What Makes Vietnamese So Chinese?
An Introduction to Sinitic-Vietnamese Studies
DRAFT
Table of Contents
dchph
(Continued)
Chapter Two
II) THE CHINESE CONNECTION
A) The politics of Chinese-Vietnamese linguistic studies
Politics is bad for an academic subject, yet Vietnam's history has already been revised many a time now and then, so are episodes of the origin of her people and language, which we need to know in depth in order to isolate and identify sources of their etymologies accordingly. In western culture objectivity in scholarship in general as known to the world have long been separated from political interests and in the field of historical linguistics, specifically, it is affiliated with Indo-European linguistic family. In the meanwhile, for such matters in a mindset of a C or V unbiased-historically concept basically exists only in vituality and, in term of linguiscs, that is just like another foreign loanword denoting an exotic idea, no more no less. Overall, C cultural items are customarily accepted by the V naturally for their intrinsic values, but anything that is subject to historical values is much depending on the current diplomatic relationship between Vietnam and China, oftentimes rough and uneasy ones due to mutual distrust characteristic of archenemies under the disguise of comradeship. At any rate their unequivocal animosity historically has periodically maxed out to the next level of tolerance in time of crises as the V willingly accept national humiliation for the sake of the soveignty of their nation.
For such reasons what is to be discussed next depicts transformational process that bears witness to the emergence of an independent Vietnam since her breakaway from the rule of China, for which Vietnam has been taking nervously careful steps over her catwalks with shadows of the past hung above which has spelled sporadic instances of invasive episodes on and off since then until present time. The main point for readers to keep in mind here is that for historical reasons that seeing Vietnam a missing part of its territorial integrity China kept bullying its weak neighbor in the south while Vietnam would in kind bluntly reject any claims of affiliation of their interrelationship, for example, say, history and linguistics.
China? Chinese? What is it? Who are they? How invasive is it about their cultural exertion on such strongly identity-conscious V people? When the China becomes strong, historically, it is to much for the Little China, as said of Vietnam by Brodrick (1942) for a good reason, to brear the heat from the C sphere. Conversely as the C pressure has built up considerably and Vietnam's endurance thins out, another resistance war breaks out again, analogously just like the American Revolution revisited time and time again at a much fiercer degree the next round. Until a lesson is to be learned, status quo still remains in a hate-love relationship. To account for the underlined policy that China has always regarded Vietnam simply as a renegade prefecture that broke away from a greater union since the 10th century, like today's Taiwan from 1949, we need to view the relationship between the two peoples under historical and anthropological perspectives.
In this section the author in fact will discuss about (1) main factors that cause the overall antagonistic entanglement in both sides in the first place and (2) the reasons why it matters so much that V etymology could only be discriminately weighed on the Sinitic scale as the most decisive factor in the V linguistic development (3) in the postulation that the core C linguistic elements in V are actually the spiritual transcendence of the racial mixture of the V mixed with C blood, mostly via cross-marriage in the last 2200 years of their social intercourses. So depending on either patriarchal or matriarchal side of genetic strains that they are looking at to take side with, students in C-V historical linguistics, who might have rarely enlightened by revelation by an insider, would certainly have something novel to learn here beside the sole academic mechanics of the V linguistics. For example, 1000 years of C cultural impacts have taken tolls on the V language with all the aboriginal roots virtually gone while Sinitic elements have emerged as winners with apparently inerasable marks on it. The author will elaborate details on some underlined causes for existing antagonism between the two countries, which will firstly consumate much space of this section of this chapter in oder for our new students to understand why even the ST hypothesis of linguistic wave-theory is being shunned by the new V nationalists, let alone the traditional family-tree one (Bloomfield, 1933. pp. 317, 18). In other words strong C cultural influence on V is accounted for linguistic influx, like those of from dialects spoken by new C immigrants, since the ancient times. The whole process and magnitude in all respective domains are comparable to the magnitude of increasing spread of the so-called American culture and language around the world.
So far you have already learned a bit of something on the becoming of C and V and their nations in the introductory chapter of this paper. Now that we could argue that the V linguistic matters could not be dealt with effectively in the absence of a resolution on outstanding anthropological and archaeological issues of regarding ancient aboriginals, as mentioned previously either the Yue or 'namman' 南蠻 nánmán, i.e., 'southern barbarians', and their descendants who had later on emigrated to regions further away from China South, that could account for those designated descendants of AA and Austronesian origin. For those who are still living in the northern hemisphere inside the C orbit ancient Yue were definitely their ancestors. It is true for not only the present V but also many other ethnic groups along with China's nationals, characteristically typical southern C inhabiting the vast souther provinces of China. In other words, similar to racial composition of the V, all those southerners, originally descendants of ancient natives from China South, are definitely of mixed race stock, being 'sinitized' in every aspects of the term, be it 'Qin-ized' (of Chinese charaterization), 'Tang-ized' (Cantonese T'ongyahn 糖人), or whatever 'Han-ized' being called, regardless of their self-declared affiliation of nationality nowadays.
Parallel to those southern entities as mentioned above, we understand that modern C Mandarin, so deviated from other dialects derived from ancient C, is a product of the speaking habit of the northern C who are from China's northern regions known as Huabei 華北, or China North. They, in all probability, are also sinitized C nationals with distinctively biological and physical traits apparently descendants of those peoples having been used to reside in areas of northern China crossing beyond the borders to the northern territories, from Mongolia's grasslands to Siberia's taiga forests. They are descents of the Manchurian, Mongolian, Tartarian, and Altaic races as known in C history as the Jin and the Qing subjects. Specifically, the whole northern C populace composition is consequences of, inclusively, a total of over 900 years starting from the eras of Qin Dynasty -- or Chin(a) -- and Han dynasties (220 BC) that had been lasting until the founding of the Republic of China in 1911, during which the country had been under the dynasties of the Jin 金 (ruled by the Tartarians), Yuan 元 (Mongolians), Qing 青 (Manchurians) (see 伯楊 Bó Yáng's editions of 司馬光 Sima Guang's Zi Zhi Tongjian 資治通鍳 , 1983-1993), not to mention those highly hypothetically-Altaic Hakka 客家 minority groups having fled from northern war-ravaged places to every corners deeply further out of the southern regions into other countries in southeast Asia, including Vietnam. Ethnically, just like those sinitized southerners the northern C are entities of totally biologically mixed race.
Similar to common concepts such as 'American', 'European', or 'Hispanic', we can see now that the term 'Chinese', or 'Han' for the same matter, to designate a race is fairly relative because there exists no such racial entity privately called the pure Han-C. A person of C origin, hence, is a descendant of members living within territories of the People's Republic of China (read 'Union of the Peoples of China'). Therefore, the becoming of the C people has been a long process of genetic mutation of different racial stocks, from natives of both the north and south proportionately, more or less, with many of over identified 56 ethnic groups having been inhabiting in the mainland of China since the ancient times. Interestingly, a very similar transformation has actually repeated for what is known today as the V people who built their independent nation further to the south. While 'Vietnamese' means exactly "the Viets (historically the Yue people) of 'the south'", i.e. those who emigated to the south, these people are of mixed racial stocks already. Those other tribes of the Yue who had stayed behind in 'the north', namely, those minorities still living in China South, especially the 20 million plus strong of the Zhuang nationality. However, unlike what is perceived by 'the Americans' for their old world's heritage and the likes, for the V, issues of their national pride is more than an annoyance of unpleasant topics for academics. The aforementioned racial breed hypothesis as to be revisited time and time again throughout this paper -- i.e., the V, the C, or their further sinitized generational offsprings as the next Han C subjects such as the Shaanxians, Shandongese, Beijingers, Cantonese ("Yueht"), Tchiewchow, or Fukienese, etc., whatever multiplied thereof -- would again doubtless stir up many contentious outrages that are all contaminated with respective ideology proactively that current rulers seem to enjoy playing.
Western methology is in a much better position for possessing efficiently analytic tools, especially in the etymological field of Sinitic historical linguistics as pioneered by Bernard Kargren (1949) in his Old Chinese (OC) reconstruction work for that could be further refined to survey the plausibility of genetic affiliation in any linguistic family of the V language. Deep down in the back of their mind, nevertheless, the V with so much nationalistism tend to look at matters sinitic and occidental per se with suspicion and they would not settle for any face values superimposed on whatever culturally orientally, even in pure V linguistics. That is a perfect world as prescribed by western standards in which ideally the insiders ought to be engaged and involved in the process of re-writing history as previously discussed, yet, that in turn is exactly the missing link hitherto, such as colonial legacy left by the French colonialists, whereby it still bears marks of the hatred by the V natives. They do not even show any liking of the upper hand played by those western ideologists with neo-colonial intellectual forms as demonstrated in the case of Austroasiastic (AA) theorization. As a result, collective data on C of V issues provided by the inside sources, even being prepared by those self-claimed western-trained scholars, are found unreliable and primitively substandard. For example, those innocently disinteresting parties acting as neutral contributors for an encyclopedia regarding the linguistic sub-family of V subject matter, what they got was actually non-factual data prepared and circulated among those C-biased V academic circles, for which the insiders themselves all know too well what the problems really are while they themselves are cheating each other, too. That kind of misinformation are commonly widespread, deliberately funneled by nationalistically active special interests, mostly results of anti-China nationalism deeply rooted in every V scholar's subconsciousness which is a major hindrance that has impeded impartial judgment.
Despite of the fact that outburst of national sentimentality is understandable, however, we would rather view each occurrence (since it will affect one's ability to judge) -- waves of demonstrations in Vietnam against China's policy in South China's Sea in 2011, for example -- as a tempest in a teapot since those are nothing in Vietnam's history. For our concerns, besides us, who else would care much about this culturally linguistic issue? Dumped are those who mind. Opponents of our school of thought would not listen to us in anyway, so let sleeping dogs lie. In the meanwhile let's build our own camp and focus solely on our matters and be entertained with what would possibly enlighten our cognizance instead. Could we, however, actually ignore all noises and go our own way by any chance? In all probability, adoption of a calm and soft stand on the issues should hurt nobody in the process so they might leave us alone for having our say. Hopefully in our lifetime they would take ours seriously someday.
By and large we shall keep our tongue-in-cheek attitude and adopt our 'so what' shudders from now on while fending off assaults from those trendy uniformed AA militants. Just be alert for dying dogs that could likely blast out their last outcries noisily with all their might. Expectedly upcoming attacks would be overwhelming to deal with emotionally because it appears to be fashionable to talk AA on V nowadays. Nevertheless, when everyone is just talking about the same thing, it is not necessary that that the crowd is always correct. In our own camp, i.e., Sinitic-oriented theorization, it is known that former Sino-Tibetan (ST) linguistic veterans in the VS linguistic field, normally armed with traditional show-and-tell methodology extracted from ancient linguistic material, e.g., Guangyun or Yuyun rhyming books, and the likes, are undoubtedly ill-equipped to fight back, especially with those specialists of partial-engagement in related VS fields. Until now no one would have neither fully made use of the data mine nor exploited the matters with an adequate approach, not to mention their having not devoted full time on such subject matters. That is where this research comes in with some rectifications on the old interpretation of data in the old methodology of enumerating on etynologies, of which the topic has already touched on a bit in the previous introductory chapter. Many more similar illustrations are to follow.
In all probability a student newcomer in this specific VS field may not completely digest in an instant the implication of concepts such as nationalism or patriotism on the part of the V, for which the author has spent more than two decades to ponder and, academically, at the same time during the course of putting together VS etymologic collectives with high degrees of complexity, at length on my part I opted for supporting the weather-beaten path of Sino-Tibetan (TB), which from beginning I did not consider, at all, V as a part one of TB branches being formed out of primitive or proto-Tibetan stages. V has its own roots at bottom stratum with a firmly ancient linguistic foundation and it has only been nourished by C elements, just like that of a subtropical flowery branches grafted on tropical fruit trees, over the period of over 2200 years after the the conquer of all China South regions by the Western Han Dynasty. Linguistically, racially as well, they all have become a sinitic part of its own implant concurrently with all other sino-linguistic branches of seven major groups of C dialects, having secured itself its position on par with that of the development of both Cantonese and Fukienese, linguistically, except for the fact that the latter two dialects have actually evolved from and inside the Sino sphere, i.e., within the sovereignty of China, while V has not for the last 1000 years.
In general, for young students of an American institute to grasp the idea easily, it is good to paint a depictive picture of today's Vietnam and its official language in comparison with, analogously, say, a better known state in the US in terms of, firstly, English and, secondly, racial composition like Mexicans of Baja California and their US-born cousins in el Norte California, previously a Mexico's territory in the early 18th century, they being of the same race genetically. In the case of California altogether all other ethnic groups have been playing active parts making up the California's population as shown in the last US census, even with smaller percentages, but new blend of linguistic strains have been fomed with similar composition of racial mixture now that racks up the official English of the state with a touch of 'Californian accents'. Another good example is of Caucasian persons born and raised in the US. They are certainly sure descendants from those earlier white European immigrants from the Old World, who, after a few first generations, for the most parts, do not know where their forefathers were from. In a sense, like Europeans looking at Europe's related matters, it is not a big deal under western perspectives that comparative historical events as such are analogous to the birth of America where the early forefathers of America who fought against the Brits were of British descent.(美).
Unfortunately, matters seem not to be such that simple and straightforward as analogized above once related parties' nationalistic subtleties are involved, as best spotted in related research papers and variant official versions of each nation's respective history which have been re-written over and over again by each ruling class of every dynasty. For example, on the political arena, in our modern time as of 2012 there still exist policing states of remnants of Soviet-style regimes, abandoned ordnances left from the era of Cold War but still being fondled by both V and C rulers who are top elites of polit bureau in each respective Communist Party. Along the lines of the ruling hierarchy are those privileged of the same kind. You might already know how heavily the way they rule with iron hands, much depending on their overwhelming police force. The rulers have to hold onto their rigid ideology which legitimizes their grips of power despite they appear smarter than those in Cuba and North Korea. To a certain extent, communism in Vietnam, and in China as well for that matter, is simply a continuity of 2011 upgraded version of variant of feudalism existing in, arbitrarily say, 1102, but laxly adopted to seat one to multiple 'kings' called 'polit bureau members' onto a 'royal chair'. In such rigidly state-controlled system we all know too well in any scholarly issues including linguistics what flavor would turn out to be, whence stick and carrot are both coated with partisan ideology while in the open, of course, no hidden political agenda has ever been admitted by any governmental body. That is how deeply the impacts have left on academics. In both Vietnam and China alike, if you do not say something right, you are done with your career.
For such reasons, it is of no surprise their own people often distrust authority for their information. In modern time they would rather to form their own critical views of history as being blossomed in formats such as blogs or forums on the internet. Even Yahoo and Google practice self-censorship in their internet search business to avoid accesses being blocked by China as what had happened them in the early 2000's for their search returns of not being politically correct in respective countries. To see the reason why empathetic factors in either nationalism, politics, or both carry a much more heavier weight in sole V etymology of C origin other than what normally is expected elsewhere in the same field of historical linguistic study, you must feel that underneath the surface a C-conscious identity is prohibitively a taboo hidden from the plain view, which is a premise to start without it. For example, the V are even defensively denying parts of their national history whenever historical details involve something that happens to be of C origin, including denial of a Chin(ese) ruler called Zhao Tuo, or Trieu Da (Trieu Dynasty 207-111 B.C., King of NamViet). Due to revolutionary transformation of writing system from C- to Latin-based orthography, modern V readers, possessing no absolutely knowledge of ancient C scripts, have to listen to what the government says through the new regime's version of history that was actually already rewritten time and time again.
In fact, throughout different dynasties of both China and Vietnam the same process keeps repeating itself for every new dynasty, i.e., regime, emerged. Within a few decades later those make-up versions of history would be doubtless accepted by the next younger generations. We are now talking about politics and here are a few examples to ilustrate the case. In our modern time, for the communist revolutionaries the much revered locales of the Pac Po Cave which used to be located inside territory of Viertnam, where Ho Chi Minh and General Giap used as a revolutionary staging base to launch guerrilla's strikes against French occupational troops, or the undeniable fact that any school students learn in Vietnam's history that the historical Namquan 南關 border pass gate, where the V troops had defeated the C invaders numerous times, its locality historically was located right at the border between Vietnam and China, but now both severed places are now found several kilometers deep inside China's territory. Recent historical events such as the 6-month border war and short detrimental clashes at sea between the two countries that took place intermittently in 1974, 1979, and 1984, respectively, they have been experiencing through the same harsh lifecycle. Specific examples as such are numerous and there they were and here they disappear, hopping in and out of school's history books as if such events had never occurred. In reality, they have been in effect weighed in a political scale at all times as new perspectives on C politics, especially for the last few decades or so since 1975 as the Vietnam War ended, have finally emerged from left and right wings in the ruling communist party, balanced by somewhat a reconciliatory tone on special national policy toward China at an expense of compromising her national pride when Vietnam is at her best in recent diplomatic makeovers in 2011 after series of brutal suppression of V activists' demonstrations against China for weeks by staging spectacular shows of the China's strange red flags with official six -- not five (one extra being speculated wildly on the world wide web as the inclusion of Vietnam as a new province of China) -- yellow stars having appeared notably in two separate occasions, highlighted with the latter incident showcasing flag waving formality by little V schoolgirls to welcome a visit by C high officials. For all such reasons, its being so called politics of C-V linguistics herein, in short, all depends on overall climate of diplomatic relation at a specific time tightly controlled by governmental bodies and such episodes have occurred from the past hundreds of years ago until now. Now one can see how impeccably the impacts nationalism has innocently played tricks on historical academic perceptions whenever specific subject matters are C-related.
While nationalistic activists in Taiwan, Tibet, or Xinjiang, are anxious to replicate the Vietnam's experience, Vietnam, in a bid to eradicate historical facts from mystifyied mainstream of C theories regarding the Vietnam's past, history on demand is once again triggered as they were in the past and then reverted from time to time for a simple reason that the last thing 'the Viets of the South' want to lose is to let go of their grips on Vietnam's independence, but at the same time they do not want to agitate the big neighbor in the north. Therefore it is of no surprise that her people appear to be sensitive and firm, sticking to nationalistic trends that shift their cultural complexion to other focus, e.g., either Austroasiatic or Austronesian, with backups from western theorists. Well, they look like smart enough in their own game. However, as nations are entering the brave new world's order of the second decade of the 21st century, China is now becoming an increasingly capable powerhouse and it has recaptured all its past glory and is still in command much of attention of specialists in the VS linguistics, even with conflicts of the nationalistic interests. Therefore, for any breakthrough in Sinitic theorization to gain popular acceptance from inside academic circles of the Kinh majority, sinitic theorists are literally tiptoeing prudently to keep themselves in balance. Again, such postulation is drawn from fact that anti-Chinese stands doubtless are equally shared by nearly 90 million people of Vietnam whereas on the level of national independence consciousness they simply follow the steps of children of warriors who had continually fought and finally won all wars against formidable C invaders countlessly at intervals throughout much of the length of 2000 years, which is only half of their long history, to be exact. They are the only ones who are having an independent nation of their own, loosely representing all peoples of the Yue origin, of whom portions are still inhabiting there, e.g., 20 million plus people of the Zhuang minorities in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (廣西壯族自治區), and all those who have been sinicized in other provinces such as Guangdong, Hunan, Fujian, etc. in China South as well as to the south of its border nowadays.
The whole matter still may not be clear to new outsider scholars even with all of the above elaborations, though. They need to rationalize with a bit of effort to crack hidden messages inside their inner shell, at times they being full of hatred and distrust of China so much in a way that it seems the whole nation is only legitimately represented by its regime's elite scholars who are actually interfering their people's cognitive view on national identity. Fortunately not all academics share the same view with historical perspectives for most national issues, which should not be so, on par with an independent mindset which could blur their outlook beyond the national horizon. Therefore, for those nationalistic fanatics who rush to deprive themselves of the true color too soon to go after what is represted by virtual reality, i.e., existing out of imagination, they just simply show what is actually inside their narrow-mindedness with poorly unmasked nationalistic sentiment and for that their parents are partly to blame even for such wrong perception in very sense of it. In other words, they are gung-ho antagonists but poor logical thinkers contaminated with nationalistic syndrome. To those people, open your mind to reason to approach all our racial and linguistic issues no matter what actually involves therein and you will be free with such an act of altruism. The will that syncs with quests for one's national independence should not cut off one's ancestral return path to get there. In fact, hard-core nationalists are unable to see beyond their national borders with objectivity, appreciating about some sorts of benefits of multicultural mixture, for example, say, the fact that western imperialist powers such as Great Britain, France, Holland, or even Germany, each has paid a hefty price for the ambitious expansionism after centuried-long period of colonialism in the mid-20th century, but they all are now instead steadily becoming nations of multi-racial diversities. In fact, such characteristic is increasingly more like USA now, culturally rich as a result of having attracted the best and brightest from around the world, which undoubtedly strikes a unique note in our modern tune.
Regionally similar events having actually taken place in the nearby other shores with the birth of Singapore Republic in 1965 with her first leaders one after another being of C origin, just like a majority of her populace, their identity being of sino-accentricity but China-unrelated. Nobody could imagine the role of Singapore's former Premier Lee Kwan-Yew would be denied by future generations for his race originally being Chinese. Let's take another example like that of the Federated Malay States, with its total population currently comprised of their C descendants up to a third of the total. And let our imagination run wild envisioning that the whole picture dotted with 'what if' situations if that nation of those federated states had fallen under the rule of China in Ming Dynasty in the 16th century? However, the emergence of the nation of Vietnam in the early days of more than 2200 years ago for which the formerly NamViet State is lumped into period of foreign rule under General Trieu Da (Zhao Tuo) of the Qin as coached in school's version at present. As a result, our newcomer VS philologians hence would surely miss an important link in the early development of V and C relation which can help strengthen the theoriztion of their genetic affiliation dated back in time for the total of 1000 years under the rule of Middle Kingdom as Giaochau Prefecture, and another 1000 years after that period Vietnam has been a dependent vassal state of China until present time. You have heard this a lot but it is importantly to bear in mind that the China's subjects then and now have been freely immigrating to Vietnam as many as they would like to. Think of the case of China's Guandong Province right now. What would it have become 1000 years later if it were an independent state starting from today? That is the length of series of historical events of what happened to Vietnam one thousand years ago and has become what it is now in terms of Chinese affiliations in all aspects of life. That is why, also like the case of Taiwan but with a shorter 300 year-plus time span, China's mentality is it always wants to take Vietnam in this case back even with a hefty price, so to speak.
Why are all the fuss about those detailed tibits? It is a motion in kind to counter resistant forces per se. All is that said because for a layman in this specific field of study s/he would likely be misled by an official version prepared by a V or C bureaucrat of a governmental institute, usually under the disguise of better branded mark of Khongtu or Confucius institution, and never suspect. However it is unavoidably that newcomers could encounter chaotic layers of nationalistic top-off with respect to related history per se. Therefore, right in the beginning, they have already disoriented from such makeups on historical details. That is a familiar pattern that explain the reason why Vietnam becomes a nation with proud and stubborn attitude as displayed by the V people in the face of on-going threats from the nothern giant neighbor since the ancient times. Talking about China is talking about politics. So what is it expected from intellectuals of the two archenemies then? Try to throw something overbrimming of fresh C ingredients back into the V melting pot and they would see into it that they would boil down into leguminous portridge.
B) Is it Chinese or Vietnamese?
Unlike the case of a hybrid language such as Albanese of which vocabularies are totally comprised of loanwords from several other prominent languages with a few hundred native words of its own (Bloomfield. 1933), V etyma mainly consist of a large amount of C loanwords, many of which evolved from shared base stock and had taken roots on top of its native basic words in mere dozens evolved from aboriginal layer of substratrum, mainly common ancient Yue stock. The nature of phonetic shells and morphemic attributes of all V lexemes in comparison with that of genetic stock that forms the same biological physique are actually not separate entities, say, it is not C branches grafted onto the trunk of the V tree but they all with leaves are of the same tree. Historically what belonged to the earlier Han State all had been originally of the Yue -- not only of the sole primitive ST base forming early subjects inside the Qin State -- that was a part of the populace of the ancient Chu State prior to her being totally conquered by the former which in turn had been overwhelminged with the Chu subjects, biologically and linguistically.
New entity called Han hence were born since then (Bo Yang. 1983). In inference that the Han elements that infiltrated into all native spheres for the next two thousand years, the Yue tribes -- specifically those of the early Viets of the LacViet -- in the face of rapid advancement of the Han expansionists, had further expanded from their old ancestral base originally in China South's regions to other places in southern region of Red Delta. The newly resettlers further encroached into perimeters of today's lower level cultivated land in Vinhphuc and Hoabinh provinces of today's Vietnam and pushed those aborigines living there previously into remote mountains, who are now parts of the other 52 minority nationality groups. For the long-marched Han soldiers many had made their home in their new encampment in the newly occupied territories, later known as Annam Protectorate Pefecture (安南督護府) in history. Biologically, the ancient 'Annamites' (安南居民) were in fact populace of racial mixture of earlier natives of the land and those racially-mixed partial Han solders and migrants coming from the north, who were in turn of another mixture of the ancient Yue people of the Chu and Zhou, and, as aforemented, then the Qin and the Han, who in turn had been... well, keep reading. The result is the emergence of new generations of children who born into racially-mixed family of the V natives and the Han resettlers from the north in their southern expeditions. In our modern time, inheritance of those original robust physical builds displayed by those youths born into new mass of V immigrants fluxing the western countries such as US, Germany, or France, etc., since the late 1970s, apparently growing up tall and big, with much lighter complexion, manifesting biological similarities with nothern heavy stock, not from those of the far south such as Malays of Austronesian or Austroasiatic origin.
To understand the matter better, one can compare such postulation with other similar national developments that had taken on the same process to form a new nation, multi-racially regardless of singly specific ethnicity origin. For example, the three consecutive prime ministers of Singapore and all Taiwan's presidents are, like their fellow countrymen, of C origin, and they prefer to consider themselves as Singaporean and Taiwanese, respectively, in whatsoever manner that goes with national pride. The Viets today feel the same way in the context that it actually does not matter much what their genetic origin actually is but their country of birth counts, which they have fought for after more than 1000 years one generation after another to free themselves from the yokes of the Chinese rulers. They are holding tight on the status-quo of what Tibetans have been still struggling since the 8th century, their national independence.
Yet it is never to be enough for a linguist in the study field of VS etymology to only elaborate on the political, cultural, and historical aspects only of a language under survey. In fact, there exist several factors, so many peculiarities, especially those of variations in different dialects and sub-dialects, that have masked the true appearance of etyma from the same root. Let put it this way, if China were not a unified nation then, like those of European Union now, each dialect should have not been called dialects but languages actually. For the same rationalization, if Vietnam had not become an independent country from that one greater imperial China since 936, her language would have been classed as one of C dialects then. The implication is that, if V were "English" as opposed to those of Germanic, Roman, Latin, Greek, etc. it should be treated in the same manner like others in the framework of Indo-European languistic family, that is to say, V versus all C dialects in the TB. So, it will need a more comprehensive approach to cover all of the above and other elements.
Methodologically, one could not, at the same time, shy away from utilizing Indo-European concepts in historical linguistics because of the nationalistic reasons as previously discussed. Balancing compromise is a main step in the spirit of objectivity that we wold like to learn from those French pioneer linguists of the early decades of the previous century, i.e., Maspero and Haudricourt, who might neither give a thought about whatever nationalism mentioned previously nor were pressed by C influence. Most of them had been trained with western methological tools found common in Indo-European linguistic application as said. Even though it is noted that their approach did not do justice to VS linguistic studies for the reason that western linguistic principles yield little help in understanding a 'strange language' (Bloomfield, 1933, p. 93), for example, say, syntactical concepts of inflective cases, i.e., accusative, nominative, dative, etc. as in Latin, German, or Russian, being non-existent in all sinitic languages, not to mention other mockings to the effect of "Annamese having no grammar" and their having all those of V syntactics put all under the umbrella of French gammatical framework, e.g., different concepts such as parts of speech (Bloomfield, 1933. p. 17) aggregately altogether being absent in C and V languages, until native scholars finally sorted out and modified the whole system based on pioneers' previous work. Overall, we all agree that it is those early linguists who have solidly set up a monumental foundation, or at least a solid springboard, for us to seriously to continue the work in this linguistic field started with the same western methodology and spirit. It is too bad, though, that those revered veterans are no longer with us in our time to disagree more with us so that our new discovery in Sinitic etymologies that underwrite the basics of our new sinitic theorization in this research could be improved further.
The author strongly believe that this paper would fill in some vacant exotic categories lacking from previous work -- which mainly focus on lexemes framed into western syntactic flexible form -- for instance, concept of tonemes in tones that make up glossemes but exist largely in both C and V, that function as primary phonenes to differentiate lexical meanings, e.g., ma1, ma2, ma3, ma4, ma5, ma6, ma7, and ma8, etc., while variant intonation of a similar lexeme /ma/ in English does not change its core meaning greatly. In other words concepts of such feature perceived as pitch register phonemics, or tones, does not exist on the other side of equation, namely, the Indo-Eropean languages. For other examples lexically it is notably that many VS compounds evolved fom solid C ideograms, which Annite scholars had seen before they taught his children those learned concepts, hundreds of years prior to the introduction of the current and moder Romanized V orthography. Of course, that would have seriously deviated from those phoneticized etyma originated from romanized writing systems. One may recall that most of SV vocabularies are literary forms so their usages always associated with written C characters. That is to say, V roots that originally appear in C would have evolved a bit differently into colloquial speech depending on who spread the new vocabularies in marketpkaces even if they were derived from the same ideographs, all due to dialectal and historical factors thorougout the history of its development.
In other words, sinitic justification of VS transformation seems to belong to a separate field of expertise. Western linguistic mechanics are just like the machine codes running behind modern computer operating systems in which language-specific applications, i.e., V and C in this case, are not western programmer's expertise but those of localizers. Phonetically, common "laws" in sound change applicable in western linguistics therefore could not be used to explain phenomena of irregular sound patterns that operate sporadically on syllabic values with words that carry similar phonemic forms at all in staging scenarios of C and V. For example, Grimm's laws of sound changes such as the theory of great shift that works well with German, for example, seem to have their limits in supporting etymological evidences that solidly purport much of the claims of ST and V genetic affiliation with Sinitic data -- not to mention SV vocabulary loanwords which set sound change patterns from C to V forms -- because V etyma of C origin could be probably extracted and collected from textual quotes buried deeply in C classics, including estranged and orphaned dialectal items or alternative lexical forms as recorded in the Kangxi Dictionary 康熙字典. In fact, many plausible instances VS etyma as such could probably be discovered by chance, not by "Grimms laws" or any laws at all, simply because their uniqueness do not fit well into the whole picture, or at least, cross-referenced patterns with those of high frequencies.
