755 replies to this topic

[xng]

Does the vietnamese language really belong to the sino-tibetan language group ? Some linguists say that vietnamese belongs to the mon-khmer group, I think this is a mistake !

If you judge the vietnamese people by their skin color and shape of the eyes, they are indistinguishable from the southern chinese people. Their culture, food and religion all points to a chinese origin. If you look at the khmer people from cambodia, you will notice that they are different in terms of eye shape (rounder) and skin color (darker) from the chinese.

While it is true that annam (northern vietnam) territory was under chinese rule for one thousand years, but from my research, before the chinese rule over annam started, a chinese general named yuen escaped to the south (for some reason I cannot remember) and founded that area called annam.
That is why a lot of people in vietnam has a surname of nguyen which is a slight mispronounciation of the original word yuen in mandarin or yuin in cantonese.

The intermarriage between the chinese and the khmer people might have resulted in the present language called vietnamese. Remember that southern vietnam was inhabited mostly by the mon-khmer group and was actually part of the CAMBODIA(KHMER) empire at that time. Some basic words from khmer could have been integrated into the chinese language forming the present vietnamese language due to the lack of communication between china and annam at that time (paper was not invented then)

The fact that the vietnamese language contains the unique tone differentiation (6 to 9 tones) that is unique to sino-tibetan group strongly suggest that it has a chinese origin rather than a khmer origin as mon-khmer languages do not have tones.

A language that is non-tonic cannot gain tonic ability if they were just to borrow foreign vocabulary (for example, japanese/korean which is non-tonic but borrows from chinese) because tonic ability is extremely difficult to learn for people whose basic language is non-tonic (just ask european language speakers).

I believe it is the other way round, the vietnamese incorporated the khmer grammar but retained their vocabulary and tone. So it is considered a sino-tibetan language.

And due to their proximity to guangdong province or general yuan might be from that province itself (need to confirm this later), is it any wonder that the vietnamese language is very similar to the cantonese language ? I do not know vietnamese language itself to compare with any of the southern chinese dialects but my strong guess is that it is most similar to cantonese !

Does anybody know the common history of vietnam and gwangdung? Are they both from the same tribe called "Yue" ?

Any arguments and feedback on this are welcome.

[Kulong]

If you judge the vietnamese people by their skin color and shape of the eyes, they are indistinguishable from the southern chinese people. Their culture, food and religion all points to a chinese origin. If you look at the khmer people from cambodia, you will notice that they are different in terms of eye shape (rounder) and skin color (darker) from the chinese.

Vietnamese in general have various different looks. Some look more like other Southeast Asians some look more like Chinese. I have several Vietnamese friends with different looks. I dated a Vietnamese girl once and she could've easily been mistaken for a Khmer but her older brother could've easily been mistaken for a Cantonese. All of her other family members look different too, some even look mixed between the two.

My theory is that modern Vietnamese is a result of mixing between those who were native to southern China (the Bai Yue peoples), and those native to Southeast Asia (people like Chams, Khmers... etc.).

While in southern China, when the original Han settlers came southward, they mixed with some of the Baiyue peoples to form the southern Chinese today.

This explains why some modern Vietnamese may look like southern Chinese.

While it is true that annam (northern vietnam) territory was under chinese rule for one thousand years, but from my research, before the chinese rule over annam started, a chinese general named yuen escaped to the south (for some reason I cannot remember) and founded that area called annam.
That is why a lot of people in vietnam has a surname of nguyen which is a slight mispronounciation of the original word yuen in mandarin or yuin in cantonese.

I have never heard of such a story. As far as I know, the Nanyue kingdom, established by a Qin general after Qin dynasty fell, existed way before "Annam". This Qin general was called Zhao Tuo.

Nguyen in Chinese is not "Yuan" but 阮 Ruan3. 阮 Ruan is an ancient Chinese instrument, which by concidence or not, also exists in Vietnam. The reason why there are so many Nguyens in Vietnam is similar to why there are so many Kims (金 JIin) in Korea. When a dynasty fell, the new power would try to kill off the royal family of the previous dynasty. So those of the previous dynasty can choose between being killed or changing their surname and go into hiding.

The intermarriage between the chinese and the khmer people might have resulted in the present language called vietnamese. Remember that southern vietnam was inhabited mostly by the mon-khmer group and was actually part of the CAMBODIA(KHMER) empire at that time. Some basic words from khmer could have been integrated into the chinese language forming the present vietnamese language due to the lack of communication between china and annam at that time (paper was not invented then)

Depending on how you define "Chinese". If by Chinese, you mean Han, then I must disagree. There were natives living in Southern China before Han conquered it. Heck, even today, there are numerous ethnic minority groups living in southern China.

