What Makes Vietnamese So Chinese?

What Makes Vietnamese So Chinese?
An Introduction to Sinitic-Vietnamese Studies

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(Continued)

II) THE CHINESE CONNECTION

The section below depicts an overall picture of C immigrants' full integration into V society since the ancient times, which will help explain why there exist so many C words in the V language, including numerous basic vocabulary items. It is an attempt to explain the reasons that underline the similarities between the two languages where contemporary V carries virtually most of the traits and peculiarities of the C language, spreading in many C dialects, that should place V on par with other languages in the ST linguistic family, just like those languages spoken the Zhuang or Dai minority groups in Southern China, or even Cantonese, of which prominent the Han elements are dominating having been built on the ancestral forms similar to what were once spoken by the ancestors of today's Zhuang people 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.)

The purpose of this discussion, in any cases, is not to draw direct genetic linguistic affinity of V and C but to demonstrate their linked kinship for all linguistic traits and a vast vocabulary items they are knittedly sharing because the task of proving a genetic relationship between the two is tantamount and its final work still will not give definite answers in a well-defined manner or result in significant changes in today's linguistic circles' aptitude of current affairs, which usually takes 50 years years so as the norm, and could only lead to more hinderances to acceptance of what is being discussed in this paper, to which I wish to see responses in my lifetime.

For such reason, for their "linked kinship", as the meaning of this term being conveyed in itself, we could only sort out their mystic entanglement and puzzling interrelationship with a few findings scarcely available at our disposal so far. The whole picture of the core matter from the start has been presented to us in this case, literally, is exactly repetitions of some conclusion from one linguist after another, just like retouches of an old and faded painting. That is, artistically, in the same manner as we would try to restore and rebuild resconstructive details from the same old restored painting, we shall first try to sketch the whole picture based solely on revealing transient shades of diminishing colors overlapping each other that try to convey to us hypothetically pseudo-historical anecdotes of the bygones: "More than three thousand years ago the mother proto-Taic had given birth to one hundred children, the BaiYue, of whom fifty were married to the orphans of the formerly powerful Shang family, long separated from the Tibetan root, and founded the Zhou Kingdom and gave birth to the Qin which were later married to the Han who forced the Chu to become his concubine..., and then when they were fighting, some fled south to join others of their long lost cousins, who were later called individually by the name Yue 粵, XiYue 西越, LuoYue 駱越, OuYue 毆越, MinYue 閩越, YueChang 越常... all with their rightful states. All together they have evolved into minority groups at present day called the Dai, the Zhuang, the Yao, the Miao, the Mon.. and all being lumped together and known as the Austroasiatic stock by western anthropologists. They are descendants of the other fifty children who had gone there in the earlier breakups 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 Trieu Da (趙陀 Zhao Tuo) who had formed the NamViet nation which later was conquered and annexed to the greater empire of the Han Dynasty and a part of it became Annam Protectorate (Annam Dohophu 安南都護府). In Annam the Vietmuong groups, descendents of the LuoYue, further broke up and thier speakers had formed, linguistically, the proto-Vietic speech, spoken by those who chose to stay behind under the ruling umbrella of the Han Dynasty, and the proto-Muong linguistic form preserved by those who fled into the remote mountainous areas. The former, having endured further the imposition of the Han's culture and language, had absorbed and blended itself with the Han dialectal form known as the Ancient Chinese, gradually and continually penetrated deeply into the Vietic linguistic form, or early Annamese, which undoubtedly was the ancestral language of today's Vietnamese.

So to speak, the "linked kinship" between the C and V language s was dated back not only from the periods of the Zhou Dynasty, of which proto-Taic remnants had scattered and merged in 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, the newly mixed race of Annamese starting from the Han time. That is how V has anything to do with the ST linguistic family from ancient times since the pre-Sinitic linguistic form encountered the proto-Taic elements onward. We will discuss those descriptive details again becuase it is an important point in V and C relationship along with other historical facts of more than 1000 year domination of the ancient land of Vietnam by the Chinese.

A) Hypothesis of Chinese origin of Vietnamese

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).

Historically, the fact that Vietnam had gone though a millennium of Chinese domination, from 111 BC to 936 AD, not to mention short intervals of other Chinese invasions long after that until the end of the 19th century, is enough to ascertain the active linguistic roles that had facilitated the integration of AC words into, supposedly, the proto-Vietic (PV) speech. In its evolution such earlier form of the V language had absorbed thousands of them from ancient to contemporary and dialectal variations of the early C language (as usual, to be mentioned only as "Chinese" in this general context throughout this paper) in different historical stages, from the early Han to the end of the Tang Dynasty, by way of both borrowing and localizing a great number of C vocabulary items. Many AC lexicons in V since then had undergone a great deal of sound changes in colloquial speech, probably a form of pidginization of a C vernecular linga-franca, throughout the ages, mostly without recorded local phonetic transcriptions before the emergence of the Nôm characters (details below), and they 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 sound changes have slowed down considerably since the adaption of Romanized V writing system in the early twentieth century and as of today that is due to the wide spead of distributed information in electronic format.

Linguistically, factors of waves after waves of Chinese immigrants from China could also greatly accounted as direct result for their bringing C vernacular linguistic influence into 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 mentioned previously, has been a mixture of Chinese immigrants from further northern China with one of the local Yuè 粵 (or 越, Yue, Yueh) of the larger tribal groups of BaiYue 百越 or BáchViệt, whose descendants, being known as the Dai 傣 ("Tày"), Máonán 毛南, Zhuāng 莊 ("Nùng"), Tóng 垌 Shuǐ 水, and many others, diverged from an earlier stock of proto-Taic people as previously mentioned. Periods prior to 3 millennia B.C. the proto-Taic people had been the masters of those vast southern regions, embracing today's China's provinces including those of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Fujian, and Guangdong, stretching from both of the banks of the Yangtze River 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 generations later made up the Chinese and other ethnic minorities still living there nowadays.

Long after having emerged from the proto-Taic groups toward the end of the Zhou Dynasty many tribal groups of the BaiYue were constantly on the move southwards. Archaeological findings in the last five decades reveal 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 "Chinese" people prior to their nation's expansion to the far south, as early as 4000 years ago (Shifan Peng, 1987). Descendants of those earlier northerners might have later become subjects of the Qin State, a powerful one among six other ancient states during the Warring Period after the decline of the Zhou Dynasty. Portions of all other tribal groups living within those states, for various reasons that they could have not been able to protect their farming land and adapt the early Chinese culture, ran away from the advancing force of a much more powerful people from a newly unified Qin Empire. Those who fled to the south were undoubtedly ancestors of the so-called proto-Austroasiatic peoples whose variant speeches had eventually formed the Austroasiatic linguistic family in the farther vast southern regions as now classed by other modern western scholars.

In a later development starting from the Han Dynasty, during the span of one thousand years of Chinese domination of ancient state of Vietnam before her independence from the Tang Dynasty in 936 AD, from where is now known as China more immigrants from north and south, just like their predecessors, generally, had been of a mixture of poor peasants fleeing from ravaging wars and hunger back home, exhausted long-march soldiers on endlessly conquering and pacifying missions, and a great number of disgraced political exiles along with their accompanied family purged and punished by temperamental dynasties that they had served (Bo Yang. 1983-1993. Zī Zhì Tōngjiàn) (1) Many of them, probably mostly men, had chosen to settle in places of where today's Vietnam's northern territories are. Most of them might have been married into indigenous families and they never returned to their homeland. Over the years and many generations later they had been totally assimilated into the newly emerged Annamese society by having blended within the dominant ethnic group later identified as "Kinh", or "Annamese". At the same time, 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) or Cantonese groups -- which continued injecting their fresh colloquial elements into the local speech in their new resettlement in addition the the prestigious Mandarin spoken at the ruling courts. This assimilation process must 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 before the Chinese expansion to the south.) These gradualness and majority factors help explain why today's V could not be considered as a C dialect of the same nature as Cant. or Fukienese (Amoy) since it demonstrates clearly an outstanding local grammatical order, prominently and dominantly, that is, adjectives being placed after nouns. This grammatical characteristic had certainly been 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(2).