In any case, deep impresses of Sinitic roots in VS vocabulary all seemingly points to etyma the same stock. Readers are to see illustrations of some hard-to-find VS etyma posted here along with those etymologies long cited by pioneers such as Maspero and Haudricourt, in the VS field in the early days of which there still exist some irreconcilable words left to be determined etymologically by the time theorization of their Autroasitic roots, many plausibly posited, though. On another hand, new students should be able to determined that shared Sinitic basic words, just like those in many languages in the same family, are caputs of both C and V centrallylexical stocks -- that is, not that some are fundamental in others but not in V as amusingly argued by some specialists -- of which their linguistic peculiarities are simply mirrors of one another, undeniably. Eventually one would come to terms reckoning they are actually etyma of the same root that could have not only penetrated deeply only in V but also distributed widely accross different linguistic families, such as the case of /mat/ (eye), for instance, not just sub-families, in this case, they belong to MK languages. You need not to fall for my theorization yet but, for the time being, at least be preprared to hold firm onto your stand and not let to be swept away amidst all commotions by the enraging AA waves that are incited by new historical etymological supporting proofs in this paper, that you will have eventually learned in the end.
Issues of something Vietnamese (V) having to do with anything Chinese (C) are old and always a matter of delicacy, as mentioned in the previous section above, at all times for a larger majority of V populace. Facts regarding certain C influences on their life would be always downplayed and overwritten with depiction undoubtedly dampened by nationalistic sentiment. Thanks to current climate in the diplomatic relation between China and Vietnam, political absurdity would also play critical role putting innocent students of VS linguistics in the hot seat. To be honest nobody could argue with V militant nationalists because they believe only in what fits into their mindset. Besides hidden political agenda, since the remote past, have dearly affected the course of V linguistic development as a result. For example, after the recommendation made by a polit bureau member usage for a more purely V selective syllable, frequency of VS "xelửa" (train) or "máybay" (airplane), or each individual word in within those two compounds for the same reason, has overtaken that of the forms of SV "hoảxa" or "phicơ", and such means of transportation were only introduced to Vietnam by the French colonialists one after another in the early 20th century, however, so they not to be credited to a localized or translated words for such reason, and both compound words are apparently derived from Chinese 火車 huǒchē and 飛機 fēijī, respectively, which are in turn of Japanese origin. Etymologically it is easy to recognize their cognateness in those obvious cases, howevever, others are not that apparent since they could be of euphemism or taboo such as names of kings, for example.
Since the course of V linguistic development has been tampered by such nationalistic twists, I will start on a fact finding journey, attempting to pound on some hidden political agenda to straighten out the historical records. In any cases, there exist plenty of V fundamental lexicons of C origin as you will see in juxtaposition of their etymologies, the holding magnet for this chapter to be elaborated next in the last section of this chapter and the next ones that would follow.
Why should we care if V is C influential or not? Well, firstly, that is what V and the core of this paper are all about. Talking about which de facto C core has influenced the most on anything V is just like describing what the Romans, the Celts, the Anglos, and the Saxons had done to Britain in ancient times (Palmer, 1972. p. 356) (英). We could affirmatively state that C cultural and historical embeds are strikingly as impressive in all intimate facets in the life of the V as in their speech exquisitely down to earth in every minute detail of unmistakenly peculiar linguistic expressions, hitting home in a very discreetly intimate spot of cupids' life in fundamental lexicons, for example, for not only straightforward sexual organs but also their depictive action, functions, and organism, etymologically, as well. Let's quickly nail each C factor in several areas with some analytical critics.
There are seven major Chinese (C) dialectal groups and each is certainly unintelligible to the others for most of the times, neither is it to another sub-dialect within its own dialect, e.g., Amoy vs. Hainanese or Tchiewchow in the same Minnan linguistic sub-family. They are related to each other only in historical sense. Speakers of each dialect are often having a hard time to articulate the national standard Putonghua (Mandarin, or M) properly for the same reason phonetically. So there are no surprise those different phonemes in V in return. Let's say, for example, older "Cantonese" generation would still probably be having difficulties to imitate those M phonemes correctly because marginally phonetic crossover interferes with positional pronunciation between the two major northern and southern dialects. Historically Cantonese-speakers are descendants of the later "Han" from the totally Tang-dominated subjects having moved in en masse into today's Guandong Province of China located in parts of the NanYue (NamViet) State and mixed with ancient natives (given the weight of X2Y3Z4H (交)) early in the 1st century. So, prior the 10th century their amassed Middle-Chinese (MC) sub-dialects had already formed out of the Tang Dynasty speech known collectively as Cantonese (Cant.) with the Guangzhou dialect as representative at the present time. Similar historical events had concurrently occurred to the V language during the same period. There is no coincidence that the Sino-Vietnamese (SV) lexical stock is just another side of the same MC dice, with the five other facets are of Cant. sub-dialects. In the meanwhile much parallel, Sinitic-Vietnamese (VS) vocabularies is on par of the same class of those Minnan sub-dialects, all having previously formed earlier some time before the Han Dynasty 200 BC. Remember that ancient Vietnam had also emerged from the very same NamViet state like the other Siniticized entities but Vietnam had firmly establised herself a nationality of its own, especially much stronger after her complete beakaway from the Middle Kingdom's protectorate umbrella as the Tang Dynasty faded away into history, anthropological connections among all of the above dated at least way back more than 2300 years. In a very similar fashion as that of Cantonese development which had happened to the Vietnamese (V) language, phonemic variants in C phonology in its diachronic loanwords can also be mispronounced and 'mispelled' within the realm of V neighboring allophones, such facts as manifested by modern modification and overcorrection made by those of today's V learners of M.
In general, analogous to what the Britons at the height of their empire had brought to Australia and New Zealand, or even to Scotland or Ireland for the same matter, series of contemporary historical episodes of each respective nation parallels a bumpy path of the development of today's Vietnam, an independent state of the Viets (交) whose ancestors had been ancient Yue natives residing in their home habitat in the southern part of today's China prior to the C conquer of the whole region of China South more than 2200 years ago. Ironically, as the world has already stepped far into the thresthold of the 21st century modern China is still living the bygone colonial eras with its thirsty quest for reinstatement of domination on Vietnam as its colony, especially for her oil rich fields. For a comparative view, to be more exact, aggressiveness is what China has proactively been after Taiwan immediately following the event that the island suffered a setback losing doplomatic recogniton as an independent state from the US in 1973. Historically in the past, China actually had these two countries brought under its reigns submissively like provinces of Guangxi of the Zhuang and Guangdong of the Cantonese, on which it has been enjoying its rule for having successfully siniticized descendants of the Yue natives starting with Tang's subjects moving en masse Again, to make matter easier to understand, let's take another look closer into the cases of both Xinjiang and Tibet as of now, in which China has been constantly exerting its enormous military power to oppressively crush down on any Viet-style resistance that had repeated many times in China's history.
In term of C linguistic vintages, just like what Latin and Greek had impacted onto many other languages in the same Indo-European (IE) linguistic family such as English or French, the essence of phonology the Tang's speech, greatly in contrast with Latin's being scholarly but dead, its designated Middle Chinese (MC) is mostly still alive and in active use in a manner that is so much more vigorously than expected. Modern sound of each SV word has actually been well-preserved, funelled, and molded by strict sound change rules within an academic framework, i.e., SV pronunciation of C characters must follow Fanqie 反切 (spelling) rules, but interestingly, their literary SV vocabularies were not just limited to scholars, they have been popular and transmittable to the colloquial speech as well, positively indispensable in daily conversation of the common mass. In fact, the SV usage exists in both speech and writing specifically in V to a degree that nobody could speak the language properly without utilizing the learned SV vocabulary set. For cases that are fluctuating in articulation, for instance, phonological nuclei tucked underneath almost every correspondent SV kernel would implicate its usage in the V spoken language. As we all are entering the revolutionary era of the multi-media internet both spoken and literary SV forms are being spead quicker even in a much more uniform and consistent fashion than they were used to in comparison to what utilities of the brushes had brought to the V in the past where such feather writing tools in ancient times were made available to only to certain social circles that actually could afford them.
Syntactically, in a long and complex sentence one could possibly manage to make a complete V sentence with minimal words of C origin, and the longer it is the less frequent they would appear. Note that for the later grammatical feature, complex but coherent speech segment has now solidly taken roots in the V language thanks to contemporary development recently under new grammatical structural imitations first from French and then English, i.e., 1868 until now, and they have become de facto writing mechanics for building V sentences now. Nevertheles, virtually, if not all, all of V grammatical markers including particles and adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions, along with its classifiers, called 虛詞 xūcí (SV hưtự), are all derived from C, the actual vehicles that connect words together coherently. Should one avoid using one or more 'xuci' in a sentence or even a clause or phrase, basically a V speech structure would then become a composite C classical-styled phrase then, such that their common expression later usually appears in idiomatic phrases (文), so to speak to the effects of 文言文 Wényánwén where a complete sentence is 'composed' and C 'word' changes 'cases' in a grammatical order of composite structure, i.e., combining isolate words.
Interestingly, nevertheless, for the shortest V sentences which are mainly composed of one or two words, one could probably only build them with words mostly of origin, for example, 'Chúa ơi!' 我主! Wǒ Zhǔ! (My Lord!), 'Đụmá!' 他媽 TāMā! (F..k you!), 'Vâng.' 行 Xíng. (Agree.), 'Xong.' 成 Chéng ('Deal.'), 'Rồi.' 了 Liăo (Done.), 'Được!' 得 Dé (Okay.), etc. Etymologically, the SV versions of the MC literary forms coexist with VS derivatives ofother C dialects of all times, e.g. 'Được' 得 dé (ok), Hai. /dewk/ or 'mắt' 目 M mù ('eye'), Hai. /maht/. The VS vocabularies, still considered as different from SV vocabulary set but each complementing the others though, are identified to belong to the older lexical layer of C (OC) of an earlier period or, coloquially, of dialectal variants which vary a great deal as one moves away from a regional speech that was standardized as its metropolitan version representative of a dialectal strain, usually the "lightest" version of it. Even though both of them, i.e., VS vs. SV, are actually products of the same historical linguistic development reflecting characteristics of either a certain particular era as dynasty changes or of regions where they were spoken, e.g., Minnan sub-dialects from the OC era of Han Dynasty while Yue (Cantonese) sub-dialects being heavily influenced by speech of the subjects coming out of the Tang Dynasty. Representatively each set of vocabularies of those two major strains had permanently and prominently imprinted in every aspect of V so profoundly that each etymon, for their being cognate to each other so apparently, is oftentimes postulated as a whole as a C loanword simply because it closely carries all the shapes and sounds of an original form in a related C dialectal source. Such a fact is based on their subtle phonetics that are so close morphonemically that each could only be treated as etyma evolved from the same root, including those that belong to the basic group, for example, Hai. /maht/ 目 M mù ('eye') vs. VS 'mắt', Cant. /t'ej/ 睇 M dì, VS 'thấy' ('see'), etc. Unfortunately, that anxiom, phonological closeness rendering postulation of lexical loaning, is not always true since one cannot say the same about words native to southern region, e.g., gạo 稻 dào (rice), dừa 椰 yě (coconut), đường 糖 táng (sugar), sông 江 jiāng (river), etc. Of course they are cases that absolutely could not be treated as C loanwords at all, but the other way around is true.
On the "lightest" to "heaviest" accented tonal glide, amusingly enough, the V northern sound to V southerners' ears is somewhat similar to what a Cantonese or Fukienese listener hears natives of Beijing speaking in Mandarin with their own northern dialect version, a syllabically and tonally simplified 'language' phomemically and phonologically as compared to the original southern ones. It is not only that but within the same dialect the northern Mandarin is also quite distinctive from its southwesthern mirrored versions spoken in the provinces of Sichuan and Jiangxi. In the case of Vietnam, unlike dialects of China, V as a whole is intelligible throughout the country, from the north to the south, though, thoughout the length of roughly 2000 kilometters long. Analytically, with its gradual variants from one locality to the one next to the previous one, each 'dialect' could be easily understood by all, with pitches either softened and laxed ("lightness") or a bit or heavier concaved accents ("heaviness"). In a way Vietnam's linguistic development parallels with its national history, to be exact. As her people marched to the south expanding their territory starting from the 12 century thereon they had carried with them the mother tongue that they called V but with some local flavors. The concept is what was described by Bloomfileld (1933, p. 51) as dialectal area where a dialectal difference is small and the differences accumulate only when one travels in one direction. We can draw lines between places called isoglosses. Bloomfield called such a larger area as dialectal geography that furnishes the key to many problems as they have been gradually being solved in many cases of Indo-European languages so far. That is how V is compared to those Sinitic dialects accross border in the north and all other characteristics as described above are considered as some C sinilarities in V in a nutshell.
What vintage could a historical linguist expect from a 'previously breakaway renegade prefecture' as always regarded by all Chinese rulers for more than 1000 years until now? Historically for centuries continually after her independence from China since the 10th century, Vietnam, while being dictated under monarchal system until 1954, often bullied by C rulers, has premeditatively managed to keep her conciliatory pose in check trying not to annoy the bull neighbor in the upper north. To the western world, as truthful as it appears, firstly, Vietnam has already been long regarded as a "Little China" with over 1100 years as a vassal state of China up until these days long after a colonial period preceded by 1000 years under C rule (Alan Houghton, 1942). Secondly, for all racial components that make up of the V populace, prominently almost all the V family surnames with which all people of the Kinh majority are bearing now are of a subset of an even bigger C ancestral pool. Interestingly enough, as nationalistic as they are such a legacy has always been accepted, valued, and passed down one generation after another with no question asked accept for a very few cases of name changes as indentity hideouts. However, as in the case like that of US President Barak Obama's genealogical family line, those hardcore nationalists with no room left in their brains still cannot figure out the role in Vietnam's history that King Trieu Da (207-111 B.C.) of NamViet had played in the first unified state of the Yue peoples. That is exactly what has been currently taking place in the present time with the modern Singapore and Taiwan where each country stands is where Vietnam stood more than 1000 years ago. To anthropologists such a fact coupled with other apparent C linguistic properties existing in V are just the same as those exist in many other subtle dialectal peculiarities, all strongly suggest traceable C kinship in their genealogical tree.
In fact, the V population actually consists of racial components with the Kinh majority, or the V to be exact, which to all other minorities is just like that of the Han ethnicity in China to other minorities. Ethnically speaking, while the other minorities were actually direct descendants from the Yue aboriginals altogether making up 50 other ethnic groups scattering in all Vietnam's remote mountainous regions, especially those northern border areas shared by both countries, majority of the Kinh are that of a mixture of all of the above plus the flux of immigrants of all walks of life from the north, who had been previously another mixture of the Yue to make the "Han". In other words, descendants of those V forefathers as immigrants coming mainly from China South region had come with their C family surnames. It is clear that there lies a continuous connection that not only the present C but also those proto-Chinese for over 3000 years had been subjects of other powerful states in the Eastern Zhou period scattering all over pre-China's territories. Recognition of such historical twists is important. The matter is as simple as it appears, but actually an uneasy subject for V natinonalists to handle especially when they had no idea that there had been no 'Chinese' at that time, at all, specifically, prior to the emergence of a unified empire of Qin, or Chine for 'China'.
On the C connection, in comparation to that of Taiwan's less than 350 years of mainland's immigrants, the fact that Vietnam had long been a well-to-do prefecture China 1000 years before the 10th century underline other related racial issues much more than those of linguistic subtleties, for instance, such as that a V subject could be mistaken for a southern C person and vice versa, which is observable not only in China but in other places as well. Let's say you may miserably fail to identify those youngsters for who is who of either C or V origin at schools in US cities. For a well known fact that V lone travellers could hardly recognized for sure amidst those C locals in farmer markets in both north and south in China, I myself have had such personal experience though many occasions and circumstances during more than dozen of times on field studies in China that I can positively affirm such a fun guesswork.
There are many ways to elaborate on mistaken identities in both races and languages, especially those for V and C, which might have not ever occurred to those of Japanese or Korean nationals. Linguistically, sounds of such toneless foreign speeches are undoubtedly peculiarly distinct to the untrained ears of C and V persons while it is interestingly enough that both countries of Korea and Japan have systematically loaned C vocabularies en masse, having imported a complete set of common C characters from the long past until recently. Elsewhere in the other parts of the world, people of a different race, such as natives of New Guinea, countries of Latin America, India, or the Philippines, for instance, adopt a complete set of a language, such as the cases of French, Spanish, or English, for their unified national communication. It is needless to say their races and languages are not related at all. However, in the case of Vietnam, in terms of aboriginal ethnicity, issues of unresolved mystically genetic affiliation with the historical C-Han mixture have still long been awaiting scientific DNA imprints to come out. We can bet that the mutational origin the V people is somewhat comparable to those racial compositions that have made up the 'Han-Chinese' stock of those who mostly have been still living within the peripherals of all China's southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan, and Guangxi. Those Han nationals, as officially identified in the modern census survey, are actually all descendants of Sinitized natives (coded as X2Y3Z4H) mutated with the same ancestral Yue racial mixture, all having evolved from aboriginals living in the habitat of the previous NamViet State. In any cases at present its highly Sinitized populace still can not be mistaken with other 'Han' northerners, such as those natives from either Beijing or Shaanxi, for another nothern mix.
In the following episode you may notice that the specifics mentioned below are to illustrate elevated cases of Vietnamese émigrés out of their homeland across the vast Pacific Ocean in our modern time, analogous to stories about journeys across Ling Nan mountainous ranges made by those of Yue aboriginals out of their native China South land speading further south of Tonkin areas hundreds of years ago. That was how the nation of Vietnam had come into being after the NamViet nation was annexed into the greater Han territory in the 3rd century. Similarly the V language affirmatively tells the same story regardless of what one would wish a different course otherwise since there might exist only one way on the becoming of it.
Imagine you are a regular customer of a thriving Vietnamese fast-food restaurant in Chinatown, in a US city such as Oakland in California, where mistaken identities frequently occur between a Vietnamese (V) and Chinese (C). You frequent there, recognize and have interacted with numerous employees, eating the V food they cook, and talking to them for quite some time now. Except for those people working there you ascertain that being the cooks, prominently V, a Mexican helper and an American son-in-law, including the store's owner, the rest are half and half ethnically, but in the sense that they are "Chinese" genetically, having immigrated from Vietnam. Historically you know that they are descendants, many generations already, of China's Ming's citizens fleeing the Qing's suppression and taking refuge in Vietnam in the 17th century, mostly C Chiewchow speakers. In real life you have heard them also talk in different C dialects with different local C customers while what actually identifies them with V nowadays is that they are in social intercourse with their V fellow countrymen, talk and behave like any natives of Vietnam, such as idolizing V pop singers, for example. Figuratively all of the above represent a complete picture of ethnological components in V racial and cultural make-ups, hence, their resulting language.
You have never questioned the authenticity of the tasty food they cook, presumably Vietnamese, with some obviously Chinese-styled items but you eat them like V food anyway, since mostly those dishes are prepared with the same ingredients and process as are being used in V culinary, with an exception that they are usually being seasoned with some sprinkles of fish sauce, though. Is it what makes that restaurant stand out in comparison with those made by other C restaurants nearby, not doing as well as the one you like to patronize? You enjoy all those C-accentuated V dishes – or V-accentuated C food for that matter – similarly to those of southern-style of Khmer origin, adding up a bit more of sweet and sour taste. In all you appreciate their cooking those tasty dishes you enjoy at the store.
So you have just been entertained a little with a scenario for those Sinitic backgrounds that contribute to the racial composition of V as well as their language. The episode has been built and tailored specifically for both of our V diaspora and fellow citizens back home. They are considered as hard-cored nationalists who would stubbornly refuse to buy those Sinitic ideas presented in this paper. They are of a kind not easily to submit themselves to any figure of expertise authority on the Sinitic matter possessing much more knowledge than theirs. Their ignorance of history is to blame and that is the nature of the V intelligentsia in general. Even if those poor guys come to compromise, they would never admit so and tend to refrain from praising any outperforming person who is still alive. In our dramatized case the underlined reason for such a militant mindset is that they are against any national theory said of C origin, linguistically or anthropologically. In fact the V are sensitive and sentimental, preferring not to logically discriminate C elements thanks to their mistrust of China's past and present. That is also the core matter of the confucian V culture, divided but determined to survive, and united on every front fighting against any encroaching moves made the Chinese rulers from the north who have always regarded Vietnam as a renegade province of their own, like the contemporary Taiwan which has had much less historical connection with China than that of Vietnam's 1000 years as a prefecture, throughout every dynasty in China's long history.
In fact, let's peek into our social circles, many of our acquaintances in our close V network are also of C origin. In fact many of us, if not all of us, do have friends of Chinese origin, even some among them they are us ourselves. In my own "Vietnamized" immediate relatives on both sides of my parents', my sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and in-laws, etc., they as C-descendants behave exactly like any of the V natives, mostly with no one even uttering a word of C, but inside their veins circulating 100 percent of "Chinese" blood, including mine. As a society as a whole we have no control over what happened in history, just like our birth, but prejudice could muddy our perception of C substantiality that has taken shapes around us after more than two millenia prior to the day we were born, associated with, have grown up, lived and socialized, or gone exile (imagine we were back in time more than 1000 to 2200 years ago when portions of ancestral Yue started to move out of the China South to its southern plank independent of previous movements toward the Southeast Asian rims which made up large portions of the later grouped AA.) In a foreign land (imagine now the early Viet started to move southward accross 16th parallel into the newly acquired Champa's territories in the 12th century, and resettled and so on thereafter), we have often come accross many of our own kind along the way, as in the case of the fast-food restaurant, with whom we usually communicate in V and have never discerned slight Sinitic elements in everything interactive around us that we have been so accustomed to, notably the V language as common bond for socialization. There is no reason for us to shed doubts about those we know and the authenticity of the mother-tongue that they and our vocables we utter without the realization that those VS words have blended well like mixture of air and water, naturally.
In fact the existing VS words we speak are living parts of nature just like the food we eat and the air we breathe that we react in a natural way without even questioning the Sinitic nature of them. We hear somebody call out our names, the surname and given name, all bearing Chinese origin, that has become parts of our cultural and linguistic heritage. Everything comes and goes so naturally and smoothly, indiscriminately. Analogously, compared to what we might still remember how we had reacted when we had happened to notice and admired how fluently a young German salesperson in a store somewhere in Germary speaks English as fluently as a Britain's native. However, don't you realize that we have hardly done so with those Chinese-descended Vietnamese because they are expected to speak Vietnamese like a native, so portions of our population have become "Chinese" descents ass another ethnic group living within the Vietnam's perimeters. That is why we have amused ourselves to those sitcoms in which those Chinese-Vietnamese who speak V like a Vmimicry, expecting them to talk as those of the multilingual salespersons who, unconsciously and naturally, switch V with other different C dialects back and forth with ease. The point to say here is perhaps we may have never even been fully aware that around us there do exist recent Chinese elements among all deeply permeated VS elements in the language that we speak and the people we connect.
This paper is going to treat those undeniable Sinitic elements existing in our speech, which have made it possible for all of us to do so out of second nature, and pin down on some aspects of it, linguistically, with an attitude, non-prejudiced, like the totality of ours – culturally, racially, and linguistically – towards the world around us with plain and simple truth regardless of how discriminate a well learned Vietnamese might be due to obvious layers of Chinese substrates on top of what is left of the locals. For code of conduct for the foregoing hypothetical episode I have exercised core substance of a V proverb that loosely means 'let's better offend first then please each other later' ("Mấtlòng trước đượclòng sau") and that of C for 'we would have not recognized each other if we did not fight' ("不打不相識"). On the one hand I will make enemies anyway out of those who read for they would not accept my theorization simply because they do not want to believe in what I will say anyway. So why should I waste time arguing with them, both those C and V? As some among us may notice, I have virtually responded to nobody, namely, those critics against me personally as they have appeared on the internet in recent years. For all of the above delicately internal reasons, I am purposely writing this paper in English because many of them humbly do not know English until some body is crazy enough to translate this into V, but at least for now I will not hear curses from fellow countrymen for some time. Surprisingly, however, the irony is that my true understanding allies unexpectedly happen to be those western specialists in the AA camp who have an open mind and enough patience to hear what I have to say on the ST linguistic affiliation of the V language and until now they might have not been convinced enough with my Sinitic hypothesis due to my faulty reconstruction of ancient phonology as well as its rationalization to frame certain sound values without further elaboration.
To be specific though, the objective of this chapter is to acquaint you with major Sinitic elements in the V language as well as to attempt to answer some questions of why and how C and V are interactive in the absence of knowledgeable intervention. I will explain the reasons that underscore the commonalities where the contemporary V speech carries virtually most of the traits and peculiarities of C including different dialects. What appears below depicts most of those influential factors that have shaped the course of the development of Vietnam, racially, hence, linguistically. You are going to see an overall picture of a full integration of C immigrants into V society since the ancient times having started more than 2250 years ago and going through 1000 years as a prefecture of China in different dynasties. It is only that main C factor that will help explain why there exist so many C words in the V language, including some of unsuspected basic items which have been previously classed into other MK cases.
That said, in other words, all in all the V language could very well be placed on par with other languages in the ST linguistic family. You may be able to recall that prior to the emergence of the AA class, with no need to discern about any other factors like the latecomer AA-MK as we have seen, and just like those languages spoken by the Zhuang or Dai minority groups in China South (Southern China), or even Cant. or Fukienese, of which the Tang and Han prominent elements had virtually replaced nearly all of its ancestral forms assumingly similar to those of aboriginal Yue speeches that were once spoken by the ancestors of today's Zhuang, Daic, and other minority peoples about 3000 years ago. (See Drake, F.S. ed. Symposium on Historical Archaeological and Linguistic Studies on Southern China, South-East Asia and the Hong Kong Region. 1967.)
To be on the safe side though, this discussion, to a lesser extent, actually is neither intended to draw a direct line of genetic linguistic affinity between V and C, nor any of those of Tibetan languages for that matter, but only to show their "linked kinship", or, metaphorically, "long lost relatives" either one of ST languages. Just like the meaning of those concepts convey a term of endearment, their implications are not only for vocabulary items, but virtually also all shared linguistic traits. Lexically, at first count, with more than 420 fundamental items from the ST etymology list prepared by Shafer they are coins for our thoughts (See Sino-Tibetan etyma), albeit that the cognateness among the V and ST etyma is so obvious to any journeyman in this VS field of historical linguistics, it is needless to say the task of proving the genetic relationship between the two languages is tantamount.
This paper is in a sense very original and the truth set herein would elevate you to the next level of intelligentsia. To save your sanity while reading this paper, do not let personal sentiment cloud your impartial judgment. Even if you are only a bit prejudiced against anything Chinese, this paper may not suit your taste, at all, so you'd better stop reading now because, for your information, what comes next is all about Chinese (C) [the truth] written in English [seeking intelligently impartial readers] on the Vietnamese (V) language [originality for its bold venture on an uncleared land-mined field], no more no less. As much as you do, I hate China's policy of expansionism handed down by its emperors who have been bullying the little Vietnam all along her thousand-year history until these days. Unfortunately it is too bad that for those Vietnamese submissive little kings to grip onto the power they they should have had in the first place have always relied on those Chinese rulers to exist. Similarly, the C linguistic influence on V has always been behaving exactly the same way, in effect. What is to be discussed herein has no room to accomodate so vast such a political subject in this scaled-down discussion, however. In all cases whatever deploring revelation about the hereditary affiliation between the two languages would not deter my determination to forge forward with altruism.
Steering this research towards that ST hereditary direction undoubtedly would burn the midnight oil while whatever resulted from it would not necessarily give satisfactory answers with a well-defined manner significant enough to uroot the belief in the AA hypothesis. I do not intend or attempt do so, not at all by all means. By the norm, based on possible rate of plausibility for a new theorization to successfully materialize from an opposite viewpoint with a radical turn of 180 degree for changes, it usually takes longer than another cycle of 60 years or so to shift an old consensus hold by veterans in the field to another direction. By then they and I will have been all dead. Therefore, possibility of a resurrection of the ST theory could only be initiated by newcomers in historical linguistics whose open and uncontaminated brains might be still impartial and hopefully they would not be compromised by a routine attitude of shrugging shoulders the way their predecessors used to do.
In the meanwhile, for the V natives it is normal that their latent antagonistic feelings against any Chinese-centric interpretation are likely to be released uncontrollably so that it has never been a good idea to renew argumentation, scholarly, on a controversial issue such as re-classification of the V language into the ST linguistic family. Their dormant simmering sentiment could further boil and spark stream of "nationalism", or to be exact, "anti-Siniticism", and that phenomenal episode could often turn into destructive force that would spoil a new generation of school of Sinitic thoughts because they would rather choose to twist their career path out of such scholarly way, consciously or not, than to take risks of being alienated from an unpopular field of studies. In additon to such unpleasantness, it is expected that the same reactions from the old MK conservatives of the western linguistic world all will inevitably contribute even more resistance, which could lead to blunt rejection of acceptance of the novelty of my elaborative efforts in addressing those existing C and V etymological issues.
I certainly do not want to see all that. What I am really seeking is recognition of their association with the Tibetan evidences with Sinitic focal points to be discussed in this paper. My wish, in my lifetime, is still able to hear constructive critics of my new Sinitic theorization and, indeed, I have started getting some attention and feedbacks since the first draft version of this paper appeared on the internet for nearly a decade ago. For that reason, with regards to their "linked kinship", for the time being we could start to sort out their mystic entanglement and puzzling interrelationship with findings, either directly or indirectly, as still conservatively preserved scarcely available at our disposal so far from traditional approaches made by those Sinitic oldtimers. In fact, a whole picture of the core matter from the start in the V historical linguistics until now which has been presented to us in this case, literally, is exactly only repetitions of certain conclusions passed down from one linguist after another, well, just like restoration of old and faded spots of a painting again and again.
C) Prelude on the Sinitic etyma
The V language used to be considered as a Sinitic branch in the Sino-Tbetan (ST) linguistic family long before the emergence of Mon-Khmer (MK) of Austroasiatic (AA) theorization of the V language came out in the 50's of the previous century. In this study, nevertheless, the author will only present V as a Sinitic "hybrid" language, as opposed to that of 'an adoptive language' or even creoles, such as French spoken in New Guinee or Haiti, because of its systematic and scholarly transformation from those of Sinitic speeches, especially those of the Han and the Tang dynasty mixed bag. It is mentioned as a Sinitic hybrid language because all Sinitic elements exist on top of multiple layers of fundamental ancient Yue substrata, many of which apparently still leave traces in many AA-classed languages such as those of Munda or Mon-Khmer. However, like Sinitic, AA may be a misnomer because the V language pecularly carry all the Sinitic substances. And in this chapter the author will dicuss some of the related issues in terms of its Sinitic affiliations, genetically or not, its apprearance may deceive many veteran philologists in the Sinitic field. The Sinitic-Vietnamese (VS) portions of the V is more like that the northern Mandarin, official language of the court for more than 1000 years which had been heavily influenced by other Altaic languages after the long period of dominance of the rulers of Altaic origin, such as the Hu from Siberia, the Yuan's Mongolians, the Kim in the Northern Song Dynasty, and Manchurians of the Qing, etc. (See Bai Yang, 1973-1983), the Sino-Vietnamese portions of the V language is more like those of MC.
