51 replies to this topic

[xng]

I am amazed at the similarities between Thai and Chinese languages especially cantonese.

Characteristics:

1. Tonal

2. Monosyllabic

3. Past, present, future tense by adding a word (eg. Liau - past)

4. Classifier of nouns

5. Short and long vowel

6. Ending in only (m, n, ng, p, t, k)

7. Many similar words (Mah - horse, kau - old, numbers etc)

8. Simple grammar (no change in verb, plural/singular etc)

9. Different words for different family relationship (eg. father's brother , mother's brother)

Even the way that the Thai speak polysyllabic words are the same as the chinese ie. broken into 'mono words with tones' eg. Com piu ter. They can't pronounce words like 'Next' , omitting the ending 'X' sound becoming 'Nek'.

Are there any other east asian languages that have all these similarities to chinese ?

Edited by xng, 23 May 2010 - 09:48 AM.

[qrasy]

There are Lao, Vietnamese (plus many minority languages).
Burmese had most of those features, though modern Burmese has lost the p-t-k difference and m-n-ng difference (even though they are still there in the writing). There's a short-long difference, but with phonation features accompanying (so long vs short always have different tones).

Btw, there's one extra voiceless stop that can end a word in Thai/Lao (and Minnan), it's distinct from all of p,t,k and is called "glottal stop" (there's no Latin letter for it; the IPA symbol for it is "ʔ").
I found a "mimimal quartet" in the dictionary, nap-nat-nak-naʔ (all high).
Actually it's only hard (for most people) to distinguish from other stops when it's used as an ending. When glottal stop begins a word, it's very easily distinguished from p,t,k.

Edited by qrasy, 23 May 2010 - 10:55 AM.

[Houyi]

2. Monosyllabic

Chinese, and other languages, being "monosyllabic" is an outdated idea.

9. Different words for different family relationship (eg. father's brother , mother's brother)

This also appears in many other Asian languages and I'm sure in any language that values family greatly. This has a lot more to do with culture than language.

Even the way that the Thai speak polysyllabic words are the same as the chinese ie. broken into 'mono words with tones' eg. Com piu ter. They can't pronounce words like 'Next' , omitting the ending 'X' sound becoming 'Nek'.

While this is an accurate observation, it's the wrong conclusion. If you look at how Japanese pronounce words imported from English, it is also broken up into individual syllables and into sounds that already exist in the language. This is quite universal.

[bloodmerchant]

I am amazed at the similarities between Thai and Chinese languages especially cantonese.

Characteristics:

1. Tonal

I hardly notice any tonality in Wu speech.

2. Monosyllabic

Wu is more polysyllabic. I don't think there is a such thing as monosyllabicity anymore in modern Chinese or any other modern language. Classical Chinese was usually monosyllabic, with a couple of polysyllabic exceptions.

3. Past, present, future tense by adding a word (eg. Liau - past)

Maybe, they're particles.

4. Classifier of nouns

I guess so.

5. Short and long vowel

I think the vowel phonology differs extremely in Asian languages.
Wu tends to shift towards simple vowels rather than diphthongs or triphthongs, for example.

6. Ending in only (m, n, ng, p, t, k)

Wu, like Burmese, does not distinguish p,t,k, instead it collapses p,t,k into a single glottal stop (ʔ). (so -ap, -at, and -ak become at first -aʔ but then shift to other rimes or form other rimes, for example, but in any case the -ʔ is still retained) But otherwise it still preserves p,t,k, in the way in forms of historical rime patterns. Wu does not have -m, but -n, -gn, nasal vowel and -ng (depending on dialect). So nasal endings in Wu are actually allophones. In some cases, the nasal endings drop (such as Mandarin -an to -e, -ei, -oe, -ae, -i or -en.).

7. Many similar words (Mah - horse, kau - old, numbers etc)

Loanwords, probably.

8. Simple grammar (no change in verb, plural/singular etc)

Maybe.

9. Different words for different family relationship (eg. father's brother , mother's brother)

It's often cultural. Every Chinese dialect has variations of father's brother or mother's brother for example.

Even the way that the Thai speak polysyllabic words are the same as the chinese ie. broken into 'mono words with tones' eg. Com piu ter. They can't pronounce words like 'Next' , omitting the ending 'X' sound becoming 'Nek'.