On becoming a majority, the new racially mixed populace later called themselves "NgườiKinh", or the Kinh, (literally meaning "the metropolitans"), whose dominant presence and establishments along the Red River's Delta and low fertile plains along the eastern coastline had further pushed and displaced indegenous stocks, believed to have spoken MK languages, among other languages of Daic origin as spoken by 1.2 million of Tay and other ethnic groups living in the northern parts of today's Vietnam, farther into remote high plateaus in western mountainous ranges. Those tribal groups later on practically became minorities in their own ancestral land(3). 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 badly treated with such a harsh way while the much later 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 (4). This fact mentioned here is only to reinforce the idea that all Chinese immigrants who came to this nation would eventually become native in a span of time as short as within three generations -- many living Vietnamese could be your active informants of this subtle fact. It is so due to the cultural factors that easily submerge the Chinese newcomers into the melting pot that readily to welcome those new arrivals of the same Confucian culture. Also so partially linguistic similarities facilitate the assimilation process at a faster pace. As we can see the same process could hardly take place in those countries where Austroasiatic or Autronesian languages are spoken. Statistics of the so-called overseas Chinese in those countries in the Southeast Asian regions point to that fact very clearly, i.e., percentage of Chinese minority is significantly higher than that of Vietnam of a little more than 1% (as of 2009). Where are those earlier Chinese immigrants now. They have already become part of the Vietnam's Kinh population.

Historically the Kinh people had continued to expand vigorously and moved further to the south away from the confined regions around today's Vietnam's Red River's ancient fertile delta. Archaeologically excavated evidences found there now include all bronze drums, which had long been forgotten lying deeply in the earth, bearing similar decorating carving of cultural motifs such as wooden boats and long feather birds, etc., similarly as those appear on the bronze drums of the Zhuang ("Nùng"), the largest ethnic goup with a population of more than 20 million people in China's southern Guangxi Autonomous Administrative Region. Contrary to the fact that while the fate of their siblings' bronze drums buried dead and forgotten in the Vietnam's soil, those same type of bronze drums have been continuously used by the contemporary Zhuang descendants of their ancestral creators as culturally and ritually ceremonial objects since ancient times until the present time. As a matter of fact, we can assume that self-claimed descendents of the masters of the Dongson's and Hoabinh's bronze drums, who must have been genetically related to those of the Zhuang, and, for some hundred years later after mixed up with other indegenous peoples -- including those later who had become Austroasiatic and Austronesian groups -- and the later Chinese immigrants, have completely forgotten the technology of how to make those drums. 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 had 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 belonged 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 reasons, any other claims appear irrelevant, amusingly enough, with the same statement that artifact findings excavated in the much farther southern parts of today's Vietnam's territories also belonged to the "Vietnamese ancestors". It is simply because no Vietnamese "ancestors" had ever been existant in those streches of land which have been only annexed to the "Vietnam" nation as lately as five centuries ago after further expansion of the Vietnam's empire into the south when its southern neighbors had been weak from the start of the 12th century. In fact, it was only from that period the Vietnamese people have begun emmigrating en masse to have crossed far beyond the province of Thuanhoa, where many centuries later the Capital Hue was established, and continued to expand all the way to the southern tip of Camau Province and, literally, kept stretching out into the Gulf of Cambodia and Thailand. Of those pieces of annexed land that formerly used to be parts of the now extinct Cham, Funan, and later Khmer Kingdoms, whatever remains today belongs to the nation of Cambodia.

This hypothesis of the Chinese racial integration into the Vietnamese society, rather controversial though, where there existed already racially mixed groups of diffrent peoples of the ancient Yues, former Chinese immigrants, and aboriginals dated back from ancient times, will shed lights on the physical traits of the populace living in the far northern part of Vietnam who look much more like Chinese than those of the indigenous people or those of Polynesian and Malay (of the Austronesian stock) or of the Mon-Khmer descents (of the Austroasiatic stock). The melting pot ideas can also be used to explain why all Vietnamese carry Chinese surnames, and, geographically, that is also the reason why virtually almost all the place names where those earlier settlers and the Kinh have ever lived bear all the names of those places in China, eg., Hànam 'Henan', Hàbắc 'Hebei', Sơntây 'Shanxi', Hànội 'Henei', Tháinguyên 'Taiyuan', Quảngnam (or 'Guangnan' as opposed to Guangdong and Guangxi), Bắcninh or Tâyninh (or 'Beining' and "Xining" as opposed to Nanning), and so on (just like the English geographical names in existence in the US east coast.)

To prove this hypothesis we will face the problem that the historical records the Vietnamese are still having are dated only from the 10th century until now and they do not cover that. Any anthrologists who wish to study the origin of the Vietnamese people, must dig into Chinese ancient records to find out. As a result we are back to the square one where we have started with our biological traits and the language itself to fondle. Anthropologically, hopefully, in the near future new DNA bio-technology will certainly help anthropologists discover more scientific facts about the Vietnamese people's biological composition. 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.

How do we build that linguistic hypothesis? 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 mutationally mixed race theory of the Vietnamese is highly plausible if we compare that to the hypothesis based on the fact that in Vietnam's recent history from 1965 to 1975, the presence of Americans soldiers on the Vietnam's soil had produced nearly 50 thousand Amerasians mothered by Vietnamese women in 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 Spaniards and their influence of less than 300 years of colonization which make up the peoples currently living in all the South America's countries.

In the case of Vietnam, while most previous Chinese immigrants have successfully blended themselves into the general local population, many of the more recent ones from Guangdong (Canton), Fujian (Fukien), and other parts of China's southern provinces who had migrated to Vietnam later for the last past four hundred years, especially since the fall of the Chinese Ming Dynasty, might have still remained distinctively 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 persons will be still able to tell you how they bear a Vietnamese version of their Chinese last names. (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 invading forces 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... had long been considered as a protectorate or prefecture of China. Inevitably, the Chinese influence had gradually 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 scholarly vocabulary stock, which have been used by the Vietnamese widely in all walks of daily life up to the present time.

Indeed, the becoming of Vietnam and her people along with their language is manifested with archaeological and historical facts that characteristically are similar to other anthropological deverlopments in other places in the world. In modern time, again, look at the Spanish influence that exist in those Latin nations and you will see clearly the parallel development. Even 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" back in time into the scenario of Vietnam's 2nd century historical setting and assume that it had survived until this day as an independent nation, we will understand this matter better by imagining how it would become today and how enormous the influence that the mainland's Chinese have asserted onto the approximately 25 million people living on this island linguistically. This Taiwan's analogy is helpful for us to picture how the Sinicization of the then Vietnam would have come about during a time span of 1000 years of Chinese colonization and why she had 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 invading armies, amounting to hundred of thousands in numbers, having continuously advanced southwards since the Han Dynasty from the 2nd century B.C. onward.

In the course of this historical development, this linguistic adoption process, that had naturally taken place long before and after Vietnam's having victoriously gained independence from China in the tenth century, kept going on under the influence of Chinese even until this day. In fact Vietnam had voluntarily adopted the C writing system in full at first as the official written language of the land. That is what I called "self-inflicted sinicization" and it also includes other aspects of cultural values such as Confucianism, Taoism, and even Buddhism. In a later development, the creation of Nôm characters based on C ideographic block writing system with modifications had been put into unofficial use in Nôm literature until the end of the 19th century. 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 they are core matter of the V etymology.