In addition to brand-new listings, this introductory work in a respect could be viewed as complementary work making a revamp of those etymological work pioneered by veterans such as Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (http://starling.rinet.ru/, 1998) for his, comparatively in lexical terms, new posit of VS 'khói' 氣 (汽) qì (smoke) for the already known SV 'khí' (air) and VS 'hơi' (vapor), or Lê Ngọc-Trụ's posit of 漢 hàn for 'hắn' (he), for example. Accurate or not, old previous findings will still be salvaged and meticulously patched with new "paints", not to cover-up but to reveal camouflaged fading spots of an old painting. Let's say, we have found 腚 dìng for VS 'đít' (buttocks) in addition to its doublet 屁 pì (SV tí), to denote the same object, but over here we may need to explain the sound change pattern -zero and /-ng/ ~ /-t/ and /p-/ ~ /d-/, many cases cited here being redundant. To what extent that you are inclined to believe in the truthfulness of the factual etymological evidences depends solely on your historical linguistics background as well as conviction about the Sinitic theorization being discussed here. For some people, they would never understand such self-evident and and self-proofed etyma which are so obvious and simple such as 早 zăo for 'chào' (hello), let alone 屁股 pìgu for both VS 'phaocâu' (chicken butts as delicacy) and its contracted form 屁 pì (SV tí) for 'đít', both equivalent to the modern M for 'buttocks', and its extended meaning for 'địt' (fart) . A rescontructed work of such scholarly depth could be done in the same manner as we would like to try like work being done in restoring and rebuilding subtle details from an old painting counterpart even though Except for those who have a grasp in many disciplines related to the subject matter, there will be not many people who would really comprehend or appreciate it. In short, again, people tend to believe in what they have already believed to start with.
For an overview of the history of V development in a nutshell, artistically depictive, imaginatively, let's first attempt to sketch the whole picture based solely on revealing transient shades of diminishing colors overlapping each other that try to convey to us a hypothetical but picturesque anecdote of pseudo-historical bygones. Illustratively, take some other cases as example, 'sông' (river) 江 jiāng and 'suối' (creek) 泉 quán diverting our attention from 川 chuān (SV xuyên), 'cửa' (door) 戶 hù camourflaging 口 kǒu, 'hiểu' (understand) 曉 xiáo replacing 會 huì, 'hiền' (good nature) 賢 xián taking place of 善 shàn (SV thiện), etc., one etymon on top of the other. Hence the hidden ones could be exposed in different shapes and sounds because there is no such thing called 'absolute' in terms of rigidity in historical linguistics. Metaphorically, for entertaining purposes, without being stressed out with all bombarding minute details of an academic subject so as to be easy to remember, its linguistic history might run with the lines as follows:
"More than three thousand years ago the mother proto-Taic had given birth to one hundred children, collectively known as the BaiYue 百越 (BáchViệt in V), with half of them married to the normadic Yin 殷 (or Ân) fighters of the formerly powerful Xia 廈 and Shang 商 clans that had long been separated from the Tibetan root. The newly mixed race had formed Sino-Tibetan linguistic branch and founded the Zhou Kingdom 周王朝. Tracing down the evolutional line, among several vassal states was the Qin State 秦國 that had become increasingly powerful and then forced the Chu 楚國 to become its "concubine" with all of her adopted indigenous subjects. Well, when they were fighting against each other, the other half fled southward to join their long lost cousins, who were later called individually by the name of Yue 粵 (Việt), XiYue 西越 (TâyViệt), LuoYue 鵅越 (LạcViệt), OuYue 毆越 (ÂuViệt), MinYue 閩越 (MânViệt), YueChang 越常 (Việtthường), etc. all having well established within their rightful states. All together they have evolved into ethnic groups at present day known us as the Dai 傣, the Zhuang 壯, the Yao 瑤, the Miao 苗, the Mon 猛 (毛南), etc., respectively. All is nowadays lumped together and named as the Austroasiatic stock by western anthropologists. They were actually descendants of the other fifty Yue children who had got there in earlier break-ups more than 2200 years ago. They, again, fought among themselves and only, in 208 BC, ended up to be ruled by a former Qin's general called Triệu Đà (趙佗 Zhào Tuó) who had established the NanYue 南越國, or NamViet, State which would later be trampled under the feet of the Han Dynasty after its long incursive march and, finally, were conquered and annexed to the greater unified China. As history has it, part of it located in today's Vietnam's northern territory became the Annan Protectorate 安南都護府 (Annam Đôhộphủ). In Annam the Vietmuong groups, descendents of the LuoYue, further broke up and, hence, their speakers had formed the proto-Vietic speech, spoken by those who chose to stay behind living under the ruling umbrella of the Han while the proto-Muong linguistic form had been preserved by those who fled into remote mountainous areas. The former, having endured further the imposition of the Han's culture and language, had absorbed and blended itself with a Han dialectal form known as Ancient Chinese. Linguistically the early V formation and development with all the AC alements paralleled to what had happened to ancestral Fukienese Amoy. Over time, diachronically and synchronically gradually and continually penetrated deeply into the Vietic linguistic form, or early Annamese, which undoubtedly was the ancestral form of today's V. "
So to speak, the "linked kinship" between the C and V languages was dated back not only from the periods of the Zhou Dynasty, of which proto-Taic remnants had scattered and diverged into all languages spoken by descendants of the BaiYue --including those of the Austroasiatic stock, e.g., the MK languages – but also continued on and further blossomed into a new linguistic form spoken by the Kinh (京族 Jingzu), meaning "the metropolitan people", the newly mixed race historically known as Annamese since the Han time. In short, from the Western Han period 208 BC onward the pre-Sinitic linguistic form had encountered the proto-Taic elements whence how V has anything to do with the ST linguistic family.
You will see those descriptive details again throughout this paper because it is an important chained link in V and C relationship from "linked kinship" to culturally-accented imposition and acquisition based on actual historical facts of more than 1000 year domination of the ancient land of Vietnam by the Han Chinese.
D) Hypothesis of Chinese origin of Vietnamese
For the prehistoric evidences, archaeologically,
The excavation of the Man Bac site (c. 3800–3500 years BP) in Ninh Binh Province, Northern Vietnam, yielded a large mortuary assemblage. A total of 31 inhumations were recovered during the 2004–2005 excavation. Multivariate comparisons using cranial and dental metrics demonstrated close affinities of the Man Bac people to later early Metal Age Dong Son Vietnamese and early and modern samples from southern China including the Neolithic to Western Han period samples from the Yangtze Basin. In contrast, large morphological gaps were found between the Man Bac people, except for a single individual, and the other earlier prehistoric Vietnamese samples represented by Hoabinhian and early Neolithic Bac Son and Da But cultural contexts. These findings suggest the initial appearance of immigrants in northern Vietnam, who were biologically related to pre- or early historic population stocks in northern or eastern peripheral areas, including Southern China. The Man Bac skeletons support the ‘two-layer’ hypothesis in discussions pertaining to the population history of Southeast Asia. (See Morphometric affinity of the late Neolithic human remains from Man Bac, Ninh Binh Province, Vietnam: key skeletons with which to debate the ‘two layer’ hypothesis, co-authored by Hirofumi MATSUMURA, Marc F. OXENHAM, Yukio DODO, Kate DOMETT, Nguyen Kim THUY, Nguyen Lan CUONG, Nguyen Kim DUNG, Damien HUFFER, Mariko YAMAGATA (2007) at http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ase/116/2/135/_pdf Note: always try http://archive.org if the link no longer exists).
Altogether along with the fact that Vietnam had gone though a millennium of Chinese domination, from 111 BC to 936 AD to be exact, not to mention short intervals of other sporadic Chinese invasions long after that until the end of the 19th century, we can determine and ascertain active linguistic roles that had facilitated the integration of AC lingo, supposedly, of which a wide range of lexicons are known as pre-Sino-Vietnamese (TiềnHánViệt), into the proto-Vietic (PV) speech. In its evolution such earlier archaic form of the V language has absorbed thousands of them from ancient to contemporary periods in addition to dialectal variations of the C language (as usual, to be mentioned only as "Chinese" in this general context throughout this paper while it could mean C "dialects" or a specific C sub-dialect), again, throughout different historical stages, from the early Western Han to the end of the Tang Dynasty, by way of both borrowing and localizing a great number of C lexical items. Synchronically many AC words in V since then had undergone a great deal of phonological shifts and sound changes in colloquial speech by the common illiterate mass, probably a form of pidginization of a C vernacular lingua-franca, throughout the ages, mostly without recorded local phonetic transcriptions before the emergence of the Nôm characters (details below). Those localized loanwords eventually have emerged as impartable elements in V as they appear at present time. In our modern time, like those written languages of the Indo-European linguistic family, the force of phonological shifts has slowed down considerably since the adoption of Romanized V writing system in the early twentieth century and as of today, partly due to the widespread of distributed information in electronic format as well mass movement via conveniently fast transportation from one region to another.
Historically, social factors such as direct result of waves after waves of Chinese immigrants from China could also greatly be accounted for heavy C vernacular linguistic influence in V. Their emigrating path was a sure southward movement that might have continuously taken place in any given period during the past 3000 years in Chinese history given the hypothetical assumption that today's composition of the Vietnamese anthropology – as figuratively illustrated in the folktale about one-hundred children coupled with archealogical evidences as previously presented – has been a mixture of Chinese immigrants from further northern China, e.g. the Hakka 客家 linguistic group, with one of the local Yuè 粵 (越 Yue) of the larger branch of BaiYue 百越, or BáchViệt, whose descendants, being known as the Dai 傣 (V "Tày"), Zhuāng 莊 (or Bouxcueng people, VS "Nùng"), Tóng 垌, Shuǐ 水, Máonán 毛南 (Môn), 苗 Miao (Mèo, Hmong), and many others, diverged from an earlier stock of proto-Taic people who during the periods prior to 3 millennia B.C. had been the masters of those vast southern territories, embracing many of today's China's provinces, including those of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu, stretching from both sides of the banks of the Yangtze River going all the way to the seas, east and south. They presumably had been the ancestors of kings of the Zhou and their subjects – the pre-Han and other ethnic stocks – whose descendants generations later made up the Chinese along with other aboriginal minorities still living there nowadays.
Long after having emerged from the proto-Taic groups towards the end of the Zhou Dynasty many of those diversed groups of the Yue in the southern provinces of today's China had been constantly on the move southward. Influx of archaeological findings in the last six decades has revealed that the proto-Taic aboriginals had long been in contact with the people in the far north, in this case, the original pre-Sinitic, or "pre-Chinese", nomadic people who had been scouting the northwestern harsh infertile regions for means of self subsistence prior to their quest for survival by expanding further to north- and southeastern territorries as early as 4000 years ago (See Shifan Peng, 1987). Descendants of those earlier northerners might probably have later become sole subjects of the Qin State, the most powerful one among six other ancient states, of which the populace could have been of mixed races, the pre-Chinese and proto-Taic aboriginals, during the Warring Periods after the decline of the Zhou Dynasty. Portions of all other aborginal groups, i.e., descendants of earlier pro-Taic people, living within those north- and southeastern states, including those subjects of the last Chu State 楚國, for various reasons that either they could have not been able to protect their cultivated land, had adopted the early Chinese culture, or run away from the advancing force of a much more powerful army from the newly unified Qin Empire. Those who fled all the way futher to the southernost regions of contemporary Indo-Chinese peninsula, stretching from today's Thailand all the way to southern Vietnam, were undoubtedly ancestors of the so-called proto-Austroasiatic people, that was on becoming and a much later events still in the making as now classed as such by modern western scholars, including the Khmer people who had formed the powerful Khmer Empire, whose variant speeches had eventually formed the Austroasiatic linguistic linkage. So whatever influence those languages have exerted on the V, either in its substratum or superstratum on a vast scale of territories, might have probably merely been a product geographical contacts coming across among aboriginals and immigrants.
In a later development since the Han Dynasty, during the span of one thousand years of Chinese domination of the Annam state before her independence from the Tang Dynasty in 936 AD, from regions now belonging to China more immigrants from north and south, just like their predecessors, generally, a mixture of poor peasants, had been fleeing from ravaging wars and hunger back home, like the Hakka. Among them were also exhausted long-march soldiers on endlessly conquering and pacifying missions and a great number of disgraced political exiles along with their accompanied family having mercilessly purged and punished by temperamental dynasties that they had served (Bo Yang. 1983-1993. 資治通鑑 Zīzhì Tōngjiàn) (南) A majority of them, probably mostly men, had to choose to settle in places of where today's Vietnam's northern territories are. Most of them were married into indigenous families and they never returned to their homeland again. Over the years and many generations later they had been totally assimilated into the newly emerged Sinicized Annamese society by having blended within the dominant ethnic group later identified as "Kinh", or "Annamese". At the same time, beside the Han culture, those newcomers had brought along with them their own dialects – of which the linguistic sub-strata had already comprised of some of the proto-Taic vernacular elements, e.g., the Amoy (廈門 Xiàmén) and Cantonese groups – which continued injecting fresh colloquial elements into the local speech in their new resettlement in addition the prestigious Mandarin written lingua-franca in the ruling imerial courts. This assimilation process could have been occurring rather slowly and gradually among the majority descended from the original "Pre-Annamese" who had long resettled there ("resettled" here means that the local people might also have immigrated from regions further in the north long before the Han Chinese expansion to the south.) These gradual integration of northerners and Annamese majority factors help explain why today's V could not be considered as a C dialect of the same nature as Cant. and Fukienese, which had shared similar historical development in those early days, since it demonstrates clearly an outstanding local grammatical order, prominently and dominantly, that is, adjectives being placed after nouns. This peculiar syntactic characteristic, similar to those of the Zhuang (Nung) or Daic (Tay), had certainly inherited from the original proto-Taic speech along with the later AC grammatical forms and this reverse word order still can be found in many C dialects. Albeit, its other peculiar linguistic characteristics and vocabulary items are mostly on par semantically and phonologically with those of C (門).
On becoming a majority, the new racially mixed population later called themselves "NgườiKinh", or the Kinh, (京 Jing, literally meaning "the metropolitans"). Their dominant presence and establishments along the Red River's Delta and low fertile plains along the eastern coastline had further pushed and displaced indigenous stocks, probably those speakers of the MK languages, among those of Daic origin spoken by 1.2 million of Tay and other ethnic groups living in the northern parts of remote high plateaus in western mountainous ranges in today's Vietnam. Those displaced tribal groups later on have practically become minorities in their own ancestral land (京). For that reason, it is not hard to understand that if those ethnic groups had been of the same anthropological composition as that of the Kinh, they might not have been discriminated badly on a large visible scalewith brutal harshness while in contrast the racially and culturally distinct Chinese ethnic immigrants have been treated fairly well, of whom the population growth and social integration must have been a much later development (華). This factual reality reinforces the idea that Chinese immigrants who have come to this nation would eventually become native in a span of time as short as within three generations or so (many living Vietnamese around you in any corner of the globe nowadays could serve as your active informants for this subtle detail.) It is undoubtedly that the cultural factors such as the same Confucian culture easily submerge the Chinese newcomers into the melting pot that readily accepts those new arrivals of, not to mention linguistic similarity which also facilitates the assimilation process at a faster pace. Failing to grasp that anthropological accelerative vehicle in forming populace in today's Vietnam as described as such from ancient times until present time we shall never be able to fully know the true origin of both V and its speakers. Let's take a look at those Chinese ethnic groups in Japan and Korea and, in reverse, those Korean or Kinh 京族 minorities in China to see how have they been faring. By the same token, we could hardly see the same process which is expected to have taken place in those countries where Austroasiatic or Austronesian languages are spoken. Statistics of the so-called overseas Chinese in those countries in the Southeast Asian regions point to that fact very clearly with percentage of Chinese minority is significantly higher than that of Vietnam, that is of a little more than 1% (as of 2009). So where are those earlier Chinese immigrants now? The simple answer is that they have already become an integrated part of the Kinh populace whose Chinese surnames are a subset of those C ones inherited from so many generations ago.
Historically the Kinh people had continued to expand agressively and moved further to the south away from the confined regions around today's Vietnam's ancient fertile Red River Delta. Archaeologically excavated evidences found there now include all ancient bronze drums, which had long been forgotten lying buried deeply in thick layers of the earth, bearing similar decorative carvings of cultural motifs such as wooden boats and long feather birds, hence, the LacViet 鵅越 , etc. similarly as those appear on those bronze drums made by the Zhuang ("Nùng"), the largest ethnic goup with a population of more than 18 million people in China's southern Guangxi Autonomous Administrative Region, not counting those living in the northern mountainous regions of Vietnam. Contrary to the fact that while the fate of their siblings' bronze drums buried dead and forgotten in the Vietnam's soil, those similar bronze drums of the same type have been continuously used by the contemporary Zhuang, descendants of their ancestral creators, as culturally and ritually sacrifcial and ceremonial objects since ancient times well into the present time. With such a continuity oberved in the Zhuang's culture we can, in contrast, assume that self-claimed descendants of the masters of the Dongsonian and Hoabinhian bronze drums – who must have been genetically related to those of the Zhuang, and, for some hundred years later after mixed up with other indigenous inhabitants including those later who are known as of Austroasiatic and Austronesian groups and the later Chinese immigrants – have completely forgotten the technology of how to make those drums. As a matter of fact, the Chinese cultural factors could also be to blame for their extinction since the conquer of the Annamese land initiated by the Han Dynasty that could either have destroyed or totally rendered them meaningless culturally. It is only in that context that the claims made by today's Vietnamese archaeologists are valid, that the bronze unearthed in those areas did belong to "Vietnamese ancestors" who actually had been on the becoming until the coming of the Han's soldiers as accounted for in the recorded history of this nation. For the same reason, any other claims might be irrelevant, amusingly and rediculous enough, with regard to similar statements made by some eagerly nationalist V scholars, that artifact findings excavated in the much farther Indo-Chinese pennisular southern parts of today's Vietnam's territories also belong to the "Vietnamese ancestors". It is untrue simply because no Vietnamese "ancestors" had ever been known in existence in those stretches of land which were only annexed to the "Vietnam nation" as lately as five centuries ago after further expansion of the Vietnam's empire advancing to the south when its southern Cham and Khmer neighbors had been in rapid decline from the start of the 12th century. In fact, it was only from that period Vietnamese emigrants began moving en masse to have crossed far beyond today's Vietnam's Thuanhoa Province, where many centuries later the Capital Hue was established, and continued to expand all the way to the southern tip of Camau Province into the Gulf of Cambodia and Thailand. Those stretches of annexed land used to be parts of the now extinct nations of Cham, Funan, and later Khmer Kingdom. Whatever remains today belongs to Cambodia to the west of Vietnam.
The emergence of the new masters, the Kinh people, of the land has evolved hand in hand with its becoming lingua franca. The fact that Chinese racial integration into the Vietnamese society, this theory rather controversial though, is about the formation of the Vietnamese people, starting on stretches land in today's Vietnam's northern parts where there existed already racially mixed groups of different peoples of the ancient Yue, with the integration earlier batches of Chinese immigrants and aboriginals dated back from ancient times, will shed lights on the physical traits of the populace living in the area further in the northern part of Vietnam who look much more like the so called today's "Chinese" than those of the indigenous inhabitants of as much theorized of Polynesian and Malay (of the Austronesian stock), or the Mon-Khmer descents (of the Austroasiatic stock). That melting pot rationalization can also be supported by the fact that all Vietnamese carry Chinese surnames as already mentioned above, and, geographically, and for the same reason virtually almost all the placenames where those earlier settlers and the Kinh have ever lived bear all the names of those places in China, eg., Trùngkhánh 'Chongqing' 重慶, Hànam 'Henan' 河南, Hàbắc 'Hebei' 河北, Hàđông 'Hedong' 河東, Hànội 'Henei' 河內, Sơntây 'Shanxi' 山西 , Tháinguyên 'Taiyuan' 太原, Quảngnam (or 'Guangnan' 廣南 as opposed to Guangdong 廣東 and Guangxi 廣西), Bắcninh, or Tâyninh ( 'Beining' 北寧 and 'Xining' 西寧 – parrallel to Xining in Xinjiang Province and as opposition to to 'Nanning' 南寧 in Guangxi Province), and so on, not to mention the fact that most of Vietnamese placenames are in SV such as Hoàihương 'Huaixiang' 懷鄉 or Bồngsơn 'Pengshan' 蓬山 and the like (the same as those British geographical names in existence in the US east coast!)
Evidences to support this hypothesis are problematic, nevertheless, due to the fact that the historical records Vietnam still having are dated only from the 10th century onward and they do not cover that. Chronology of priivate family geneological tree are rare, if any, mostly cover about 500 years or less with scanty information to be of any historical value. Any anthrologists who wish to study the origin of Vietnamese, must therefore dig into ancient Chinese records to find out, usually unexpectedly coming across citations accidentally revealed and utilized by other authors researching on different subjects. Anthropologically, hopefully, in the near future new DNA bio-technology will certainly help anthropologists discover more scientific genetic specimens about the Vietnamese people's biological composition. As a result we are back to the square one where we have started with our biological traits and the language itself to fondle. For biased and untrained eyes, let's say, we need to figure out who are actually Vietnamese ones among a group of mixed Chinese and Vietnamese students of the second generation in an institution in the US. For the latter, that is what I am trying to do, it is no doubt that modern V shares its linguistic characteristics in its large stock of vocabulary items with those of C than any other sources as they have left larger imprints in many linguistic marks evolved from either C ancient forms or their dialectal derivatives.
On the sideline, in Vietnam's contemporary history, the fact that the colonization of the country by the French colonists from 1861 to 1954 had produced a nouveau class of intelligentsia, including Vietnam's the last King, Bao Dai, who could barely converse in their mother's tongue but French, would not surprise anybody when it comes to the C origin of V etymology with the same C analogy. That theory of mutationally mixed race of the Vietnamese is highly plausible if we compare that to our hypothesis based on the fact that in Vietnam's very recent history for the period of 10 years from 1965 to 1975, the presence of Americans soldiers on South Vietnam's soil of population of less than 20 million people had produced nearly 50 thousand Amerasians mothered by Vietnamese women, surprisingly within such a short period of time. Elsewhere in the world, in modern time, we can still find the transformational and mutational, genetically and linguistically, similarities in the biological and linguistic compositions, such as those of Spanish conquistadors and their influence on the indigenous people in all the South America's countries after less than 300 years of colonization, which have changed the racial make-up of the populace in a remarkable way.
Specifically in the case of Vietnam, while most previous Chinese immigrants in ancient times have successfully blended themselves into the general local Kinh people, many of the more recent ones from Guangdong (Canton), Fujian (Fukien), and other parts of China's southern provinces who have migrated to Vietnam later during the last past four hundred years, especially since the fall of the Chinese Ming Dynasty, might have still remained ethnically Chinese and have been identified as of several different Chinese ethnic groups, namely, the "Minhhương" (descendants of the Ming's subjects), Chaozhou (Tcheochow), Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese, and Fukienese. For a large majority of these later groups, many of them might also have already fully absorbed into Vietnamese society. Just ask a Vietnamese, chances are that three or four out of ten individuals will be still able to tell you how they bear a V version of their C last name. (See Appendix I)
In addition to the Chinese immigrating factor, the linguistic penetration of vast C lexicons into V vocabulary stock had been also the results of forceful imposition of the use of the C language on the local people under the rule of Chinese rulers during their one thousand (1,000) years of domination of the then Vietnam. During that time, "Vietnam", which was then called under the several names including Namviệt, Annam, Giaochỉ, Giaochâu, ÐạicồViệt, ÐạiViệt, ÐạiNam, etc., had long been considered as a protectorate or prefecture of China. Inevitably, the Chinese influence had steadly found its way into all arrays of the V language permanently, from basic linguistic stratum, distinguishable from the core indigenous remnants originated from the proto-Taic forms as pointed out earlier, to an upper overly scholarly vocabulary stock, which have been used by the Vietnamese widely in all walks of daily life up to the current time. If you take off all the possible vocabularies of C origin from the modern V, I doubt that you can ever make a complete sentence intelligebly, or at least without having it sound awkard like archaic Chinse-style wenyanwen 文言文.
Indeed, facts on the becoming of Vietnam and her people along with their language is manifested and reinforced with more and more archaeological and historical artifacts. Characteristically its national development is similar to those of places anthropologically in other parts of the world such as those Latin nations, South Africa, Singapore, Taiwan, etc. In the case of today's Taiwan, after the Chinese takeover since the early 16th century, the island's indigenous people have become a minority on their own land. If we frame this "nation island" back in time and map it into the scenario of Vietnam's 2nd century historical settings assuming that Taiwan had survived until this day as an independent nation, we shall understand this matter better by imagining how it would have become today and how enormous the influence, linguistically, the mainland's Chinese have asserted onto the approximately 25 million inhabitants living there. This Taiwan's analogy is helpful for us to picture how the process of Sinicization of the then Vietnam would have accelerated about during a time span of 1000 years of total Chinese assimilation and why Vietnam had thereon continued on with the same self-inflicted Sinicization for another 1000 years given presumably a very much smaller population than that of Taiwan at present time. Keep in mind that she had to accomodate a larger number of Chinese soldiers of the invading army, amounting to hundred of thousands in numbers, having continuously advanced southwards since the Han Dynasty from the 2nd century B.C. onward.
In fact, ithe course of its eventfully historical development, an inevitable linguistic adoption process had naturally taken place long before and after Vietnam's having victoriously gained independence from China in the tenth century, which has kept going on under the influence of Chinese even until this day. Vietnam had voluntarily adopted the C writing system in full at first as the official written language of the land, hence, previously termed as "the self-inflicted sinicization", not to mention other aspects of cultural values in tradition and customs strongly dictated by Confucianism, Taoism, and even Buddhism. In a later development after the 10th century, creation of Nôm characters based on C ideographic block writing system with modifications had been put into unofficial use in Nôm literature, mostly flourrished from the 16th century onwards, until the end of the 19th century when the Romanized Vietnamese orthography gradually began replacing the Chinese way of writing. In modern V, consequently, there have emerged in V two sets of common vocabularies, the first one widely known as the HánViệt (SV) – mostly appearing in dissyllabic usage – and the HánNôm (VS or V lexicons of C origin, including those older loanwords from AC). And, as one can expect, they are essentially the essence of the V etymology.
E) Core matter of Vietnamese etymology
Cao Xuân Hạo (2001), a contemporary renown Vietnamese cultural and linguistic theorist, in his "TiếngViệt là TiếngMãlai?" (Could Vietnamese be of Malay origin?) states that most of the V words which have been considered original – từ thuần Việt – are actually not indigenously pure. According the author's view, in linguistics, there is no such thing called "pure". He emphasizes that it does not matter much to which origin, be it of C, Thai, MK, or Austroasiatic cognates, should V be classed, the core matter of the debatably etymological issues remains the same as is as in the case of many basic words that he cited: chim bird (of MK origin), vịt duck (of Thai origin), cá fish (of Austroasiatic origin), thỏ hare (of C origin) are still considered "pure" Vietnamese (p. 90).
In fact, all linguistic essentials that make up the whole body of a language, holistically, are what matters the most. The C elements in V are its substance and living soul. As in many cases of other languages in the world, we cannot solely base on cases of isolated basic words of MK cognates, as many specialists in this field have normally done, to paint a picture that the Vietnamese originally spoke a MK language, then borrow the C vocabularies and their tones to make up for their defficiency, just like what the Japanese and Koreans have done with the C lexicons. However we all can see that both of the latter could not accomodate their tones due to the inhibition of intrinsic structure of their languages. Recognizing only those basic MK cognates in such manners has taken out of the context of the language as a whole, which will shift the whole language out of balance for the reason that many of those C cognates are in the same basic realm, too.
According to an old wisdom, the most advanced and powerful people are likely to influence the least developed ones. Therefore, it is not surprising that specialists of V always think that those basic V words must have been from MK source because the Khmer Empire had ever been the most enermous power in Southeast Asia flourished from the 9th to the 13th century. Hence, whenever any words were found to be cognate to those of MK, there exists such an implicit concensus that they are of the MK origin, not the other way around. To accomodate the cognateness of those C and V basic words the MK theorists have come up with clever rationalization that C and V basic etyma have been a result of cultural causability. They still have stopped short of viewing V as a mixed language even though they recognize the existence of both MK and C basic cognates in V while the rest is C loanwords, that is to say, V has been formed from other sources and never been the origin to divert and evolve into other languages. But how could ancient basic words have crept into the V language when border of Vietnam was stopped at Thuanhoa in the northern central part by the end of the 12th century? Despite of the fact that after that period Vietnam had grown strongly and more aggressively advanced towards the south and finally swallowed nearly half of former Khmer Empire territory such misnomer of V of MK origin has been carried on even for those linguists who enter lately into this field of research simply because they usually follow footsteps of predecessors, take their opinions, then start, or expand their work from the same baseline.
Fortunately, obviously the MK path is the one must be taken because it is not a significant way to look for V etymology due to a scanty share of a very small amount of basic words. Research on V could be done differently with a new approach and perspective based on, firstly, larger portions of ST basic vocabulary which demonstrate the common origin based on Shafer's ST work (1972) as we shall see later, and, secondly but most importantly, evidences of cognateness in C and V etymology in many linguistic realms. Deaparting from conventional wisdom we can say that, using the influential factor to analyze, languages of MK origin could have also borrowed many words from V the same way V has done so from C. I have follwed the MK camp at first, but later on during the course of my own expedition in V historical linguistics I have formed new contrast views by questioning the existing MK factors validity of most of oldtimers' claims, which has arisen from my suspection of the mastery level in related languages by those specialists who hold the V hostage in the MK confinement, especially those western linguists who rely too much on data provided by informants, or to be exact, interpreters. Similarly, I myself might fall on the same fallacy for my lack of knowledge of the MK languages for the same reason I have used to discriminate against opposite views. However, many of my new discovery in this area might have not been known before as a result of my own new approaches starting with what I know and confident the most, that is, C and V. I am fully competent, along with the related linguistic matters I have hereby reached a conclusion of my own per se. In other words, seeking the roots of etymology involves a lot of other factors much more significant than being limited to mechanically setting up vocabulary correspondences and applying linguistic rules on a fractional share of tiny basic stock.
Be reminded again that the purpose of this research however is not to prove the ST origin of V genetically and to denounce the MK theories, but only to present my new approach to help find the etymology of thousands of V words of C origin. That same method can also be used to evaluate most of the words that previously have been speculated by many distinguished linguists in the field that they were of the MK origin, which might not be the case at all.
