The average french looks latin and not nordic. We cannot discount any migration from the nordic groups such as english just as there are migration from vietnam.

Again, somebody got Hmong and Lao into his example

That's right. Southeast Asia is bigger, yet only people from the very Northern part is avalaible in U.S.

My conclusion is that many people hardly see any Malay but quite often see Vietnamese.

I wouldn't take any word from non-Malaysian/Indonesian for what is "Southeast Asian look".

The miao-yao and tai-laos people are recent migrants into south east asia. Their original place should be around south china. The same latitude as the cantonese.

The true south east asians are the malays in indonesia, philipines and khmer people.

Last time I checked the official population of Chinese Vietnamese are about 1-2 millions. 25% of 80 millions is quite far-fetched That's even more presumptuous than the Cambodian people claiming the population of Khmer Krom is about 8 millions

what the hell are you talking about? malaysia,indonesia,philipines were once connected with the mainland southeast asia,thats right,including vietnam, and thailand.

malays are more of oceanic people,like the polynesians. i would consider them as pacific islanders.

when did vietnam and thailand become non- southeast Asians?

I thought that the proto-Malay had their root from the Tibet region who might migrate to the current Malaysia sometime around 3-4,000 years ago. The ancient Khmer people also migrated from India a bit more recent, around 2,000 years ago. Are you referred the true Southeast Asian as the original Orang Asli or the Negritos (who should be considered as the real bumiputra in place of the current Malay) instead?

I am not talking about all those assumptions about the homeland of the malay or khmer. There are so many different versions which are just theories anyway.

I am talking about the first recorded history which is around the qin-han dynasty era (around 2000 years ago) of the people that the chinese observed and recorded.

The tai and laos people were still in south china at that time.

The malays were already in the indonesian and philipines islands. The khmer is already in cambodia and most of mainland south east asia.

For your info, the aslian (orang asli) in the peninsular is related to the mon-khmer people.

You're talking about geographical lifeplace. He is talking about something a several centuries ago.

I belive every continent in the world was once connected, to form a "Pangaea".

According to your pattern, I can ask "since when have West Malaysian been non-Southeast Asian?"
Side question: are you now true American?

Tibet region?
I have only heard of Yunnan migration theorem.

Any proof that Khmer also migrated from India?
I ask this because the "proof" I can think of is similar to relationship between India and Indonesians.

LOL I don't wish to say that Aslian and Mon-Khmer are related, seeing that Vietic is also on that map.

This is the so-called modern definition. Are singaporeans south east asians too ? Then chinese can be called south east asians since they migrated to singapore and formed the majority in that country ? These countries are in south east asia, but I don't know how you classify people who are recent migrants and not the original inhabitants ?

Thais, laotians are not the originally inhabitants of south east asia, they are the original inhabitants of south china.

Let's not talk about the theories that all humans are africans (right ! caucasians and africans and mongoloids look alike and we all speak afrikaans), what is most important is when differentiation of facial features and language occurs.

Vietnamese is an anomaly and is debatable.

Those who are within the same language family are genetically related as they came from the same tribe many thousand of years ago, that's why they share common root words which are not borrowed. Any experts (not amateurs) which can confirm this definition ?

Have you ever heard of ASEAN?
And have you see real Cambodians and/or Burmese?
And are you referring to Ethnicities or Nationalities? Malays are not the same as Malaysians.

To most of those experts, it's "solid".

Well, if you mean "gene/DNA", then MANY exceptions, as in language replacing and heavy mixtures. See Turkic speakers and Karen (Sino-Tibetan) speakers.

Unfortunately those experts are not around here

Don't be so elegant.

I do not fear of losing my identity. I am Vietnamese, and I do not believe in hypothesis that is not supported by solid evident by non-experts that ALL the Zhuang, the Cantonese, and the Vietnamese are originally Yue ethnic. Yue was not and is not an ethnic. It is just a name. My children have no idea of Vietnam or the Vietnamese, let alone their Vietnamese identity. I concern about what is right, what is correct rather than I concern about my identity.

I agree that for thousands of years, the Chinese migrated to Vietnam and became Vietnamese. It does not make the Vietnamese are originally Chinese or Chinese related. It is safe to say that some Vietnamese are or were Chinese migrants. We all know that most Americans are or were migrants, except the American Indians.

Unfortunately, experts are not around here, but by common sense, Chinese are not the roots of all South Asia people. Some just want the Vietnamese were people migrated from China to Vietnam rather than the Vietnamese were local people. They just don't get that before the ancient Chinese empire was formed, before the Han ethnic was formed, there were local people anywhere in Asia, including Vietnam and China.