B) Core matter of Vietnamese etymology

Cao Xuân Hạo (2001), a 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 is the same 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, linguistic essence in existence that makes up the whole body of a language is what that matters the most. In V the C elements is its soul and substance. We cannot solely base on cases of isolated basic words of MK cognates, as many specialists in this field have done previously, to paint a picture that the V speak a MK language then borrow the C vocabularies and their tones to make up for their defficiency -- just like the fact that the Japanese and Koreans have done the same with the C lexicons but could not accomodate their tones due to the inhibition of intrinsic structure of their languages -- since doing so those baisc MK cognates were mostly taken out of the context of the language as a whole and that makes the whole language out of balance for the reason that that many of those C cognates are in basic realm, too.

Etymology involves a lot of other factors much more significant than being limited to a fractional share of tiny basic stock to reach such a hastening conclusion. Deaparting from conventional wisdom we can say that, using the influential factor to analyze , languages of the MK origin could have also borrowed many words from V the same way V has done so from C. Mostly, according to the same old widom, the most advanced and powerful people are likely to influence the least developed ones. Unfortunately, until these days specialists of V always think that those basic V words must have been from a MK source or any other ones, including those in C as many having been exposed in the last five decades, but not the other way around, whenever any words were found being cognate to those of MK. Actually, they behave that way for a good reason: the implit concensus that V has been formed from other sources and never been the origin to divert and evolve into other languages. Those linguists who enter lately into this field of research usually follow footsteps and take opinions of preceding pioneers and then start or expand their work from there. That is not the only way research for V etymology and it be done differently with new approach and perspective. I, from beginning, have questioned their mastery level of related languages, especially those linguists who rely much on data provided by informants or interpreters. I start my own approaches and do not pretend to know any of the MK languages. Importantly I do feel competent with the related C linguistic matters and reach may own conclusions from there.

Again, 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 a new approach to help find the etymology of thousands of V words of C origin. That approach 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.

C is a language belonging to the ST linguistic family. Could V have been also a language descended from the same root if most of its words are proved to be of C origin? If many of those proven lexicons are the most basic ones, usually about 200 items, are, it is reckoned that, as a rule of thumb in historical linguistics, they could not be considered as loanwords but must be cognates originated from the same source. That is possible given theories about the proto-Taic elements and the pre-Sinitic forms that they all were in contact some time during 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, however, those V linguists in the MK camp will raise their eyebrows and come to the offensive line on all fronts. Of course, this is indeed a controversially interesting topic that needs to be re-examined with further research in order to re-establish that long old reckoned connection which I called the linked kinship.

I myself believe that it should be so because, again, in addition to sharing most of the basic lexical items and further more beyond, the two languages are also embedded to the bone with most of the linguistic attributes and traits, including those subtle unique characteristics that only exist in C and V, as follows (many more examples and elaborations will be provided 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 that fits perfectly into the MC two-registered tonal scheme where one can still recite Tang's poems which fit perfectly into the strict schemes of tonal rules and rhyming syllabic finals. Mandarin nowsaday only retain 4 tones but the tonal registered values are almost the same for words in both M and V, so are other C dialects, especially those of Minnan and Cantonese, both with 7 to 10 tones, e.g. M mā, má, mă, má compared with ma, mả, mà, má, plus 6 additional tones in Cant. maa, maah, mahk, mak, mahp, map, cf. mạ, mã, mạc, mác, mạp, máp, etc. Interestingly enough, the same 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 S+V+O 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' ("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 quađây mời khách' 把水果帶過來請客 Bă shuǐguǒ dāi guòlái qǐngkè ("Bring the fruits 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, and not to mention possible omission of subject or object when either one is implied in a sentence, etc. Linguists must know best how important this linguistic structure is when looking for commonalities in languages of the same family.
"isolate" construction : C and V both do not have inflectional words to play the role of grammatical functions word order like those of most 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 simpy 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. In the meanwhile it appears that elements of morphemic syllable for word building structurally sometimes could be treated as 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. they are all the same in both languages since V simply uses C material to build the same vocabulary items of identical characteristic connotation.
syllabic structure: basic lexical building block is constructed with the pattern initial + middle + final, mostly with the pattern of CVC, characerized by dominant consonantal-initialed leading 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: 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: majority of vocabularies consists of mostly two-syllable words, such as siêngnăng 勤勉 qínmiăn 'industrious', nonsông 江山 jiāngshān 'nation', ánhmắt 目光 mùguāng 'the look', ánhnắng 陽光 yángguāng 'sun rays', giàucó 富有 fùyǒu 'wealthy'...), etc. and many of them are unique 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 '(under the) countryside', đoáhoa 花朵 huāduǒ '(a stem of) flower', etc.
syllabic morphemes to build compounds: 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'... , in which each morphemic syllable is wholly or partially independent of the senantic bound of the original meaning of the root.
synonymous compounds: in V and C, homonyms in monosyllabic word are in large amounts. To avoid that ambiguity problem compounds have been formed by combining two symnonymous monosyllabic words, e.g., đấtđai 土地 tǔdì 'land', thươngyêu 疼愛 téngài 'affection', buồnrầu 愁悶 chóumèn 'sorrowful', tìmkiếm 尋找 xúnzăo 'search', chimchóc 禽雀 qínquè 'birds'... 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 'height', trêndưới 上下 shàngxià, cayđắng 辛苦 xīnkǔ 'bitterly'.
dialectal, colloquial, and idiomatic expressions: 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 'invariably', tấtcả 大家 dàjiā 'all', 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 remembering its source', lárụngvềcội 葉落歸根 yèluòguīgēn 'a leaf falls to its tree root', ếchngồiđáygiếng 井蛙之見 jǐngwòzhījiàn 'shortsighted', etc.
classifiers and their fonction 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, same usages in both C vand V, e.g., cái 個 gè 'set', chiếc 隻 zhī 'piece', đôi 對 duì 'pair', con, 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, 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'), etc.
functional words: all prepositions and conjunctions are completely the same in both languages, such as, 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', etc.
grammatical markers: they are words used to fulfill the grammatical funtion that frames or fossilizes string of of fixed words or expressions, with many becoming stand-alone words stately, for 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 'prepared and reasdy', cáigọilà 所謂 suǒwéi 'the so-called', "cái tôi có" 我所有 wǒ suǒ yǒu, cái việc nó làm 他所作所爲 tā suǒ zuò suǒ wéi, 借問白頭翁,垂綸幾世也 Jiē wèn báitóuwēng, chuí lún jǐ shì yě ? "Xin hỏi ônglão này, thả câu được mấy đời nhỉ?", "ởtrong" 其中 qízhong 'among', "cáikhác" 其他 qíta 'other', etc.

In other words, one can almost translate word by word from one language to another which mirrors each other with the same texture and textual connotation that are fabricated in either one. Analytically, those lexical features are something so linguistically unique and peculiar to only languages of close affiliation that share the same linguistic traits, not to mention caltural 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. Comparison of Cant. and M along with the composition of the population of speakers of those two "languages" -- both being two C dialects descended from an encestral "Chinese" spoken by the "Chinese" -- will support this argument profoundly. For instance, Cant. common vocabulary items of basic layer obviously deviate somewhat from those of M while in V they somehow are on par even with those basic "Chinese" vocabulary items in both dialects which are still widely in active usage today, e.g.,

Cant. /pintouh/ 'where' as opposed to M náli 那裏 (cf. VS nơiđâu, đâunào) [ SV nalí | nơiấy <~ nơiđấy <~ nơiđó, % @ # M 那裏 nàli (nalí) | M 那 nà, nuó <MC nʌ <OC ɲa:r | ¶ n- ~ đ-, x. đó, đấy || M 裡 lǐ <MC lɨ <OC rhǝʔ | FQ 良士 | cf. V Huế dialect: 'nớ' ],
Cant. /fajŋ/ 'sleep' as opposed to M shuìjiào 睡覺 VS # 'giấcngủ' (cf. 睡去 qù shuì: đingủ) [ SV thuỵgiác | @ # M 睡覺 shuìjiào \ @ 覺 jiào ~ giấc, @ & 睡 shuì ~ ngủ 臥 wuò (ngoạ) | M 睡 shuì < MC ʑwɜ < OC *dhojs || M 覺 jué, jiào < MC kauk < OC *kru:k ],
Cant. /jəm/ as opposed to M 喝 hè 'drink' (cf. VS uống) [ SV ẩm) | 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 , điỉa 拉屎 | 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). | However, 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. /kuj/ 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 ], etc.