Dialects of C language belong to the ST linguistic family, of the Sinitic division specifically. Could V be considered also a language descended from the same family, not necessarily of the same division, if most of its words are proved to be of C origin? Should many of those proven lexicons happen to be of the most basic ones, usually about 200 items as commonly recognized in historical linguistics, the consensus is that that they could not be considered as loanwords but cognates evolved from the same source. That is possible given highly plausible theories about the proto-Taic elements and the pre-Sinitic forms that they all share when they had been in contact some time prior to the Zhou Dynasty from 1122 BC to 256 BC. As you will see in this research we can tally all rectified basic vocabularies up to more than 170 items ans, understably, those V linguists in the MK camp will raise their eyebrows and come to the offensive line on all fronts. Naturally, it is a controversial but interesting topic that needs to be re-examined with in-depth research so as to found a long old reckoned connection, previously referred to as "the linked kinship."
I believe that should be the case because, again, in addition to sharing most of the basic lexical items and much more, C and V are also embedded to the bone with most of identical linguistic attributes and traits, including those subtle and unique characteristics that only exist in closely kin languages. Below are some of their prominent striking linguistic similarities (many more examples and elaborations will follow later as we come along and possibly some may be repeated but that is for emphasis or to illustrate a point):
- The tonal system: The V language with an 8 tone system – seen by many as 6 tones based on the visual look of modern orthography without regard to two "entering tones", or "thanhnhập" 入聲 rùsheng – that fits perfectly into the MC two-registered tonal scheme, where one can still recite Tang's poems which fit perfectly into their strict schemes of not only tonal rules but rhyming syllabic finals. Mandarin nowadays only retains 4 tones but its tonal registered values are almost fairly squared equally for homonyms in V – so are other C dialects, especially those of Minnan 閩南 (Fukienese) and Yue 粵 (Cantonese), both containing somewhere from 7 to 10 tones – e.g. M 'mā, má, mă, má' compared with V 'ma, mả, mà, má' plus 6 additional other tonal equivalents in Cant., that is, 'mah, maah, mahk, mak, mahp, map' as compared with V 'mạ, mã, mạc, mác, mạp, máp', etc. Interestingly enough, besides, similar tonal values can be applied to those vocabularies in several other minority languages classified as of ST language family spoken by the Zhuang, Dai, Miao, etc. people in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Fujian, etc. provinces in South China.
- Main sentence structure: Basic structure appears as Subject+Verb+Object in both languages, not excluding other exceptional reverse patterns such as O+S+V, e.g. 飯我吃了. Fàn wǒ chī le. 'Cơm tôi ăn rồi'. (Literally, "Meal, I already consumed"), 這本書我看了. Zhè běnshū wǒ kàn le. "Quyểnsách nầy tôi xem rồi.' ("This book I have already read."), 'Mang tráicây đem quađây mời khách.' 把水果帶過來請客 Bă shuǐguǒ dāi guòlái qǐngkè. ("Bring the fruits over here to treat our guests."), or that of dual subject SS+V+O, e.g. Tiểu-Yến nó yêu tôi. 小燕她愛我 Xiăoyàn tā ài wǒ. ("Xiaoyan she loves me") and both do not have dual S+V+OO in similar contextual structure, not to mention possible omission of either subject or object when either one is implicitly understood in a sentence. Linguists know that best as of how important this linguistic structure is when looking for commonalities in languages of the same family.
- "Isolate" construction: Both C and V do not have words with inflectional affixes to play the role of grammatical functions or syntactic word order like those of Indo-European languages but fixed words to form stative, copulative, submissive, active transitive, and qualificative constructions, e.g., không 不 bù (for negation), có 有 yǒu (there is), là (SV thì) 是 shì (to be), bị 被 bèi (passive – plus C active – voice), được 得 dé (active voice), and adjective-verbal actant (such as 'nó thôngminh' 她聰明 tā cōngmíng 'she + intelligent'), etc., and interrogative sentences are constructed by simply adding 'cóphải' 是否 shìfǒu or 'cóphảilà' 是不是 shìbùshì (Do..?, Is that...? etc.) in the beginning of sentence, or 'không' 不 bù (否 fǒu) (..is'nt it? .. doesn't it? .. dont' you? etc.) to the end of the question. At the same time it appears that elements of morphemic syllable for word building structurally sometimes could function the role of affixes, e.g. hoa(nhỏ) 花兒 huār 'flower', mai(nầy) 明兒 mínr 'tomorrow', họcgiả 學者 xuézhě 'scholar', tácgiả 作者 zuòzhě 'author', vôlễ 無禮 wúlǐ 'impolite', vôhiệu 無效 wúxiào 'ineffective', phithường 非常 fēicháng 'unusual', phichínhnghĩa 非正義 fēizhèngyì 'unjust', etc. In other word, all these morphemic forms are about the same in both languages because, partly, V simply borrows the whole C units and at the same time uses its lexical material to build the same polysyllabic words of identical characteristic connotation.
- Syllabic structure: Basic lexical building block is constructed with the pattern initial + middle + final, mostly with the pattern of CVC, characterized by dominant consonantal-initialed leading words (that is, less of vowel-initialed words), all sharing simple consonants without clusters, e.g., c, ch, t, tr, n, ng, etc. rounded and glided middles like -w-, -j-, such as x+o+ang ~ q+i+ang 腔, h+ư+ơng ~ x+i+ang 香, and especially finals with endings evolved from Middle Age /-wng/, /-wk/ such as thống 痛 tòng 'pain', đông 東 'east', cốc 榖 gǔ 'grain', tốc 速 sù 'fast', etc.
- Basic vocabulary stock: This prominent commonality is undeniable in all lexical espects of each and every word, for examples, nạ 娘 niáng 'mother', bố 父 fù 'father', xơi 食 shí 'eat', ngủ 臥 wò 'sleep', mắt 目 mù 'eye', đầu 頭 tóu 'head', ngực 臆 yì 'chest', phổi 肺 fèi 'lung', cá 魚 yú 'fish', lửa 火 huǒ 'fire', lá 葉 yè 'leaf', nhà 家 jiā 'home', lợn 豚 tún 'pig', săn 田 tián 'hunt', etc.,
- Dissyllabicity or dissyllabics: Majority of vocabularies consists of mostly two-syllable words, such as siêngnăng 勤勉 qínmiăn 'industrious', nonsông 江山 jiāngshān ('river' + 'mountain' for) 'country', ánhmắt 目光 mùguāng 'the look', ánhnắng 陽光 yángguāng 'sun rays', giàucó 富有 fùyǒu 'wealthy'...), etc., many of them being peculiar semantic composition of lexical building blocks such as bàntay 手板 shǒubăn '(panel of the) palm', cổchân 腳脖子 jiăobózi ('neck of the foot' for) 'ankle’, khuônmặt 面孔 miànkǒng '(the frame of a) face', dướiquê 鄉下 xiāngxià '(down there in the) countryside', đoáhoa 花朵 huāduǒ '(a stem of) flower', etc.
- Morphemic syllable a building unit to coin new words: These lexicons are mostly composed of either a morpheme, syllable or both: bồihồi 徘徊 páihuái 'melancholy', yêuđương 愛戴 àidài 'love', khổsở 苦楚 kǔchǔ 'hardship', bắtcóc 綁架 băngjià 'kidnap', cẩuthả 苟且 gǒuqiě 'slobby', etc., in which each morphemic syllable is either wholly or partially independent of the semantic bound of the original meaning of the root, that is, they are mostly phoneticized transcriptions of actual spoken words. Characteristically, this type of coumpounds are similarly constructed with the same structure in both languages, of which many are likely C loanwords in V.
- Syllabic parallel compounds (in synonymous/antonymous/reduplicative forms): Iin V and C, homonyms in monosyllabic words are in a pretty large amount given limited combinations of all possible syllables in each language. To avoid problems of ambiguity that monosyllabics may cause, compounds have been formed by combining by two symnonymous, hence for the same reason of two antonymous monosyllabic words, e.g., đấtđai 土地 tǔdì '(soil +) land', thươngyêu 疼愛 téngài '(affection +) love', buồnrầu 愁悶 chóumèn '(sad +) sorrowful', tìmkiếm 尋找 xúnzăo '(seek +) search', chimchóc 禽雀 qínquè '(fowls +) birds', etc. or creating new reduplicative dissyllabic words, such as liênmiên 連綿 liánmiăn 'continuous', mongmanh 渺茫 miăománg 'slim', lôithôi 囉嗦 luōsuō 'verbose', dễdàng 容易 róngyi 'easily', lòngthòng 籠統 lóngtǒng 'long-winded', etc, and adding morphemic parallel compounds, e.g., caothấp 高低 gāodì '(low +) height', trêndưới 上下 shàngxià '(above + below) positional', cayđắng 辛苦 xīnkǔ '(tasty hot +) bitterly', etc.
- Similarities in dialectal, colloquial, and idiomatic expressions: In both languages they are the same distinctively unique attributes, for example, luônluôn 老老 láoláo 'always', đánhcá 打魚 dăyú 'net fishing', gàcồ ~ gàtrống 雞公 jīgōng 'cock', gàmái 雞母 jīmǔ 'hen', chồmhổm 犬坐 quánzuò 'squat', răngkhểnh 犬牙 quányá 'canine', saocứ 總是 zǒngshì 'how come', tấtcả 大家 dàjiā 'everybodyl', mauchóng 馬上 măshàng 'immediately', ítra 起碼 qímă 'at least', trờinắng 太陽 tàiyáng 'sunshine', đâunào 那裡 nàli 'where', đểý 在意 zàiyì 'to mind', uốngnướcnhớnguồn 飲水思源 yǐnshuǐsīyuán 'drink water and remember its source', lárụngvềcội 葉落歸根 yèluòguīgēn 'like a leaf one returns to his root when he dies', ếchngồiđáygiếng 井蛙之見 jǐngwòzhījiàn 'shortsighted as a frog sees the sky from the bottom of a well', etc.
- Classifiers and their function as pronouns: They are used to specify objects or facts and usually positioned in front of nouns or, alternately, could be used alone as pronouns, with virtually the same usages in both C and V, e.g., cái 個 gè 'set', chiếc 隻 zhī 'piece', đôi 對 duì 'pair', con 子 zǐ (a classifer), cuốn 卷 juān 'roll', bó 把 bă 'bunch', trận 場 chăng 'a round of', chuyện 件 jiàn 'fact', ván 盤 pán 'a show', etc.
- Particles: Grammatical particle is generally added to the end of a sentence to indicate direction, state of affairs, or the tone of speker's sentiment, etc., for example, "đây" as in lênđây 上來 shànglái 'come up here', "đi" as in vềđi 回去 huíqù 'go home', "ơi" as in trờiơi 天啊 tiānna 'My Lord', "nè" as in "tôi đây nè" 是我呢 shì wǒ ne 'it's me', "nha, nhé" as in "tôi ăn nha" 我吃啦 wǒ chī lā 'I eat now'), "Chạy không nổi nữa rồi!" 走不了了呢! Zǒu bù liăo le ne! 'cannot walk any longer', etc.
- Functional words: All prepositions and conjunctions are completely the same in both languages, for example, và 和 hé 'and', với 與 yú 'with', từ 自 zì 'from', nếu 若 ruò 'if', vì 為 wèi 'because', nhưngmà 然而 rán'ěr 'but', vìthế 於是 yúshì 'therefore', dođó 所以 suǒyǐ 'hence', dùrằng 雖然 suīrán 'although', etc.
- Grammatical markers: They are words used to fulfill the grammatical function that frames or fossilizes string of fixed words or expressions, with many becoming stand-alone words stately, that is, a state of affairs or circumstances, which are mostly remnants of classical C or 文言文 wényánwén, which had been in active use until the beginning of 20th century in both countries, for example, "sự, cái, việc, nhỉ..." as in "có sự chuẩnbị" 有所準備 yǒu suǒ zhǔnbèi '(a state of being) be prepared and get ready', cáigọilà 所謂 suǒwéi 'the so-called', "cái tôi có" 我所有 wǒ suǒ yǒu '(of) mine', cái việc nó làm 他所作所爲 tā suǒ zuò suǒ wéi (what he has done), 借問白頭翁,垂綸幾世也 Jiēwèn báitóuwēng, chuí lún jǐ shì yě? "Xinhỏi ônglão này, thả câu được mấy đời nhỉ?" (May I ask how many generations that your people have done net-fishing like you?), "ởtrong" 其中 qízhong 'among', "cáikhác" 其他 qíta 'other', etc. and so on.
In sum, with little premeditation and some effort one can almost translate word by word from one language to another which mirrors each other with the same textual connotation that are fabricated with the same structural and rhetorical texture (virtually all Chinese classics and Kongfu novels have been translated that way from the early 20th century until present time, and for those native-born speakers they have no problems appreciating those works with ease and enjoyment despite of all the heavily-accented C style, semantic, syntactic, and lexical, deeply encoded in the corresponding SV transliteration, not intended for foreign learners of V for sure.) Analytically, those lexical features are something so linguistically unique, intimate, and peculiar to only languages of close affiliation that share the same linguistic traits, not to mention cultural and sentimental factors, especially, in this case, the tonal system of which each tone carry almost the same sound value as that of the equivalent that distributes throughout many C dialects that inherently ought to belong to the same language family.
James Campbell in Vietnamese Dialects ("http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/dialectv.php") does not agree with my theory, he states it best that
"I originally included Vietnamese in this study/website because of the fact its phonological makeup is very similar to Chinese and, indeed, its tonal system matches the Chinese one. Originally I wrote at this site: "Vietnamese is neither a Chinese language nor related to Chinese (It is an Austroasiatic > Mon-Khmer language more closely related to Khmer/Cambodian). Besides having a very similar phonological system, and due to the heavy Chinese influence on the language, it also has a tone system that matches the Chinese one." However, after reading and conducting a bit more research, it appears that Vietnamese' affiliation with Việt-Mương, Mon-Khmer, and Austroasiatic, may in fact be a faulty case."[...]
[Vietnamese] may not be considered a Sinitic language or one of the Chinese dialects, but the Kinh have a lot in common with the Chinese culture, and the language leaves little to doubt. I will not go into great detail about how this is claimed, as a great deal has been posted at some other websites (see below) and that is not the purpose of this site. However, one can see that Vietnamese shares many traits in common with Chinese: 60-70% Sinitic vocabulary, another 20% of vocabulary is substrata of proto-Sinitic vocabulary, much of the grammar and grammatical markers share similarities with Chinese, along with classifiers. One would find it very difficult to draw similar parallels between Chinese and other Mon-Khmer languages. It seems that after considering all of this, what is left that is Mon-Khmer is actually very little, and probably acquired over time through contact with bordering nations. For example, the numbers are of distinct Mon-Khmer origin, however, used in many compound words, Vietnamese uses instead Chinese roots (as is common in the other Sino-Xenic languages, Japanese and Korean)."
Compare V with other C dialects, all the difference between V and M could be like variations between M and a Yue or Minnan dialect, which of aboriginal origin in ancient times has probably evolved over time with full incorporation of the mandarins' mainstrean official court language for more than 2000 years until now. That twist of historical fate, being seen as a C dialect, could have occurred to the V language if Vietnam did not gain and maintain its independence on and off beneath the guise of a protectorate under the umbrella of the greater Middle Kingdom since the 10th century. In fact, comparison of contemporary Cant. and M, along with the composition of the population of speakers of those two "languages" – both being two C dialects descended from an "ancestral Chinese" spoken by the "Chinese" – will support this argument profoundly. Sematic discrepancies, for instance, Cant. for common lexical items of basic layer obviously deviate greatly from those of M. In the meanwhile, interestingly, in V they are somehow still maintaining what is on par with those basic "Chinese" vocabulary items separately with each dialect which are even widely in active usage today, e.g.,
- Cant. /pintouh/ 'where' as opposed to M náli 那裏 (nơiđâu) [ SV nalí, VS nơiấy <~ nơiđấy <~ nơiđó, @# M 那裏 nàli | M 那 nà, nuó <MC nʌ <OC ɲa:r | ¶ n- ~ đ- || M 裡 lǐ <MC lɨ <OC rhǝʔ | FQ 良士 | cf. V Huế dialect: 'nớ', VS 'đâunào' 在哪 zàină) ],
- Cant. /fajŋkao/ 'sleep' as opposed to M shuìjiào 睡覺 SV thuỵgiác, VS # 'giấcngủ' [ (cf. 去睡 qù shuì (VS đingủ) 'go to bed') | @# M 睡覺 shuìjiào \ @ 覺 jiào ~ giấc, @ 睡 shuì ~ ngủ 臥 wò (SV ngoạ) | M 睡 shuì < MC ʑwɜ < OC *dhojs || M 覺 jué, jiào < MC kauk < OC *kru:k ],
- Cant. /jəm/ 飲 yǐn (SV ẩm) as opposed to M 喝 hè (SV hát) 'drink' [ cf. VS uống | M 飲 yǐn < MC ʔɪm < OC *ʔjəmʔ | Zyyy: ijəm2 || cf. VS hớp, húp, hò, hát, hét ~ M 喝 hè < MC xʌt < OC *ha:t | According to Starostin: to yell, cry (angrily) (LZ). Regular Sino-Viet. is 'hát'. The earliest attested usage of the character (Han) is for *ʔra:ts, MC ʔaj, Mand. yè 'to cry (with a constrained voice)'. In modern Mand. the character is most frequently used for hè 'to drink' (with an unattested MC reading) ],
- Cant. /o'njew/ as opposed to M 尿 niào 'urine, urinate' [ cf. VS tiểu, đái | M 尿 niào < MC niew < OC *ne:ws) | ¶ n- ~ đ-, t- | cf. điđái 拉尿 làniào 'go to pee', điỉa 拉屎 làshǐ' l- ~ d- (đ) | According to Starostin, Viet. t- is rather strange here, so Viet. tiểu may be quite independent from the Chinese word. Another possible explanation of the Viet. word would be a contraction of the Chinese euphemism for 'urine, urinating' 小便 (MC sjew-bjen). | Note: Starostin might have missed the sound change ¶ n- ~ đ-, t- that appears in both M and Viet., e.g., 鳥 niăo : điểu, 那 nà, nuó : đó, đấy (V Huế dialect nớ) ],
- Cant. /kujh/ as opposed to M 累 lèi 'tired' [ cf. VS mõi | M 累 lèi < MC lwɛ < OC *rojʔs ],
- Cant. /thaj/ 睇 thấy 'see' as apposed to M 見 jiàn 'see, seen' (cf. VS thấy) [ M 見 jiàn < MC kien < OC *kians | FQ 古電 ],
- Cant. /lhwo/ 落 for 'go down' as opposed to 下 xià [ cf. VS 'xuống' ],
- Cant. /lho/ ~ M 拿 ná 'take' ~ VS lấy,
- Cant. /hoj/ ~ M 去 qù 'go' ~ VS đi,
- Cant. /zhou/ 走 zǒu for 'run' ~ VS 'chạy' [ cf. mod. M 跑 păo 'run', 走 zǒu 'go' ], etc.
As we can see so far the core matter of C and V etymology is rooted deeply in the realm of vocabulary, not grammar. The following illustrated examples demonstrate how lexical transformation happens by means of semantic analogy approach coupled with dissyllabic sound change approach (to be discussed in detail later as we continue on.) which can be used to find candidate patterns of sound shifts of related words. The overall purpose is to draw the rules for all possible alterations of other words from C to Nôm, or VS, i.e., V of C origin in restrictive sense, based on the assumption that if most of the proven loanwords appear in one category and of the same class, even of dubious origin due to their discrepancy in phonology, etymologically, it is likely that they are possibly of the same origin as long as they carry all traits with the same phonological peculiarities and underlined contextual connotation, e.g.,
- đầu 'head' 頭 tóu – sọ 'cranium' 首 shǒu,
- mặt 'face' 面 – mày 'eyebrow' 眉 méi,
- mắt 'eye' 目 mù – mũi 'nose' 鼻 bì,
- sống 'live' 生 shēng – chết 'die' 死 sǐ,
- ăn 'eat' 吃 chī – uống 'drink' 飲 yǐn,
- khóc 'weep' 哭 kù – cười 'laugh' 笑 xiào,
- đi 'walk' 去 qù – đứng 'stand' 站 zhàn,
- nặng 'heavy' 重 zhòng – nhẹ 'light' 輕 qīng,
- cao 'high' 高 gāo – thấp 'low' 底 dì,
- nóng 'hot' 燙 tàng – lạnh 'cold' 冷 lěng,
- buồn 'sad' 悶 mèn – vui 'happy' 快 kuài,
- xa 'far' 遐 xiá – gần 'near' 近 jìn,
- cay 'spicy hot' 苦 – đắng 'bitter' 辛 xīn (苦), etc.
At the same time, this approach is being in use in parallel with another dissyllabic approach by which we can easily identify, analyze, and extract monosyllabic basic words from V synonymous or parallel compounds as in the aforementioned cases of "chài+lưới", "xe+cộ", "cậu+mợ", "chú+bác", and so on. By doing so we will be able to find reliable traces of sound changes and semantic shifs from C to VS in all possible venues, of which some traditional approaches, no matter how unconventional as they appear, have been posited by many specialists of V, for example, to associate "voi" with vi 為 wēi (elephant), "lúa" < lai 來 lái (unhusked rice grain), "trờinắng" < tháidương 太陽 tàiyáng (sun, sunshine), and indigenous lexicons in the C and V zodiac systems with names of related animals such as tử 子 zǐ 'chuột' (rat), trâu 丑 chǒu (buffallo), ngọ 午 wǔ 'ngựa' (horse), mùi 味 wèi 'dê' (sheep), tuất 戌 xù 'dog', hợi 亥 hài 'heo' (pig), or some other reasonable rationalization to relate SV and VS words. (See
- "Tết" < 節 jié (SV tiết) as in (# tiếtxuân') 春節 Chūnjié (Spring Festival), "ănTết" 過節 guòjié (celebrate Spring Festival), "TếtNguyênđán" 元旦節 Yuándànjié (Spring Festival), "TếtÐoanngọ" 端午節 Duānwǔjié (Late Spring Festival), "TếtTrungthu" 中秋節 Zhōngxīujié (Mid-Autumn Festival), etc.
from which we can easily induce to confirm the etymon "Tết". It is noted that in V there is a compound "ănTết" (to celebrate the Spring Festivals, which is equivalent to for "guòjié" 過節 and M for 過 is "guò" (to pass), or SV "quá" [wá]. Suppose that 過, in this case functioning as a affix for many other compound words with related meaning, is cognate to "ăn" as in "ănTết" while the meaning of "eating" in "ăn" (in this case it no longer means "eat" even though it is implied as such) has been generalized and "sublimated" to another level to denote the concept of "celebrating" for this dissyllabic word "guòjié" 過節. That is to say "quá" [wá] has given rise to "ăn" despite of semantic disparity etymologically in each respective stem monosyllabically. We can then say that in this case, 過 "guò" has been likened, or associated and identified with "ăn". In other words, an "affix" in a C dissyllabic word, regardless of the meanings in its original root or dissyllabic form, could converge on an existing form in V and then deviate into a newly-found concept with the very same loaned element. That is what is mentioned as "principle of sandhi process of association" in this paper. The affix "ăn" then becomes a "prefix", an indispensable tool to create more new words, carrying more extensive meaning such as "take in", "take part in", "engaged in". In the same manner we can further explore other passibilities as those in with the extended prefix "ăn":
- "ăntiệc" 宴席 yànxí (feast),
- "ăncưới" 酒席 jǐuxí (go to a wedding banquet),
- "ănmừng" #慶祝 qìngzhù (celebration),
- "ănmặc" 衣食 yīshí (food and clothing),
- "ănuống" 飲食 yǐnshí (eat and drink),
- "ănngon" 吃香 chīxiāng (enjoy delicious food),
- "ănnói" 言語 yányǔ (talking),
- "ănhiếp" 畏怯 wěiqiè (to bully),
- "ăntiền" 贏錢 yíngqián (win money),
- "ăntiền" 要錢 yàoqián (extort money),
- "ănmày" 要飯 yàofàn (beggar),
- "ănhàng" 吃貨 chīhuò (eat gluttonously, Also: run counterband),
- "ănđòn" 挨打 áidă (get beaten),
- "ănbám" #白吃 báichī (live on other's labor),
- "ănnhậu" 應酬 yìngchóu (drinking and eating) [ ~ ănchơi]
- "ănthua" #輸贏 shūyíng (betting, fighting to compete), etc.
- "làmăn" 生意 shēngyì (do business),
- "đồăn" ~ "thứcăn" 食物 shíwù (foods),
- "biếngăn" ~ "ngánăn, nhịnăn" 厭食 yànshí (anorexia),
- "hamăn" 貪吃 tānchī (be obssessed with food),
- "cóăn" #有錢鑽 yǒuqiánzuàn (make money), etc.
which are in line with
and futher development as a morphemic-syllabic suffix like
We can see that the affix "ăn" in those examples is centered around the vocalism of both the initial y-, w- substituting "ăn" and sh-, ch-, j-, etc., for 吃 (喫) chī [ M 吃 (喫) chī < MC ʔjet < OC *ʔrjət | MC reading 梗開四入錫溪 |The actual character is 喫 chǐ. The loan character 吃 chī is used only in modern Mandarin. The new reading is based on 乙 yì < MC ʔit < OC *ʔrjət , with the phonetic stem ~ 乙 ất, and ¶ -t ~ -n, which gives rise to 'ăn' | Dialects : Chaozhou: ŋjək41 || M 喫 chǐ < MC khiek < OC *khe:k. (吃 originally means "stammer") || Also: M 吃 jí < MC kit < OC *kɨt | According to Starostin: to eat, drink, swallow (Han). Karlgren gives a LZ reading *khra:ts (MC khaj) 'energetic' - very dubious and not attested elsewhere. The reading *khe:k is attested since Han; modern chī is quite irregular.] In short, 吃 chī, a basic word, that means "ăn" (eat), has become a prefix in V to take on different meanings such as swallow, consume, take in, endure, etc. which can be associated with other sound bits that center around the initial CH- as well as twisted variations of the V "ăn".
In effect, as the basic words showed, that is what really makes V so C.
F) Chinese and the basic vocabulary stock
It is of no surprise that many of the V basic vocabularies, to say the least, seem to have originated from the same linguistic roots as those of C, as enumerated previously, for the reason that they had long been in close contact at least 1000 years before the confirmed influence – as such recorded in C history – of the C language on V started from 221 BC during China's Qin-Han periods. In fact, culturally inundated words of ancient C origin such as
- "nạ" 娘 niáng (old V "mother") [ doublets: 奶 năi (SV 'nãi'). For etymology, see previous section.],
- "nhà" 家 jiā (home) (SV gia) [ M 家 jiā < MC ka < OC *kra: | FQ 古牙 ],
- "chén" 盞 zhàn (bowl) (SV tràn) [ M 盞 zhàn < MC can < OC *tsjre:nʔ | MC reading 山開二上產莊 ],
- "đũa" 箸 zhú (chopsticks) (SV trợ, chừ, trừ) [ M 箸 zhú < MC ɖʊ < OC *dras | FQ 遲倨 | cf. Hainanese: /du/],
- "thìa, chìa" 匙 chí (spoon) (SV thi, chuỷ) [ M 匙 chí < MC tʂe < OC *dhe ],
- "cằm" 含 hán (chin) [~ VS cắn, ngậm, mĩm, hàm (AC 'chin') | M 含 hán < MC gæm < OC *ghɒm < PC **gɒ:m ~ Tibetan PC *kɒ:m (VS cắn 'bite') > Tibetan: agam (VS gặm 'gnaw'), akham (VS cắn) | phonetic stem 今 jīn (kim) Cant. /kjəm/ ],
- "sọ, đầu" 首 shǒu (cranium, head) (SV thủ) [ M 首 shǒu (đầu) ~ 頭 tóu (đầu) | M 首 shǒu < MC ʂjəjw < OC *sluʔ (AC 'head') | Starostin: cf. perhaps also Viet. sọ 'cranium, skull'.],
- "mắt" 目 mù (eye) (SV mục) [ M 目 mù < MC mouk < OC *moukʷ (AC 'eye') | cf. Hainanese /mat/ ],
- "bếp" 庖 páo (kitchen) (SV bào) [ M 庖 páo < MC bạw < OC *bhū < PC **brū ],
- "tấmcám" 糝糠 sănkāng (broken rice chaff) (SV tầmkhang) [ M 糝 săn < MC sɣm < OC *sjə:mʔ | Starostin: rice (in grain); to add rice to gruel (L.Zhou). Standard Sino-Viet. is tầm. Protoform: *chya:mH, Meaning: gruel, soup. Chinese: 糝 *ʂjə:mʔ rice gruel with meat. Tibetan: a~z|/am (resp.) soup. Lushei: côm mix (any liquid food) with cooked rice. || M 糠 kāng < MC kʌŋ < OC *ka:ŋ | MC reading 宕開一平唐溪 ],
- "canh" 羹 gēng (broth, soup) [ M 羹 gēng < MC kɒiŋ < OC *kra:ŋ | Note: as opposed to modern M 湯 tāng which is also a loanword in V 'thang' for both 'noodle soup' 湯粉 tāngfěn 'búnthang' and 'medicinal brew' 藥湯 yàotāng 'thangthuốc' ],
- "bàn" 案 àn (table) (SV án) [ M 案 àn < MC ʔɒn < OC *ʔa:ns | MC reading 山開一去翰影 ],
- "ghế" 椅 yí (chair) (SV ỷ) [ M 椅 yǐ < MC ki < OC *krjəjə ],
- "tủ" 櫝 dú (cupboard) (SV độc) [ M 櫝 dú < MC duk < OC *lho:k ],
- "guốc" 屐 jī (wooden sandals) (SV kịch) [ M 屐 jī < MC gajk < OC *ghrek | Dialect: Cant. kek6, Hak. kiak8 ], etc.
- "vuquy" 于歸 yúguī (bridal wedding ceremony),
- "thángchạp" 臘月 làyuè (the 12th month of the year in lunar calendar),
- "sínhlễ" 聘力 pìnlǐ (betrothal dowry for the bride),
- "chồmhổm" 犬坐 quánzuò (squat),
- "chợbúa" 市舖 shìpǔ (~ phốchợ) (market),
- "đòngang" 渡江 dùjiāng (riverboat),
- "xinlỗi" 見諒 jiànliàng (apology),
- "cảlũ" 大伙 dàhuǒ (the whole group),
- "đồngloã" 同伙 tónghuǒ (accomplice),
- "ungthư" 癰疽 yōngjū (cancer) [ ~ VS ungthối, ươngthối 'spoiled' | M 癰疽 yōngjū (ungthư) | M 癰 yōng < MC ʔoʊŋ < OC *ʔoŋ ], etc.,
including other compounds like
and the like, are still in common use in contemporary V while some of them have become obsolete, old-fashionable, or rare in modern C usage, with the same denotation and meaning though. Specifically in this cultural context, it appears that V had adopted most of C words of the same kind for its own use rather than they were evolved from common roots genetically.