The fact that the vietnamese language contains the unique tone differentiation (6 to 9 tones) that is unique to sino-tibetan group strongly suggest that it has achinese origin rather than a khmer origin as mon-khmer languages do not have tones.

Thai also has tones, so do many other languages spoken in southern China.

Anybody know the common history of vietnam and gwangdung? Are they both from the same tribe called "Yue" ?

廣東 is 粵 while Vietnam is 越, same pronounciation but different characters. The natives in Southern China prior to being conquered by Han from the north were called 百越 Baiyue. It was not a single, unified people, but rather numerous tribes. Some of them intermarried with northern Han and formed modern southern Chinese while some went south and intermarried with Khmers, Champas and other southeast Asians to form the modern Vietnamese.

[xng]

Thai also has tones, so do many other languages spoken in southern China.

Thai has tones but it does not belong to the mon-khmer language family which are non-tonal languages.

[Kulong]

Thai also has tones, so do many other languages spoken in southern China.

Thai has tones but it does not belong to the mon-khmer language family which are non-tonal languages.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't know which language family Thai belongs to as I don't have much interests in it. But judging from what you are saying, you personally think that all languages with tones belong to Sino-Tibetan.

[Gubook Janggoon]

I remember Coolstorm was trying to tell us at AE that Japanese was a Sino-Tibetan language....meh...just be content with what the experts say...Also in the beginning of your stuff you started talking about race. A lot of times race has nothing to do with language. Look at the turks (Turkey). You have Blonde people walking around there and yet they speak and Altaic language...Same with Finland and ect. You can't really judge language by race.

[Kulong]

I remember Coolstorm was trying to tell us at AE that Japanese was a Sino-Tibetan language....meh...just be content with what the experts say...Also in the beginning of your stuff you started talking about race.  A lot of times race has nothing to do with language.  Look at the turks (Turkey).  You have Blonde people walking around there and yet they speak and Altaic language...Same with Finland and ect.  You can't really judge language by race.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree.

Also, language families were created by men, to be more specific, Europeans. They aren't exactly the most accurate or appropriate catagories. However, currently the world is dominated by the West so whatever they say goes...

[qrasy]

Historically, Turk once lived in what today is Mongol. They then migrated to Central Asia and they got to Asia Minor. That's why they mixed with Europeans and became blond.

Point to history and think how they got their language! Don't just look at the present time speakers and conclude that Race is unrelated with Language.

[Yun]

Nguyen in Chinese is not "Yuan" but 阮 Ruan3. 阮 Ruan is an ancient Chinese instrument, which by concidence or not, also exists in Vietnam.

Actually, Ruan was a surname before it was the name of an instrument. The round-bodied version of the lute (pipa 琵琶) was known as the ruanxian and later just as the ruan, because Ruan Xian 阮咸, one of the group of late Cao-Wei eccentrics the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, was good at playing it.

[xng]

I remember Coolstorm was trying to tell us at AE that Japanese was a Sino-Tibetan language....meh...just be content with what the experts say...Also in the

As far as I know, NO linguists has ever implied that japanese is a sino-tibetan language. The very basic qualities of non-tonal and polysyllabic rules out that possibility. Japanese is related to the altaic language.

The basic qualities that must be met to be sino-tibetan is tonal and mono-syllabic (combination of 2 chinese characters to form a word are still not poly-syllabic). This is a unique combination not found anywhere in the world as far as I know.

[nishishei]

As far as I know, NO linguists has ever implied that japanese is a sino-tibetan language.  The very basic qualities of non-tonal and polysyllabic rules out that possibility. Japanese is related to the altaic language.

There's no evidence that Japanese is Altaic (Korean is barely altaic, and Japanese is still not found to be related to Korean besides superficial similarities).

Japanese is a tonal language by the way.
HAshi = chopsticks
haSHI = bridge

Ame = rain
aME = candy

Similar to Shanghainese tonal system (SHINven = news, shinFEN = excitement).

[xng]

There's no evidence that Japanese is Altaic (Korean is barely altaic, and Japanese is still not found to be related to Korean besides superficial similarities).

Japanese is a tonal language by the way.
HAshi = chopsticks
haSHI = bridge

Ame = rain
aME = candy

Similar to Shanghainese tonal system (YAUjin = devil, yauJIN = important; SHINven = news, shinFEN = excitement).