As we can see so far the core matter of C and V etymology is rooted deeply in the realm of vocabularies, not grammar. The following illustrated examples demonstrate lexical transformation by means of semantic analogy approach. It can be used to find candidate patterns of sound changes of related words in addition to another dissyllabic sound change approach as to be discussed in detail later on. 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 restrictve 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 because of discrepancy in phonology, it, etymologically, 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 (5), etc.

At the same time, this approach is being in use in parallel with the 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 I believe that we will be able to find reliable traces of sound changes from C to VS in all possible venues and approaches, some of which, no matter how unconventional as they appear, have been in use by many specialists of V 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 system with names of related animals such as ngọ 午 wǔ 'ngựa' (horse), hợi 亥 hài 'heo' (pig), or some other reasonable way to relate SV and VS words. (See Some examples of variables sound changes)

In the meanwhile with the new approaches suggested in this research paper, while inheriting merits of achievements accomplished by forerunners in the field by embracing whichever traditional methodologies have been followed so far, we will go a step further by treating related dissyllabic words as baseline units for sound change patterns instead of their old monosyllabic and one-to-one correspondent approach as has been normally done in past by the oldtimers. And then from there we will trace back to the original monosyllabic unit and sometimes we are able to reconstruct the actual original sound values further back in traceable ancient periods as in the case of "chài" and "xe". This mothodology will be applied equally to the finding of those words in cultural basic vocabulary stock as well, for instance,

"Tết" < 節 jié (SV tiết) as in (# tiếtxuân') 春節 Chūnjié (Spring Festival) | "ănTết" 節過 guòjié (celebrate Spring Festival) | "TếtNguyênđán" 元旦節 Yuándànjié (Speing Festival) | "TếtÐoanngọ" 端午節 Duānwǔjié (Late Spring Festival) | "TếtTrungthu" 中秋節 Zhōngxīujié (Mid-Autumn Festival)...

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" 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. 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 existing form in V and then diverge into a newly-found concept with the very same loaned element. That is what I call principle of sandhi process of association, that 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),

which are in line with

"ănmặc" 衣食 yīshí (food and clothing),
"ănuống" 飲食 yǐnshí (eat and drink),
"ănmày" 要飯 yàofàn (beggar),
"ănnói" 言語 yányǔ (talking),
"ănhiếp" 畏怯 wěiqiè (to bully),
"ăntiền" 贏錢 yíngqián (win money),
"ăntiền" 要錢 yàoqián (extort money),
"ănhàng" 吃貨 chīhuò (to eat gluttonously),
"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),

and futher development as a suffix like

"làmăn" 生意 shēngyì (do business), etc.
"đồăn" ~ "thứcăn", "mónăn" 食物 shíwù (foods, dishes),

We can see that the affix "ăn" in these examples is centered around the vocalism of both the initial y-, w-,... substituting "ăn" and sh-, ch-, j-,.. 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 || 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(喫) chī, a basic word, that means "ăn" (eat), has become a prefix in V to take on different meanings (swallow, consume, take in, endure..) which can be associated with other sound bits that center around the initial CH- as well as twisted variations of the Viet. "ăn".

More of similar sound changes of other forms will be explored in the following sections.

C) Chinese and the basic vocabulary stock

It is of no surprise that many of the V basic vocabulary items, to say the least, seem to have originated from the same linguistic roots as those of C since they had long been in close contact at least 1000 years before the confirmed influence of the C language on V started in 221 BC in China's Qin-Han periods. In fact, culturally inundated words of ancient C origin such as

"nạ" 娘 niáng (ancient Vietnamese "mother") [ 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 (cắn) > Tibetan: agam (gặm), akham: 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 (unhusked rice residue) (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 ],
"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 ],

including other compounds like

"vuquy" 于歸 yúguī (bridal wedding ceremony),
"thángchạp" 臘月 làyuè (December),
"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 (apologize),
"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 | According to Starostin : abscess (L.Zhou) ], etc.

and the like, are still in common use in contemporary V while many of them have become rare in modern C usage in the same denotation and context. 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.

However, the vocabulary list will be much densely populated if we are to include more of old-time 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 (politely reserved),
"bợmtrợn" 霸道 bàdào (unreasonably aggressive),

as well as those of numerous basic vocabulary items which might have originated from the same roots such as

"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) | x. © nạ 妳 nǐ > (nhĩ) 娘 niáng | Âmđầu *m- ~ b-: cf. Amoy bo3, Chaozhou bo3 ],
"anh" 兄 xiōng (older brother) (SV huynh) [ M 兄 xiōng < MC xwyajɲ < OC *smraŋ | Note the aspirated 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 to signify 'neck' ],
"thịt" 膱 zhí (meat) (thức) [ M 膱 zhí | ~ phonetic stem: M 識 shí, zhí < MC tʂɨ < OC **tjəkh ] ,
"ăn" 吃 chī (eat) (SV: ngật, cật),
"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' ],
"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, according to Starostin, '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),
"gỏi" 膾 kuài (minced meat and salad) [ 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 風箏 fēngzhēng (phongtranh) ],
"lửa" 火 huǒ (fire) [ M 火 huǒ < MC xwʌ < OC *smjə:jʔ | ¶ hw ~ l- : ex. 大伙 dàhuǒ: cảlũ, 同伙 tónghuǒ: đồngloã, 过 guò: quá /wa/, lỗi, 灣 wān: loan; 話 huà: lời, 裸体 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 near 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) | Also used for *d(h)a:ʔ (MC do, Pek. dù) roots of mulberry tree. | ¶ t- (th-) ~ đ-, -u ~ ôt, -ôc: ex. tù 宊: đột; tú 圖: tù: dú 獨: độc; dù 督 :đốc; hù 忽 : hốt; bù 不: bất; bì 畢: tốt, bì 必: tất; gǔ 骨: cốt ;tủ 櫝 dú ..],
"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 | This is a loanword in Chinese. 犬 quán is another form. ],
"cọp" 虎 hǔ (tiger) (SV hổ) [ 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 ],

and the list continues on.

Many of these vocabulary items in V clearly show traces of both common root and identiable loanwords in both V and C. They are considered as of common root since 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 Austroasiatic 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 adopting proccess had been continuously going on long after Vietnam's gaining independence from China. Evidences carved on tablets, unearthed in Vietnam in the late 1970's, reveal that many Nôm words were adopted from the Chinese lexical usages as late as of China's Ming Dynatsy in the 16th century (Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, 1979). That is to say, C words kept infiltrating into the V vocabulary centuries long after its independence from China, which would probably have been in some form of vernacular Mandarin.