I know some Wu speakers pronounce Next as 'ne-keh-su-teh', sort of like Japanese in a way, North as 'nol-su', for example.

Are there any other east asian languages that have all these similarities to chinese ?

Even Chinese dialects are different from each other.

[xng]

This also appears in many other Asian languages and I'm sure in any language that values family greatly. This has a lot more to do with culture than language.

This is not true.

Indonesian, Malay and filipino all don't distinguish between Father or Mother relatives. An uncle is an uncle (same as European languages) whether they come from Father or Mother.

[xng]

Wu is more polysyllabic. I don't think there is a such thing as monosyllabicity anymore in modern Chinese or any other modern language. Classical Chinese was usually monosyllabic, with a couple of polysyllabic exceptions.

By monosyllabic, I mean MOST words consist of one word or a combination of 2 meaningful words ie. Train is Fire Car in all chinese dialects.

Toilet is 'Water room' in Thai and consists of two separate words.

Eg of true polysyllabic word is English 'interpretation' which does not have any meaning when broken into its components in, ter, pre, tion.

Another example is Indonesian 'jodol' when broken apart becomes jo, dol which has no meaning individually.

Edited by xng, 24 May 2010 - 04:00 AM.

[xng]

Wu, like Burmese, does not distinguish p,t,k, instead it collapses p,t,k into a single glottal stop (ʔ). (so -ap, -at, and -ak become at first -aʔ but then shift to other rimes or form other rimes, for example, but in any case the -ʔ is still retained) But otherwise it still preserves p,t,k, in the way in forms of historical rime patterns. Wu does not have -m, but -n, -gn, nasal vowel and -ng (depending on dialect).

I believe this is because Wu was influenced by Mandarin which in turn was influenced by Manchu language to drop the p,t,k,m ending and to lose the number of tones (ie.5) from the original 8, since Wu is the buffer/middle area between the Northern Mandarin and the Southern chinese languages. Even MinDong has this characteristic as it borders Wu's region.

Anyway, what I am talking about are the older chinese languages who do preserve these features ie. Minnan, Cantonese and Hakka.

There are Lao, Vietnamese (plus many minority languages).

Lao comes from the same language family and branch as Thai so we treat them as the same group.

How is Vietnamese different/similar in terms of all the criteria listed ?

Edited by xng, 24 May 2010 - 04:06 AM.

[qrasy]

I hardly notice any tonality in Wu speech.

I had a Burmese friend and he didn't notice the tonality of Burmese speech either. Though a person who uses the language to communicate often "take for granted" some features that are "audibly special" to the outsiders.

Wu does not have -m, but -n, -gn, nasal vowel and -ng (depending on dialect). So nasal endings in Wu are actually allophones.

Though to show those are allophones one need to see that there are no minimal pair between them.

I know some Wu speakers pronounce Next as 'ne-keh-su-teh', sort of like Japanese in a way

Nai-ke-si-te is just like Northern Mandarin.

By monosyllabic, I mean MOST words consist of one word or a combination of 2 meaningful words ie. Train is Fire Car in all chinese dialects.

There's ambiguity in the usage of "monosyllabic language".
Modern Chinese is mostly monosyllabic when morphemes are concerned, but not words (bloodmerchant is talking about words rather than morphemes).
This is because things like "觀" is not a modern Chinese word, even though it's meaningful.
The difference between morpheme and word can be seen even in English. "Geo" and "logy" are not words even though "geo" and "logy" both have meaning and can "recombine" with other parts of speech to form new words.
"Geo" is a morpheme as the meaning is not splittable, but nevertheless it's not a word.

Another example is Indonesian 'jodol' when broken apart becomes jo, dol which has no meaning individually.

FYI, this is considered nonstandard. 'Title' is 'judul' in Indonesian.

I believe this is because Wu was influenced by Mandarin which in turn was influenced by Manchu language to drop the p,t,k,m ending and to lose the number of tones (ie.5) from the original 8

Actually, there's no need for Manchu influence; Burmese is separated from Manchu far far away yet have similar reductions of ending and vowel (a few changes like ai -> ɛ is also shared). I would rather consider this as a type of "lazy sound" rather than a "Manchu accent" (the glottal stop is not satisfactorily explained simply by Manchu as Manchu itself doesn't have such thing).