You meant "arrogant" perhaps?

Regarding the overseas Vietnamese (merely 30 years give or take in most other countries since the Fall of Saigon except for the Viet's community in France)! Sometimes the worst misfortune there came opportunities. The characteristics of resiliency, determination, hardwork, respect for higher education, strong family value... of the Vietnamese have proven quite successful during the past 30 years as they merely have had a fair chance to compete in any country.

The Vietnamese in overseas are definitely not concerning about losing their identity due to any sinicization process but the quick rate of assimilation into their local community could be an issue though!

Yue is not an ethnicity but a group of ethnicities beyond the south of china.

I have always said that the vietnamese, cantonese, zhuang are to a certain percentage of the population related (admixture) due to their shared history and geographical proximity to each other.

That is why I am wondering why most people in this forum said they can only be 100 % vietnamese or 100 % chinese.

There is no such thing 100% chinese or 100% vietnamese. The Yue started as an ethnic and then lost its proximity due to wars, influences, and invasions from the outsiders.

The BaiYueism is now coming to a new peak, maybe its peak ever.

Did the BaiYue people exist long before the name was recorded in history?
If so, who records BaiYue as an ethnic?
Which historian impressed mordern people that BaiYue is an ethnic?

BaiYue means "100" ethnics, one of which was called "Yue" and most of them were quite similar thus leading to a generalization.

Don't go too far to the past when all of those 100 ethnicities were a single ethnicity when we are only interested in historic era.

Admixture would make even "100%" Chinese not be 0% other ethnicities, and vice versa
and despite of that.... we have 100% African ancestry

At that time, BaiYue was an ethnic group, together with BaiHan.

there was/is no baihan ethnicity whatsoever


100 hans

You know what you know ... including those ancient folks who believed they were the center of the universe or certain modern people who think they're representing the "apex of all humanity"... nonetheless two wrongs =/= one right though!

Correct me if I am wrong but when the chinese mentioned the hundred yue, they mean those tribes that reside in south of yangtze river.

Those areas are mainly inhabited by the numerous tai speaking and miao-yao speaking tribes.

ummmmmmmmmm.............................................................................is Yue Han?

And Vietnamese-like languages.

Well, depends on what "Yue" you mean. Yue of Zhejiang should be .

"Han" as a name of the ethnicity was imposed to the Chinese by the rule of Northern nomads, before that it's just Hua.

History of Hundred Yue People is not so difficult to understand,
but it takes 29 pages of discussion to make it clearer and clearer to members.

The reason is that someone does not realize that an ethnicity keeps evolving
during its history. BaiYue was not an ethnicity, but its tribes were. Those tribes
evolved to be nowaday non-Han Chinese minorities, and other ethnics in other
countries outside China such as Vietnam, Lao, Thai, and others. We may see
that in the other threads such as the history of Han, or other groups.

Althose most of the BaiYue tribes now are Chinese, and the ancient Vietnamese
once have been amongst the BaiYue, it does not mean the ancient Vietnamese
were in the same ethnic with other Chinese minorities, that can be lead to the
conclusion that the root of the mordern Vietnamese was in the ChangJiang area,
the area said to be of the BaiYue.

As we can look at the very old record, the area of the ancient Vietnamese was
in the South East of the China empire.

昔黃帝既建萬國、以交趾遠在百粵之表、莫能統屬、遂界於西南隅
其部落十有五焉、曰交趾、越裳氏、武寧、軍寧、嘉寧、寧海、陸海、湯泉
新昌、平文、文郎、九真、日南、懷驩、九德皆禹貢之所不及。

However, someone tries to say that the ancient Vietnamese were in theChangJiang
area. That is among the reasons we keep discussing over and over again.

I think you mean southwest.

But how large far was the extent of Chinese then?

Yes. It was South West.
I called South East the way mordern Westerner say, rather than the statement in the quotation.
I think the old China empire was not further than mordern north Vietnam.
We can look at the map in history to see that.

Looking closer, it mentions about Giao Chi, Viet Thuong Thi and Van Lang all at the same time...
Also Rinan and Jiuzhen also mentioned.
other places look like a normal Chinese name. (e.g. Jia Ning, ning Hai)

You miss the meaning of the word "con rong chau tien" and you miss the story in your previous post.

Au Co was De Lai's daughter, not his wife.