Indeed, the linguistic influence in this respect has continued all the way to the modern time with those up-to-date words such as

"chuồn" 滾 gǔn (get out),
"lặn" 溜 lìu (slip out),
"khôngdámđâu" 不敢當 bùgăndàng (it's not so),
"baphải" 廢話 fèihuò (be all mouth),
"bahoa" 大話 dàhuà (pompous),
"tầmbậy" 三八 sānbā (nonsense) [ March 8 as International Women's Day] ,
"ẩutả" 苟且 gǒqiě (unattetentively),
"bạtmạng" 拼命 pìnmìng (recklessly),
"bênhvực" 幫忙 bāngmáng (take side),
"phaocâu" 屁股 pìgǔ (chicken's butt as a delicacy),
"dêxồm"婬蟲 yínchóng (lecherous),
"tàixế" 司機 sījī (chauffer),
"láixe" 駕車 jiàchē (drive a car),
"băngtần" 頩道 píndào (TV channel),
"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 'heart attack' or 'stroke'), etc.

How the emegence of many words in these list have come about could be a matter of speculation. They might have infiltrated the Vietnamese language from a vernacular form of M since the articulation of those words sounds like some twisted form of "accented Mandarin" or, at best, pidginization by the common populace.

For those words of basic vocabulary stratum, pending more needed substantial work on linguistic genetic affinity of both C and V, the underlined commonality purposedly raised here is merely provisional, an attempt to establish a lexical connection between the two languages. 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 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 there and spread northwards into the Dongtinghu Lake (Độngdìnhhồ) in Hunan Province of today's China -- until this day, is what has made V as it appears today and that fact should be what matters first in any studies of Vietnamese etymology. In other words, V, characteristically, is undoubedtly more close to C than it is to any languages in MK linguistic family.

D) A new dissyllabic sound change approach to be explored

Modern V vocabulary stock consists of a great number of two-syllable or dissyllabic words. This characteristic of dissyllabics -- of language with dominant words composed of two syllables -- has become prominently one of the main characteristics of the V language. Recognition of this natural evolution will let us learn how to appreciate more exotic tastes for the tongue. Being much more than that, this is an intellectual revelation that will ignite an urge inside us to explore more etyma and seek a better new tool to cultivate this monstrous monosyllabic-stemmed tree, deeply rooted in so rich a fertile soil mixed with thick layers of both Sinitic and indigenous strata, now to have been overgrowing with dissyllabic leaves and dotted with polysyllabic fruits of completely different textures and look and feel.

Do yourself a favor by starting exploring the V etymology in the realm of polysyllabics. This historical linguistic expedition will enable you discover a whole lot more than what you have ever known 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". Swear on the faces of those who, for their just being truely ignorant themselves, are trying to fool you into believing that misconception, synomynously V being a momosyllabic primitivity. Inspecting it under the perspective of polysyllabics, the same attitude as you do with English, French, C, or Korean, etc. will inexhaustibly take you much further from where you have been confined for so long by antiquated linguistic wisdoms and methodologies that show clearly their aging time. Once you have got out of the old dormant shell, you will have a whole ocean to venture.

In fact, modern V appears to show clearly that it is a language of dissyllabics in nature as plentiful with commonly used dissyllabic vocabulary items of different types. Categorially, there are those dominant two-syllable words built with two word-syllables or morphemic-syllables which can be either synonymous, opposite, parallel in nature, or simply compounds constructed with existing lexical material. These compounds have been coined the same way as those of modern C, if not to say they have simply mirrored lexicons of the C counterparts. They are 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 (~ 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), 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 the changes either in semantic, as just mentioned, 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, here are some more examples:

(1) sànhvề, (2) rànhvề, (3) rànhrẻ, (4) sànhsỏi: 善於 shànyú (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 (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 (tuynhiên) 'although, even if, however' [ % M 雖然 suīrán | M 雖 suī < MC sjwi < OC *swhij | ¶ s- ~ d-, r- ~ l-, m- ], etc.

Obviously, over here 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 synonymous dissyllabic words as examples.

tức|giận: this dissyllabic word, slightly different from 氣憤 qìfèn which conveys a stronger sentimental connotation, 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, aother 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 penomenon, to be explained later, is very commonplace for dissyllabic V words derived from C equivalents.).
Similarly, trước|tiên, 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 process of association.
cũ|kỹ [kʊkej]: "kỹ" appears to be a reduplicate of "cũ", also a cognate with "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 [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" (nearby), of which the syllabic-words of the last two dissyllabic words are arranged in reverse to fit into local speech habit.

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 materials which point 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 so 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.

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, -k > -ng, etc. Sound changes of this kind do 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 iurinate' (also: tiểu), 蒜 suàn ~ tỏi 'garlic', 前 qián ~ trước 'before' (cf. Hai. /tai/), 幕 mù (SV: mạc ~ MC mak) ~ màn 'curtain'. 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 汽 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) evolve into "kháchsáo" ~ "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).
Here are some other examples:
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 by itself 家 jiā is "nhà" (home) and dā 大 is "to" (large) or "cả" as in dāhăi 大海 (#bểcả),
bāngmáng 幫忙 (assist): 'bênhvực' (support) 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, 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),

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").

There is no doubt that cultural factors have actually facilitated the selective borrowing and sound change process. Variant morphs 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 first articulations and frozen there, but they 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. Additionally we can see V is so reluctant in borrowing words of other close neighboring MK languages, even in settings of mixed social interactions among larger multi-ethnic populace in those high plateau or southermost provinces where place names 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 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 vocabulary items have penetrated widely and deeply into the V language with 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 that they had come from. Naturally, they could easily occur following certain custom norms and acquisitive models, of course, within a linguistic kinship boundary. That is why English "cut" and V "cắt" obviously are not cognates, but 隔 "gé" [kə2] and "cắt" are.

Putting all together, that is how our new dissyllabic approach has come about after a long study of the process of sound changes of hundreds of Vietnamese words of C origin based on their naturally characterized dissyllabics, rationalization, and generalization. This new tool will be utilized in this research paper by analyzing more etyma 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 sound change event, but as a dynamic process in which a whole sound string, or cluster of sounds, all has changed together, invariably in all shapes and sounds, independent of monosyllabic word equivalents 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 in the Indo-European languages. That is much easier to recognize since they are all written in Latin alphabets. We will try to do the same while handling the Vietnamese 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 Mare being transcribed in pinyin, such as

廢話 fèihuà ‘non-sense’ ~ Vietnamese baphải,
大話 dàhuà 'pompous'~ V bahoa,
溫馨 wēnxīng ‘warm’ ~ V ấmcúng,
開心 kāixīn ’pleased’ ~ V vuilòng,
忍心 rěnxīn 'cool-heartedly' ~ V đànhlòng.

The net result of this phoneticized presentation, that is, dyssyllabicity, 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 romanized 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.

In fact, scribing disyllabic words in dissyllabic formation is the centerpiece of our approach. As mentioned earlier, words in combining dissyllabic formation is that when their sound changes from one to another is of dynamic phonological changes which are influenced by all phonetical elements surrounding core lexemes. What peculiar about them is that they have drastically veered away and been independent of the original sounds once it is reckoned that a monosyllabic syllable is merely a morphemic syllable. We will continue to examine this phenomenon at length to understand why in many a case sound changes in dissyllabic words are all both phonologically and semantically distinct from the baseline they originated from. Expectedly, seeing multiple morphs of the same syllable in different dissyllabic formations, at first sight, may help readers recognize sound change patterns that appear in its whole entirety instead of what happens individually to isolate syllables. For the same matter, however, at the same time, they may also cause confusion to the laymen and leave them with the impression that phonological variants given for the same C monosyllabic stem are ad hoc cases of lawlessness.