5 tones for Wu is only for Shanghainese. Other Wu can have from 4-12 surface tones.
Manchu does have "Akim bek", though I'm not sure under what special conditions -k and -m can appear.

Anyway, what I am talking about are the older chinese languages who do preserve these features ie. Minnan, Cantonese and Hakka.

One of the features listed should be "erased" in this case (no5).
The main long-short distinctions in Cantonese can be traced from merger of different vowels, e.g. /ə/ > short /a/, original /a/->long /a:/.
There's no evidence of pure vowel length difference in Early Middle Chinese.

Lao comes from the same language family and branch as Thai so we treat them as the same group.

Thai and Lao is pretty close int this case. Though we can't conclude anything if it's simply "same language family".
I only mentioned about the major languages (national), not minor languages.
Hmong lost almost all endings and doesn't have length distinction but otherwise would fit into the previous criterion.
Khmer is non-tonal, predominantly "sesquisyllabic" ("one and half" syllables); but (if I'm not wrong), in modern times the grammar is mostly isolating (but some words inherited from Old Khmer to have inflections).
There's additional -l, -c, -ɲ and -h (some dialects also -r) compared to the set of Thai endings.

How is Vietnamese different/similar in terms of all the criteria listed ?

I think it fulfills all. Occasionally you see polysyllabic morphemes, just like in other Asian languages. No7 is pretty much because of loans from Chinese.

Edited by qrasy, 24 May 2010 - 05:34 AM.

[Houyi]

This is not true.

Indonesian, Malay and filipino all don't distinguish between Father or Mother relatives. An uncle is an uncle (same as European languages) whether they come from Father or Mother.

Assuming you're telling the truth, that would be 3 languages out of how many Asian languages? Also it was my fault that I should've been more clear that by "Asian" earlier I should've said East Asian languages. To be even more specific, languages that were part of the Sinosphere.

By monosyllabic, I mean MOST words consist of one word or a combination of 2 meaningful words ie. Train is Fire Car in all chinese dialects.

Toilet is 'Water room' in Thai and consists of two separate words.

Eg of true polysyllabic word is English 'interpretation' which does not have any meaning when broken into its components in, ter, pre, tion.

Another example is Indonesian 'jodol' when broken apart becomes jo, dol which has no meaning individually.

That is not correct. 火車 huoche ("fire vehicle") itself is a word. When broken up to 火 and 車 it loses its meaning. So I suppose it's true to say Chinese has monosyllabic morphemes, but on a word-level, Chinese is hardly monosyllabic.

[xng]

Assuming you're telling the truth, that would be 3 languages out of how many Asian languages? Also it was my fault that I should've been more clear that by "Asian" earlier I should've said East Asian languages. To be even more specific, languages that were part of the Sinosphere.

Other languages which failed the first criteria ie. tones are non-tonal - Manchurian, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Filipino Tagalog, Khmer.

Thailand is hardly part of Sinosphere.

Those which are tonal eg. vietnamese may not have all the other criteria. I don't know enough vietnamese to judge so we need some vietnamese members to come in.

Burmese and Tibetan are tonal but how about the other criteria ? They fall in the same language family as chinese but forms a different branch. How similar are they compared to Thai and chinese ?

PS. My previous definition of 'word' means morpheme which is a bit too technical for me to use.

Edited by xng, 24 May 2010 - 09:55 AM.

[Houyi]

Other languages which failed the first criteria ie. tones are non-tonal - Manchurian, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Filipino Tagalog, Khmer.

What do family titles have to do with tones?

Thailand is hardly part of Sinosphere.

Point? Who said it was?

Those which are tonal eg. vietnamese may not have all the other criteria. I don't know enough vietnamese to judge so we need some vietnamese members to come in.

Burmese and Tibetan are tonal but how about the other criteria ? They fall in the same language family as chinese but forms a different branch. How similar are they compared to Thai and chinese ?

Again, what are you talking about?

PS. My previous definition of 'word' means morpheme which is a bit too technical for me to use.

That's fine, we all make mistakes. But having monosyllabic morphemes doesn't make the language monosyllabic.

[JamyangNorbu]

Other languages which failed the first criteria ie. tones are non-tonal - Manchurian, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Filipino Tagalog, Khmer.