The word "con rong chau tien" means children of dragon and grand-children of fairy. This is because Than Nong married a fairy in Lingnan, gave birth to Loc Tuc (Kinh Duong Vuong). Kinh Duong Vuong then married daughter of the Dragon Lord, gave birth to Sung Lam (Lac Long Quan). So Lac Long Quan's mother was a dragon, and his grandmother was a fairy. Therefore comes the word "children of dragon, grandchildren of fairy" (con rong chau tien)

About Than Nong being chinese, I don't want to argue. Everything can happen, the Han could have copied him from the Bai Yue, or we could have copied him from the Han. But I can give you many reasons why I have the right to suspect he was invented by the Han.

But I don't care, even a Vietnamese kid knows that he/she is descendant of Than Nong. I knew this since i was a kid.

That story was not made up by a historian. It's passed down from one generation to another generation among Vietnamese. Look around the minor ethnics in Vietnam who have Yue origin and are related to the Kinh, they also have the same legend, different in details, but same in general. All of these talk about 100 children came from the same sac of eggs...then they were separated and started their own journey. Also, I highly doubt "dong bao" is originally a Huaxia word. In Vietnamese, we have many words that indicate a sac that are related to the word "ba`o" like bao (middle tone) and boc...

it was common for non-chinese to claim linage from han chinese,for example the xiongnu(huns) claim to be descendant of dayu of the xia dynasty
it was recorded in shiji and hanshu.



shennong(than nonng in viet?) exsisted 5000 years ago, i don't think the baiyue even exsisted at the time being. shennong is one of the ancestor of chinese people. we call him the yan emperor.



A close kin of the Yellow Emperor, he is said to be a patriarch of the Chinese. The Han Chinese regarded them both as their joint ancestors.
Shennong (Traditional Chinese: 神農; Simplified Chinese: 神农; pinyin: Shénnóng), sometimes known as the Yan Emperor (炎帝), is a legendary emperor and culture hero of Chinese mythology who is believed to have lived some 5,000 years ago and who taught the ancients the practices of agriculture.






then do so.
it wouldn't make any sense and no reasons for ancient chinese to claim a
baiyue(which at the time was being regarded as uncivilized and barbaric by the han chinese) as their ancestor. it should be the other way around that ancient viets claimed to be descedant of shen nong to make them appear more civilized and on the same level with the han chinese.

if the ancient viets were descedant of shen nong,then why didn't the viets write about shen nong's early work of medicine?


The most well-known work attributed to Shennong is the 神农本草经 (pinyin: Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing translated as The Divine Farmer's Herb-Root Classic) -- first compiled some time during the end of the Western Han Dynasty -- which lists the various medicinal herbs discovered by Shennong by grade and rarity.




every chinese kidds knows they are a yanhuang zison炎黄子孙, it means sons/grandsons of yan and huang emperor

do you really not know or just pretending not know?

the vietnamese language is composed of over 70% of chinese loan words. so the word bao could well be a chinese loan word.

uh huh, right. I know Vietnamese even better than you do.

But do you think it's not fair when every time people see a similarity between the Vietnamese and the Chinese, they claim that the Viet learned it from the Han. Their reasons are the Han dominated the Yue for over 1000 years, and the Han is the center of the civilization in East Asia, they're the only civilized people and they spread civilization to other people...That is so Han-centric, which is very a common thing among classical Han historians and Han textbooks.

When two ethnics come in contact (or live together), they have to have some influence on each other. It's a two-way thing, not a one-way thing...meaning the Han had influence on the Yue and the Yue also had influence on the Han, not just the Han had influence on the Yue.

For example,
One of my Cantonese friends told me that the word 'pants' in Chinese is kwan...in Vietnamese, 'pants' is 'quan'...So are you going to say we got that word from the Han? It's hard to tell, especially when it's a so common word in our language and we use it everyday.

Vietnamese drink tea and eat rice. Chinese also drink tea and grow rice...Are you going to say we learned it from the Chinese?

It's ridiculous to me to say that every single word in Vietnamese language that sounds similar to any Chinese word has Chinese origin. Why is it not the otherwise?

The Han just spread civilization, they don't learn anything from others?

I can see you have a very Han-centric view in your post as you say it was common for non-chinese to claim linage from han chinese,for example the xiongnu(huns) claim to be descendant of dayu of the xia dynasty...you talk like that the Han linage is so great that everyone wants it.

And how do you know that shennong existed 5000 years ago? When was the document you showed me written? Was it written 5000 years ago? Myths can tell you a lot...but they can also be misleading sometimes.

...and...so people didn't know the practices of agricultures until 5000 years ago?

Again it's your Han-centric view, like there's no other civilization but the Huaxia civilization in east asia.

First tell me what the word Shennong means in Chinese, tell me all the things he did, tell me others name that he had. I'll continue after you answer those questions.