Similar to the description of dissyllabic characteristics of the examples already cited above, 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 (nonsensible), 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"... specifically. In fact, conceptually it renders both phế 'waste' and bỏ ‘abandon’ connotations in V while the original meaning of this one-syllable word is not the same as 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 stemmed 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 derived from some of those C dissyllabic compounds which have resulted in V homophones with 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),
alternation of 錯過 cuòguò, a doublet of 放過),
bỏmặc 不理 bùlǐ 'abandon',
bỏphí 白費 báifèi 'to waste'

or in phrases such as

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',

The sound change to bỏ in the above examples, including the innovation of other words, too, is unquestionably owing to different contextual settings. It involves not only phonological and semantic assimilative process but also syntactical reshuttle 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 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 word had evolved into nói ‘talk’ (SV thoại , cf. correspondent patterns: 水 shuǐ nước 'water' (SV thuỷ) ].

For the same reasons,

快 kuài may become mau (also a loan graph for ‘happy’, SV vui ),
and it is not hard to understand why 點 diăn becomes -lên.
Of course, lên here has nothing to do with ‘ascend, get on’. "Lên" here is only a grammatical particle indicating a command, similar to ‘up’ in ‘hurry up’. Phonologically, it is easier to see [tjen] ~ [len].
Individually,
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 ],
of which, 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.

Let compare lên in other context:

lênđây : 上來 shànglái ‘come up here’.
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 (zhèi 這 in Chinese, meaning 'here', this'). Lastly,
溫 wēn can be ấm, but in which way that 馨 xīn becomes 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 SV hinh, MC xieng < OC *hing, of which the velar x- becomes a labiovelar /k-/, /k'-/ as commonly occurred in Chinese. Let’s compare 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’.

The above 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 compound morphs, that is, either or both of which cannot be separated. It is the result of the sound change of a dissyllabic word from which any syllable can give rise to a complete new sound, by all means, that can be different from the very same stand-alone syllable as a monosyllabic word. The new sound may or may not mean anything if their syllabic components are separated from the combining form depending on the degree of its association with another word that is similar in sound or meaning. 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').

In fact, any C dissyllabic words could evolve into various sounds in V, of which the order could be put in reverse to fit into the local speech habit (this will be discussed much more later on in a different perspective.) For our previous examples, they fit into the cases of monosyllabic homophones and homonyms, which are plentiful in both V and C. As we can see may V etyma have been missed by V specialists for their monosyllabic misconception.

As a matter of fact, regarding to the true nature of V, it has long been wrongly regarded as monosyllabics (tínhđơnâmtiết 單音節性), or characteristics of a language based on its dominant one-syllable words in its vocabulary. That is, V is a language that is lexically, semantically, and syntactically composed of one-syllable words. It might have been true in ancient times, as with any languages on earth, but it certainly no longer is such a case in modern V. We can say that this misconception on these issues in some linguistic circles of the old school has misled specialists of V to the point that it has certainly hindered new break-through development in this field. For this reason, the result of this research is, hopefully, to correct their misconception about monosyllabics and to pave ways for new approaches to explore areas of V etymology of C origin started with this nouveau dissyllabic approach, departing from those old ones that have been limited to only isolated monosyllabic and mere basic words.

As a matter of fact, the two aspects of dissyllabics and C origin are closely intertwined as much as the two languages themselves are to the point that studies in either language cannot satisfactorily be done without referring to the other. Karlgren (1915), Haudricourt (1954), Chang (1974) Denlinger (1979), Pulleyblank (1984) and many others utilized V when they studied Ancient Chinese phonology. Specialists of V studies 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 researches are mostly based on and limited to monosyllabic lexicons. This aptitude has prevented them from seeing other variations in sound changes from those same monosyllabic stems as they appear in dissyllabic formation.

That having said, this VS study can also be seen as an attempt to establish kinship of both C and V with some shots of historical sypnosis and linguistic proofs presented herein with all comprehensive linguistic lexical aspects. With the new dissyllabic approach, we will have an advantegous edge over the old monosyllabic methodoloy -- where, in this case, only monosyllabic words are considered as base units for examination -- because it will enable you find words that could possibly slip from your attention. Specifically, my dissyllabic approach to find Vietnamese words of Chinese origin as discussed so far is based on two premises: Firstly, both modern V and C are dissyllabic languages, or of dissyllabics, that is, lexically and semantically each of the two languages as a whole is composed of a high percentage of two-syllable words. Secondly, I started out with a hypothesis, based on what I have learned about these two languages linguistically, that there is a linked kinship of both C and V. And with my dissyllabic approach I have substantially found many V dissyllabic words of C origin. From there, I can further explore other possibilities by pinning down certain basic words, initially mostly by instinct triggered by my own hypothesis of distant genetic affinity, via their appearance in dissyllabic form, for example,

"chimchóc" 禽獸 qínshòu (SV cầmthú) 'animals, birds' [ ~ thúvật, convật | M 禽獸 qínshòu \ @ 獸 shòu ~ chóc (in modern V it is treated as a reduplicative syllable) | M 禽 qín < MC gim < OC *ghjəm | 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 ],

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? If it is so, '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. Therefore, with further investigation and explorationin C etymology, I have found out that 'chóc' means 'chim':

"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 | 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 fish. 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-) || 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) ],
"númruột" 骨肉 gǔròu (SV cốtnhục) 'flesh and bone' [ literally 骨 means 'bone' in C while 肉 ròu is associated with 'ruột' (literally 'intestine') in V. With this meaning this word can be used as in the context of 'fruit meat, nut meat, 'something edible inside its shell' ]
"barọi" 肥肉 féiròu (SV phìnhục) 'bacon' [ literally 肥 féi means 'fat' in C and here we have a derivation of 'ba' while 肉 ròu beomes 'rọi' simply a variation of 肉 ròu while 'ba' 肥 féi could be associated with 'three', by means of innovation, to mean ''three layers of 'rọi'".],
"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- | 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-. ],

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 give rise to the word 'rán' (to fry), too, which is being used along with other words such as 'chiên' 煎 jiān.

"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:mjy/ | 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 and 蟹 xié is ghẹ, cua, cáy | M 蟹 < MC ɠa < OC *ghre:ʔ | 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). | 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) [ 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: Minnam: Hainanese hun, Amoy hun2, Chaozhou huŋ21, Fuzhou xuŋ2 | 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- ].

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 inds 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, another 'ruốc' (fried shredded meat jerky), too.

By following the dissyllabic approach, we, hence, have found some basic words "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 of C origin, which, as we will see much more later in other sections in the format of stem-leaves or worksheet, appear to have closely affiliation with ancient and modern C dialects, literary as well as vernacular (having being referred as "Chinese" or "C" in general throughout this paper).

With a large amount of authentic C and V basic words as plausible cognates being found by appying this dissyllabic techniques, the implication that the kinship between the two languages is genetically related can be confirmed accordingly. Our resulted etymological findings then can be used to re-establish the genetic affiliation between the two languages, at least for certain of words. It is so because basic words had been what a language originally started with after all. This new approach has indeed enabled me to find a remarkable large number, about 20,000, of V words of C origin, many of which have long been regarded as indigenous Nôm words, or "pure" V.

Again, this new dissyllabic approach is to treat each C word, which is composed of one or more syllables or morphemes, each represented by each C character singly, regardless of its meanings associated with each individual morpheme whether it is monosyllabic or polysyllabic. This should be as a correct way to deal with C lexicography. In both V and C, a morpheme usually coincides with a syllable, which is free to go with other syllables to form other words. 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, for instance,

on the C side,

măshàng 馬上: mauchóng 'quickly',
qímă 起碼: ítra 'at least',
măhǔ 馬虎: qualoa 'carelessly',
piányì 便宜: rẽmạt, bèo 'cheap',
dōngxī 東西: đồđạc 'things',
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: điểmtâm (~ lótlòng) 'snack' (Viet. 'breakfast'),

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: kǒuqiě (~ ẩutả) 'carelessly',
mứcđộ 幅度: fúdù 'extent',
vấtvả 奔波: bēnbó (~ tấttả) 'hand to mouth',
múarối 木偶戲: mù'ǒuxì 'pupetry',
trờinắng 太陽: tàiyáng 'sunshine',
bồihồi 徘徊: báihuái 'melancholy',
chịuđựng #丞受: chéngshòu 'endure',
bắtđền 賠償: péichăng 'ask for compensation' (~ bắtthường),
vỡlòng 啓蒙: qǐméng 'pre-schooling',
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).