Thailand is hardly part of Sinosphere.

Those which are tonal eg. vietnamese may not have all the other criteria. I don't know enough vietnamese to judge so we need some vietnamese members to come in.

Burmese and Tibetan are tonal but how about the other criteria ? They fall in the same language family as chinese but forms a different branch. How similar are they compared to Thai and chinese ?

There is more than one Tibetan dialect/language, and not all of these are tonal. The more archaic dialects are not tonal leading many to conclude that archaic Tibetan was a non-tonal language.

An easy demonstration of the differences within the Tibetan dialects is the pronunciation of the letters ཀ་ and ག་ in the central Tibetan dialect (dbus skad/དབུས་སྐད་) and the predominant Tibetan of Qīnghǎi, the Amdo dialect (a mdo skad/ཨ་མདོ་སྐད་).

In dbus skad, these letters are distinguished by ཀ་ representing a high tone kā, and ག་ a low tone ka̱.

In a mdo skad, these letters are toneless and phonetically identical.

With regards to similarities to Chinese, besides tones in two of the more 'progressive' dialects, there are relatively few. Chinese is Subject Verb Predicate, while Tibetan, along with the other Tibeto-Burman languages, is Subject Predicate Verb. There are some words in common, but most are very late borrowings into Tibetan from Chinese. Most linguists seem to think the split of the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages, (if Sino-Tibetan is a valid classification) was quite ancient.

[qrasy]

Other languages which failed the first criteria ie. tones are non-tonal - Manchurian, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Filipino Tagalog, Khmer.

If you limit yourself to East and Southeast Asians, apart from Hmong-Mien and Tai-Kadai in which "all" are tonal, I can think of Chinese, the majority of Tibeto-Burman, Vietnamese, and Tsat.

I've heard that there's some type of Khmer that keeps different pitch when the -r ending is lost. I haven't personally encountered this, though, so I'm not sure if it qualifies as "tonality".

Those which are tonal eg. vietnamese may not have all the other criteria. I don't know enough vietnamese to judge so we need some vietnamese members to come in.

5 and 6 is true for modern Vietnamese. In the writing there's ă-a /a-a:/ and â-ơ /ɜ-ɜ:/ distinction which is length.
As in many Tai languages, this distinction only occurs for words with final consonant. So ă-a is "the same" while ăn-an are different.
Vietnamese writing has p-t-k (written ptc) and m-n-ng.
And in spite of the spelling, the writing "-nh" and "-ch" is interpreted as /jŋ/ and /jk/ in North Vietnamese.

4 is correct. There's always something between a number and the thing it counts, e.g. "một bông hoa" "một cuốn sách" "một con cừu" "một con bò".
[classifier] + [noun] even appear "stickier" than Chinese, as {[classifier] + [noun]} (without number) appear to be used just like one noun unit in English. (not sure which cases, perhaps a Vietnamese can explain)
(this is different from Cantonese noun phrase of [classifier]+[noun] which would contain the meaning of "that particular one")

3 and 8: đã means "completion", đang means "in progress", sẽ marks "going to happen", không means "not".
changes in grammar are always added separately (apparently except those that are crystallized from ancient times; even modern Chinese has remnants of grammatical changes).

7: obvious if you compare with Chinese; most if not all from Chinese loanwords.

9: there are many Chinese loanwords in this area. e.g.
Aunt: cô (姑), thím (嬸), dì (姨)
Uncle: bác (伯), chú (?叔), cậu (舅)
Though colloquial cô and cậu have developed into a kind of "pronoun replacement".

2: monosyllabic word root is dominant, all the Vietnamese example words I took above has that feature.

PS. My previous definition of 'word' means morpheme which is a bit too technical for me to use.

A less technical term is word-root (even though it excludes suffixes, there's no suffix in Chinese).

There is more than one Tibetan dialect/language, and not all of these are tonal. The more archaic dialects are not tonal leading many to conclude that archaic Tibetan was a non-tonal language.

Actually, the writing itself does not contain any sign of tones, while still keeping not ambiguous.

In dbus skad, these letters are distinguished by ཀ་ representing a high tone kā, and ག་ a low tone ka̱.

In a mdo skad, these letters are toneless and phonetically identical.