The list will be much densely populated if we include more of literarily old-timed words that both C and V are still using now. Some of those words are
- "thánggiêng" 正月 zhèngyuè (January),
- "Tết" 節 jié (Spring Festival),
- "TếtÐoanngọ" 端午節 duānwǔjié (Late Spring Festival),
- "kháchsạn" 客棧 kèzàn (hotel),
- "xinchào" 見過 jiànguò (hello),
- "kháchsáo" 客套 kètào (polite),
- "bợmtrợn" 霸道 bàdào (high-handed),
- "cha, tía" 爹 diè (father) (SV ta) [ 'tía' is much close to modern M 爹 diè while 'cha' seems like an older reading ~ MC reading 假開三平麻知 : FQ 知麻 tr+a ~ cha (M 知 zhī (SV tri), Hai. /tai/ > t-), level tone, open, read as 假 jiă (giả) ~ trá | phonetic stem 多 duō < MC tʌ < OC *ta:j | FQ 得何 ],
- "mẹ" 母 mǔ (mother) (SV mẫu) [ VS variants: (1) mái, (2) cái, (3) mệ, (4) mạ, (5) mợ | M mǔ 母 < MC myw < OC * mjəʔ | MC reading 流開一上厚明 | Cant. /mou/, Hai. /mai/ (~ mái) | cf. © nạ 妳 nǐ > (nhĩ) 娘 niáng ],
- "anh" 兄 xiōng (older brother) (SV huynh) [ M 兄 xiōng < MC xwyajɲ < OC *smraŋ | Note the aspirated SV h- is lost => '-uynh' ~ MC xwyajɲ => 'anh' ],
- "chị" 姊 zǐ (older sister) (SV tỷ, tỉ) [ M 姊 zǐ, jiě (~ modern M 姐 jiě (小姐 xiáojiě) tiểuthơ <~ ) M 姊 zǐ, jiě < MC tsjɨ < OC *ɕjəjʔ (~ɕjəi) ],
- "cổ" 喉 hóu 'neck' [ 喉 hóu > 'cổhọng' M # 喉嚨 hóulóng 'throat' while in modern M 脖子 bózǐ 'neck' evolved dissyllabically to signify 'neck' ],
- "thịt" 膱 zhí (meat) (thức) [ M 膱 zhí | ~ phonetic stem: M 識 shí, zhí < MC tʂɨ < OC **tjəkh ] ,
- "xơi" 食 shí (eat) (SV thực) [ ~ xực (Cant. /sjək/), đút (feed) | M 食 shí < MC ʑik < OC *ljək | FQ 乘力 | According to Starostin : to eat. Also read *lhjək-s, MC zjy (FQ JY 祥吏) 'to feed, give to eat' (later usually written as 飼 in that meaning). | cf. ăn 吃 chī (ngật), đút 飼 shí 'feed' || For "ăn" 吃 chī (eat) (SV: ngật, cật), see above. ],
- "uống" 飲 yǐn (drink) (SV ẩm) [ M 飲 yǐn < MC ʔɨmʔ < OC *jəmʔ | FQ 於錦 | According to Starostin : to drink. Also read *ʔ jəmʔ -s, MC ʔ im (FQ 於禁) 'to give to drink'.],
- "bú" 哺 bǔ (breast feed, suck) (SV bộ) [ M 哺 bǔ < bo < OC *ba:s ],
- "lúa" 來 lái (unhusked rice) [ M 來 lái < MC ljəj < OC *rjə: | MC reading 蟹開一平咍來 | lúa >~ 來 lái © 來 lái (lúamì, lúamạch - wheat (Triticum aestivum)) | According to Starostin: In Shijing rhyme jə OC *rjəs | OC *r- cf. dialects: Amoy, Chaozhou lai2, Fuzhou li2, Jianou lej2, lai9, Jianyang le2, Shaowu li2. | However, Starostin noted that 'lúa' is 稻 dào (đạo) instead of 'gạo' 'rice'. M 稻 dào < MC dɑw < OC *lhu:ʔ ~ ɫhu:ʔ | MC reading 效開一上皓定, and it is a loanwoard in C (Protoform: *ly:wH (~ ɫ-), Meaning: rice, grain, Chinese: 稻 *lhu:ʔ (~ɬh-) rice, paddy, Burmese: luh sp. of grain, Panicum paspalum, Kachin: c^jəkhrau1 paddy ready for husking. Kiranti: *lV 'millet' | SR: 1078 h-k .],
- "dưahấu" 塊瓜 kuàiguā (watermelon),
- "chả" 炸 zhà (fried meatloaf, boiled meatloaf),
- "gỏi" 膾 kuài (salad with minced meat) [ M 膾 kuài < MC kwaj < OC *kwa:ts ],
- "gà" 雞 jī (chicken) (kê) [ M 雞 < MC kiej < OC *ke: | ¶ j- ~ g-: ex. 寄 jì (ký) gởi | cf. gàmái, gàmẹ: 雞母 jīmǔ, gàtrống: 雞公 jīgōng (Amoy, Hainanese), gàcồ: 雞公 jīgōng ],
- "mèo" 貓 māo (cat) (SV miêu) [ M 貓 māo < MC maw < OC * mrhaw | According to Starostin : Also read *mhraw, MC mew, id. Viet. mèo is colloquial; standard Sino-Vietnamese is miêu.],
- "chuột" 鼠 shǔ (mouse) (SV thử) [ M 鼠 shǔ < MC ʂo < OC *ɬhaʔ],
- "trâu" 牛 níu (water buffallo) (SV ngưu) [ M 牛 níu < MC ŋjəw < OC *ŋujə | FQ 語求 | According to Starostin : bovine, cattle, cow, ox. For *ŋ- cf. Xiamen, Chaozhou gu2, Fuzhou ŋu2, Jianou niu2.],
- "diều" 鷂 yào (kite) (SV ngao) [ M 鷂 yào < MC jɜw < OC *ɫaws | Starostin : kite (Han). Also read *L^aw, MC jew, Mand. ya:o 'a k. of pheasant' (Han). | Modern M for 'kite' is 風箏 fēngzhēng. ],
- "lửa" 火 huǒ (fire) [ M 火 huǒ < MC xwʌ < OC *smjə:jʔ | ¶ hw ~ l- : ex. 大伙 dàhuǒ: cảlũ, 同伙 tónghuǒ: đồngloã, 過 guò: quá /wa/, lỗi, 灣 wān: loan; 話 huà: lời, 裸體 luǒtǐ: loãthể ~ 果 guǒ: quả /wả/)],
- "lá" 葉 yè (leaf) (SV diệp) [ M 葉 yè < MC jep < AC *lhap < OC *lap < PC **lɒp | MC reading 咸開三入葉以 | Most of the Tibetan languages carry the the sound close to Viet. "lá": Tibetan: ldeb lá, "sheet", Burmese: ɑhlap "bud", Kachin: lap2 "leaf", Lushei: le:p "bud", Lepcha: lop "leaf", Rawang ʂɑ lap "leaf wrapper" ; Trung ljəp1 "leaf", Bahing lab. Sh. 138; Ben. 70. ],
- "đất" 土 tǔ (soil) (SV thổ, độ, đỗ) [ M 土 tǔ < MC dwo < OC *daʔ (Li Fang-Kuei : OC *dagx ) | FQ 他魯 | MC reading 遇合一上姥透 | Starostin: MC tho < OC *tha:ʔ (Note the final -ʔ) ],
- "chó" 狗 gǒu (dog) (SV cẩu) [ ~ VS cầy | M 狗 gǒu < MC kjəw < OC *ko:ʔ | MC reading 流開一上厚見 | proto-Viet **kro | Note: This is a loanword in C. 犬 quán is another form, probably a doublet. ],
- "cọp" 虎 hǔ (tiger) (SV hổ) [ ~ VS hùm | M 虎 hǔ < MC xo < OC *xla:ʔ | proto-Viet **ku ~ 虎 hǔ],
- "voi" 為 wēi (elephant) [Viet. © 'voi' ~> @ M 為 wēi, wéi (mới, hãy, rồi) \ ¶ w- ~ h-, m-, r- | M 為 wēi, wéi < MC we < OC *waj | FQ 薳支 | MC reading A: 止合三平支云; B: 止合三去寘云 | According Starostin: An *-s-derivate from the word is OC *waj-s, MC we\ (FQ 于偽), Pek. wèi 'for, on behalf', Viet. vì, vi.. For initial *w- cf. Min forms: MC we - Xiamen, Chaozhou, Fuzhou ui2; MC we, Xiamen ui6, Fuzhou oi6, Jianou ue6. Shuowen defines the character as 'female monkey'. Although this word is not attested in literature, it may be compared to PST *qwaj reflected in Kach. (D) woi monkey; Moshang vi-sil; Rawang jəwe; Trung a-koi; Kadu kwe id. (STC No 314 *(b)woy; dubious are Mikir ki-pi and Miri si-be). Thomas: voi | Shuowen : 母猴也.其為禽好爪.下腹為母猴形.王育曰.爪象形也.古文為.象兩母猴相對形. | GSR 0027 a-e ],
as well as those of numerous basic words which have originated from the same roots such as
etc., and the list continues on.
Many of these fundamental items in V clearly show traces of both common origin and identifiable loanwords in both V and C. They are considered as of the same root because some of them are basic words which must have existed in any languages before any loanwords were introduced. To be treated as loanwords they must be obviously of C or "Yue" origin either way. While there have been studies being done on "Yue" loanwords, also known as those Austroasiatic origin in linguistic circles in modern time, in C, there is no doubt that the V language has been aquiring many C words of the same nature since ancient time as seen in the aforementioned examples. This linguistic proccess of adoption had been continuously going on long after Vietnam's gaining independence from China. Carved wooden tablets, unearthed in Vietnam in the late 1970's, as evidences of C linguistc evidences reveal that many Nôm words were adopted from the C lexical usages as late as of China's Ming Dynatsy in the 16th century (Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, 1979). That is to say, that those C words creeping into the V vocabulary would probably have been in some form of vernacular Mandarin, just like what is happening at present time. In fact, SV usage adapted from modern C specially in V Northern dialect has been steadily growing since the division of Vietnam into North and South in 1954, and kept expanding long after her national unification in 1975, which has solidly form a new set of modern SV terms semantically much more close to contemporary C, such as 緊張 jǐnzhāng (SV khẩntrương) used casually in the sense of 'quickly' instead of the sole connotation 'căngthẳng' (strained), 擔保 dànbăo (SV đảmbảo) 'guarantee' instead of 'bảođảm' as used in the south. Other than that specific deviation, overall the C linguistic influence on the whole V in this respect has been a continual process all the way to the modern time with those peculiar up-to-date words such as
- "chuồn" 滾 gǔn (get out) [ Also, VS 'cút' ],
- "lặn" 溜 lìu (slip out),
- "khôngdámđâu" 不敢當 bùgăndàng (it's not so),
- "nóichuyện" 聊天 liáotian (talk),
- "bahoa" 大話 dàhuà (pompous),
- "baphải" 廢話 fèihuò (be all mouth),
- "tầmbậy" 三八 sānbā (nonsense) [ Note: a degratory term to redicule women on their International Women's Day in March 8 ] ,
- "ẩutả" 苟且 gǒqiě (unattetentively),
- "bạtmạng" 拼命 pìnmìng (recklessly),
- "bênhvực" 幫忙 bāngmáng (take side),
- "dêxồm" 婬蟲 yínchóng (lecherous),
- "phaocâu" 屁股 pìgǔ (chicken's butt as a delicacy),
- "tiếtcanh" 血羹 xuěgēng (concentrated duck blood broth as a delicacy),
- "suỷcảo" 水餃 shuíjiăo (dumpling),
- "mìchính" 味精 wèijing (monosodium glutamate,)
- "xơitái" (~ "ăntái") 吃生 chīshēng (to eat raw, or configuratively in VS 'to butcher') [ cf. 生 shēng, Hai. /de/ for 'đẻ' or 'give birth'] ,
- "chếtyểu" 夭折 yāozhé (to die young),
- "trúnggió" 中風 zhòngfēng (equivalent to folk concept of 'heart attack' or 'stroke'),
- "tàixế" 司機 sījī (chauffer),
- "láixe" 駕車 jiàchē (drive a car),
- "băngtần" 頩道 píndào (TV channel), etc.
How the emegence of many words in these list have come about could be a matter of speculation because up until 1954 border crossings back and forth between China and Vietnam on lands and seas happened to be open with no visa needed. These movements undoubtedly have injected vernacular form of M into the V vocabulary based on the articulation of those words which sounds like some twisted form of "accented Mandarin" or, at best, pidginization by the common populace.
For those words of basic vocabulary stratum which appear to be cognate to those in the MK and C languages, pending more needed substantial work on linguistic genetic affinity of both C and V, the underlined commonality purposely raised here is provisional, showing an attempt to establish a lexically meaningful connection between the V and C languages because we cannot ignore the fact that the existence of many words in all linguistic categories that have C roots, dated as far back as hundreds of years before the first Han Dynasty's invading army ever set their feet on NamViệt 南越 NánYuè state (at that time with its capital Phiênngung 番禹 Fànyú situated in today's Guangzhou 廣州, the provincial capitol of today's China's Guangdong Province, and northern part of today's Vietnam was included in this state where ancestors of the ancient "Vietnamese", or LuoYue (LạcViệt) people, might have inhabitated from that region and spread northwesternly into the Dongtinghu Lake 洞庭湖 (Độngđìnhhồ) in Hunan Province of today's China.) Everything linguistically considered is what has made V as it appears today and that should be what matters the most in any studies of V etymology. In other words, V characteristically is undoubtedly closer to C than to any languages in MK linguistic family.
G) A new dissyllabic sound change approach to be explored
In this section we will deal with dissyllabicity and and linguistc change. Stock of modern V vocabulary consists of a great number of two-syllable, or dissyllabic, words. Dissyllabic attribute has become prominently one of the main characteristics of the V language. Recognition of this natural evolution is an intellectual revelation that will assist us in identifying more its etyma from, metaphorically, monstrous monosyllabic-stemmed linguistic tree that is deeply rooted in so rich a fertile soil mixed with thick layers of both Sinitic and indigenous strata from ancient times, now having overgrown with dissyllabic leaves and dotted with polysyllabic fruits of completely different textures and look and feel in its appearance.
Do yourself a favor by starting exploring the V etymology in the realm of polysyllabics. This historical linguistic expedition will enable you to discover a whole lot more than what you have ever known or been told about this language. The message that I am trying to get across now is that V is no longer a monosyllabic baby; it has fully grown up into polysyllabic adulthood on a par with any other languages on earth, polysyllabically, not "mo no syl la bic al ly". Monosyllabics (tínhđơnâmtiết 單音節性) signifies characteristics of a language based on its dominant one-syllable words in its vocabulary – sometimes implicitly synomynous to momosyllabic primitivity to refer to some savage tribal world in some remote corner in jungles somewhere in the world – which none exists as I know of. So the belief that V is a monosyllabic language – that is, V is a language that is lexically, semantically, and syntactically composed of one-syllable words – simply a result of repetition of a misconception wide-spread even among the V specialists themselves. Those who are ignorant have never bothered to think how many possible combinations of consonants and vowels that can make up all the monosyllabic words for a language! Once you have placed V under the perspective of polysyllabics with the same attitude as you do with English, French, C, or Korean, etc., they will inexhaustibly take you much further from where you have been confined for so long by obsolete linguistic wisdoms and antiquated methodologies that show clearly their aging time. Once you have got out of the old dormant shell, you will have a whole ocean around you to venture.
In fact, modern V appears to show clearly that it is a language of dissyllabics in nature as it has plenty of commonly used dissyllabic vocabularies of different types. Categorically, they are those dominant two-syllable words built with two word-syllables, or morphemic-syllables, each of which can be either synonymous, opposite, parallel in nature, or simply compounds constructed with existing lexical material. These two-syllable compounds have been coined the same way as those of modern C, if not to say they are simply mirrored counterparts. They are specifically comprised of two elements of word-syllable, which are almost synonymous with each other, e.g., tức|giận 氣憤 qìfèn (mad/angry), trước|tiên 首先 shǒuxiān (firstly/initially), kề|cận 切近 qièjìn (by/near), đường|cái 街道 jièdào (road/street), thương|yêu 疼愛 téng'ài (affection/love), etc.
Besides, there are also modified dissyllabic words of local innovation which use the same existing words to carry new meanings and present themselves as different lexical entities as in the cases of cámực 墨魚 mòyú (~ modern M 魷魚 yóuyú 'squid' which becomes "condiều" 'kite' in V), thươnghại 傷害 shānghài (cf. modern M 同情 tóngqíng or SV đồngtình 'symphathize'), tửtế 仔細 zǐxī 'kindness' (as opposed to VS tỉmỉ 'meticulous' as originally conveyed in M. cf. modern M 細心 xīxīn), cậunhỏ 小舅 xiăojìu 'little boy', chúnhỏ 小叔 xiăoshù 'little boy', cônhỏ 小姑 xiăogū 'little girl' (as opposed to the original meanings that denote husband's siblings being called by their bother's wife), khốnnạn 困難 kùnnán 'miserable' (as opposed to 'difficulty' in modern M), etc.
Why do all these matters have to do with the V etymology? The anwer is they show that dissyllabic words have originated from changes either in semantic, phonological, or lexical aspects, all having been built with the C material.
Phonologically, close examination of the previously cited examples will reveal some sound change patterns that underline the etymology of those V words that apparently have been alternations of C dissyllabic equivalents. To refresh our memory and build up our VS stock, here are some more examples:
- dànhcho 限於 xiànyú (SV hạnvu) 'be limited to, limit', of which the meaning is extened to 'giớihạn' 界限 jièxiàn 'boundary',
- (1) sànhvề, (2) rànhvề, (3) rànhrẻ, (4) sànhsỏi: 善於 shànyú (SV thiệnvu) 'be good at' [ % M 善於 shànyú | M 善 shàn (thiện, thiến) 'be good at, of good character' (1) rành, (2) sành, (3) sỏi, (4) sõi, (5) lõi, (6) hiền, (7) hay | % M 善 shàn < MC dʑɜn < OC *ɖarʔ | FQ 常演 | Note here we have the sound change patterns of ¶ sh- ~ s-, r-, l-, th- ~ h-, ex. thiện > hiền > hay \ @ 善 shàn ~ sành, rành; sỏi, sõi > lõi. cf. hiềnlành 善良 shànliáng (good character) ],
- (1) sángtỏ, (2) rànhmạch: 明白 míngbăi (SV minhbạch) ''unequivocal, understand, bright, transparency' [ % M 明白 míngbăi | M 明 míng < MC maiŋ < OC *mraŋ | FQ 武兵 | ¶ m- ~ s-, r- ],
- (1) chodù, (2) dùsao, (3) dùrằng, (4) mặcdù, (5) tuyvậy, (6) dẫurằng, (7) dẫucho, (8) dùlà, (9) dầulà, (10) dẫulà, (11) mặcdầu: 雖然 suīrán (SV tuynhiên) 'although, even if, however' [ % M 雖然 suīrán | M 雖 suī < MC sjwi < OC *swhij | ¶ s- ~ d-, r- ~ l-, m- ], etc.
Apparently, we have cases of V dissyllabic words of many-to-one correspondences with those of C equivalents as a result of association with other variations of sound change articulation.
Lexically, as disscussed earlier in the lexical and semantic analysis, these compounds may have different composition showing that the two monosyllabic words that make up the dissyllabic words are variations of different C word-syllables, either being likened or associated with. Let's expand some more synonymous dissyllabic words as examples.
- tức|giận (angry): this dissyllabic word, slightly different from 氣憤 qìfèn which conveys a stronger sentimental connotation 'indignat', can be further broken into "tức" and "giận", two monosyllabic synonyms in V, equivalent to the combination of C qì 氣 and hèn 恨. However, another modern dissyllabic C word shēngqì 生氣 is a much more plausible cognate to "tứcgiận", for which, interestingly enough, the V word order is in reverse (this phenomenon, to be explained later, is very commonplace for dissyllabic V words derived from C equivalents.).
- Similarly, trước|tiên (firstly), cognate to shǒuxiān 首先 (SV: thủtiên, VS: đầutiên), is composed of "trước" (a VS sound of 先 xiān – cf. Hainanese /tăi/) plus "tiên" (a SV sound for "xiān"). The concept-sound of "trước" has taken place of "đầu" in this case, that is to say, the "trước" has been associated with "đầu" shǒu 首 to form this dissyllabic word. This is what I called the sandhi processof association.
- cũ|kỹ [kʊkej] (old): "kỹ" appears to be a reduplicate of "cũ", also a cognate of "jìu" 舊, a closer sound to "kỹ" than "cũ". So over here we have a new combined form: 舊 (cũ) + 舊 (kỹ). The same composition and formation apply equally to
- kề|cận (nearby) [kekʌn] with a different connotation as that of 切近 qièjìn. However this disyllabic word is from "kàojìn" 靠近 (~ jiējìn 接近 'in contact') whichis also a cognate of "gầngũi" and "gầnkề" (close to), of which the syllabic-words of the last two dissyllabic words are arranged in reverse to fit into local speech habit, syntactically.
In all probabilities, dissyllabics was a later development in both C and V. However, the words "trước", "cũ", and "gần", as opposed to the SV "tiên", "cựu", and "cận", respectively, are old material, which points to the same stems used to make those dissyllabic words with the same contextual denotation in both languages.
From there we can see more reasons why it is so C about the V language, both etymologically intertwined with each other that sound changes from one language to another must have occurred in the context of characteristics that both languages share, in this case, the dissyllabic word formation of the two.
Phonologically, for the time being, just take some of many sound change patterns at their face values, e.g., -eng for (>) -e, -ang > -ac, -ong > -aw, n- > đ-, -n > -i, -t, -k > -ng, etc. Sound changes of this kind follow linguistic rules in which, phonemically, changes occurred in the realm of neighboring sounds which have the same attributes in articulation, e.g. 生 shēng ~ đẻ 'give birth' (cf. Hainanese /de/), 忙 máng ~ mắc 'busy' (also: bận), 痛 tòng ~ đau 'pain', 尿 niào ~ đái 'urinate' (also: tiểu), 蒜 suàn ~ tỏi 'garlic', 前 qián ~ trước 'before' (cf. Hai. /tai/), 幕 mù (SV: mạc ~ MC mak) ~ màn 'curtain', etc. The main point to bear in mind is that sound changes in syllabic formation did occur in "phonological batches", or cluster of sounds, as whole syllabic units such as -ong > -aw, -ang > -ac, -wan > -oi, -u > -ang, etc., but not just phonemically n-, đ-, -c, -u, -i, -ng, etc., as they had taken place in a much later development. As C has become more and more dissyllabic in nature at a later time, approximately starting from the Tang Dynasty, when its dissyllabic words changed into V they also changed in dissyllabic clusters of sounds, in a whole entity of paired syllables, not singly as simple vowels into other vowels or an initial into another initial, or not even syllable by syllable on one-to-one correspondences.
Dissyllabic sound change patterns are an important point in my new approach used in this research of V etymology of C origin. The logic behind this argument is, in terms of historical evolution and linguistic characteristics, V and C are polysyllabic, or to be exact, disyllabic languages. Nowadays, C has already been classified by the world's large universities' renown linguistic circles as a polysyllabic language (Chou. 1982, p.106), then V should be formally reckoned as such, too. Only in this context and premise can one be able to see how sound changes from C to V have taken place and why dissyllabic words should bear the apprearance as we see them here in this paper. In other words, dissyllabic words have carried along their dissyllabic attributes when transforming themselves into V, so that is why with
- qì 氣 we have "hơi" (steam) as in "qìchē" 汽車: # "xehơi" while "kiệt" and "xỉn" (气 being an ideographical and allophonic form for 汽 ,氣 ) as in "xiăoqì" 小氣 become "keokiệt" (stingy) [~ # 節儉 jiéjiăn (SV tiếtkiệm) 'frugal') ] or "sáo" and "khứa" as in kèqì 客氣 [~ kètào 客套 (SV kháchsáo) ] (polite) hereby "kháchsáo" has evolved into "kháchkhứa"; however, with "shēngqì" (angry) 生氣 we have "tứcgiận"(< #giậntức phonetically) while "shēng" 生 by itself is "sống" (live) or "đẻ" (give birth to).
- jiārén 家人 (family member): #"ngườinhà", but with rénjiā 人家 (other people), jiā becomes "ta" as in "ngườita" or "cả" as in dājiā 大家: "tấtcả" (eveybody) while 家 jiā by itself is "nhà" (home) and dā 大 is "to" (large) or "cả" as in dāhăi 大海 (#bểcả),
- bāngmáng 幫忙 (assist): 'bênhvực' (support) [ modern M 'help' ] while, monosyllabically, "máng" 忙 (busy) gives rise to both "bận" and "mắc" and 幫 bāng becomes "bọn" (group of people),
- bāchăng 巴掌: "bạttai" (spank) [ ~ VS "bộptai". See previous note. ]
- shǒubăn 手板: #"bàntay" (palm of a hand) [ ~ modern M 手掌 shǒuzhăng (SV thủchưởng) | M 手 shǒu < MC ʂjəw < OC *ɫhuʔ | FQ 書九 || M 板 băn < MC pɑn < OC *pra:nʔ | FQ 布綰 || Dialects: Sichuan Mandarin, Cantonese, Minnan and some others all use 手板 shǒubăn. ],
- jiăobăn 腳板: #"bànchân" (sole of the foot) [ ~ modern M 腳掌 jiăozhăng || Dialects (See above) ],
- shǒuxīn 手心: "lòngtay" (palm of the hand), etc.
Here are some other examples:
As we can see, the magnitude of sound changes are multi-faceted and diverse when dissyllabic words are treated as the whole unit. In the process the same syllabic portion in the dissyllabic word could have altered its vocalic shell which could sound differently when standing alone as a monosyllabic word. So the phonological constraints that may exert on each independent syllable would not effectively restrict what sound changes would become of other dissyllabic word in the targeted language. In reality they could occur and affect the whole string of sounds bound in the dissyllabic formation and the result, in most of the cases, is not same as that of the monosyllabic morph. If one still considers V is a monosyllabic language, then s/he will never fully appreciate the underlined notion of this theory which is now used in our new dissyllabic approach in studying this behavior of sound change realm.
Once accepting that as a rule of sound change, one will never wonder why -ư corresponds to variants of -a, -iê to -a, -au ~ -ông, -at ~ -an, -an ~ -ôt, -ai ~ ua, etc, and will not insist on -a- must be -ươ-, -ng must be -ng, or d- must be n- and so on as commonly characterized in one-to-one relationship.
In reality, at the time when C loanwords found their way into the V language, sound changes could have already taken place inside the C language itself first or would have happened later after they were borrowed in V. In any cases, sound changes might have occurred within certain linguistic contraints, including cultural factors, such as the case of 母 mǔ for "mẹ" /mê/ (mother) which then has become "mợ" /mə6/ to add a second meaning in the sense of 'maternal uncle's wife' – probably due to the drop of the word cậu 舅 jìu (maternal uncle) from the complete C compound 舅母 jìumǔ 'maternal uncle's wife' – as well as local speech habit, e.g. 手板 shǒubăn ~ #"bàntay" instead of "taybàn" (literally "a table of the hand" for "palm"). (See Robert D. King, 1969. pp.62, 63)
There is no doubt that cultural factors have actually facilitated the selective borrowing and sound change process as well. Phonological variations of the same word reflect the fact that, even when they were first loaned they might have followed certain phonological and phonetic patterns, sound changes might not have just caught on their first articulations and frozen there but could have continued to change over the time due to cultural factors such as localities, social status, education, time frame, e.g. 他 tā 'he, him' (SV tha) nẫu, nó, họ, 我 wǒ 'I, me' (SV ngã) tôi, tao, tui, tớ, qua, 咱 zá 'I, we, us' ta, 咱們 zánměn 'we' (inclusive) chúngmình, tụimình, etc.
In the meanwhile we can see V is so reluctant in borrowing words of other close neighboring MK languages, very few of them, even in settings of mixed social interactions among larger multi-ethnic populace living in those high plateau or southermost provinces where placenames bear indigenous marks notably but not the living tongue. Contrarily, V is readily to import and use words from C, even, sometimes, words of the same meanings have already existed, e.g. "mìchính" 味精 wèijīng for 'vịtinh' or 'bộtngọt' (MSG), "suỉcảo" 水餃 shuíjiăo for 'taivạc, quaivạc' (rice dumpling), "vằngthánh" 餛飩 húndùn for 'hoànhthánh' (wonton), etc.
This phenomenon is understandable given the historical context of linguistic development of V which has been going hand in hand with the evolution of the C language, of which its vast lexical items have penetrated deeply into the V language via various dialectal contacts in different periods of history. With the same words, if they entered the V language at different times, they might have also carried different pronunciations depending on from which C dialects or sub-dialects that they had come from synchronically. Naturally, they could easily occur following certain custom norms and acquisitive models, of course, within a linguistic kinship boundary. That is why French "bande" and V "băng" or English "cut" and V "cắt" obviously are not cognate, but 繃 béng [*baŋ] and "băng" or 隔 "gé" [*kat] and "cắt" are, respectively.
Putting all together, that is how our new dissyllabic approach has come about after long rationalization, generalization, and analyses of the process of sound changes of hundreds of V words of C origin based on their naturally characterized dissyllabics. This new tool now will be utilized in this research paper by inputting more etyma into the pattern models to further confirm the resoucefulness of its methodology. In summary, by centering on the recognition of dissyllabic nature of both V and C, we will no longer look at sound change patterns as an isolate phonemic shifting event, but as a dynamic process in which a whole sound string, or cluster of sounds, all has changed together, variably in all shapes and sounds, independent of monosyllabic word equivalents with which phonemes contained therein.
Comparatively, these sound change patterns have occurred just like those of Latin polysyllabic roots that have given rise to many variations and forms penetrating into the vocabulary stocks of the Indo-European languages. That is much easier to recognize since they are all trascribed in Latin alphabets. We will try to do the same while handling the V etyma by treating them as phonetic clusters instead of ideographic blocks as they appear in C which can distort our view conceptually. Therefore, conventionally, in the aspect of romanized transcriptions, like their counterparts of C, V dissyllabic words in this paper, as you have noticed, all have been written in combining formation just as those of M are being transcribed in pinyin, such as
- 廢話 fèihuà ‘non-sense’ ~ VS baphải,
- 大話 dàhuà 'pompous'~ VS bahoa,
- 溫馨 wēnxīng ‘warm’ ~ VS ấmcúng,
- 開心 kāixīn ’pleased’ ~ VS vuilòng,
- 忍心 rěnxīn 'cool-heartedly' ~ VS đànhlòng..
The net result of this dissyllabically combined forms will enable us to absorb a piece of information quicker and easier by grasping the whole concept in the polysyllabic, or dissyllabic for this matter especially, block in a similar fashion that we have experienced with other Roman writing systems. From there we will build foundation for the new dissyllabic approach after much of basic concepts and generalized principles have been discussed here so far. It is certainly that this methodogy will help us identify a vast majority of V words having C origin. (Read more on V dissyllabics below.)