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 like those. 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, in this case have been likened, associated, or identified with words of similar sounds conveying the same meaning. It is no surprise to see that 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 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

起義 qǐyì, VS: nổidậy ‘to rise against',

while in other compounds it appears to associate with other concepts and sounds:

起馬 qímă means ‘at least’ (VS: ítra),
興起 xìngqǐ ‘interested’ (VS: hứngchí, #nổihứng, nứngcặt (excited, sexual erection) and mừngrỡ(jubilant)),
起源 qǐyuán ‘originate’ (VS: bắtnguồn),
起頭 qǐtóu ‘start’ (VS: bắtđầu), and
起步 qǐbù 'take steps' (VS: cấtbước).

Similarly, for 順 shùn (SV thuận) [ M 順 shùn < MC tʂjwən < OC *djənh (Schuessler : *mljuəns) ], we have

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.

The word-morphemes 起 and 順 are in bound 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 avenue in search for words of Corigin, we could find that almost all the V words could be traced to find their C origin!

As we will see through all the illustrations in this paper, the deeply rooted misconception of monosyllabics of V and C, i.e., they being a monosyllabic and their vocabulary items being compositions of monosyllabic words, 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 must have been monosyllabic. It is easier to confirm that monosyllabic characteristics of C based on literary works of more than two thousand years ago than to do so with that of V where its oldest books are only dated as far as ten centuries ago. In all possibilities, basic words that both languages seem to share in common seem to point to the direction of monosyllabics.

In modern V, one can find thousands of dissyllabic, along with a few more polysyllabic, words in any V dictionary even though they are still incorrectly written in separated syllables. 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 his saying to apply to the English language in the same respects, it is also a monosyllabic language! Also, this statemenent just makes Barker appear having superficial knowledge of the V language. Some V linguists might have "worshipped" him, more or less, just simply because Barker is a western linguist who knows something about V! When he said “certain compounds, reduplicative patterns, and loanwords”, anyone who is unfamiliar with the language may feel that there are only a small number of such words exist in V. In reality, almost a whole vocabulary stock of V are structured as such as we can see in any V dictionary. In other words, his statement can be used to disqualify him as incompetent to be a specialist of V. Ironically, many V linguists in the field tend to value those viewpoints made by those "western" specialists who simply know something, usually limited to small areas of expertise, about V to say something about it!

It is true that many of those dissyllabic words in V can be analyzed as combination of monosyllabic words of which each can be used independently to attach to other syllable-words to form other counpounds. Nevertheless, remember that a great number of those words are formed to connote a new different concepts and cannot be considered as compounds anymore but composite words. 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 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 counterparts. In this respect, the only difference is, like its cousin C language, each morpheme in its free form as a complete different syllable-word can only mean something else having 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.(6), the C stems as syllable-words contained in them cannot be used as independent monosyllablic words in the the Vlanguage. (Read more details of this discussion in Sửađổi Cáchviết ChữViệt) If those words are written in combining formation instead of being singly written as separate syllables in appearance, they certainly will give Vietnamese kids a good headstart with abstract cognitiveness 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, they should not base on V orthography to determine its monosyllabic characteristics after all.

For the matter of polysyllabics, 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, being used in today’s V sufficiently constitutes the dissyllabic nature of the V language, in addition to other polysyllabic words formed out of fixed expressions in different categories. Many of those loanwords are unbreakable. 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. Unfortunately, in today’s writing system of the V language each of such dissyllabic words is still broken into two syllables where each of which when standing alone may not be related to the original meanings and may not mean anything at all!

Exactly the same thing can be said about the dissyllabic characteristics of the C language. Any C dialect nowadays is also a dissyllabic language per se. Regarding this issue, 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... in V.

As to the sound change from C into V words, those linguists, who started with the misconception that C and V are both monosyllabic languages, have tried to look for only one related Ve 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 serious flaw with the old approach. One cannot fully explore the etymology of V words of C origin by only investigating and confining oneself to the realm of only isolated monosyllabic words and expect to find all their corresponding C cognates.

Once and for all, let's face it, since both languages are dissyllabic ones 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 instance, in Indo-European 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).

What does this rule have to do with V words of C origin? 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: Standard Sino-Viet. is nguyên; 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 fén 'flour, noodle' SV phấn, VS bún, bột, phở, bụi [ See its etymology as previously cited. ],
拜 bài 'kowtow' SV bái, VSvái, lạy, van(xin) [ M 拜 bài < MC paj < OC *pre:ts | MC reading 蟹開二去怪幫 | ¶ b- ~ l- : ex. 兵 bīng (binh) lính ],

etc., or in compounds:

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',
試場 shìchăng (SV: thítrường) # trườngthi 'examination site',
戰場 zhànchăng (SV: chiếntrường) chiếntrận , hence, # trậnchiến 'battle' (note: word order is in reverse in all three cases above),
一場夢 yī chăngmèng (SV:nhất trườngmộng) một giấc/cơn mơ/mộng 'dream',
一場病 yī chăngbìng (SV:nhất trườngbệnh) một trận/cơnbệnh 'illness',
一場戲 yī chăngxì (SV: nhất trườnghí) một tuồng/xuấthát [ VS 'xuất @ 場 chăng ~ SV 齣 chù 'xuất' ] 'a show',
一場空 yī chăngkōng (SV: nhất trườngkhông) một khoảngtrống 'emptiness',
在場 zàichăng (SV: tạitrường) tạichỗ ~ tạitrận 'on spot, red-handed', etc.

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, which might have already taken place before they were introduced to V as in the above cases where zhèn 陣 (trận) or chù 齣 (xuất) had been associated with chăng 場, but also accomplished by transferring a whole syllable-word and its associate meaning to match the new dissyllabic counpounds. Let's examine the case of

thợmộc, ~ mùjiāng

mùjiāng is a Mandarin 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

"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; shì 事: thờ ], is meant to indicate "tú" [t'u2] or "trò" (student, pupil, follower, trainee), which possibly had given rise to "thợ" (to signify all concepts of "apprentice", "journeyman","artisan"... inclusively).

In this case "thợ" 徒 tú (SV đồ) appears to have become a free syllabic form functioning as a prefix in V, by means of association, to be combined with other syllable-words to make other compounds:

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’,

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 could give rise to more V sound variations. In the end the absorbing language, the borrower, would gain a few extra new words and, at the same time, add more meaning to existing similarly sounding words -- innovation principle -- but of different C roots. For the latter they have come into existence by means of constant association of similar sounds or meanings, or both, of existing words, for instance,

xīn 心 'heart': tim '(physical) heart', tâm (SV), lòng '(spiritual) heart, inner feelings' ... ~> tâmhồn 心+魂 xīnhún '(spiritual) heart', lòngdạ 心腸 xīnchăng '(figuratively) heart', and 點心 diănxīn 'snack' điểmtâm (SV), lótlòng ~ lótdạ 'breakfast', 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 ] versus 'gương, as in 'làmgương' 旁樣 pángyāng 'exemplify',
fén 粉 'flour': phấn (SV), phở ~ bún, bột, bụi vs bụi from 'dust' 灰 huī (SV khôi): VS muội, vôi 'plaster, lime' [ M 灰 huī < MC xuaj < OC *xwəj ],
zhù 注 'annotate': chú (SV), chua, chảy 'to flow' vs 'chảy' from 消 xiāo (SV tiêu) 'to melt, dissolve' [ M 消 xiāo < MC sjew < OC *saw | According to Starostin : to melt,dissolve. A later meaning is '(dissolve >) disperse, spend'. Standard Sino-Viet. is tiêu.],
húndàn 魂蛋: hoangđàng 'the unruly outcast' vs 荒唐 huāngtáng: hoangđường 'outlandish, out of this world',

etc.