Are these tones differentiation apply to only a few words ? What is the percentage ? If most of the japanese words are non-tonal, it is still considered non-tonal. Just like raising the tone in most european languages to designate a question doesn't imply it is a tonal language because it is still the same word and same meaning.

Does you break up hashi into ha shi with an individual meaning ? If you cannot then it is polysyllabic. In chinese every word can be broken up into a single character, a combination of 2 characters usually form a word. But it is still considered monosyllabic due to this nature.

[qrasy]

I know that Japanese has low-high pitch distinction, but this distinction is far different from a tonal language.

'Tones' mentioned here are NOT pitch differences relative to other syllables, but the pitch differences to the syllable itself. So, rising falling and flat are completely different tones in a tonal language.

The difference can be seen easily.

For example, if we have a sequence of 'a's like this:
a(high-rise)-a(high-fall)-a(low-fall)-a(low-rise)

Japanese have only high-low difference, so Japanese users percieve: a(high)-a(high)-a(low)-a(low)
Mandarin is quite consistent in tone, there are no similar tones, so Mandarin users percieve: a(rise)-a(fall)-a(fall)-a(rise)
(when trying to learn Viet tones, Mandarin users will likely confuse ~ and ´ tones since both are rising)
While Indonesian (non-tonal) users percieve nothing special but a-a-a-a.

If I'm not mistaken, accent distinction also occurs in Russian and English.

In Shanghainese, V and F are different phonemes, so the shinven-shinfen distinction is not a valid example.

Even if you ignore the ru tones, Shanghainese still have 3 tones. Although the Yang-Shu tone depends on the voiced initials, it cannot be ignored or else you'll not have 8 tones in Middle Chinese. (For example, Yin-qu and Yang-qu tones in Middle Chinese are distinguished by voiced/voiceless initials, but the TONAL VALUE are different so we can consider them different tones)
Note: The Yang-Shu are different in pitch regulation from the other tones.

If you see carefully the 2 yin yones of Shanghainese, they are distinguished also by rising/falling. One is high-rising and the other is high-falling, so a Japanese cannot distinguish the 2 tones (both will be interpreted as high)

[qrasy]

There's no evidence that Japanese is Altaic (Korean is barely altaic, and Japanese is still not found to be related to Korean besides superficial similarities).

Japanese is a tonal language by the way.
HAshi = chopsticks
haSHI = bridge

Ame = rain
aME = candy

Similar to Shanghainese tonal system (YAUjin = devil, yauJIN = important; SHINven = news, shinFEN = excitement).

Of course, there are no clear evidence, since Korean are an isolated language.
I'm seeking 'cognates' between 'unrelated' languages and I've not found 2 in Korean related to others!
In Japanese I found are many words (basic words, not the words from Chinese!) similar to outside its family (Vietnamese, for example), but I found no such things in Korean.
(oh, can 10-20 words considered many?)

YAUjin and yauJIN may be different because YAU in devil is ping and yau in important is not (yinshang and yinqu merged, if I'm not mistaken).

Are these tones differentiation apply to only a few words ? What is the percentage ? If most of the japanese words are non-tonal, it is still considered non-tonal. Just like raising the tone in most european languages to designate a question doesn't imply it is a tonal language because it is still the same word and same meaning.

Does you break up hashi into ha shi with an individual meaning ? If you cannot then it is polysyllabic. In chinese every word can be broken up into a single character, a combination of 2 characters usually form a word. But it is still considered monosyllabic due to this nature.

Although Pu-Tao (grape) and Luo-Bo (a kind of vegetable) are not proper names, they cannot be split into this extent.

[xng]

If you look at the common features of the sino-tibetan language family, one really wonders why the present vietnamese language is not a member of the tai branch of the sino-tibetan family as claimed by certain linguist.

http://www.factmonst...y/A0861103.html

Granted that tai numeric system from one to ten sounds very similar to cantonese than vietnamese to cantonese (not sino-viet numbers).

But vietnamese has more similarities to tai in that it has the adjective after the noun instead of before the noun.

[qrasy]

Note that tone and monosyllabic are not essential features of Tibeto-Burman (and therefore Sino-Tibetan).

And I've found that the Tsat (Austronesian) has formed complex tones and become more monosyllabic.

Even without Tsat, we're still noticing many similarities between Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian. And the inbetween languages are also similar??

Can you tell me the difference between Mon-Khmer and Tibeto-Burman???