue substrata — so by AA theorization it is an AA language and it is the indigenous Yue substrata that the AA fits in — thanks to its apparent remnants of basic etyma as well as innate expressions such as

• 'Nih hoj ping douh?' (Where are you going?),
• 'Hyej fajng dzwo kao.' (He's already slept.), etc.,


which sharply deviate from similar expressions in several C dialects, just like what would appear in V but in different ways. For intance, those two senctences could be translated into M and then V word by word as


• "你去那兒?" Ni qù năr? 'Mầy đi đâu vậy?'


and


• "他睡覺了." Ta shuìjiào le. 'Nó đingủ rồi.'
,

respectively, where we can posit V 'đi' for 去 qù and 'đingủ' for 睡覺 shuìjiào at the same time with implications that V 'ngủ' ~ 臥 wò (SV ngoạ) is associated with the dissyllabic word 睡覺, while phonemically 睡 = 'đi' and 覺 = 'ngủ' (in V literally formed as 'go to sleep'). All these postulations were established by a dissyllabic approach to be dissussed later.

In actuality, both Cant. and V plus another southern C dialect called Fukienese, which is represented by Amoy (Xiàmén) dialect 廈門方言, with 7 tone system, all still contain remnants of the original speech in Han Dynasty which had been built on top of aboriginal linguistic layers. While VS and Fukienese etyma carry more of Han Dynasty's remnants and those SV and Cant. lexicons are more of a speech of Tang Dynasty after its finalization on dissylabic re-ordering, all three speeches still retain many ancient phonological pecularities and features, beside tones, rich in syllabic finals until this day. Those linguistic attributes charateristics had already long become extinct in the so-called Guanhua, or the modern M, that had gained their position as national language, aka putonghua.

In the meanwhile all of the above factors, theoretically, could be used as supportive argumentation to the theory of Sinitic affiliation of the V language relative to each other as we have seen them both today. With regards to the geo-historical anthropological aspects of the Sinitic-Yue affiliation, or the origin of both C and V, and for that matter genetically, the V language has already been in possession of such tonality and dissyllabicity which had been sharing with those Sinitic elements since the remotely ancient times, 3,000 to 5,000 thousand years ago, perhaps, which actually surpasses the upper limit set for this research, enough for us to understand the existence of the by-then Indian-cultured Champa state that situated in the time frame of the Early Han Dynasty arounnd 100 BC, which is used to refute the AA theorization of the northward formation of Vietnam and also a slap on the faces of those who have made overly jealous claims that those artifacts of Sahuynh and Oc Eo civilizations had been created by the "Vienamese ancestors".

As part of introduction chapter to this VS study, etymologically, the foregoing section, while trying to ignore all the bells and whistles from the AA camp, is also supposedly to trumpet all about the 'ST-VS' — conceptually vs the AA-MK — to ring in your attention branching into those V and C similarities far beyond what have been minimally acknowledged, or adequately recognized, by other authors, who have hardly been able to decipher the true messages engraved on worn-out side of a buried flipped coin, which are comparable to Egyptian Hieroglyphs (that's why we envy the Egytian's being so lucky and reckon the truthfullness and seriousness of the work done by those western archeaologists in the field, but never so with those of the AA.) Should they come to the recognition and reconciliation of those new discoveries as outlined above or are they way too much Chinese on the becoming V which would make it look so much more like another C species so they would rather keep V an independent linguistic entity so as not to be in disaccord with the temperament of Vietnamese nationalism than hardly accept an uneasy fact of a Siniticized V? As a matter fact, it is of no surprise to become as such in each of its historical stages which have been subject to changes in accordance with national moody rhythms while business of politics goes on as usual, especially in the field that V is too much overloaded with heavy culturally-accented items. In this regard there exist so many C items in its vocabulary stock that one needs to ascertain that one's own standing on any testament ought to be firmly verified before depriving of V a form of speech a real C root without giving it a chance, a postulate to extend further even to a realm of virtually all V idioms and proverbs (just like an orphan being adopted with complete refusals from the god-parents to access his or her true identity). I myself have long recognized this matter and set out an expedition on the lesser frequented route called Sinitic-Vietnamese -- in opposition to AA-MK theory -- and found thereupon still an deserted playing field. I hope that this research will revive its vitality and start raising true interests deeply in core matters of the Sintic strata of V etymology (VS). So far, as readers have already got some glimpses of the true matter on the foregoing, layer after layer of C lexicons have been unveiled in all shapes and forms. Undoubtedly many of them are C loanwords, but deep below the surface a very few of their cognateness as protruded from the same remotely ancient past would eventually tell us some stories of the unknown VS core matters.