(Note: I'm not going to try to prove that Than Nong is Viet, because, like I said, in the swirl of history, how can we tell what's true and what's not true, anything could have happened that we don't know. I will just give out some reasons to suspect its Huaxia origin...but of course deep in my heart, I believe Than Nong is Yue, I'm just not going to argue much.)

edit: just read 10 pages of this thread and I feel that nguoiVietchantong's posts are very ANNOYING.

uh,huh. i know chinese language better than you do.



its not a claim,the ancient viet did learned a lot of things from the chinese. can you name anything that the ancient chinese learned from the ancient viets?



well,what ancient viet influence on chinese?



firstly,pants is kuzi in mandarin chinese. its not hard to tell,there are well constructed proto-sino-tibetan root words that you can look it up.

so the english drink tea too. so korean and japanese eat rice too.

eating rice and drinking tea are not a cultural influence,nor did i claimed it was from china



this shouldn't even be a question. its well establised facts by linguasist that about 70% of vietnamese vocabs are of chinese origin.

. Genetic relationship. Vietnam was ruled by China for ten centuries, from 111 BCE to 939 CE, when many Chinese loan words entered Vietnamese. Because Chinese charaters served for a long time both as the medium of written communication among scholars and officials, and as the vehicle of literary expression, people often think mistakenly that Vietnamese is derived from Chinese or is a dialect of Chinese. Actually--like Korea and Japan--Vietnam was merely a pocket of Chinese cultural influence. Genetically unrelated to Chinese, Vietnamese, belongs to the Mon-Khmer stock, which comprises Mon (spoken in Burma) and Khmer (the language of Cambodia), as well as Khmu, Bahnar, Bru and other languages of the highlands of Vietnam. Mon-Khmer is a branch of the large Austro-Asiatic family [q.v.], which includes several major language groups spoken in a wide area from the Chota Nagpur plateau of India, in the west, to the Indo-Chinese peninsula in the east. (For hostorical studies, see Maspero 1912, Haudricourt 1953, 1954, and Gregerson 1969.) {See also Southeast Asian Languages]

firstly,i'm not even a han,i'm a huihuiand

when did vietnam start recording histories?

the chinese writing system dates back over 4000 years ago: the oracle bones.







shen means:god,magical, and etc,it has too many meanings.
nong: farmers

shennong together means the farming god

shennong's other name is yandi: the yan emperor

I never said I know chinese better than you do. I said I know Vietnamese language better than you do; Vietnamese has chinese loan words is not a new thing to me. But I just feel it's not fair. Why do the Hans get credit for every similarity?


Were they there when the diffusion of cultures and languages happened? How do they know who learned from whom? China just gets so powerful and everything has to be in its favor.

I think i'm talking about may be this 裙. Please correct me if I'm wrong


uh huh. But most of people think we followed the Chinese. It's cultural diffusion. Who knows for sure where it first appeared?



Were these linguistics there when the diffusion of language occured? And where is the source?

they earned it.



Qun is not a pant,and its wear by girls.
well by historical records,archeological sites and common root words.







do we need to be there to know genghis khan was such a bad-a ss

do we need to be there to know the dinosours exsisted?

Don't change the topic. I'm asking you how do you know Shennong existed for 5000 years. The quote you gave me was surely written by the much latter generation.
The Yue did have their writting (found in Sapa, a city in northern Vietnam) and they might have recorded their history, but it doesn't matter since all was gone during the Han domination, and now no one can decode that writing to understand what it says.


Chinese people call the god of fire 火神, the god of water 水神, etc...Have you ever said 神火 or 神水.
It's obviously that in Chinese (a language originated from Huaxia?), the adjective goes before the noun it describes...but why in Shennong, the adjective follows the noun? I don't think you ever said 神火 or 神水, but why do you say 神農. Why is it not 農神?

(Please correct me if any character is wrong)

Yan in Yandi as I know is hot. That is so weird because hot/dry weather will make plants die. Plants need water. How can a farming god be called the king of hot?

no comment...I know I will get another empty answer.

historical records are written by historians from their point of views, they can write whatever they want...true or not true, who knows for sure?


and the archealogists said....


maybe we do...
beside, those are far different from what we're talking about...

We can discuss more next week. I need to do my assignment now.

Thanks.
Bye and Take care.

i don't know. and i don't really care when he exsisted.what matters is that we considered him to be one of the ancestors of chinese.





rgiht,blame the bad,evil chinese for everything.



old chinese is quite different from modern chinese,and shennong is not a new invented name.

and the meaning of shennong is only my own interptation. shenong is simply a name nothing more nothing else.