< of cases hoc ad are stem monosyllabic C same the for given variants phonological that impression with them leave and laymen to confusion cause also may they time, at however, matter, For syllables. isolate individually happens what instead entirety whole its in appear patterns change sound recognize readers sight, first formations, dissyllabic different syllable morphs multiple seeing Expectedly, from. originate baseline from distinct semantically phonologically both all words changes case a many why understand length phenomenon this examine continue will We syllable. morphemic merely is which form syllabic origially as sounds original their independent away veered drastically have about peculiar What changes. dynamic another one when allophones surrounding elements phonemic by influenced forms clusters Phonetic approach. our centerpiece formation combining disyllabic scribing fact, matter>Similar to the description of dissyllabic characteristics of the foregoing examples, the following illustrations are intended to further expand and explore other venues of possible alternations of the dynamics of syllabic changes in dissyllabic formation. For instance, given acceptance of a proven case phonologically, let's say, while one may reconcile the sound variant 廢 fèi (waste) with ba (meaning 'nonsensible' only in this morphemic form), one may wonder how on earth these two sounds in Romanized M and V can be connected semantically. Obviously each respective word has nothing to do with ba in the sense of either ‘three" or "father", etc., specifically. In fact, conceptually it renders both SV phế 'waste' and bỏ ‘abandon’ connotations in V while the original meaning of this one-syllable word is not the same as that of the very same syllable that is encoded in the dissyllabic word that makes up the concept of "baphải" (non-sense). At the same time, the syllabic-word ba- as well as -hoa individually may not mean anything lexically in V as opposed to what we know etymologically of those two syllable-words 廢話 fèihuà in C. Together as bound morphs they make what the morphemic compound bahoa is as a unit in its wholeness which renders a new concept with it in the new vocalic shell. In this case, one plus one makes one and not two – one new two-syllable word for one new concept.
In the following expanding examples, with the same "affix" 廢 fèi, structurally, it is the same with baphải; however, in contrast to ba it is easier to see why "fèi" has become "bỏ- " 'discard’ as in
- bỏphế (~ # trừbỏ) 廢除 fèichú, ‘eradicate',
- bỏđi 廢棄 fèiqì ‘abandon’,
- đồbỏ #廢物 fèiwù ‘the unwanted’,
- bỏhoang #荒廢 huāngfèi ‘deserted’,
Like ba, bỏ is not necessarily always associated with 廢 fèi. In this case it is derived from the process of C to V sound changes, that is manifold, especially from those of dissyllabic words. To gain more understanding of the idea that sound change is independent of etymological root – originally of one-syllabe word or one C character – and can be greatly influenced by both phonological and semantic associative and dissimilative factors, let’s further compare some V words stemmed from some of those C dissyllabic compounds which have resulted in V homophones with the orthography bỏ:
- bãibỏ 排除 páichú ‘abolish’,
- bỏphiếu 投票 tóupiào ‘to cast a ballot’,
- bỏrơi 抛棄 pàoqì ‘abandon’,
- bỏđi 放棄 fàngqì ‘discard’,
- bỏqua 放過 fàngguò ‘let go’ (~bỏlỡ) [ cf. 錯過 cuòguò, probably a doublet of 放過 ],
- bỏmặc 不理 bùlǐ 'abandon'(~bỏbê),
- bỏphí 白費 báifèi 'to waste'
- bỏlỡ dịpmay 放過機會 fàngguò jihuì ‘let go an opportunity’ (~ bỏqua dịpmay),
- bỏ tiền (vô túi) 把錢(進入口袋里) bă qián (jìnrù kǒudài lǐ) 'put the money (into the pocket)',
- bỏtiền ra mua 花錢來買 huàqián lái măi 'spend the money to buy', etc.
or in phrases such as
The sound change to bỏ in the above examples, including innovation of other words, too, is unquestionably owing to different contextual settings. The whole transforming event involves not only phonological and semantic assimilative process but also syntactical reshuttle, or reordering' through the reverse order of word structure as exemplified in đồbỏ and bỏhoang, which was undoubtedly a local development to fit syntactically into V speakers’ speech habit.
Similarly, the fact that 話 huà phonetically evolves into the morpheme hoa is acceptable, but in which way does it become phải ? The sound change rule { hw- ~ fw- } applies here since this sound change pattern is very common in C dialects such as Cant. and Fukienese in comparison with MC or M sounds [ cf. bông 葩 pā (SV ba) ~ hoa 花 hwā /fa/ (Cant.) ]. Moreover, in dissyllabic formation, /fwa/ could easily be modified as [fai] while 話 huà in its original monosyllabic form had evolved into nói ‘talk’ (SV thoại [ cf. correspondent pattern { th- (sh-) ~ n- } for 水 shuǐ 'water' (SV thuỷ) nước; Vietmuong form /dak/ (parallel to M 踏 tă (SV đạp, VS chà) 'trample' ) ].
For the same reasons, sound changes can occurr in different ways, for example,
- 快 kuài becomes mau ('fast', from a loangraph for ‘happy’, SV vui 'happy') [ cf. Cant. /faj/ ],
- 開 kāi ~ mở (open) [ cf. Cant. /hoj/ ],
- 口 kǒu ~ mỏ (muzzle), [ cf. 'mồm' 吻 wěn 'mouth' (SV vẫn), Cant. /howh/ ],
- 點 diăn: it is not hard to understand why becomes -lên.
- 點 [tjen] can also be tiếng ‘hour’, châm 'ignite', chấm ‘dot’, and 'dip', tí ‘a bit’, điểm, đếm 'count', etc. [ M 點 diăn < MC tiɛm < OC *te:mʔ | MC reading 咸開四上忝端 ],
- lênđây : 上來 shànglái ‘come up here’.
- 溫 wēn can be ấm, but in which way does that 馨 xīn become cúng ? Of course, it is not the same as cúng 供 gòng (SV cống) ‘make offerings to spirits’, but it is the result of sound change, as 馨 xīn is also pronounced xīng in Pinyin, hinh in SV [ MC xieng < OC *hing ], of which the velar x- becomes a labiovelar /kw-/, /k'w-/ as commonly occurred in C [ cf. 慶, 磬, and 罄, all being pronounced qìng in M and khánh in SV ]. Also, consider its phonological variations in
- thơmlừng ~ thơmlựng 馨香 xīnxiāng ‘fragrantly smell’.
Of course, lên here has nothing to do with ‘ascend, get on’ but here it functions as a grammatical particle indicating a cource of action, a command, similar to ‘up’ in ‘hurry up’. Phonologically, it is easier to see [tjen] ~ [len] and, etymologically, it conveys several concepts, namely,
and, in effect, phonologically and semantically, the different meanings in V match exactly what [tjen] means in every definition of the word 點 diăn as defined in an ancient or modern C dictionary.
For lên let compare it with other etyma in other similar context:
In this case, shàng 上 corresponds to lên ‘ascend’, though, and -lái 來 is a grammatical particle -đây of which the articulation is assimilated to an adverb of direction in V of the same sound (etymon: zhèi 這 in Chinese, meaning 'here', this').
Before we continue on, take a note that with dissyllabic approach when I start with a word, any word in either V or C, I am able to expand and multiply infinite derivavatives of lexical cognate items between the two languages.
Those examples depict a picture of multifaceted sound changes from C to V, among which each of the above dissyllabic words is composed of bound morphemes or compounded morphs, that is, either or both of which cannot be separated and used independently. It is the result of the sound change of a dissyllabic word from which the very same syllable can give rise to a complete new sound, by all means, that can be very different from the original syllablic stem functional as a stand-alone monosyllabic word (equivalent to a C character). That is to say, a new derived sound may or may not mean a thing should their syllabic components be separated from the combining form depending on the degree of its association with another word that is similar in sound or meaning. For illustration let’s examine the syllable-word mau- in mauchóng 敏捷 mǐnjié ‘quickly’, which, in fact, a variation of 盡快 jìnkuài (> chóng + mau) and its colloquial variation as 馬上 măshàng (literally means 'on the horse'). As we can see by now, except for the associated 快 kuài for 'mau' (fast), etymologically it's original meaning being 'vui' (happy), no other C characters above directly signify 'fast' at all. Additionally, either syllable in a C dissyllabic word could evolve into various sounds in V with the order of morphemic syllables syntactically therein having been transformed in reverse, or interchange of segments, depending on primary semantic significance, to fit into the local speech habit as motivated naturally generative grammatical rule. Our examples fit into the cases of monosyllabic homophones and homonyms, which are plentiful in both V and C.
We may now could see why a great number of V etyma have been largely missed by V specialists because of their deeply-rooted misconception of V or C as have been wrongly classed as of monosyllabics. Such characteristics might have been true in ancient times when amount of vocabulary were limited to a mere survival level. Modern V, like any languages on earth, certainly is no longer of such a lonely case of monosyllabics. Misconception on this issue by an old school has misled specialists of V to the point that it has certainly hindered new breakthrough development in this field. Hopefully, the result of this research will eventually have an impact on such misconception and to pave the way for new approaches to explore areas of V etymology of C origin started with this novel dissyllabic approach, departing from those old paths focusing mainly only on isolated monosyllables and mere basic words.
For the two aspects of dissyllabics and C origin, V and C are closely dependent and intertwined as much as the two languages themselves are to the point that studies in either language cannot satisfactorily be complete without referring to the other. Karlgren (1915), Haudricourt (1954), Chang (1974), Denlinger (1979), Pulleyblank (1984), and many others utilized V when they reconstructed Ancient Chinese phonology. Specialists of V such as Haudricourt (1954), Lê (1967), Ðào (1983), and some others also did the same by making use of C dialects to shed light on the etymology of V words. They all see the affinity, whether genetic or not, between C and V, but until now nobody has discovered that most of V words originated from C since their studies are mostly based on and limited to monosyllables. This aptitude has prevented them from seeing other variations in sound changes from those same monosyllabic stems when they appear in dissyllabic formation.
That having said, this VS study by no means can mainly be seen as an attempt to establish kinship directly between C and V with only some shots of historical sypnosis and linguistic proofs hereby launched with complete comprehensive linguistic lexical aspects but merely an introduction to new dissyllabic approach, its advantegous edge over an old self-constrained method, where only monosyllabic words are chosen as base units for investigation. Once recogniton of dissyllabic methodology is secured, it will be the key to find hundreds of C and V etyma that could have possibly already slipped from your attention unsuspectedly.
Specifically, my dissyllabic approach for C and V etymological study has been mainly founded on two premises: Firstly, I recognize that both modern V and C are of dissyllabics, lexically and semantically composed of a high percentage of two-syllable words, probably including their usage frequency (See Chou, Fa-Kao. 1982). Secondly, I started out with a hypothesis, based on what I have learned about these two languages linguistically, that there exists a linked kinship between them. Intuitively, my dissyllabic approach have already yielded substantially thousands of V words of C origin. From thereon I could further ping certain basic words with high possibilities of accuracy, initially mostly by instinct triggered by my own hypothesis of distant genetic affinity, all conceived via their appearance exactly in dissyllabic form. Below are some other examples resulted in by utilized that approach:- "chimchóc" 禽獸 qínshòu (SV cầmthú) 'animals, birds' [ also, 'thúvật', 'convật'. For 'chóc', being associted with 雀 què, qiăo, qiāo (SV tước), in modern V it is treated as a reduplicative syllable, but actually it was a monosyllabbic word (see elaboration if 雀 below.) | M 禽 qín < MC gim < OC *ghjəm, cf. modern M 鳥 niăo (điểu) ~ Hai. /jiăo/ for 'bird'. Dialects: Chaozhou ʑin12, Wenzhou: ʑiaŋ12, Shuangfeng: ʑin12 | According to Starostin, the character is more frequently used since L.Zhou with the meaning 'wild bird(s)', 'something caught', whereas for the meaning 'to catch, capture' one uses the character 擒 || M 獸 shòu < MC ʂjəw < OC *ʔjəwʔh ],
- "chóc" 雀 què, qiăo, qiāo (SV tước) ' bird' [ @& 'chimchóc' '禽雀 qínqiāo' | M 雀 què, qiăo, qiāo < MC cjak < OC *tɕekw | FQ 即略 | According to Starostin, for OC *c- and -a- can also be reconstructed (there are no rhymes and hsieh-sheng connections for the word) - but the reconstruction *tɕekʷ seems preferable because the word is written as 爵 (*tɕekʷ) in Late Zhou. Initial q- in Mandarin is unclear. The regular Sino-Viet. reflex is tước; chóc is used in the compound chimchóc 'birds' (note that 雀 is also used as a general name for all small birds in Early Chinese). ],
- "chảcá" 炸魚 zhàyú (tạcngư) 'fried fish' [ literally 'fried fish cake' | M 炸魚 zhàyú | 炸 zhà, zhá | ~ phonetic stem 乍 zhà < MC tɕak < OC *tɕra:ks | According to Starostin, a very recent character (attested only since Ming, and having no MC readings); also read Pek. zhà 'to burst on fire'. | ¶ zh- ~ r-, n- || M 魚 yú < MC ŋʊ < OC *ŋha | FQ 語居 | MC reading 遇合三平魚疑 | Shuowen 水蟲也.象形.魚尾與燕尾相似.凡魚之屬皆從魚. (575) | According to Starostin, Sino-Tibetan: For *ŋh- cf. Xiamen hi2, Chaozhou hy2. | Protoform: *ŋ(j)a. Meaning: fish. Chinese: 魚 *ŋha fish. Tibetan: ɳa fish. Burmese: ŋah fish, LB *ŋhax. Kachin: ŋa3 fish. Lushei: ŋha fish, KC *ŋhɑ. Kiranti: *ŋjə. Comments: PG *tàrŋa; BG: Garo na-t<k, Bodo ŋa ~ na, Dimasa na; Chepang ŋa ~ nya; Tsangla ŋa; Moshang ŋa'; Namsangia ŋa; Kham ŋa:ɬ; Kaike ŋa:; Trung ŋa1-pla<ʔ1. Simon 13; Sh. 36, 123, 407, 429; Ben. 47; Mat. 192; Luce 2. | ¶ OC *ŋh- ~ k- (ca-) || Note: There is a famous Vietnamese dish called "chảcá Lãvọng" (simply a fried fish dish, no fish cake or paste involved, "Lavong" name of a place) ],
- "chảluạ' ~ "giòlụa" 炸肉 zhàròu (SV tạcnhục) 'boiled meatcake' [ Literally 'fried meat'. It could also have possibly evolved into 'chảgiò' / ¶ r- ~ gi- | M 肉 ròu < MC ɳʊk < OC ɲikʷ (nhuk) | ¶ r- (OC ɲ-) ~ l- | Note: There is a monosyllabic word 'lụa' 縷 lǔ (SV lũ) (silk), but in "chảluạ" 炸肉 zhàròu, there is no 'silk' involved here. "lụa" in this two-syllable word simply a variant of 肉 ròu / ¶ r- ~ l-. ],
- "cậtruột" 骨肉 gǔròu (SV cốtnhục) 'blood kinship' [ Literally 'flesh and bone'; 骨 means 'bone' in C but it is assocted with 'cật' (for gǔ), probably derived from 切 qiè, while in V 肉 ròu is associated with 'ruột' (literally 'intestine') ],
- "barọi" 肥肉 féiròu (SV phìnhục) 'bacon' [Lliterally 肥 féi means 'fat' in C and here we have a derivation of 'ba' while 肉 ròu becomes 'rọi' simply a variation of 肉 ròu. It is probaly that the V 'ba' 肥 féi could be associated with 'three' (for 三), by means of innovation, to mean ''three layers of 'rọi'".],
- "mắmcá" 鹹魚 xiányú (SV hàmngư) 'salted fermented fish paste' [ Literally 'salted fish' in C and 鹹 xián means 'mặn' (salty); hence, ~ #cámặn 'salted fish' | Cant. /ha:hmjyh/ | M 鹹 xián < MC ham < OC *grjem | MC reading 咸開二平咸匣 | Dialects: Changsha xan12, Shuangfeng ɠã12, Nanchang han12, Meixian ham12, Cant. ha:m12, Amoy ham12 ($); kiam12 | ¶ h- ~ m- < *OC grj- ~ m- || see 'cá' for its etymology. ],
- "mắmruốc" 鹹蝦 xiánxiā (SV hàmhà) 'salted fermented shrimp paste' [ Literally 'salted shrimp' and 蝦 xiā is 'ruốc, tôm, tép' | ~ VS 'mắmtôm' | modern M 蝦漿 xiājiāng (SV hàtương) | M 蝦 xiā < MC ɠa < OC *ghra: | FQ 胡加 | MC reading 假開二平麻曉 | ¶ x- (OC *ghr-) ~ r- ],
- "mắmriêu" ~ "mắmrêu" 鹹蟹 xiánxié (SV hàmgiải) 'salted fermented crab sauce' [ Literally 'salted crab' in C; M 蟹 xié is ghẹ, cua, cáy | M 蟹 < MC ɠa < OC *ghre:ʔ, *kre:ʔ | According to Starostin: crab (Han). Normal Sino-Viet. is giải: it is interesting that both this form and the colloquial cáy reflect a voiceless initial (possibly pointing to a variant *kre:ʔ). Sino-Tbetan Protoform: *q(r)e:(j)H. Lushei: ai, KC*tʔ-g|ai. Lepcha: ta<-hi. Kiranti: *ghra\ | ¶ x- (OC *ghr-) ~ gh-, k-, r- ],
- "búnriêu" ~ "búnrêu" 蟹粉 xiéfěn (SV giảiphấn) 'crab noodle soup) [ M 粉 fěn ~ VS bột, phở, phấn, bụi (flour, noodles, dust) | M 粉 fěn < MC pʊn < OC *pjənʔ | MC reading 臻合三上吻非 | Dialects: Amoy, Minnam, Hainanese hun2, Chaozhou huŋ21, Fuzhou xuŋ2 | According to Starostin, the later (and usual) meaning is 'flour'. The word is also used in compounds meaning 'noodles', thus it seems possible that Viet. bún 'vermicelli' is an independent loan from the same source. | ¶ f- ~ b- ].
With the meaning 'animals' 禽獸 qínshòu fits into 'thúvật, convật'. But with 'chóc', is it a reduplicative syllable or originally an independent monosyllabic word having its own meaning? 'Chóc' is probably a synonymous monosyllabic word, like other dissyllabic words which have been formed with the same principle, that means the same thing as 'chim' (bird). Since 'chóc' is a basic word, etymologically, as a dialectal variant in Thanhhoá and Ninhbình Provinces – where the capital of the old Vietnam used to be located known as "Thành Hoalư" (Hoalu Citadel) after independence from China in the 10th century (this detail is to emphasize the plausibility of the basic word 'chóc' as it is still used by people living in this area, descendants of major metropolitan intelligentsia of the time) – there must be a cognate with some form in C, especially OC. Starting with a hypothesis and then later with further investigation and exploration in C etymology, I have found out that etymologically 'chóc' means 'chim' as follows:
Let's go further to analyze 炸 zhà, 魚 yú, 肉 ròu, 骨 gǔ, 肥 féi, 鹹 xián, 蝦 xiā, 蟹 xié, 粉 fěn for now with some possibilities that could give rise to variety of sounds in V dissyllabic forms.
From here we can see that "chả" (boiled meatcake) in Vietnamese simply a variation of 炸 zhà 'to fry', which, semantically, has developed from the original meaning 'fry'. To differentiate the new meaning, 炸 zhà could also possibly have given rise to the word 'rán' (to fry), too, which is being used along with other words such as 'chiên' 煎 jiān (deep fry).
So from here we can draw the conclusion that "mắm" (fish sauce, anchovy) was evolved from "mặn' while "riêu, or 'rêu' is from 蟹 xié, which is the possible source of 'ghẹ, cua, cáy' (different kinds of crabs), "ruốc" from 蝦 xiā (VS tép, tôm), and 'bún' (noodles) from 粉 fěn, which gave rise to phở (noodle), bột (flour), phấn (chalk), bụi (dust), and 肉 ròu to the morphs of 'ruột, rọi, lụa', and, interestingly, including another 'ruốc' (fried shredded meat jerky), too.
This new dissyllabic approach has indeed enabled me to find a remarkably large number, 20,000 plus, of V words of C origin, many of which have long been regarded by purists as indigenous Nôm words, or "pure" V, among which are of basic words, namely, "chim, chóc, chả, giò, cá, lụa, ruột, rọi, mặn, mắm, riêu (rêu), ghẹ, cua, cáy, ruốc, tôm, tép, bún, bột, phở, phấn, bụi'' in V having sources from ancient to modern C dialects, literary as well as vernacular (all referred to as "Chinese" or "C" in general throughout this paper).
With a large amount of even more authentic C and V basic words as plausible cognates being found by applying this analytic technique, the implication that the kinship between the two languages is genetically related can be posited accordingly. Results of our etymological findings are materials to build a framework for re-establishing genetic affiliation between the two kin languages, or at least in etymological level for over 95% of the V vocabulary accounted for. Doubtless basic words had been what a language originally started with after all, but V etyma of confirmed C origin is what presents the way V appears today. For journeymen to easily catch the whole picture of V and C, compare the English language with what apprear to be of Greek, Latin, French loanwords, Anglo-Saxon lexicons are of Indo-European stock anyway.
This new dissyllabic approach always treat each C word, which is composed of one or more syllables or morphemes as individually represented by each C character, as each independent entity regardless of its meanings associated with a certain morpheme which is disguised under different phonetic shells either for monosyllabic or polysyllabic form. That is why sometimes we see syllabic combinations in C may convey completely different meanings regardless of its written characters – including jiăjiē 假借 loanwords internally in C to connote certain words – and, consequently, in V compounds by way of association. As a matter of fact, in both languagesa morpheme usually coincides with a syllable, which is free to go with other syllables to form other words, for instance,
on the C side,
- qímă 起碼: ítra 'at least',
- măhǔ 馬虎: qualoa 'carelessly',
- măshàng 馬上: mauchóng 'quickly',
- piányi 便宜: rẽmạt, bèo 'cheap',
- piànmì 便秘: #táobón 'constipation'
- dōngxī 東西: đồđạc 'things',
- dōngjiā 東家: chủnhà 'host',
- liáotiān 聊天: tròchuyện 'chat',
- wúliáo 無聊: lạtlẽo (~ nhạtnhẽo) 'boring',
- mòshēng 陌生: lạlùng 'strange',
- huāshēng 花生: đậuphụng 'peanut' (Hai. /wundow/) ,
- diănxīn 點心: dằnbụng 'snack' [ ~ lótlòng, SV 'điểmtâm' is 'breakfast'],
- diănqián 點錢: đếmtiền 'count money'
, etc.
and here on the V side,
- mặnmà 舔蜜: tiánmì (~ #mậtngọt) 'sweetly',
- dưahấu #塊瓜: kuàiguā (watermelon),
- thathiết 體貼: tǐtiè 'heartily',
- cẩuthả 苟且: gǒuqiě (~ ẩutả) 'carelessly',
- mứcđộ 幅度: fúdù 'extent',
- bứcvẽ 畫幅: huàfú 'a painting',
- vấtvả 奔波: bēnbó (~ tấttả) 'hand to mouth',
- múarối 木偶戲: mù'ǒuxì 'pupetry',
- trờinắng 太陽: tàiyáng 'sunshine',
- trờitạnh 晴天: qīngtiān 'dry weather'
- banngày 白天: báitiān 'daylight' [<~ 白日 báirì ],
- bồihồi 徘徊: báihuái 'melancholy',
- chịuđựng #丞受: chéngshòu 'endure',
- bắtđền 賠償: péichăng 'ask for compensation' (~ bắtthường),
- mùtịt 矇蔽: méngbì 'blindfolded' (~ bưngbít),
- lùmù 朦朧: ménglóng 'vague' (~ lờmờ, SV mônglung),
- vỡlòng 啓蒙: qǐméng 'pre-schooling',
- vuilòng 開心 kāixīn 'pleased',
- chấpnhất 在意: zàiyì 'to mind' (~ đểý),
- lánggiềng 鄰居: línjū 'neighbor' (~ hàngxóm, lâncận),
- đạochích 盜賊: dàozéi 'burglar' (~ trộmcắp 'thief'),
- dêxòm 婬蟲: yínchóng 'lecherous' (~ quỹrâuxanh),
,etc.
For those words on the C side any linguist of C knows that better than anybody else why the C ideographs involved have nothing to do with the meanings they convey. In a C dictionary, one can find numerous characters or polysyllabic words which have multiple meanings, but specicfically in these cases, mostly they are loangraphs that just transcribed the sounds for certain concepts. In the case of C words evolving into those of V scenario, either one or both of the C syllable-words that make up the compounds, as shown in the examples above, have been likened, associated, or identified with words of similar sounds conveying the same meaning. It is amusing to see sometimes what has changed into V is not exactly what it was originally in C. That is, they are no longer the words of the same C roots initially derived from. V words having that characteristic are numerous. Let's examine some more words of this nature:- 起義 qǐyì, VS: nổidậy ‘to rise against',
- 起馬 qímă means ‘at least’ (VS: ítra),
- 興起 xìngqǐ ‘interested’ (VS: hứngchí, #nổihứng (excited) and mừngrỡ (jubilant)),
- 起源 qǐyuán ‘originate’ (VS: bắtnguồn),
- 起頭 qǐtóu ‘start’ (VS: bắtđầu), and
- 起步 qǐbù 'take steps' (VS: cấtbước).
- 孝順 xiàoshùn ‘filial piety’ (VS: hiếuthảo),
- 順利 shùnlì ‘smoothly’ (VS: suônsẻ and chótlọt > trótlọt),
- 順風 shùnfēng ‘favorable wind’ (VS:xuôigió and thuậngió),
- 順手 shùnshǒu ‘conveniently’ (VS: thuậntay, sẵntay and # luônthể),
- 順便 shùnbiàn ‘conveniently’ (VS: luôntiện and sẵntiện), etc.
起 qǐ, among other things, signifies ‘to rise’ (VS: dậy) [ M 起 qǐ < MC khɤ < OC *khjəʔ | MC reading 止開三上止溪 ] as in
while in other compounds it appears to associate with other concepts and sounds:
Similarly, for 順 shùn (SV thuận) [ M 順 shùn < MC tʂjwən < OC *djənh (Schuessler : *mljuəns) ], we have
The word-morphemes 起 and 順 are in binding form and have evolved into different sounds, meanings and words in V. Inside the C language itself similar morphemes like ‘qǐ’ and ‘shùn’ are innumerable. By actively pursuing this venue in search for words of C origin, almost or all the V words could be traced to find their C origin and we shall see more through all the illustrations in this paper.
In the meanwhile the deeply rooted misconception of monosyllabics of V and C has prevented specialists in the field of V etymology from seeing that sound changes of individual syllables in dissyllabic formation are independent from its original monosyllabic equivalents. Originally, in ancient times, like any other languages on earth, both V and C cound have been monosyllabic because languages have developed from what of simplicity to complexity. It is easier to confirm that monosyllabic characteristics of C based on literary works of more than three thousand years ago than to do so with that of V where its oldest books are only dated as far as from the 10 century onwards, but, in all possibilities, basic words that both languages seem to share in common seem to point to the direction of monosyllabics, though.
In addition, modern V orthography also has disguised dissyllabics underneath monosyllbics and deceived untrained eyes on scanning thousands of dissyllabic words, along with a much lesser number of those of polysyllabics, in any V dictionary which conventionally are still, wrongly, written in separated syllables with all C characters left out – for which each lexical item is listed individually just like lexical items listed in "Đại-Nam Quấc-âm Tự-vị" 大南國音字彙 (Dictionary of National Sounds of the Great Southern Kindom) by Huình Tịnh Của published in the late 19th century, one C character at a time, for example, 'giang' 江 for 'sông' (river) and 'san' 山 for 'núi' (mountain) and then for those subsequent dissyllabic compounds such as "giang san" 江山, a totally another word to denote another concept to mean 'country', of course, being separately written, effectively even worse without the hyphen (-) which had been in actively formal use until the late '60s of the 20th century – only monosyllabic word one after another with all C characters left out. Laziness of the users and ignorance by educatators were partially to blame for what actually goes wrong in the national orthorgraphy.
Linguistically, in the past, many experts of V insisted on its monosyllabic characteristics as represented by Barker (1966, p. 10): “With the exception of certain compounds, reduplicative patterns, and loanwords, Vietnamese and Muong are both monosyllabic languages.” If we take this quote seriously and apply that to the English language in the some similar aspects, then English also re-appears as a monosyllabic language. Here, Barker's statemenent exposed his weakness on the V language, who have already had V "worshippers" among some half-baked linguistic cirles – you could now visually imagine a scene of of those Vietnamese philologists, chirping ohs and ahs, surrounding and admiring a westerner who can even utter Vietnamese, oh my godness! I guess you got the ideas noow, didn't you? – simply because Barker is a western linguist, well equipped with plenty of high-institutional linguistic technical tools on location on a fieldtrip and readily to apply them with data provided by linuistcally untrained informants and interpreters. So when he said “certain compounds, reduplicative patterns, and loanwords”, those readers who are unfamiliar with the language may feel that there in fact are only a small number of such types of multi-syllabic words exist in V. Nevertheless, the fact is that almost a whole vocabulary stock of V nowadays structured as such and distributed widely across all contemporary lexical spectrum as we all can see in any V dictionary (hopefully none of us is to be fooled by the current orthography of syllable-words as being written separately.) For this reason, Barker's statement has disqualified himself as incompetent in this specific V linguistic field. Ironically and unfortunately, our poor V linguists still highly value that monosyllabic viewpoint and use it as a launchpad to jumstart their new linguistic career.