In short, recuperation from such irrational matter is really some simple steps to take but the rediculous thing is that once those AA believers have been so deeply indoctrinated with such a wrongly postulated theory they would believe in everything, for example, those nonsense of a toneless hypothesis. If the AA theorists had learned some history and know that 'Annam' had been a proctectorate prefecture of China from 111 BC until 936 AD, nobody would have ever dared to venture in such a tedious task of trying to fefute or deviate the V affiliation from those of ancient Cantonese or Fukienese.

In conclusion for this chapter, this research will present to you the Sinitic paradigm that will elaborate on the etymology of VS of C origin.

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(華) See Nguyễn Tài Cẩn's Nguồn gốc và Quá trình Hình thành Cách đọc Âm Hán Việt (1979) for the history of MC to SV transformation. Examples of those Yue loanwords in C are "đường" 糖 táng (sugar), "dừa" 椰 yě (coconut), "trầu" 柄榔 bīngláng (betel nut, cf. Muong 'blau'), "sông" 江 jiāng (river, cf. Muong 'krong'), etc.

(秦) Tàu (1) Tần, (2) Chệt. (3) Tầu, (4) Tàu 秦 Qín (Tần) [ Vh @ QT 秦 Qín < MC tʂjin < OC *tʂin | PNH: QĐ ceon4, Hẹ cin2, Tn ćhiẽ 12, Ta ćiẽ 12, Dc ćhĩ 12, Nx chin12 | Shuowen: 伯益之後所封國。地宜禾。从禾，舂省。一曰秦，禾名。𥠼，籒文秦从秝。匠鄰切 | Kangxi: 〔古文〕𣜈【唐韻】【廣韻】匠隣切【集韻】【類篇】【韻會】【正韻】慈隣切，𠀤音螓。國名。【說文】伯益之後所封國。地宜禾。【詩·秦風·車鄰註】秦，隴西谷名。在雍州鳥鼠山之東北。【疏】今秦亭，秦谷也。【韻會】春秋秦國，漢置天水郡，後魏改秦州。【釋名】秦，津也。其地沃衍有津潤也。　又三秦。【史記·項羽紀】三分關中，王秦降將，章邯雍王，司馬欣塞王，董翳翟王，爲三秦。　又大秦國。【後漢·西域傳】大秦在海西，亦云海西國。其人民長大平正，有類中國，故謂之大秦。　又姓。秦自顓頊後，子嬰旣滅，支庶以爲秦氏。　又【說文】一曰秦，禾名。　又叶慈良切，音牆。【易林】玉璧琮璋，執贄是王。百里寧越，應聘齊秦。 | Ghichú: Chữ dùng trước và sau thời ÐôngChuliệtquốc ở các nước ở đất Trunghoa ngàynay để chỉ nướcTần (Hoàngđế Tần Thỉhoàng thốngnhất 7 nước năm 246 trước Côngnnguyên). Trong vănhoá Việt, ngày Tết Ðoanngọ mồng 5 tháng 5 đượcxem là một ngàylễ lớn trong dângian trướcđây. Phongtục gói bánhú và quăng bánh xuống sông là đểcho cá khỏi tỉa xác Khuất Nguyên là một sĩphu người nướcSở, đượcxem là ngườiyêunước, tựtuẩn để khỏi bị lọt vào tay quânbinh nướcTần. Dựavào tìnhtiết đó, ta cóthể liênkết ngay hàmý đốikháng và ngaycả khinhmiệt khi gọi nước 'Tần'. Vùng Nước Sở ngàynay toạlạc tại Tỉnh Hồbắc, cóthể là một bộphận hoặc ítra rất gầngũi với vùngđất BáchViệt phươngNam (baogồm các tỉnh Vânnam, Quảngtây, Hồnam, Quảngđông, Phúckiến...) trên 2000năm trướcđây. Nhờđó, ta cũng cóthể dễdàng liênkết âm 'Tần' với 'Tàu' (trong tiếngViệt ta còn có từ 'Tàuô', phùhợp với màu áoquần của quanquân Ðời Tần — hoàntoàn màuđen). Cóngười cholà 'Tàu' là 'tàughe', và 'ngườiTàu' là người đi tàughe hoặc sống trên tàughe khi đến Việtnam, nhưng đây chỉlà một cáchsuyluận màthôi. Chỉcó liênkết 'Tần' với 'Tàu' là hợplý nhất (nhưng trong ngữâmhọc 秦 Qín 'Tần' lại kếtthúc bằng một âmcuối mở là tỵâm -n, khó biếnthành -w, một âm trònmôi đóngkhép), vì vào thờiấy dânchúng các nước liệtquốc đều ghét 'Tần'. Còn một sựkiện đángkể là người Quảngđông ở Việtnam thường tựxưng mình là 'Thòn(g)dành' 唐人 Tángrén (Đườngnhân) hay là 'côngdân Nhà Ðường'. Trong những quycách biếnđổi ngữâmhọc, 'thòn(g)' trong 唐人 tángrén (đườngnhân) hay 'thòn(g)dành' đều cóthể biếndạng thành âm 'tàu' (nhưng nênnhớ 唐 táng — 'đàng, đường' đều kếtthúc với một âmcuối mở, khó biếnthành /-aw/) thời cổđại mang ýnghĩa 'đường(cái)', 'đàng(cái)', x. 唐 táng (đường).). Tuynhiên, khảnăng nầy khôngbằng loạisuy 'Tần' = 'Tàu' vì ngườiViệt chúngta không 'ghét' người Quảngđông như ta thường liênkết ngườiQuảng là 'ngườiTàu' trong kháiniệm 'Tàu' nhưng ta biết trong hiệntại, vì trongtâmthức tậpthể (collective consciousness) cóthể chúngta thầm hiểurằng ngườiQuảngđông là 'ngườiBáchviệt' đã bị Hánhoá (Triệu Ðà xưngvương nước Namviệt, thủphủ Phiênngung, tức Thànhphố Quảngchâu ngàynay.) Ngoàira trong ngữâmhọc ta còncó chữ 中 Zhōng (Trung) ~ tàu \ ¶ ʈ- ~ t-, /-ŋʷ ~ -w/ (by dissimilation), § 痛 tòng (thống) ~> 'đau', dođó 'trung' cũng rất cóthể biếnthành 'tàu'. || ex.. 秦晋之缘 QínJìnzhīyuán (KếtduyênTầnTấn), 秦人 Qínrén (ngườiTàu), 三秦 Sānqín (BaTàu), 秦越 Qín-Yuè (Tàu-Việt) || Note: China, Chinese, as China is called in Qin Dynasty (246 — 210 B.C). Also:, a kind of cereal, family surname of Chinese origin, Qin Tribe, Qin State, Qin District in ancient China, Shaanxi Province, China, (Viet.), Chet, a contemptuous term for Chinese. ]