(Please correct me if any character is wrong)



northern china is not siberia,theres's a hot summar too. plan dies in cold winter as well.
huangdi mean the yellow emperor because the river is yellow colored.


whats your point after all?

hey DearCoolz, I'll reply to you next week (probably Saturday or Sunday), now I don't have time to type everything down.

i know you and I have very different povs, but nice to meet you anyway.

take care.

In "Chinese (and nearby)-style construction", something that is literally "childern and grandchildren" (子孫 in Chinese) means descendants.

The Dong are clearly Chinese 同. It's a very basic word, you even derive some 形聲 from it.
胞 does not mean "egg sac", but "womb, placenta, fetal membrane"


The word did not exist, but the "candidates" may.
oh, and Yan emperor was said to be leader of proto-Tibeto-Burman people.

No writing system....

Example? The heavenly stems and earthly branches system? I think it's closer to Tai than Viet

Just by looking at the form, "quần" is typical (new) Sino-Vietnamese... Unlike "rồng" since it's not valid (new) Sino-Vietnamese.

Agriculture in east Asia should be spread by one unique people very long time ago.
I think the word "tea" originates in China... but I don't know how to be sure. But clealy Koreans and Japanese had to loan the word from China...

Some, I think, are definitely otherwise, I can think of "睇".

I agree with you

Recent development. That's why it's extremely similar to Fujianese when the languages are "unrelated". Definitely a loan.


That's not how I interpret it, because the ordering is strange. If the ordering in Chinese was reversed, why not "Di Huang 帝黄"?
You may argue that in Tibeto-Burman languages the order is reverse... but try to find the grammar first...
For now, I may interpret it as "expert/genius farmer". (this translation is not very good, but how would you translate 神童?)

It's something like "flaming lord". Just a legendary leader, not a god.

Some Vietnamese argues that the word ShenNong comes from BaiYue people rather than HuaXia people.
I am not interested in this topic, for it is the work of the Chinese scholars instead. I accept whatever the conclusion they come. I just want to say, ShenNong is not Vietnamese any way.

Both DearColz and lachong are right in some aspects, and you both can come to common reasonable thinkings without rejecting others idea. I believe that Chinese and Han culture have long development that absorb many things from other cultures and languages. Vietnamese and Viet culture are greatly affected by Chinese culture and language. The Viet word "dong bao" is really an adopted word from Chinese, literately meaning "people of the same fetus." It does not mean that "every word that has similar sound to Chinese is defenitely adopted from Chinese." I have experienced this kind of conclusion by several so-called-Vietnamese-languistics. You can find many Vietnamese words with the same meanings that sound similar to their counterparts in either Asian languages, such as Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Thailand, native Taiwanese, Pacific Islanders, etc. The reason is that these languages have sounds written in separated characters. Therefore, the chance of having the similar sounds for the same meanings are great.

If you want a false evident, I give you one word I can falsely claim that the English adopt from Vietnamese language. The word is "cut" that has exact sound and meaning as "cat" in Vietnamese. You can prove that the Vietnamese word "cat" is adopted from the English word "cut," too, if you want. I hope that you can see through the analogy rather than the proof to the hypothesis that the Vietnamese people, culture, and language are from Anglo Xason.

The elegant Chinese think that the Chinese culture and language are great, and they are the only source of the world languages and cultures. Some Vietnamese (even Vietnamese historicans) think that Vietnamese people, language and cultrue are from Chinese, and they wrote their belief in their history book as to be the truth. Reading history books with scientific and open mind, you can see that, without doubt, without arguing.

Generally, language could change within merely couple generations while genetic make up would not. Since the Vietnamese do use Chinese characters as their written language for almost two thousand years (as long as the unified Chinese written language existed by itself) therefore the borrowing and/or using of Chinese words in modern Vietnamess language is a given fact. However, the origin of the Vietnamese to discuss in this thread would go beyond the concept and formation of the language itself, as I've addressed repeatedly, with archeaological and genetic accounts, the ancient Vietnamese have been settled continuously from the current region of north Vietnam for milleniums, many thousand years before Vietnam became a polity of China officially from 43-939AD.

I hope this is something you dwell on every minute of your life.

I mean of course the "Han" get credit for Chinese-sounding words, up to 70% of their vocabulary (*wikipedia) has been purported to have come from their northern neighbors. If you're looking for something to be proud of from your own culture, vocabulary isn't a good place to start. You should try looking into clothing and customs. Or maybe you could point out how Vietnamese people use "Han" words differently, how they've made up new words, or maybe even how the Vietnamese usage of "Han" words have influenced southern Chinese provinces in their usage of the same words.



and 裙 means dress, I think.