It is true that many of old and new dissyllabic lexical items in V can be analyzed as combination of monosyllabic word of which each can be used independently as an attactment to another syllable-word to coin new dissyllabic compounds (cf. English 'homepage', 'webpage', 'logon', etc.) Nevertheless, it should be noted that a great number of those words are formed to connote a totally new different concepts and cannot be considered as compounds anymore but composite words in technical terms. That is, these words are composed of two or more syllables in form of bound morphemes and they cannot be broken down further into single syllables to be used as independent words. One of the good examples is the most basic V words about body parts, which could have existed since ancient times, such as đầugối ‘knee’, mắccá ‘ankle’, bảvai 'shoulders', cùichỏ ’elbow’, màngtang ‘temple’, mỏác ‘fontanel’, chânmày ‘eyebrow’, etc. All of these are dissyllabic composite words are made up of bound morphemes, that is, they must appear in pairs, of which either or both syllables making up each word are unbreakable just like their English traslated counterparts. In this respect, the only difference is, like its sister C language, each morpheme in its free form – as a complete different syllable-word – can limit its meaning to something else that may have nothing to do with the meaning of the original form. For example, đầu also means ‘head’ and gối means ‘to lean against’. Other examples of a great number of dissyllabic words are in different categories such as càunhàu ‘growl’, cằnnhằn ‘grumble’, ‘bângkhuâng ‘pensive’, bồihồi ‘melancholy’, mồhôi 'sweat', mồcôi ‘orphan’, hàilòng 'pleased', taitiếng ‘infamous’, tạmbợ ‘temporary’, tráchmóc ‘reproach’, tuyệtvời ‘wonderful’, tămhơi 'whereabouts', and polysyllabic words such as cườimĩmchi 'shoot a smile', tủmtỉmcười 'hide a smile', mêtítthòlò ‘irresistable’, nhảyđồngđổng 'jump up in protest' ,bađồngbảyđổi ‘unpredictably’, hằnghàsasố ‘innumerable’, lộntùngphèo ‘upside down’, tuyệtcúmèo ‘fabulous’. Even with those SV words such as hiệndiện ‘presence’, phụnữ ‘woman’, sơnhà ‘country’, etc.(平), virtually each C stem in syllable-words contained in them cannot be used as independent monosyllablic words in the V language. (Read more details of this discussion in Vietnamese2020 Writing Reform Proposal) If those polyssyllabic words are written in combining formation instead of being singly written as separate syllables in V orthorgraphy, they certainly will give Vietnamese kids a good headstart with abstract cognitiveness development and to foreign learners of V a solid base to pick up vocabularies and less likely a false impression about the language, including Barker himself. In other words, the currently antiquated V orthography could not based on to determine monosyllabic characteristics of the V language after all.
For the matter of whether V is of polysyllabics or not, in the past renown V linguists such as Bùi Ðức Tịnh (1966, p.82), taking side with Hồ Hữu Tường, criticized and defied the idea that V is a monosyllabic language. They both treated V as a dissyllabic language. In V, the sole fact that a high percentage of SV words, as quoted above, just like words having roots from Latin and Greek in the English language respectively, being heavily used in today’s V sufficiently constitutes the dissyllabic nature of the V language, not to mention other polysyllabic words formed out of fixed expressions in different categories, such as 'ởmứcđộ', 'dùlà', trongkhiđó', 'kểtrên', 'dùthế', 'xuyênMỹ', similar to those in English such as 'insofar as', 'nevertheless', 'meanwhile', 'aforementioned', 'albeit', 'trans-America', respectively.) Loanwords, usually borrowed into V are those of polysyllabics, unbreakable, or are they not? (cf. those borrowed from French 'axít' for 'acide', 'buộcboa' for 'boursebois', 'ôtô' for 'auto', etc. Why do they want to break them apart like 'a xít', buộc boa' ô tô', respectively? Probably the younger generation are smarter and more logical than their forefathers when they accept the complete loan packages for 'dollar', 'visa', 'sillicon', 'restroom', 'toilet', 'cellphone', 'webpage', 'internet', 'monitor', 'computer', 'Washington', 'California', 'Canada', etc.) Are similar languages in the world all considered of polysyllabics just because their orthorgraphy are written as such or characteristically they are by nature? The Koreans and Japanese have long recognized this matter and they always, scientifically, write polysyllabic words in “group”, which always appear in patterns like XX XXX XX X XX XXX XX visually. So do the Thais, the Laotians, the Cambodians, the Malays, and the like. Too bad that, however, in today’s writing system of the V language each dissyllabic words is still broken into two syllables where each of which, when standing alone, may neither be related to the original meanings nor mean anything at all.
Any C dialect nowadays is also a dissyllabic language per se. Regarding to the dissyllabic characteristics of the C language, exactly the same thing can be said about those of V. For this issue in C, Chou (1982, p.106) quoted others in his article:
Following Kennedy and de Francis, Eugene Chin said: "If we admit that words, not morphemes, are the construction material of Chinese, we cannot but admit that Chinese is polysyllabic. If we may use the majority rule here, we will have no trouble establishing the fact that Chinese is dissyllabic."
The majority rule is the C vocabularies are dominated by a greater amount of dissyllabic words. From this premise that C is dissyllabic and the same applies to V, we can trace each dissyllabic word in both V and C and we will find that, phonologically, like many monosyllabic words, a dissyllabic C word could evolve into quite a few different words in V, including latest words downright in our modern time. For instance, one C word 三八 sānbā (SV tambát to redicule women in their March 8, International Women's Day), meaning “nonsense”, might have already given rise to tầmphào, tầmbậy, tầmbạ, bảláp, bảxàm, basạo, xàbát, xằngbậy, etc., in V.
As to the sound change from C into V words, those linguists of monosyllabics camp have tried to look for only one related V word and its equivalent to one C character, equally a monosyllabic word, and, in most of the cases, they seem to be able to associate only one C character to only one monosyllabic word in the V language while each C character in each dialect, in many a case, may have several pronunciations. That is a deficit flaw with their old approach. One cannot fully explore the etymology of V words of C origin by only investigating and confining oneself only to the realm of isolate monosyllabics and expect to find all their corresponding C cognates.
Only that are C and V both recognized dissyllabic languages consisting mainly of two-syllable words, linguistic rules of sound changes from C dissyllabic words into V ones are just like those of other polysyllabic languages. For simple illustration, in Indo-European (IE) languages polysyllabic words of the same root when changing into another language at least one of the syllables may not strictly follow the same phonological pattern in all languages, such as the word “police”: politi, polizei, policia, polizia, polite, polis, polisi, "phúlít" (old VS from French) – any IE historical linguists know better than I do regarding IE's complex sound shifts and changes for the same etymological matters throughout all IE languages from proto-forms to middle epoch.
What do their similarities and linguistic rules have to do with V etyma? In the C ~> V scenario, one C character, coinciding with a syllable and a word, or being just only a morpheme, when changing into V, theoretically, only one equivalent sound (word) exists, but in reality in many a case there are more than one V sound for each C character, for example,
- 元 yuán (beginning, original) SV nguyên, ngươn , VS (tháng)giêng, ngọn [ M 元 yuán < MC ŋwjən < OC *ŋon | > VS giêng (thánggiêng < 正月 zhèngyuè ~ 元月 yuányuè) | According to Starostin, Viet. ngọn may reflect a variant *ŋons. For *ŋ- cf. Xiamen guan2, Chaozhou ŋueŋ2, Fuzhou ŋuoŋ2, Jianou ŋuiŋ2 ],
- 度 dù (measure) SV độ, VS dò, đo, đạc [ M 度 dù < MC dʌk < OC *dha:k < PC **dha: ],
- 粉 fěn (flour, noodle) SV phấn, VS bún, bột, phở, bụi [ See its etymology as previously cited. ],
- 拜 bài (kowtow) SV bái, VSvái, lạy, van [ M 拜 bài < MC paj < OC *pre:ts | MC reading 蟹開二去怪幫 | ¶ b- ~ l- : ex. 兵 bīng (binh) 'lính' ],
- 場 chăng SV trường, tràng [ M 場 chăng < MC ɖaŋ < OC *ɫaŋ | According to Starostin in MC we have here a very rare case of preserving ɖ- < *ɫ- (normally *jaŋ would be expected). ],
- 劇場 jùchăng (SV: kịchtrường) # sânkhấu (stage),
- 在場 zàichăng (SV: tạitrường) tạichỗ ~ tạitrận 'on spot, red-handed',
- 試場 shìchăng (SV: thítrường) # trườngthi (examination site),
- 戰場 zhànchăng (SV: chiếntrường) chiếntrận , hence, # trậnchiến (battle) (note the word order is in reverse in all three cases above), etc.
- 一場夢 yī chăng mèng (SV:nhất trường mộng) một giấcmơ, giấcmộng, cơnmơ, cơnmộng (a dream),
- 一場病 yī chăng bìng (SV:nhất trường bệnh) một trậnbệnh, cơnbệnh (illness),
- 一場戲 yī chăng xì (SV: nhất trường hí) một tuồnghát, xuấthát (a show) [ VS 'xuất @ 場 chăng ~ SV 齣 chù 'xuất' ],
- 一場空 yī chăng kōng (SV: nhất trường không) một khoảngtrống (emptiness, nada, empty-handedness), etc.
etc., or in compounds:
and in V there evolved into several sounds:
and in the following, the classfier 場 is incorporated inside the V and make them become fixed binding lexical forms, for example,
This is where a sandhi process of association has taken effect in the sound change process. It has occurred not only in syllables where neighboring sounds with similar syllable-word and meanings can be assimilated and that might have already taken place before they were introduced to V as in the above cases of zhèn 陣 (trận) and chù 齣 (xuất) which have been associated with chăng 場 – per Starostin's comment on its etymology as noted above, based on their phonology, the V variants of 場 chăng had been likely borrowed into V very lately, probably from a vernacular form of M long after the MC period – but also accomplished by transferring a whole syllable-word and its associative meaning to match the new dissyllabic counpounds.
Let's examine a similar case of :
- thợmộc ~ mùjiāng
- "thợthầy" (~"thầythợ") as in "Khôngra thợthầy gìcả!" or "Nửa thầy, nửa thợ, nửa đườiươi!", all mean 'You (or s/he...) are just useless!' This compound must have been evolved from "thầytrò" or 師徒 shītú. "Thợ" here, as opposed to "thầy" 師 shī 'teacher, master' [ cf. the patterns of shí 時: thời, thì (time); shì 事: thờ (serve) ], is meant to indicate M "tú" [t'u2] or "trò" (student, pupil, follower, trainee), which possibly had given rise to "thợ" (to signify all concepts of "apprentice", "journeyman","artisan", etc., inclusively).
- thợđá 石匠 shíjiāng ‘stone smith’,
- thợsắt ~ thợthiết 鐵匠 tiějiāng ‘blacksmith, tinsmith’,
- thợgiày 鞋匠 xiějiāng ‘shoemaker’,
- thợnề ® 泥水匠 níshuǐjiāng ‘bricklayer’,
- thợmài ® 磨光匠 móguāngjiāng ‘grinder’,
- thợkhoá 鎖匠 suǒjiāng ‘locksmith’,
- thợnhuộm ® 洗染匠 xǐrănjiāng ‘dyer’ (contraction of "thợtẩynhuộm"),
- thợngói (thợngoạ) 瓦匠 wăjiāng ‘bricklayer’,
mùjiāng is the M sound of 木匠 (carpenter), and while there is not much to say about mộc [mokʷ] (<= MC [mowk]) for 木 mù, "thợ" might not be a direct sound change from 匠 "jiāng" [ M 匠 jiāng < MC ʐjɑŋ < OC *ʐhaŋs ] into V, but it could be more likely a derivative from the compound
In this case "thợ" 徒 tú (SV đồ) appears to have become a free syllabic-morpheme form functioning as a prefix in V, by means of association, to be combined with other syllable-words to make other compounds:
etc.,
However, we may not want to exclude the possibility that "thợ" was derived from the "thợ" 匠 jiāng of MC [dziaŋ], instead of 徒 tú, which appears to fit into in a pattern of sound change somewhat similar to MC [tshiaŋ] > tương > tượng (SV) >thượng >thợ (VS) [ cf. the patterns of 獎 jiăng ‘prize’ tưởng (SV) > thưởng (VS)] or "thừa" being corresponding to M 承 chéng, etc.
In the cases as discussed above, dissyllabic words, or polysyllabic words for that matter, with at least one of the two syllables had undergone the sandhi process of assimilation or association. To all those cases we also can apply the natural phonological linguistic rules that dictate from sound changes in polysyllabic words that one or more syllables can be deformed, corupted, dropped, contracted, associated, etc. that make the sound change transformed into another different appearance phonologically. As we can see, through this sound change process a mere original stem, or lexical base, could give rise to more V sound variations. In the end the absorbing or target language, the borrower, would derive a few extra new words and, at the same time, add more meaning to existing similarly sounding words – rule innovation – but of different C roots. For the latter they have come into existence by means of synchronic association of similar sounds or meanings, or both, on existing words. Let us analyze some other similar instances:
- xīn 心: 'tim' (physical heart), 'tâm' (SV), 'lòng' (spiritua heart, inner feelings); ~> 'tâmhồn' 心+魂 xīnhún (spiritual heart), 'lòngdạ' 心腸 xīnchăng (figuratively heart), and 點心 diănxīn (snack) 'điểmtâm' (breakfast in SV), 'lótlòng' ~ 'lótdạ', 手心 shǒuxīn 'lòngtay' (palm of the hand),
- jìng 鏡: 'kính' (SV), 'kiếng', 'gương' (mirror, eye glasses) [ M 鏡 jìng < MC kajiŋ < OC *kraŋs | FQ 居慶 ] as apposed to ''gương' in 'làmgương' 旁樣 pángyāng (exemplify),
- fěn 粉 (flour): phấn (SV), 'phở', 'bún', 'bột', 'bụi' vs. 'bụi' (dust) from 灰 huī (SV khôi): VS 'muội', 'vôi' (plaster, lime) [ M 灰 huī < MC xuaj < OC *xwəj ],
- zhù 注 (annotate): 'chú' (SV), 'chua', 'chảy' (originally, flow) vs. 'chảy' from 消 xiāo SV 'tiêu' (to melt, dissolve) [ M 消 xiāo < MC sjew < OC *saw | A later meaning is '(dissolve >) disperse, spend'. ],
- húndàn 魂蛋: 'hoangđàng' (the unruly outcast) vs. 荒唐 huāngtáng: 'hoangđường' (outlandish, out of this world),
etc.
During the process of lexical development, V has also proved to be keen in innovation of loanwords. While a great number of words retain their original forms and existing associated meanings, some have evolved their own way to grow by attaching new differentiation in meanings either with the old pronunciation or new articulation which have resulted in subtle semantic changes. This does not necessarily mean C loanwords will end up richer in V counterparts, i.e. more derived words, because, as we have seen in the above examples, the other way around is also proved to be true for many words as in the case that V uses the same ssociatory sounds to identify with other glosses (just like loan-graphs in C itself). Here are some more examples to support the emumeration of the case of one-to-many C ~ V glosses:
- 沖 chōng, chòng : (1) SV xung, trùng 'giving the rise to', (2) dội 'pour water on', (3) sôi 'boil up' (associated with: 燒 shāo, 開 kāi), (4) xông 'charge (against)', (5) xấn 'dash (against)', (6) tông 'collide' (assossiated with 撞 zhuàng), (7) đụng 'collide' (assossiated with 撞 zhuàng), (8) đường 'public road' (assossiated with 道 dào), (9) sang 'develop and print photo' (modern usage), (10) xối 'wash out' (associated with: 澡 zào),
- 戶 hù: (1) SV hộ 'household', 'a family unit', (2) cửa 'door' (associated with: 口 kǒu), (3) ngõ 'gate' (associated with: 門 mén),
- 會 huì : (1) SV hội 'fair', (2) họp 'meeting', (3) hiểu 'understand' (associated with:曉 xiăo), (4) hụi 'privately colateral loan', (5) hồi 'a period of time' (associated with: 回 huí), (6) sẽ 'will, going to do something' (associated with: 將 jiāng),
- 天 tiān: (1) SV thiên 'sky', (2) trời (~ giời) 'the Almighty', 'the sun' (associated with 日 rì), (3) trán 'forehead' (associated with 頂 dǐng),
- 回 huí: (1) SV hồi 'return', (2) về 'return' (associated with : 歸 guī), (3) quay 'turn' (associated with 迴 huí ),
- 鹹魚 xiányú: (1) mắmcá 'salted fermented fish sauce', (2) # cámặn 'salted fish',
- 過去 guòqù: (1) SV quákhứ 'the past', (2) quađi 'pass by', (3) # điqua 'pass by', (4) # đãqua 'already passed',
- 太陽 tàiyáng: (1) SV tháidương '(literary) the sun, (2) # mặttrời 'the sun', (3) # trờinắng 'sunny' (associated with 日 rì), (4) (associated with) màngtang 'temple' 太陽穴 tàiyángxué,
- 月亮 yuèliàng: (1) mặttrăng 'the moon', (2) # ánhtrăng 'moonlight', (3) # trăngsáng 'brilliant moon', (4) # nàngtrăng '(literary) the fairy moon' (associated 亮 liàng with 'ánh' 光 guāng ),
- 問答 wèndá: (1) SV vấnđáp 'cross examination', 'oral exam', (2) hỏiđáp 'questions and answers',
- 問題 wèntí: (1) SV vấnđề 'problem', (2) # thắcmắc 'question',
- 聽寫 tīngxiě : (1) chínhtả 'correct spelling' (associated with 正寫 zhènngxiě), (2) ngheviết 'dictation',
etc.
At the same time, the sound changes that have made up derived words could be independent of their original form. Historically, this development is commonplace in any language, let's say, as in the case of English, we have the word albeit < all be it < for 'though' (semantically changed) or the etymology of morning < morn < Old English morgen while evening < æfnung, a noun from the verb æfnian ‘grow towards night’. Following the pattern of evening the morn had become morning.
In V, specifically, I would like to call that kind of phenomenal occurrence of association as assimilative sandhi, or, alternately, the sandhi process of assimilation or association, a very common phenomenon in phonological development. They are likely products of time which have come into existence naturally probably without much of human interference. Let's examine a few more illustrations of associatory variations in the case of 待 dài 'wait' with this assimilation process:
- 待 dài đãi in SV, đợi in VS, 'wait' [ M 待 dài < MC dɣj < OC *dhɑ:ʔ | FQ 徒亥 | MC reading 蟹開一上海定 ],
- 等待 děngdài 'wait for' chờđợi [ < #'chờđón' < 'đónchờ' (SV đẵngđãi) | cf. the sound change pattern of chéng 承 SV thừa – see 待承 dàichéng below ]. It's vocal shell is being phoneticized as such because that is a result of association of the denotatum 期待 qídài, a doublet of chờđợi with later semantically reversed change to become a connotatum chờđón 'expect' that has been incorporated into the exisiting compound with "等" děng 'wait' being treated as "待" dài "đợi" 'wait', hence, semantically 等 děng being a doublet of 待 in C,
- 期待 qídài (SV: kỳđãi ) becomes a connotatum chờđón 'expect' (originally it was cognate to "chờđợi" 'wait for', also 'expect').
- 對待 duìdài (SV: đốiđãi ) becomes đốixử 'treat' in VS as 對 duì has been associated with 處 chǔ 'xử',
- 待承 dàichéng (SV: đãithừa ) đãiđằng 'treat with a feast',
- 接待 jiēdài (SV:tiếpđãi ) tiếpđón 'reception, to greet' (in both cases, 待 dài is in association with jiēsòng 接送 "đưađón" meaning 'to pick up and see off'), etc.
and the articulation of this character will change into some other sounds when this lexeme is in other dissyllabic forms, or words, and, in this case, they are compound words, such as
Similarly,
In another direction of development of new vocabularies, consciously the principle of lexical association serves as an important tool for coining new compounds with existing lexemes. That is, a new coinnage can be a word of local innovation of an existing word to be made-to-order as (1) needs arise, (2) new word being coined, (3) all to be created from the C material that has been already assimilated in the borrowing language or concurrently being used in the loaning language, for instance,
(1)
- bấmnút "按紐" (~nhấnnút) ànnǐu 'press the button > click the button,'
- mạnglưới "網絡" wăngluò 'net > network > computer network' ' ('lưới' is associated with 羅 luò 'net' in V),
- viênchức #"職員" zhíyuán 'civil servant > governmental officer' (also in C, 'staff' = V 'nhânviên' 人員 rényuán ), ,
- trangmạng "網頁" wăngyè 'web page' ('trang' is associated with 張 zhāng 'sheet' in V),
(2)
- bánhbao "餅+包" (# bāobǐng) 'dumpling',
- bòbía "包餅" (bāobǐng) (a Chaozhou style spring rolls wrapped with V rice paper, called /popẽ/; also, a kind of sweetened Chaozhou-style cake, called in V as 'bánhbẽn'.),
- tủlạnh "冷 + 櫝" (# lěngdú) 'refrigerator',
- thangmáy "梯 + 機" (#tījī) 'elevator',
- thangcuốn "梯 + 捲' (#tījuān) 'escalator',
- xếhộp "盒+車" (# héchē) 'automobile sedan',
- nhuliệu "柔+料" (=軟件 ruănjiàn) (róu+liào) 'software',
- phầncứng "份+剛" (gāng+fèn) 'hardware',
- trangnhà "張 zhāng + 家 jiā" 'homepage',
- liênmạng "聯+網" (lián+wăng) 'internet',
(3)
- thơmộng "詩 + 夢" (shī+mèng) 'romantic',
- rượuchè "酒+茶" (jǐu+chá) (= hèjǐu 喝酒) 'alcoholic' ,
- côngnhânviên "公+人員" (gōng+rényuán) 'civil servant,' ~ côngchức "公+職" (gōng + zhí),
- toàán "座+案" (zuò+àn) 'court',
- quantoà "官+座" (zuò+guān) 'judge',
- ratoà "出庭" (chùtíng, currently in use in modern M, in Viet. 庭 tíng, SV đình' being associated with 'toà'), 'appear in court' ,etc.
Those who do not accept the fact that both C and V are dissyllabic languages may find it hard to see why the same monosyllabic word in V originally cognate to only one character in C could evolve into variable sound changes in several different dissyllabic words. Only with the recognition that V is a dissyllabic language will one see why two-syllable V words of C origin have followed their own rules of linguistic sound changes, such as the associative sandhi rule, which are quite different from those of sound change from a monosyllabic word into another monosyllabic word as in most of the cases of SV lexicons as we usually see in historical phonology.
As we amass more examples, similarly, many words derived from the OC and MC may complicate the matter further with multiple lexical and phonological developments, which may confuse unbelievers if the premises above could not be comprehended and digested beforehand, such as
- 大 dà ‘big, elder’ (SV: đại) [ M 大 dà < MC dɒj < OC *dha:ts ] could become to, cả, sơ, tào, ba, tất, đủ, lồ as in
dàgézi 大格子: ® tocon (big body),
dàdăn 大膽: togan, cảgan (daring),
dàshèng 大聲: totiếng (raise one's voice),
dàjiě 大姐: # chịcả (elder sister),
dàxiōng 大兄: # anhcả (elder brother),
dàhăi 大海: # bểcả (big ocean. See below for etymology of "bể"),
dàhuǒ 大夥: cảlũ (the whole group),
dàyì 大意: sơý (inattentive),
dàhuà 大話: tàolao, bahoa (talk nonsense, pompous),
dàjiā 大家: tấtcả (all, everyone),
dàyuè 大月 : # thángđủ (full month of 30 days)
pángdà 龐大: khổnglồ (enermous),
- 沖 chōng, chòng (xung, trùng) [ M 沖 chōng, chòng (trùng, xung) < MC ʈiuwŋ < OC *druwŋ ]
giving the rise to:
(1) xối 'to wash out',
(2) dội 'pour water on',
(3) sôi 'boil up',
(4) xông 'to charge',
(5) xấn 'to dash (against)',
(6) tông 'to collide',
(7) đụng 'to collide',
(8) đường 'public road',
(9) sang 'develop and print photo' (modern usage) as in 'sanghình' ~ 'sangảnh' 沖印 chōngyìn, etc.
in VS as opposed to only dà 大 ~ đại, 沖 chōng ~ xung (trùng) in SV, repectively, or as in the cases of previously cited examples of qǐ 起 ~ khởi, shùn 順 ~ thuận, chăng 場 ~ trường.
For cases of many-to-one C ~ V, it is also a phenomenon that one word, either in monosyllabic or in dissyllabic formation, in V can point to different sources in C, depending on the context. These are the cases that show dynamic sound changes that further rebut the monosyllabics viewpoint that sound change must be restricted mostly on the basis of one-to-one correspondence, for instance,
"cho":
- cho 給 jǐ, gěi 'give' (SV cấp) [ M 給 jǐ, gěi < MC kip < OC *kjəp < PC **qjəp | MC reading A: 深開三入緝見; B: 深開三入緝見 | Yangzhou: A: kjəi2; $ tʂiɔʔ4; B: kjəi 2, Chaozhou: A: tʂijəʔ41; B: tʂiɔʔ41, Wenzhou : A: tʂiai41; B: tʂiai41, Changsha : A: tʂi4; B: tʂi4, Shuangfeng: A: tʂi12; B: tʂi12 | According to Starostin, Mand. gěi is quite irregular; there exists, however, a regular (literary) reading jǐ. || Note: ¶ j- ~ ch- ],
- cho(phép) 準 zhǔn 'allow' (SV chuẩn) [ M 準 zhǔn < MC tʂyn < OC *tɕwin | MC reading 臻合三上準章 | ex. 'chophép' @# 批准 pīzhǔn (SV phêchuẩn) 'permit, allow' ]
- cho 許 xǔ 'allow' (SV hứa) [ M 許 xǔ < MC xo < OC * sŋaʔ | ex. 'khôngcho' 不許 bùxǔ (SV bấthứa) 'do not allow' ],
- cho 賜 cì 'present with' (SV tứ) [ M 賜 cì < MC sjɜ < OC *slheks | FQ 斯義 | According to Starostin: to give, present with. The word is frequently written as 錫 (and in these cases consequently usually read as MC siek - which is probably due to confusion with the basic reading of 錫 - MC siek 'tin' q.v.). See the discussion in Schuessler 98. ],
- cho 贈 zèng 'give a gift' (SV tặng) [ M 贈 zèng < MC tsɦəɒŋ < OC *dzəŋ ],
- chodầu 雖然 suīrán 'although' (SV tuynhiên) [ ~ VS chodù M 雖然 suīrán | M 雖 suī < MC sjwi OC *swhij ],
- chonên 所以 'therefore' suóyǐ (SV sỡdĩ) [ M 所以 suóyǐ \ @ 所 suǒ ~ cho, @ 以 yǐ ~ nên \ ¶ y ~ n- {應 yìng (SV ứng) nên} ],
- chotới 直到 zhídào 'until' (SV trựcđáo) [ M 直到 zhídào \ @ 直 zhí ~ cho | See đến, tới ],
- chotiền 捐錢 juānqián 'donation' (SV quyêntiền) [ M 捐 juān < MC jwen < OC *wen | According to Starostin: to sacrifice, to subscribe, to leave (smth. to smb.) (L.Zhou). Mand. juān and Sino-Viet. quyên reflect a form like MC *kjwen - probably secondary, under the influence of other characters (cf. �ʔ, 娟 etc.) ],
- dànhcho 專用 zhuānyòng 'specialized for' (SV chuyêndụng) [ @# M 專用 zhuānyòng \ @ 專 zhuān ~ cho | M 專 zhuān < MC tɕwen < OC *ton ],
- khiếncho 引起 yǐnqǐ 'cause' (SV dẫnkhởi) [ M 引起 yǐnqǐ \ @ 起 qǐ ~ cho \ ¶ q- ~ ch-, r- ],
and other compounds lexemically built with 'cho':
"làm":
- làm 幹 gàn 'do, make, work' (SV cán) [ M 幹 < MC kan < OC *ka:rs | ex. 'làmviệc' 幹活 gànhuó 'work'],
- làmruộng ~ làmđồng 耕田 gēngtián 'to farm' (SV canhđiền) [ M 耕 gēng < MC 耕 kaijŋ < OC *kre:ŋ | MC reading 梗開二平耕見 | Dialects: Chaozhou kẽ11, Wenzhou kiɜ11, Shuangfeng kiẽ11 | cf. 'cày' (a plough, to plow the paddy), hence, càyruộng 耕田 gēngtián ],
- làmcàn 蠻干 mángàn 'foolhardy' (SV mancán) [ @# M 蠻干 mángàn | M 蠻 mán < MC mwan < OC* məran ],
- làmơn 頒恩 bān'ēn 'give blessing' (SV banân) [ M 頒恩 bān'ēn \ @ 頒 bān ~ làm 辦 bàn (bạn) \ ¶ b- ~ l-, ex. 拜 bài (bái) lạy 'kowtow' ],
- làmdốc 排架子 báijiàzi 'pretend' (SV bàigiátử) [ @ 排 bái ~ làm 辦 bàn ],
- làm 辦 bàn 'to handle' (SV bạn) [ M 辦 bàn < MC bɑn < OC *bhre:ns | FQ 蒲莧 | Starostin : to deal with, handle, manage. For *bh- cf. Chaozhou phõĩ6. | ¶ b- ~ l-, ex. 兵 bīng (binh) lính ],
- làmgương 旁樣 pángyāng 'exemplify' (SV bàngnhan) [ @ 旁 páng ~ làm 辦 bàn (bạn), @ 樣 yāng ~ gương 鏡 jìng (kính) ],
- làmphiền 勞煩 láofán 'please help' (SV lạophiền) [@ 勞 láo ~ làm 幹 gàn ],
- làm 弄 nòng, lòng, nèng 'make' (SV lộng) [ M 弄 nòng, nèng, lòng < MC ləwŋ < OC *ləwŋ | MC reading 通合一去送來 | ¶ n-~ l- | ex. làmtiền 弄錢 nòngqián (SV lộngtiền) 'make money', 弄樣子 nòngyàngzǐ (SV lộngnhantử) : làmdángvẻ (làmravẻ) make oneself look like ],
- làm 令 lǐng 'cause' (SV linh, lịnh, lệnh) [ M 令 lǐng, líng, lìng < MC leŋ < OC *riŋ | FQ 呂貞 | ex. 令人驚訝 lìng rén jīngyá 'làm (người) kinhngạc' (it caused surprise to everybody.) ],
- làmăn 生意 shēngyì 'make a living' (SV sinhý) [ M 生意 shēngyì \ @ shēngyì ~ 'làmăn' (& '幹 gàn + 吃 chì) | ¶ sh- ~ l- ],
- làmthinh 安靜 ānjìng 'keep quiet' [ ~ VS yênlặng, imlặng, lặngim, lặngyên, tĩnhlặng | M 安靜 ānjìng \ @ 安 ān ~ làm | M 靜 jìng < MC tsjɜŋ < ʑheŋ | FQ 疾郢 || M 安 ān < MC ʔɒn < OC *ʔa:n | FQ 烏寒 | MC reading 山開一平寒影 ],
- làmkhôngkịp 來不及 lái bùjí 'cannot make it' (lai bấtcập) [ @ M 來不及 lái bùjí | @ 來 lái ~ 'làm' ],
- làmlại 再來 zàilái 'try again' (táilai) [ @# M 再來 zàilái | M 再 zài < MC cɤj < OC *ɕjə:s | According to Starostin : twice; again, and again || 來 lái (lai) [ M 來 lái < MC lɣj < OC *rjə: ],
- làmcông 勞工 láogōng 'to labor, work for' (laocông) [ @ M 勞工 láogōng \ @ 勞 láo ~ làm 幹 gàn ],
- làmlụng 勞動 láodòng 'to labor' (laođộng) [ M 勞動 láodòng \ @ 勞 láo ~ làm 幹 gàn, @ 動 dòng (động) lụng (reduplicative)],
- làmquan 當官 dàngguān 'be an official' (SV đangquan) [ M 當官 dàngguān \ @ 當 dàng ~ làm 幹 gàn ],
- làmlính 當兵 dàngbīng 'be a soldier' (SV đangbinh) [ M 當兵 dàngbīng \ @ 當 dàng ~ làm 幹 gàn ],
- làmtóc 理髮 lǐfá 'hairdo' (SV líphát) [ M 理髮 lǐfá 'hairdo' \ @ 理 lǐ ~ làm 弄 nòng (SV lộng) | M 理 lǐ < MC lɤ < OC *rhjəʔ ],
- làmtiền 賺錢 zhuànqián (SV chuyếntiền) [ M 賺錢 zhuànqián \ @ 賺 zhuàn ~ làm 弄 nòng (SV lộng) | M 賺 zhuàn < MC tɕwen < OC *kje:m | MC reading 咸開二去陷澄 ], etc., and the list goes on.