三秦 Sānqín (1) TamTần, (2) BaTàu [ Vh @ QT 三秦 Sānqín \ Vh @ 三 sān ~ ba, @ 秦 Qín ~ Tàu | QT 三 sān, sàn, sā, sēn < MC sɑm, sʌm < OC *sjə:m, *sjə:ms | Pt 蘇甘, 蘇暫 || QT 秦 Qín < MC tʂjin < OC *tʂin | x. Tàu || Handian: ◎ 三秦 Sānqín 指關中地區。項羽破秦入關,把關中之地分給秦降將章邯、司馬欣、董翳,因稱關中為三秦. ◎ 城闕輔三秦,風煙望五津。 ——唐· 王勃《杜少府之任蜀州 ◎ (1) 秦亡以後， 項羽三分關中，封秦降將章邯為雍王， 司馬欣為塞王， 董翳為翟王，合稱三秦。見《史記·秦始皇本紀》。後指今陝西一帶。唐王勃《杜少府之任蜀州》詩：“城闕輔三秦，風煙望五津。” 金馮璧《河山形勝圖》詩：“地形西控三秦遠，河勢南吞二華秋。”(2). 秦州、 東秦州、 南秦州的合稱。 《魏書·尒朱天光傳》：“於是三秦、 河、 渭、 瓜、 涼、 鄯善咸來款順。”《資治通鑑·梁武帝中大通二年》引此文， 胡三省注雲：“ 三秦， 秦、 東秦、 南秦也。” | Note: Sanqin, central Shanxi plain.Also: (Viet.) mostly contemptuous term to call Chinese. ]