It's highly doubtful. There are "infinite" number of permutations of meaning-sound correspondences, so there's also a chance that similar sounds have reverse meaning. But of course, the largest possibility is that they have unrelated meanings.
If you want to see these kind of things, you may see: http://members.aol.com/yahyam/coincidence.html
of course, some of them looks like loan: post in Turkish and English, but most of the others are clearly not loans.

... I'm not sure if the vowel is the same. But, anyway I have not heard them myself.

The arrogant ones instead of "elegant" ones.

I'm not sure what you're referring to, because I doubt that Altaic speakers have large influence to Chinese vocabulary.

Wiktionary gives "skirt, apron, petticoat".
But I think 裙 means s(h/k)irt. Why do I put h/k there? Because they (shirt/skirt) are cognates. European people did not distinguish skirt and shirt, and those are one piece. I think ancient Greek uses "s(h/k)irt" as well...
Skirt came from loaning of Scandinavian languages. Most of the time, 'sk' is Scandinavian loan in English and the "more base" English have 'sh' for that.

Li(cham) are called Tsat in hainan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsat_language http://www.hainan-world.com/dir/hainanethnic.html#utsul
the Li (hlai) are tai-kadai speaking and are not cham



Tho, as they onced were called is now preferably called Tay(similar to tai) are a Tai people. the tay of northern vietnam are very similar to the nung which are also tai speaking. the nung of northern vietnam are the southern zhuang in southern china. wewwwwwwwww...


quoted from jerry edmonson-
In fact, the very name Luo in Mandarin but in Middle Chinese Lak (600 AD) may be
reflection of the usage still found in many daughter languages of la:k (Thai
luk) meaning child in the sense of offspring. Thus the Kam call
themselves La:k Kam 'offspring of the Kam, the Kam'.
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture...59f1c529e78d256

Jerry Edmondson
formerly at Inst of Lg and Culture for Rural Dev.
Mahidol University at Salaya
Nakhon Pathom 73170


as visitor and permanently at


University of Texas at Arlington
Linguistics
Arlington TX 76019-0559
USA


Tai and Kadai
Jerold A. Edmondson and Yang Quan
University of Texas at Arlington and Central Institute of Nationalities
Arlington TX 76019-0559 USA and Beijing, China 1000081


We were very gratified by the recent article in the Bangkok Post by
Professor Vallibhotama that identified the Zhuangmostly living in
China's Guangxi Provinceas cultural and linguistic brothers and sisters
of the Thai and, therefore, descendants of an ancient Tai culture of whom
the Thai's can be justly proud. The two of us, one for 40 years and the
other for 10 years have been concerned with the linguistic cousins of the
Zhuang and thus the cousins of the Thai's. These other relatives are
culturally and linguistically only slightly more removed than the Zhuang.
Yang Quan is a member of China Kam nationality and inventor of their
writing system. He and Jerry Edmondson have been doing collaborative
research on the Tai and Kam-Sui people since 1983.


The Thai and the Zhuang are members of the Tai Branch of languages. A
sister to the Tai Branch is the Kam-Sui Branch. Kam-Sui includes beside
Kam and Sui a number of smaller and even less studied minority groups
who like the Kam and Sui live mostly in Guizhou Province, just to the
north of the territory of the Zhuang. The Kam have a population of 2.5
million and the Sui have 345 thousand (census 1990).


In addition to the Kam and Sui first cousins to the Thai's there are a
number of still more distant relatives, the Hlai of Hainan Island, the
Gelao, the Lachi of Guizhou, Yunnan, and Vietnam, and two or three others.
These third cousins are much more different than the Kam and Sui.
Because the Gelao and Lachi are much less well studied, we will
concentrate here mostly on the Kam and Sui first cousins and ignore the
more distant third cousins. The Thai, the Zhuang, the Kam, the Sui, the
Gelao and others are collectively called Kadai or by some Tai-Kadai.


The question of interest to us is the nature of parent or grandparent
language and people from which Tai (and thus Thai and Zhuang) and Kam-
Sui descended. There are basically two kinds of sources of information
about this parent/grandparent language and culture: (1) accounts among
Chinese annals of encounters with these peoples and (2) stories, legends,
customs, and practices still preserved today.