I wonder which dialects have this:
1. ཀ་ ka high, ག་ kʰa low
or this:
2. ཀ་ ka (voiceless), ག་ ga (voiced)

With regards to similarities to Chinese, besides tones in two of the more 'progressive' dialects, there are relatively few.

How about counting measures?
Is "4 sheep" (or "sheep 4") valid or does it have to be "4" + [unit] + "sheep"?

Chinese is Subject Verb Predicate

Depends on context. When it's 把-carrying sentence or passive voice, SOV appears in Mandarin.

Edited by qrasy, 24 May 2010 - 04:24 PM.

[bloodmerchant]

With regards to similarities to Chinese, besides tones in two of the more 'progressive' dialects, there are relatively few. Chinese is Subject Verb Predicate, while Tibetan, along with the other Tibeto-Burman languages, is Subject Predicate Verb. There are some words in common, but most are very late borrowings into Tibetan from Chinese. Most linguists seem to think the split of the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages, (if Sino-Tibetan is a valid classification) was quite ancient.

Typically Wu Chinese is considered to be an SVO language, but with a greater tendency towards SOV than in other Chinese dialects (But that's not because of some Altaic influence). But that could be due to some type of 'resistance' in adopting SVO typology, and SOV has been attested in Literary Chinese. But Wu Chinese itself is flexible in terms of typology, that a sentence can be expressed in both SVO and SOV.

I believe this is because Wu was influenced by Mandarin which in turn was influenced by Manchu language

No. Wu may have been influenced by Northern Chinese in the past continuously, but they still show 'conservative' aspects compared to other Chinese dialects. It is also progressive in its own manner as well, different than that of Mandarin. but nevertheless, it is still quite 'closer' to Mandarin in some aspects but 'farther' than Mandarin in other aspects.

to drop the p,t,k,m ending

maybe the -m ending, where it merged with other nasals, and then made changes of their own.

But the -p,-t,-k endings have all merged with -(glottal stop). So they didn't really lose it, it's still preserved, albeit in a different form. And the rimes that end in a glottal stop still fall under the same type of tone (the entering tone). This is also attested in Jin, Jianghuai Mandarin and Xiang. Other Mandarin dialects lost those endings but still preserved the same entering tone.

and to lose the number of tones (ie.5) from the original 8,

The number of tones in Wu varies from dialect to dialect.

since Wu is the buffer/middle area between the Northern Mandarin and the Southern chinese languages.

Wu-speaking areas are part of Southern China, I believe that the Jianghuai Mandarin, Xiang, and SW Mandarin speaking areas are more like buffer areas.

Even MinDong has this characteristic as it borders Wu's region.

Most varieties of Min Dong still preserve -k to some extent, to the point that Fuzhou dialect has two semi-separate entering tones: one for -k and one for -(glottal stop).

Min Dong, unlike Wu, and like the other Southern Chinese languages that you mentioned, have increased use of diphthongs and triphthongs, where in Wu, they collapsed to either as monophthongs or diphthongs.

Edited by bloodmerchant, 24 May 2010 - 07:11 PM.

[JamyangNorbu]

Actually, the writing itself does not contain any sign of tones, while still keeping not ambiguous.

Correct, the writing does not contain any tonal markers. I apologize, but I'm not clear on what the second portion of the sentence means? "while still keeping not ambiguous."

I wonder which dialects have this:
1. ཀ་ ka high, ག་ kʰa low

This is actually a better representation of dbus skad phonetics, specifically in the lha sa variation where there is a stronger aspiration than in some of the other regions.

or this:
2. ཀ་ ka (voiceless), ག་ ga (voiced)

The voicing can occur under certain conditions with super and subscripts in dbus skad, and can also result in a tone shift. The voiced ga does not usually occur as a standalone in dbus skad's orthography.

How about counting measures?
Is "4 sheep" (or "sheep 4") valid or does it have to be "4" + [unit] + "sheep"?

4 sheep would be rendered as lug bzhi (sheep 4).

Depends on context. When it's 把-carrying sentence or passive voice, SOV appears in Mandarin.

Sure. But it is generally classified as SVO because of the default structure. Tibetan is always SOV, although the subject is not required to be explicitly stated in simpler sentences where it is obvious.