(普) For you as general readers here is few short tips before continuing and I promise that you will have a lot to learn. Firstly, be prepared with plenty of time because this research should have been published in print format only, not suitable for a quick scan on internet. Secondly, if you will not thoroughly grasp what is conveyed in this introductory chapter, do not despair. As long as you are still eager to learn, you may want to cut it short this way, consider AA as a linguistic branch derived from the Yue languages and then start your new journey from there, for terminologically it may make a better sense if you choose to enter that detoured way. Else start with the premise that "Yue" (as opposed to AA) is the starting point for everything to be discussed hereupon, then you will easily understand the reason why the AA people go all the other way around. Thirdly, in any way do not let the overwhelming AA information on the www to intimidate you because for those who are in the ST circle (for "Yue"), like myself, they know exactly what is on their side of the coin. A calming effect for you to navigate through the AA maze without distraction is not to immediately respond to reactions by those from the AA camp since you will easily get distracted. I always assume that you are of the ST camp, otherwise you have not enough patience to read this far and more than the next equivalent of hundreds of printed pages awaiting you ahead.

For language leaners, for example, just like the first taste of "phở", they will be excited to discover that "phở", etymologically, is cognate to 粉 fěn 'noodle' (SV phấn) which is also an etymon that has evolved into V "bún" (noddle), "bột" (flour), "phấn" (chalk), "bụi" (dusk), etc. For linguists, etymologicallythey may unarguably accept right away the plausibility of cognateness of these paired entities "雞 M jī (SV 'kê' ~ VS 'gà', 'chicken')", "蛋 dàn (đản ~ trứng, 'egg')", "蒜 suàn (toán ~ tỏi, 'garlic'), "公 gōng (công ~ ông, 'baron') ~ 翁 wēng (ông ~ ông, 'old man')", "打 dă (SV đả ~ VS đánh, 'strike')", etc, but for average readers it would take them some time to digest factual statements the help of some explanatory elaborations on the related etyma. Sometimes readers have to unquestionably accept certain presumptions first, such as "打 dă" ~ VS "đánh" with no need to know further the lengthy explanation of its original phonetic 丁 dīng (SV đinh, 'young man') that also has given rise to 釘 dīng (SV đinh 'nail', đóng 'to nail'), etc., to validate the next inductions from such premises.

(Q) For a guide to an approximal pronunciation of V, refer to http://vi.wiktionary.org/wiki/, Vietnamese-English dictionary by Nguyễn Ðình-Hoà (1966), or Nguyễn Văn Khôn (1967)

(車) According to Starostin, in MC 車 also reads /tʂa/, FQ 尺遮 (whence Mand. chē, Viet. xa), but this reading is rather recent (judging from rhymes in Guangyun 廣韻, not earlier than Eastern Han) and must stem from some Old Chinese dialect. Vietnamese has also a colloquial loan from the same source: xe. If the reconstruction is indeed *kla, one can think of an early borrowing from IE (hence, 'cộ' ).

(音) Hints for C philologists, the discrepancy in subtle articulation in V may be examined to solve "chongniu" and I, II phonemic division issues in the MC historical phonology.

(T) For example, 疼 téng in "đớnđau" 疼痛 téngtòng (SV đôngthống) 'painful' 痛 tòng (SV thống) 'pain' \ OC *doŋw \ *ŋw ~ -w ~> "đau" (pain), while 疼 téng in 疼愛 téng'ài' (SV đôngái) 'love' ~> "thươngyêu", or "chân" 腳 jiăo 'foot' and "bànchân" 腳板 jiăobăn (in reverse order, "table" of the foot"), etc.

(M) I think the verbage for the last clause should be stated as "whether initially it originated from the same root as those of MK languages or not." However, most of the specialists of V prefer the other and this is where all the debates start since one cannot say other MK languages originated from "the V linguistic family" since there exists no such terminology, so when one sees there are MK elements in Vietnamese, it is easier to say that Vietnamese originated from the MK linguistic family. See more in section III) The Mon-Khmer Association.




 

ā ē ě ī ǐ ă ō ǒ ū ǔ ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ ü ɔ ɑ ɪ ɛ ɤ ə ŋ ɯ ɪ ʔ ʃ ö χ ɓ ɗ ɱ ʿ ʾ θ ñ

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