With a little linguistic common sense one will readily accept some implicit rules that underline the sound changes that have given rise to the above lexical variants because it is easy to identify phonological relations between cognates, i.e., words of the same root that appear in different forms in different languages. Also, we should know that in C there may be several C characters representing a concept-word (either a lexeme, morpheme, allophone, or doublet, as opposed to an individual syllable-word or character) and they may be pronounced similarly or differently depending on other factors such as time frame and locality. In this case sound changes that appear in many different forms in the C language itself and their variants in V may need much more analysis in order to understand how they happened, for example:
- phong 風 fēng 'wind' [ > giông > gió | M 風 fēng < MC pjuŋ < OC *pjɔm, prɔm < PC: **pryŋʷ, *prym | M 風 fēng ~ giông => gió | giông /dʒŋʷ/ -> gió /dʒɔ/ ~ phong /pfɔŋʷ/, © 凬 | cf. 虫 chóng (trùng) VS trùn, giun, 富 fù (phú) VS giàu ], hence, we have
颱風 táifēng > giôngtố 'taiphoon',
風雨 fēngyǔ > 'rainstorm' > mưagió) 'rainstorm' [ cf. 凍雨 dōngyǔ 'mưadông' (rainstorm) ], - 蜂 fēng 'bee' [ >phong > ong | M 蜂 fēng < MC phouŋ < OC *phoŋ | FQ 敷容 | According to Starostin : Also read *bhōŋ, MC buŋ (FQ 薄紅) || (< @ 螉 wēng < ong, a doublet of the same root ) ],
- 海 hăi biển ~ bể 'the sea' [ < phonetic stem 母 mǔ > mái > mệ > mể > bể > biển | M 海 hăi < MC xʊj < OC *smjə:ʔ | ¶ h- ~ m-, m- ~ b- | cf. 每 měi 'mỗi', 梅 méi 'mai', 敏 mǐn 'mẫn' ], hence,
大海 dàhăi > biểncả (bểcả), 'big sea'
苦海 kǔhăi > bểkhổ (khổải) '(sea of) suffering'
海浪 hăilàng > sóngbể 'sea wave'
海口 hăikǒu > cửabể 'seaport'
海窛 hăikòu > cướpbể (~海賊 hăizéi) 'sea pirate', - 公 gōng công, cồ, ông, trống 'male, mister, public' [ for "ông" we have 翁 wēng as an old doublet form, etc. | M 公 gōng < MC kuŋ < OC *klo:ŋ | FQ 古紅 | MC reading 通合一平東見 | Shuowen: 平分也.從八**.八猶背也.韓非曰.背**為公. (49) | According to Starostin : clan head, Gong; palace, court. Later also used for 'the whole clan' < 'public'. | cf. 鞏 gǒng => cáitrống ~ gǔ 鼓 ]
- jiànkāng 健康 (SV kiệnkhang) 'health, healthy' :
- bắtđền ~ bắtthường 'demand compensation' [ originally from 賠償 péichăng (~ VS # "đềnbồi", or in SV 'bồithường', 'compensate'), that is, "bắt-" (逼 bī 'to force') has been more associated with "bắt" as in "bắtbuộc" 逼迫 bīpò (SV bứcbách) 'to force' (M 逼迫 bīpò \ @ 逼 bī ~ 迫 pò (bách) buộc | M 逼 bī < MC pʊk < OC *pjək) than with 捕 bǔ (bộ) 'capture' [ ~ VS vồ, bắt 'arrest', vớt 'catch' | M 捕 bǔ < MC bɔ < OC *bha:s | MC reading 遇合一去暮並 | cf. 捕魚 bǔyú 'bắtcá' ~ 'vớtcá' (catch fish) ].
- mĩmcười ~ ngậmcười 含笑 hánxiào (SV hàmtiếu) 'smile' [ cf. 'ngậmcườichínsuối" 含笑九泉 hánxiàojǐuquán, literally 'be resting in the underworld' | Note: 笑 xiào "cười" (smile), and "mĩm" could have been evolved from 'mĩmcười' 微笑 wēixiào or 笑眯眯 xiàomīmī "cườimĩmchi" (crack a smile ) while "ngậm" (literally, 'hold in one's mouth') is derived from 含 hán, which also means "hàm" (jaw) and "cằm" ('chin'). ]
- khócthútthít 哭泣 kùqì (weep) [ 哭泣 kùqì > "thútthít" ~ kùqì > khóc 哭 kù +thútthít ].
- lỗtai 耳朵 ěrduō 'ear, ear drum' ~> 'tai' for 朵 duō [ with the omission of 耳 ěr, a case of corrupted contraction. It could also an innovative method of vocabulary coinage in V. cf. tai 耷 dà 'big ear' ]
- thầytrò 師徒 shìtú "teacher and students", which strengthens the plausibility of 師 shì as "thầy" and establishes the sound change pattern "đ-" ~ "tr-" where "đ-" might have been older than "tr-". Also, it may have given rise to 'thầythợ" as previously discussed.
- nhẹnhàng 輕輕 qīngqīng ~ nhènhẹ "slightly", 輕重 qīngzhòng 'nặngnhẹ' (M 重 zhòng, Hai /dang/ ) "weight", which gives us an analogy of 'nhẹ' = 輕 qīng "light" [ by way of ¶ /q- ~ nh-/ and /-ng ~ zero / ].
- chungquanh (xungquanh) 周圍 zhōuwéi (around), which has given rise to "quanh" as in "quanh ta" or (around us).
- đồngbạc 銅板 tóngbăn (monetary unit) ~> tóng 'đồng' while 'bạc' is associated with 錢幣 qiánbì 'tiềnbạc'.
- bạttai 巴掌 bāzhăng 'spank' (~ bàntay 'palm' ~ 手板 shǒubăn ) – bā gives us two different sounds in V, "bạt" and "bàn" and the whole word gives us a hint of zhăng => tay (~ 手 shǒu) 'hand'.
- bạtmạng 拼命 pìnmìng 'risk one's life', which show pìn could evolve into "bạt" [ ¶ p- ~ b-, -n ~ -t; it is not neccessary that only some sounds that are similar to bì, bā, or bó to give rise to 'bạt'.]
and
In the cases of ong and cồ, công, ông, trống, these multiple forms of sound change can easily be recognized due to the phonological similarity between them as doublets – characters of the same root that appear in different forms – in the C language. In many cases, it is not always that there is a clear-cut association, for example:
It is plausible that jiànkāng 健康 itself has given rise VS 'sứckhoẻ' (health) and this should be the case. It is possible that the initial kh- in the second syllable could become sandhized with -n of the first syllable jiàn to be identified with 'sức' [ ~ 力 lì SV lực (strength) ] and 'khang' kāng 康 [ note an earlier SV sound as 'khương' /k'jɨəŋ/ ] to become 'khoẻ' (strong). However, we could explore further to see if that is the case or it could possibly have been an innovation of 力氣 lìqì (SV lựckhí) 'power' [ ~> 'sứckhoẻ' ~ # 'hơisức' (strength). ] or a new coined word in V by using C material. If we analyze 'khoẻmạnh' by breaking up the two syllables and rebuild the V "khoẻ+mạnh" with two separate elements such as zhuàng+měng '壯+猛' 'strong', or reversedly with 'mạnhkhoẻ' 猛壯 měngzhuàng, an actual C word which implies less the meaning of 'health' and 'healthy' than that of jiànkāng 健康, though. When we apply the associative sandhi process rule of sound changes we will find the origin of another word 'khoẻkhoắn' ~ jiànzhuàng 健壯 (SV #trángkiện) 'feeling fit, well' with the same lexeme 健 jiàn for "khoẻ". In this case we can easily associate zhuàng 壯 with kāng 康 which could have given rise either reduplicative 'khoắn' or 'mạnh' [ /majŋ6/ < /k'wəɒn5/ (khoắn) < /k'aŋ1/ < /k'jɨəŋ1/ (khương) ] . However, in the first case, 力氣 lìqì (lựckhí) as "sứckhoẻ" [ > ® "khoẻ"], etymologically, denotes mainly 'strong, powerful' while jiànkāng 健康 "sứckhoẻ" conveys the exact meaning of both 'health' and 'healthy'.
Apparently, with the dissyllabic approach, we could further secure and strengthen the plausibility of those monosyllabic words "thầy", "thợ", "hàm", "ngậm", "mĩm", "tai", "tay", "đồng", "bạc", etc. and dissyllabic words "bạtmạng" or "bạttai", and understand better the meaning of mysterical morphs in those polysyllabic composite words, for instance, "mĩm" in "mĩmcười" or "mĩmchi" in "cườimĩmchi", "thútthít" in "khócthútthít", or "bạt" in "bạttai".
It is only in dissyllabic formation that a phonetic sandhi process could occur as easily seen in:
- lāji 垃圾 'garbage': rác(rưới) 'garbage' in which the k- (¶ j- ~ k-) in the second morpheme and has combined with ra- (¶ l- ~ r-) [ VS rác, >~ rácrưới, rácrưởi, rácrến (SV lạpcấp) | M 垃圾 lēsē, lājī, contraction ® rác < @ 垃圾 lāji | ¶ l- ~ r- <= ra- + k-, ® -ấp | cf. 'Iraq' 伊拉克 yīlākē ~ Irắc ],
- trờiơi 天啊 tiānna 'My Lord' [ 天啊 tiānna is a resultant of combined sounds of 天 tiān + 啊 ā ],
- kěbié 可別: chớ(có) 'do not' [ chớ <~ ® chớcó | (SV khảbiệt) | # M 可別 kěbié \ @ 可 kě ~ có 有 yǒu (SV hữu) | M 可 kě < MC khjə < OC *kha:jʔ | FQ 肯我 || M 別 bié < MC bet, pet < OC *brat, *prat ].
Of course, sound changes have oftentimes happened within constraints of linguistic rules. Nevertheless, it is unnecessary, though, throughout this paper, to discuss all the rules of sound changes each for most of occurrences, including those of phonology of VS, so they are left to the readers to assume the sound changes are plausible, e.g., bīng 兵 ~ lính (soldier), bài 拜 ~ lạy, vái (kowtow), dă 打 ~ đánh, đập (strike), yǐn 飲 ~ uống (drink), bǐrú 比如 ~ tỉdụ, tỉnhư, vídụ, thídụ, vínhư (example), etc., especially in the cases of SV sounds, of which the pronunciation keys, i.e. 番切 fănqiè, match respective phonetic descriptions listed in classical rhyming books or dictionaries such as 廣韻 Guăngyùn or the "Kangxi Zidian" 康熙字典, so it cannot be wrong, e.g., xié 鞋 ~ hài (shoes), kù 哭 ~ khấp (khốc) (weep), bǐng 偋 ~ sính (betroth), chéng 承 ~ thừa (to present), and so on.
Just let critics acclaim my ignorance of western historical and comparative linguistic methodologies whereby all available mechanical tools are actually mostly suitable for tackling Indo-European generalities whereby C and V peculiarities, especially their tonality, do not fit in, partly for the same reason that they insist on, ironcally, "isolated monosyllabic languages", even though it is customary that a system of well-establised phonological linguistic rules help explain and analyze logically behaviors of sound change, given manners of how words have become homonyms in the sound system like in the cases of those same M words originated from the same MC sources that still retain distinct sounds in SV and match the phonological spelling scribes in the "Kangxi Zidian". For instance, one morpheme "yi" [i] (pronounced with four different tones in M) has the SV equivalents of nhất, nghĩa, nghệ, ngãi, nghị, y, dịch, dị, dĩ,, etc., 一, 義, 藝, 議, 醫, 易, 異, 以, respectively, and so on.
Etymologically, inside the C system itself many sound changes are easy to see if we compare them with the MC and OC sound systems. Let’s take the first two of the above for illustration,
- nhất 一 yì [i4] (one) [ M 一 yì < MC ʔjit < OC *ʔit < PC **ʔɨt (~ɠ-) | MC reading 臻開三入質影 | FQ 於悉 ] that has given rise to SV "nhất", and
- nghĩa ~ ngãi 義 which correspondends to "yì [i4]" (righteousness) [ M 義 yì < MC ŋɜ < OC *ŋajs | According to Starostin: be right, righteous, proper. A derivate from 宜 *ŋaj q.v. Viet. nghĩa is a rather archaic reading (preserving the late Han-time a-vocalism, but having already lost the final *-j), but is accepted as standard Sino-Viet. For *ŋ- cf. Chaozhou ŋi4, Fuzhou ŋie6 ].
Linguistic literature is full of cases of radical changes like those. "Loss of segments is an almost commonplace kind of historical development: Greek lost its final stops, Germanic lost word-final consonants and vowels under certain conditions". (King, 1969, pp. 109, 111) Here we have concrete cases of loss in M which are so apparent and well-documented. We are not going to discuss that complicated process here but just simply state that this sound change to [i] each as cited above is the result of the drops of the initial and ending of an ancient sound during the process of diachronic sound changes (Well, that the process could be synchronic, if there are not enough supporting proofs from ancient C rhyming books to demonstrate their gradual changes, will result in the same changing patterns anyway.) From the early centuries of the last millenium until the end of nearly 100 year Mongolian ruling of China in the 14th century, M had been in close contact with the Kims, Tartars, Mongolian – and later on the Manchurians who had ruled the whole China from the 16th century to early 20th century – and their languages, the language of conquerers of the China's vast northern heartland, for over 1000 years as described previously. Undoubtedly their northern non-Han speeches must have left remarkable impact on MC and earlier stages of Early Mandarin (EM) to have caused changes in terms of contraction, ommission, corruption, loss, or drops of sound of their intials, medials, endings, or combinations of any of them in its lexemes as we see it today (Bo Yang, 1983, and Zhou, 1991). Even though it appears straightforward enough to draw patterns of sound changes when all the ancient and contemporary sounds are all listed for comparison with lexico-statistical methodology, being able to painstakingly do so systematically is not always the case because in many circumstances it is kind of brain-taxing to comprehend why and how the sound changes have actually occurred, for example, 'học' [hɔkʷ] (study) is derived from [howk], which fits into the continuum of phonological sound change diachronically leading to the M reading of [sye2]:
- 學 xué < xia < /xjaw/ (EM) < ha:wk (MC) < OC *ɣɶ:kʷ (the sound change rule for the ending sound /-kʷ/ is { -k :-kw/w }, that is, -k, when conditioned by -w-, will become -kʷ) [ According to Starostin: MC ɣạuk < OC *ghrūk | Pulleyblank : LM xɦja:wk < EM ɣaɨwk / ɣɶ:wk ]. Somewhere along the line { ha:wk (MC) < ha:wk (EMC) *ɣɶ:kʷ } had evolved the [howk], then [hɔkʷ], and that must have occurred during the period of Early Middle Chinese (EMC) for the final [-kʷ].
- khóc 哭 [k'ɔkʷ] 'cry' had been gone through a similar processs which left traces in SV khốc [k'okʷ] < khấp [k'ʌp] (<= k'a:wk (MC ) < *k'avkʷ) [ According to Starostin: M 哭 kù < MC khuk < OC *kho:k | MC reading 通合一入屋溪 | VS 'khóc' <= /kɔkʷ/ ~ /kokʷ/ khốc ~ AC *ka:wk < PC **kavkʷ | dialects: Yangzhou: khɔʔ 4, Suzhou khoʔ41, Shuangfeng: khjəu12, Nanchang khuk41, Meixian: khuk41, Cant. huk41 ~ ham, Amoy khʔk41, Chaozhou khok41, Fuzhou khouʔ41, Shanghai khoʔ4 ].
Similarly, we can see that
In any measures, sound changes are so dynamic and diversed that they have also had great effects on whole sound strings comprised of multiple syllables, not just been limited to the initial, medial, or final of one syllable, as we have seen in the cases of dissyllabic forms in some of the examples above. Moreover, one of the most striking feature in the rule of syntactical change from C into V to fit the speech habit of the V speakers is the reverse order of the word structure of a compound word, mirroring the noun + adjective order (existing in OC grammar), in which the second word is often the modifier of the first one as opposed to that of modern C (adjective + noun). This phenomenon has had a great effect on forming the order of dissyllabic formation, i.e., which syllable should go first. Since certain dissyllabic words, mostly loanwords, as such being composed of those two originally lexical elements, when they were introduced into the borrowing language such syntactical order might change to fit local grammar owing to the looseness of those syllabic forms. That might have been the case of mass borrowings of both literary and spoken words at the time that the final and stablized lexical form for a specific word was still on the becoming, which can be found plentiful for those words originated from MC of the Tang Dynassty.
Apparently, one of the logical results of this dissyllabic treatment, that is, when needed, or make a best guess for an etymon under investigation, always remember to reverse the order of the syllables in the dissyllabic formation when in doubt or still speculating. This trick will solidly give us many plausible words cognate to those of C, for example,
- bắtnạt #欺負 qīfù 'bully' (SV khiphụ) [ plausibly, 欺 for 'nạt', 負 'bắt' ],
- thầymô #巫師 wūshī 'sorcerer' (SV usư) [ also, ~ > phùthuỷ | 巫 wū 'mô', 'phù', 師 shī 'thầy', 'thuỷ' ],
- khônlanh #精巧 jīngqiáo 'witty' (SV tinhxảo) [ 精 jīng 'lanh', 巧 qiáo 'khôn'],
- bàxã #媳婦 xífù 'wife' [ 媳 xí 'xã', 婦 fù 'bà'],
- ôngxã #相公 xiànggōng 'husband' (SV tướngcông) [ 相 xiàng 'xã', 公 gōng 'ông' ],
- ôngchủ #主公 zhǔgōng 'master' (SV chúacông) [ 公 gōng 'ông' ],
- hồnthiêng #靈魂 línghún 'spirit' (SV linhhồn) [ 靈 líng 'thiêng', 魂 hún 'hồn'],
- nonsông #江山 jiāngshān 'nation' (SV giangsơn) [ 江 jiāng 'sông', 山 shān 'non', hence, 'sôngnúi' ],
- yêuthương #疼愛 téng'ài 'love' (SV đôngái) [ 疼 téng 'thương', 愛 ài 'yêu' ],
- đườngcái #街道 jièdào 'road' (SV cáiđạo) [ 街 jiè 'cái', 道 dào 'đường', also: 'đườngxá' ],
- phốchợ #市舖 shìpū 'market'' (SV thịphố) [市 shì 'chợ', 舖 pū 'phố', also 'chợbúa' ], etc.,
and many other polysyllabic words cited as examples throughout this paper.
All of the above characterize conceptually and metaphorically of what, except for the true meaning of the concepts lexemic idiom and lexeme that Makkai uses to refer to for the idiomatic meanings of "Emperor of Japan, old wife, hot potatoes, and red herring" (the first two being fish names, and the last two for 'embarassment' and 'phony', respectively), is described in Addam Makkai's "Pragmo-Ecological Grammar (PEG): Toward a New Synthesis of Linguistics and Anthropology" in Proceedings of the IXth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographic Sciences: 327-61, Mouton, The Hague, Sol Tax (General Ed.), Approaches to Language" (William McCormack & Stephen Wurm [Eds.] ), 1978 (p. 346).
"[..]the participant morphemes once had (and in other environments still have) separate lexemic status with separate sememic realizates, and this past (or elsewhere still active) meanings have a definite shining-through effect, suffusing the meaning of these lexemic idioms with the old, supressed, literal meanings. The denotatum in each case is primary or lexical meaning, and the TRANSLUCENT CONNOTATUM is the original literal meaning of the form. What makes lexical idioms unusual is that they, therefore, have two meanings silmultaneously, i.e. the REFLECTING DENOTATUM together wither meaning TRANSLUCENT CONNOTATUM. Whether the language has a heavy morpheme reinvestment ratio or not in its lexeme inventory becomes an interesting typological question, but there is little doubt that there are any real languages that do not somehow utilize morpheme reinvestment in the building of new lexemes. "
In our enumeration and elaboration as emphasized all along, we have learned a thing or two from the dissyllabic approach without which many V words have slipped out of attention of many scholars. You will learn how to derive those V words from the C equivalents the same way as I have done in section "VI) A case study worksheet".
The renewed recognition of the true dissyllabic, or polysyllabic for that matter, nature of the V language sets forth a new approach to the study of V etymology since many peculiar sound changes of words from C to V occurred only in that condition. This new approach is a new treatment that has been long overdue because of a deeply-rooted wrong notion of monosyllabics of V. (雙)
(交)Review of my XYZ racial formulary: symbolistically the proportion of racial transmutation could be a formulated for the Viets by assigning some weights 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) (See Chapter 2: B) Rainwash on the Austroasiatic Western front).
(美) See my "On the Origin of the Vietnamese People" in V, Appendix H.
(英) That is metaphorically comparable to elaborating on China's Simplified C vs. Tradional C, along with Pinyin vs. Zhuyin transcribing systems being in use in Hong Kong or Taiwan or, analogously, cf. 面 miàn (face, noodle, wheat) for 麵 miàn (noodle, wheat) vs. the derivivatives in VS 'mặt' (SV 'diện') and 'mì' (SV 'miến'), repectively, a big difference, so to speak.
(文)A good examples is from "Bình Ngô Đại Cáo Tân Thời" written in classical language with a modern context by author. It is a modern slanted version of the 'Vietnamese proclamation of independence from China' in 1428, Vietnam's Le Dynasty. You may want to read the full version of it in APPENDIX L or do a Google search to see how "nationalsm" and "politics" can obscure some good judgment:
"凭吾丑告: 女丑讨华, 占有千秋, 婆权成性, 历载叶千, 巨大无双, 蝴蝶婆脷, 汉和岭蛮, 缩头乌龟, 中擦外伤, 坏而恋战, 南越百族, 湖广七雒, 独吾健在, 雄居南方, 旗花移到, 吾邦挚友, 好客有方, 来者良家, 流氓勿忘, 白藤江待, 南刹西刹, 旗中无敌, 维我独尊, 骑越虎也, 上之毋下, 入生出死, 大鱼气小, 急吃豆腐, 九死一生, 贪食疾身, 女等欺人, 甚不可忍, 君子报仇, 十年不晚, 咱走着瞧, 霸权破脷, 惹火焚身, 九泉归依!" (Trâu Ơi Bố Bảo: Trâu số đạo hoa, ngàn lẻ thu qua, hay thói quyền bà, sửxanh ghichép, cụ đại vôsong, baybướm lưỡibò, hánhởmulạnh, đầurùa lấpló, trong sứt ngoài thoa, lâm chiến bại hoài. HồQuảng dù mất, NamViệt vẫncòn, Hùng cứ phươngnam, kỳhoa dịthảo, hữuhảo chi bang, chuộngchìu hiếukhách, nhàlành kếtmối, lưumanh chớhòng, Bạchđằng BểĐông, Trườngsa Hoàngsa, duyngãđộctôn, kỳ trung vô địch, cởi cọp Việtnam, lênvoixuốngchó, vàosinhratử, ỷlớnhiếpbé, nuốtxương mắccổ, dỡsốngdỡchết, thamthựccựcthân, lũbay bốláo, đắcchí tiểunhân, nhịn cũng vừa thôi, quântử ratay, bàihọc ngànnăm, tổcha tụibay, báquyền bảláp, rướchoạvàothân, ngậmngùi chínsuối !)
(南) Throughout this 72 volume chronological history of China from the Xia, Shang dynasties in early days of Chinese history to the Song Dynasty authored by the Song's 司馬光 Sīmă Guāng we can see an overall picture of popular exile regions: ancient Língnán 嶺南 region, or Nányuè State 南越, including today's Guangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Fujian provinces, part of Vietnam's northern territory, and China's province of Hainan Island. Interestingly, the exile factor, in fact, has been a recurring one dotting throughout Chinese history, even up to our modern time, e.g., June 1989's Tiananmen Square bloody event which had resulted in more than 50 thousand Chinese elites to have permanently resettled in the USA and some other western countries.
(門) If Vietnam could have not gained indepedence from China in the 9th century and were still a China's satelite state, protectorate, or province then our view now could have been completely different then, for example, the languages spoken by the Zhuang, Dai, Dong, Shui ethnic groups in today's southern China are all classed as of ST linguistic family, so would V.
(京) At the present time clashes between ethnic groups of Khmer descent and the Vietnamese, either implitcitly endorsed or expressly represented by their government, have driven many of those people out of their home into Cambodia where the racial tension has deteriorated into situations thereby we have seen hundreds of them to have been resettled en masse in the US in the early 2005.
(華) In fact, under the historical scope, one could hardly find any notable racial clashes, even minor ones, between the Vietnamese and Chinese (descendants of those late newcomers of just three or four generations versus those already racially integrated groups earlier) that could compatibly mirror the ethnic lynchings of the Chinese minorities to what has, time and time again, happened in other Southeast Asian countries such as the Phillipines, Malysia, or Indonesia throughout their contemporary history. If we take into account the events that had led the expulsion, or emmigration to be exact, of the Chinese minorities – that is, those recent immigrants in terms of a time span of one hundred years or less, otherwise they all certainly having already become Vietnamese – out of the country recently in our time (1979-1980), we can clearly see that act was obviously politically motivated by the ruling communist government in light of the socialist revolution after Vietnam was unified in April 1975 and later by the Sino-Vietnamese conflicts in the late 1970's.
(苦) Vietnamese "cay" is 苦 kǔ (khổ), which pairs with 辛 qīn (SV tân) to give rise to "cayđắng" ~ 辛苦 qīnkǔ (tânkhổ) 'difficult, hardship'. Viet 'cay' originated from M 苦 kǔ. [ M 苦 kǔ < MC khɔ < OC *kha:ʔ | FQ 康杜 | According to Starostin: be bitter. Also used for a homonymous *kha:? 'sow-thistle' (Sonchus oleraceus?). Viet.'khó' is colloquial (used only in the sense '(bitter) < hard, difficult' - existing also in Chinese); regular Sino-Viet. is khổ.] Modern M 'spicy hot' is 辣 là (lạt) whereas 苦 kǔ (khổ) is 'cay' in Viet. In archaic C 辣 là is Viet. 'lạt' or 'insipid, not salted' [ M 辣 là < MC ra:t < OC *lat | FQ 盧達 | According to Starostin: bitter, not sweet (Tang). In Viet. cf. also nhạt 'insipid, not salted' (written with the same character and possibly a colloquial loan from the same source - although nasalisation is not clear). For *r- cf. Min forms: Xiamen luat8, lua?8, Chaozhou la?8, Fuzhou lak8, Jianou luoi8, Jianyang lue8, Shaowu lai6. For C 辛 xīn ('bitter', SV tân) it is V 'đắng'. | M 辛 xīn < MC sjin < sin | MC reading 臻開三平真心 | According to Starostin, it is used also for a homonymous *sin 'be bitter, pungent, painful'. This semantic shifting phenomenon is common in historical linguistics, especially for those of proto- or archaic roots. ]
- đầugối #膝蓋 xìgài ‘knee’ ,
- mắccá 踝節 guǒjié ‘ankle’ [ Also: 踝骨 guǒgǔ ],
- bảvai #肩膀 jiānbăng'shoulders',
- cùichỏ 手肘 shǒuzhǒu ’elbow’,
- màngtang 太陽穴 tàiyángxué ‘temple’,
- mỏác #囟門 xìnmén 'fontanel’,
- chânmày 眉尖 méijiān ‘eyebrow’
- càunhàu 僝僽 chánzhòu ‘growl’,
- cằnnhằn 埋怨 mányuàn ‘grumble’,
- bângkhuâng 彷徨 pánghuáng ‘pensive’,
- bồihồi 徘徊 páihuái ‘melancholy’,
- mồhôi 冒汗 màohàn 'sweat',
- mồcôi 無根 wúgēn‘orphan’,
- hàilòng 開心 kāixīn 'pleased',
- taitiếng 丟臉 dìuliăn ‘infaous’,
- tạmbợ 暫時 zànshí ‘temporary’,
- tráchmóc 折磨 zhémó ‘reproach’,
- tuyệtvời 絕妙 juémiào ‘wonderful’,
- tămhơi 音信 yīnxìn 'whereabouts'.
- cườimĩmchi 笑眯眯 xiàomīmī 'crack a smile',
- tủmtỉmcười 偷偷笑 tòutòuxiào 'hide a smile'
- mêtítthòlò 迷離糊塗 mílíhútú ‘irresistable’,
- nhảyđồngđổng #蹦蹦跳 'jump up in protest' ,
- bađồngbảyđổi 說三道四 shuōsāndàosì ‘unpredictably’,
- lộntùngphèo ® 亂七八糟 luànqibāzao ‘upside down’,
- tuyệtcúmèo ® 妙不可言 miàobùkěyán ‘fabulous’,
- hằnghàsasố 恆河沙數 hénghéshāshù ‘innumerable’,
- hiệndiện 現面 xiànmiàn ‘presence’ ,
- phụnữ 婦女 fùnǚ‘woman’,
- sơnhà 山河 shānhé ‘country’,
dissyllabics:
polysyllabics:
and sure SV equivalalents:
(雙) Once the dissyllabic nature of V is reckoned, one cannot but logically accept a new way of writing V orthography (to be called Việtngữ 2020 or Vietnamese2020 as being discussed in details in Vietnamese2020 Writing Reform Proposal) That is what I have done purposely with all V dissyllabic words in this paper. In summary, the logics behind this is that many of these words may not be separated into isolated syllables because each of these syllables functions like a bound morpheme, or composite morph, which must go with other syllables to make a complete word as illustrated in many examples throughout this paper. It is hoped that this new polysyllabic orthography will be the right way to write V and widely adopted in our lifetime.
ā ē ě ī ǐ ă ō ǒ ū ǔ ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ ü û ɔ ɑ ɪ ɛ ɤ ə¯ ŋ ɯ ɪ ʔ ʃ ö ä ü ɐ ɒ æ χ ɓ ɗ ɖ ɱ ʿ ʾ θ ñ ŕ ţ ť tś ı ć ¢ ď Ā ź dź ƫ ć ń ç ď ş ŗ ż ſ ņ ʷ ɲ ʈ ɫ ɬ ʈ ƫ ʐ ɣ Ś ¯¯ ¯ ˉ