The ancient Chinese encountered a lot of different groups as they spread
to the south from their origins along the Yellow River. All Chinese
scholars agree that the precursors of the Kadai were the Yue, who lived in
East Central and SE China about 2500 or more years ago. Indeed, the Yue
are thought to have been a group diverse enough to be called the Bai Yue
(Hundred Yue), a name that signifies many subgroups. The Yue were a
group, who are first mentioned in 870 BC when they became a vassal of
the Chinese Emperor. They descended from East Central China into the SE
coastal areas that today included Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern
Vietnam. The subgroup of special interest here are the Luo Yue or Western
Yue. They were the only group among the Yue later to survive being
sinified by descending armies of later Chinese emperors. They included
different kinds of people: the Thai/Zhuang as well as Kam/Sui, and the
Jiaozhi (ancestors of the Vietnamese, who call them Giao-chi). In fact,
the very name Luo in Mandarin but in Middle Chinese Lak (600 AD) may be
reflection of the usage still found in many daughter languages of la:k (Thai
luk) meaning child in the sense of offspring. Thus the Kam call
themselves La:k Kam 'offspring of the Kam, the Kam'.


Language of the Yue. A few words of the Yue language are recorded in the
Yueren Ge (The Song of the Yue). It is a song sung by a governess
entertaining a young Yue Prince by rowing him in a boat in the sunshine.
She says how happy she is and that her life couldn't be more wonderful.
This language is recorded in Chinese characters but, while readable by
Chinese, it makes no sense in the Han language. But to Tai and Kadai
speakers the meaning in recognizable even today. For example, the word
'boat' in the ancient Yue language is la2. Today in Thai it is rya2, in
Zhuang ru2 or ly2 and in Kam it is lo2 (the number 2 represents the tone of
this word and rya is the transcription in Mary Haas Thai-English Student
Dictionary). It is a common inheritance found in all daughter language
still today. There are other words forms from the Yue language, but we
will not speak of them here.


The Yue possessed two notable cultural products: cotton and a special
house style. Cotton is thought to have been brought to East Asia from
India, cf. the Sanskrit word for cotton, karpassa, is widely found in E and
SE Asia. But, in Tai and Kam/Sui it is fa:y or pui as found in Thai/Zhuang
and Kam may be descended from the Yue word for cotton. In regard to
dwellings, the successors to the Yue, the Liao (Lao) namely, said they
remembered that the Yue first lived in caves. But caves are unsuitable
dwellings during floods and are often infested with snakes and vermin. So
in time the Yue changed to living in trees. Trees were better as refuges
from water and bugs but the sites of large trees could not be chosen by
the owner and villages or groups of houses were not practical.
Nevertheless, a Yue inventor incorporated the character of trees in his
design of a dwelling on piles one story tall. We are today familiar with
this kind of house so characteristic of the Tai and Kam-Sui people. The
word for this house design is also from the Yue, namely Ganlan. Note that
resembles fairly closely -lan. In other languages there are similar forms:
Lao lan, Kam yuan, Zhuang ruan/luan, etc. The Ganlan house style that found today
among the Thai, Zhuang, Kam, and Sui as well as among other related
groups.


And then came the Liao. The Liao (Lao) as successors of the Yue were
settled in Lingnan, today the territory of Guangdong, Guangxi, and Tonkin
of Vietnam. Some scholars believe that the Luo in Luo Yue at a later time
became known as Liao by sound change; the final consonant in lak
weakened and disappeared to result in Lao or Liao to refer to same groups
as before. Similarly, these people were called variously at different
places, e.g. Lang, Lie, Liei or Lai, Luliang, Liao, or Lao.


We have been able to find examples of the Liao language in the Guangxi
Tongzhi (Gazateer on Guangxi Province). In this document written at the
time of the Qing Dynasty but describes, as it says, the language of the
ancient Liao (Lao) people. Typography prevents us from transmitting these
characters, but the similarity between the ancient Liao lg and Thai,
Zhuang, and Kam is unmistakable.


The Liao seem to have come to the attention of Han historians in the Han
Dynasty (116 BC). They figured prominently in all Chinese histories of the
area from this time up to the Tang usually being afforded a separate
chapter. In the Jin Dynasty (AD 265-420) they are found in profusion in
Sichuan, entering that territory from the SE and driving out the
inhabitants; perhaps these were the Gelao. The Liao reached the pinnacle
of their power in Liang times, when the Han in Shu (todays west central
Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou) had to fight with them virtually every year.
By AD 525, it was said, 200,000 Liao families were paying tribute to the
Chinese Emperor. We do have extensive descriptions of the Liao in fourth
century Guizhou, but we do have information about them in Sichuan in the
4th c. The Hua Yang Guo Zhi (AD 317-420) states that before AD 344 there
were no Liao in Sichuan. But in that year they descended upon Sichuan in
great numbers, 100,000, and could not be overwhelmed. By Tang times the
most powerful group among the Liao was settled on the Hunan-Guizhou
border. We can see that there appear to be two migrations northward of
the Liao. One of these was just after 344 AD when the people later to be
known as Gelao came north to western Guizhou and Sichuan. The second
migration was focused after 600 AD when the Tang began. During this
same time the Zhuang remained in their traditional homeland of Guangxi.