In the realm 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 concepts, 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 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 associative sounds to identify with other glosses (just like loan-graphs in C itself). Here are some other examples:

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) # 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', (2) ngheviết 'dictation',

At the same time, the sound changes that have made up the lately developed 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 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. It is likely products of time which have come into existence probably without much of human interference. Let's examine a few more illustrations of associative 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],

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

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').

Similarly,

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.

In another direction of development of new vocabulary items, 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 when needed (1), new word being coined (2), all to be created from the C material that have been already assimilated in the borrowing language or concurrently being used in the borrowed language (3), 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',
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/),
tủlạnh "冷 + 櫝" (# lěngdú) 'refrigerator',
xếhộp "盒+車" (# héchē) 'car',
nhuliệu "柔+料" (=軟件 ruănjiàn) (róu+liào) 'software',
phầncứng "份+剛" (gāng+fèn) 'hardware',
liênmạng "聯+網" (lián+wăng) 'internet',

(3)

rượuchè "酒+茶" (= hèjǐu 喝酒) (jǐu+chá) 'alcoholic' ,
trangnhà "張 + 家" 'homepage',
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, one will see why two-syllable V words of C origin have 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.

Similarly, many words derived from the OC and MC may complicate the matter further with multiple lexical and phonological developments 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 | ex. sanghình 沖印 chōngyìn ]
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), 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.

Besides, there 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 cases that show dynamic sound changes that further rebut the theory 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. | ¶ 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 ],

and other compounds lexemically built with 'cho':

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 \ @ zhí ~ cho, x. 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- ],

"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' ],
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 | FQ 良士 | According to Starostin : to divide fields into sections. A later meaning is 'to regulate, control; to reason > reason, principle'. Viet. lẽ is colloquial; standard Sino-Viet. is lý (suggesting a MC variant *ly\).],
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 or morpheme, as opposed to 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 > mưagiông> mưagió) '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 ) ],

and

海 hăi '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 ]

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:

jiànkāng 健康 (SV kiệnkhang) 'health, healthy' :

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 have 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'.

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. 'ngậmcười nơi chínsuối" 含笑九泉 hánxiàojǐuquán, literally 'be pleased in the underworld' | Note: 笑 xiào "cười" (laugh, 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').
khócthúthít 哭泣 kùqì (weep) [ 哭泣 kùqì > "thúthít" ~ kùqì > khóc 哭 kù +thúthít ].
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).
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 zhòng, Hai /dang/ ) "weight", which gives us an analogy of 'nhẹ' = 輕 qīng "light".
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 } and it is not neccessary that only some sounds that are similar to bì, bā, or bó.

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".

Also, it is only in dissyllabic formation that a phonetic sandhi process could occur as 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 (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 most of occurrences, including those of phonology of VS, so they are left to the readers to assume the sound changes are correct, e.g., bīng 兵 ~ lính, bài 拜 ~ lạy, vái, van, dă 打 ~ đánh, đập, yǐn 飲 ~ uống, bǐrú 比如 ~ tỉdụ, tỉnhư, vídụ, thídụ, vínhư, 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, kù 哭 ~ khấp (khốc), bǐng 偋 ~ sính, chéng 承 ~ thừa, and so on.

Just let critics acclaim my ignorance of western historical and comparative linguistic methodologies whereby all the mechanical tools are mostly suitable for their tackling Indo-European generalities whereby C and V peculiarities do not fit in. In reality it is reckoned that those phonological linguistic rules help answer questions such as how the sound changes have come about given that many words have become homonyms in a sound system. In M those same words originated from the same MC sources still retain distinct sounds in SV, which match the phonological spelling description 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, nghị, y, dịch, dị, dĩ... , 一, 義, 藝, 議, 醫, 易, 異, 以, respectively, and so on.

As a matter of fact, many sound changes are easy to see if we compare them with the MC and OC sound systems. Let’s take the first two words for illustration,

nhất 一 yì [i4] [ 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 /li>
nghĩa ~ ngãi 義 which correspondends to "yì [i4]" [ 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 ].

That phenomenon of phonetic omissions were very common in M. Though the process is complicated, we can simply say that this sound change is the result of the dropping of the initial and final sounds of an ancient sound during the process of synchronic sound changes. M, in the early days, had been in close contact with the Kims and their language, the language of conquerers of the China's vast northern heartland, for over 1000 years as described previously. Their undoubtedly northern non-Han language must have had strong impact on the original and earlier form of M to have caused the contraction, ommission, corruption, and dropping of those intials, middle dipthongs, and finals in its syllables as we see it today (Bo Yang, 1983, and Zhou, 1991). However, though it appears straightforward enough to draw patterns of sound changes when all the ancient and contemporary sounds are all listed for comparison, known as lexico-statistical methodology, being able to do so is not always the case because in many circumstances it is kind of brain-cracking to understand 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 leading to the M reading of [sye2]:
學 xué < xia < /xjaw/ (Early Mand. - 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], similarly, we can see that
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 ].

In fact, 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 the 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 C (adjective + noun). This phenomenon had 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 lexical elements, when they were introduced into the borrowing language such syntactical order might change to fit local speech habit 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 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) [ 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' ],

and many other polysyllabic words cited as examples throughout this paper.

All of the above is 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 beng 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 illustrated above, we have learned a lot from this dissyllabic approach without which many V words might have slipped out of our attention. You will learn how to derive those V words from the C equivalents the same way 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. (7)

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(1) 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 Sīmă Guāng we can see an overall picture of popular exile regions: ancient Língnán 嶺南 region that includes Nányuè 南越 -- or today's Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Fujian provinces, part of Vietnam's northern territory and Hainan Island. Interestingly, the exile factor, in fact, has been a recurring one dotting throughout Chinese history, even up until our modern time, e.g., June 1989's Tiananmen Square event which had resulted in more than 50 thousand Chinese elites to have permanently resettled in the USA and some other western countries.

(2) If Vietnam could have not gained indepedence from China in the 9th century and were still a China's satelite 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.

(3) At the present time clashes between ethnic groups of Khmer descent and Vietnamese, 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.

(4) In fact, under the historical scope, one could hardly find any major racial clashes, even minor ones, between the Vietnamese and Chinese (late newcomers 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, tose recent immigrants in terms of a time span of one hundred years or less, otherwise they all certainly having already become Vietnamese -- recently in our time (1979-1980) out of the country, we can see clearly that act was political motivated by the communist government in light of the Socialist revolution after Vietnam was unified in 1975.

(5) Vietnamese "cay" is 苦 kǔ (khổ), which pairs with 辛 qīn (SV tân) to give rise to "cayđắng" or 辛苦 qīnkǔ (tânkhổ) 'difficult, hardship'. Viet 'cay' was 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. ] C 辛 xīn ('bitter', SV tân) 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'. ]

(6) Here are speculations of possible C cognates for these V words:

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’,

(7) Once the dissyllabic nature of V is reckoned, one cannot but logically accept a new way of writing V words (to be called Việtngữ 2020 or Vietnamese2020 as being discussed in details in Sửađổi Cáchviết ChữViệt) That is why I have intentionally done with all V dissyllabic words in this paper. In short, the reason 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.

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