Not only is there evidence in historical documents for two (peaks of)
migrations to Guizhou but also evidence in linguistic forms. Thai/Zhuang
as well as Kam/Sui have in their inventories of basic words virtually the
same set of borrowed Chinese terms. For example, the numbers from 2-10
in Thai, Zhuang, Kam, and Sui even today are nearly identical (with slight
variation). This segment of the lexicon was borrowed from Chinese at
exactly the same time and, moreover, that time was not before the
Guangyun rhyming dictionary of 601 AD. The forms of the digits,
according to Guo Xiliang's Handbook of Ancient Chinese Phonology, are (we
have simplified some of the symbols slightly to allow them to be printed
more easily):


'two' ni/'twin' shong
'three' sam
'four' si
'five' ngu
'six' liuk
'seven' ts'iet
'eight' pt
'nine' kieu
'ten' ziep


The near identity of the digits among these sister groups suggests that
the numbers were borrowed at a time after 600 AD but before the Thai and
the Kam-Sui parted company with the Zhuang. That means that the Thai,
Zhuang, Kam, and Sui were together at a time later than has been
customarily assumed. This time frame is compatible with Professor
Vallibhotama second migration in the 6th century AD. Note, moreover,
that the number five and six in Thai and Zhuang both begin with 'h',
whereas in Kam and Sui they are ngo and liok, which suggests that Thai
and Zhuang were together a time after the Kam/Sui departed and that is
why both are members of the Tai Branch and that is also why Kam-Sui is a
cousin to Thai and not a sister.


As far as the Thai are concerned, the Huayang Guozhi (Gazetteer of the
South) says, "In the area of Xingu Commandarie there are many Jiu Liao".
(The hierarchical organization of the Han Chinese was Zhou, Jun, and Xian,
which we render here as Prefecture, Commandary, and County.) In the
Taiping Yulan (Pacific Royal Review, 791 Chapter) "In Xingu Commandarie
at Linjiu County there are Jiu Liao" These were originally the Dian Yue
(The Yue of Yunnan Province) and later they became Jinzhi (Gold Teeth),
Baiyi (White Yi), or Mang (Mong). Xingu Commandarie is found in extreme
southern Yunnan Province today's Wenshan and Honghe Prefectures.
Another area mentioned is Yongchang Commandarie, which today includes
Dehong Prefecture, where the Dai Nuea live. Muong is often the name used
for the T(h)ai peoples. Although these reports are of only the northern
fringes of the Thai settlements in the period 601-1279 AD, they are
nevertheless several hundred years earlier than the earliest Thai
documents from Sukhothai.


There were revolts among the Tai in the years: 742-45 the family Huang
pressed the families Gui, Nung, and Zhou to the borders of the South China
Sea. Again, in 780-94 new revolts caused by the family Huang, who drive
the families Gui and Zhou northward. Revolts again in 816, 21, and 22.
Finally, there was a grand rebellion organized by Nung Zhigao in 1053.
Some of these social convulsion may have led to the departure of the Thai
to their current location.


In other words the general scheme of development is:
Yue 800-500 BC
|
Luo Yue ....
|
Liao 110 BC -800 AD
/ \ Border between China and Vietnam est
241AD
Thai Gelao
Zhuang
Kam
Sui (Many groups were called
/ \ Liao until 1400 AD)
Thai Kam 600-800 AD
Zhuang Sui


sorry for the long read, peace

1- Yes. The largest possibility is the similar sounds (of different langugages) have unrelated meanings. However, the chance that they have the same meanings is also positive.
2- The Vietnamese adopted words from Chinese, indeed, have different sounds. For example, most of 'r' in PinYin is 'nh' in Vietnamese, 's' - 't', 't' - 'th', 't' - 'd', 'b' - 'p', 'p' - 'f', etc.
3- Pronounciation of Mandarin are different from Cantonese, and other Chinese 6 dialects.
From 3 statements above, Vietnamese adopted words from Chinese can be found in other languages that have more similiar sounds than in Chinese (which dialects?). Therefore, in Vietnamese languages, there are words that are definitely adopted from Chinese, and words we cannot tell whether they are adopted from Chinese.
About the word "cut" in English, you must hear it spoken in both English and Vietnamese native speakers to see the similarity. I never think that the word is dopted from Vietnamese.