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(Continued)
Originally this paper is entitled Introduction to Sinitic-Vietnamese Studies. What I had initially in mind is to introduce some new findings in the study field of the Chinese (C, Chin.) origin of a vast little-known stock of the Vietnamese (V, Viet.) vocabulary, which is to be called the HánNôm, or Sinitic-Vietnamese (VS, Nôm).
During the course of putting things together, I have to reconcile myself with the fact that in the Asian linguistic circle philologists seem to be strongly in favor of the Mon-Khmer (MK) origin of the Vietnamese language with a wide-range basic words in V that appear to be in agreement with those of MK languages. Interestingly, by doing so they are not aware that many of those V etyma related to those in Chin. one way or another as they are cited in this paper.
For the change of the title of this work into What makes Vietnamese so Chinese? I find it deemed to be much more appropriate for what will be put in discussion in this paper that will refect the substantial findings of massive V etyma that resemble those of Chin. so much that they could still shed doubts on the MK theory. For such reason, main points of my discussion about the Chin. factors in the V language still remain the same insofar as V and Chin. are concerned, etymologically.
These newly identified words of Chin. origin are direct results of applying two etymological methods called dissyllabic and analogical approaches. The first one is to treat sound changes of two-syllable Chinese words to Vietnamese as being unrestricted to and independent of individual one-syllable words to identify multiple patterns of sound changes that have occurred to the same syllable in polysyllabic Chinese lexicons in the process of their natural adaption in Vietnamese. This method, in turn, will help analogize sibling glosses within a categorical group and in a cultural context, i.e., if a word has a Chinese origin, chances are that its related words could be the same, too, which would go unnoticed otherwise. This subsequent methodology is called the analogical approach.
By applying these two new etymological approaches, more Vietnamese words of Chinese origin, including those of basic vacabulary stratrum, can be unveiled. Implications of any new development in this study can be used to rebut the arguments that the origin of Vietnamese is of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic linguistic family. In addition, evidences on Chinese linguistic traits found in this study, therefore, may eventually help strengthen the foundation for re-classifying Vietnamese into the Sino-Tibetan (ST) linguistic family.
In the meanwhile, even though the HánViệt, or Sino-Vietnamese (SV), sound system, obviously a variation of Middle Chinese (MC), is not the subject matter under discussion in this study, its sound change patterns and rules are also utilized here.
I) INTRODUCTION:
Before I go into discussion of the main subject, I would like to introduce a sketch of the main points made in this study, along with the background underlining a compelling motive that has drawn me to do this research, the goal I wish to achieve, then I will define some terms and explain the conventions, abbreviations, and symbols used here.
This paper is intended for both linguistic specialists and general readers as well, so please bear with me should I explain too much of anything, which is so obvious to specialists in the field study, or too little of everything, which general readers will find it difficult to follow.
I am well aware that today's belief in the linguistic world is going strongly more for theories of Mon-Khmer (MK) root in the Austroasiatic linguistic family (ALF) for the origin of Vietnamese than for those of older Sino-Tibetan (ST) camp. However, bear in mind that current hypotheses about the Mon-Khmer genetic affinity of Vietnamese is still only another theory, an unfinished work, not quite satisfactorily proven yet. In this circumstance, the Sino-Tibetan school of thought is still holding ground for its prior theoretical merits, still worth being recapped and explored further because there are equally solid linguistic evidences pointing to that direction.
In studying the Vietnamese language as it appears in its wholeness, in terms of its linguistic characteristics and traits, actually it doesn't matter much whether initially it was originated in the Mon-Khmer linguistic sub-family or not(1) but all it counts is what makes it up as a living language as it appears today with all the attributes considered as natural parts of a language. Analogically, the English language can be regarded as such a case, that is, when we look at this language, we see the language presents itself in its wholeness, not just only the Anglo-Saxon parts of it. Similarly, Vietnamese is a language that has blended itself beautifully with all Chinese elements that are impartible and one can see in it neither only those common peculiatiries nor solely Mon-Khmer traces of a limited amount of their etyma. The same holds true for those of other languages in the Austroasiatic family such as Munda despite of the fact that one can find a certain amount of basic glosses between the two languages and that does not make Munda even a distant cousin of Vietnamese.
The fact that, as presented in this paper, the nature of linguistic attributes of Vietnamese is so similar to Chinese in most of the aspects that make what a language of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family (STLF) look like should also make Vietnamese a class of the same linguistic family. For this reason, sidelining the main objective to prove the Chinese origin of thousands of Vietnamese words, this study is also an attempt to answer the question: "Is the Vietnamese language is characteristically much closer to the Chinese language than to a Mon-Khmer language such as Khmer?" This research will demonstrate that it is much more like Chinese, which is so obvious, above anything else, e.g. grammar, grammatical markups and instrumental prepositions, tonal system, phonology, peculiar experessions, and, especially, monosyllabic stems and lexical compositions from the same etyma which make up a vast amount of Vietnamese words, which, at first sight, seem to be "pure" Vietnamese, or indigenous, but actually in most cases might have Chinese origin.
By taking the dissyllabic and analogical approaches suggested in this paper, you will see how thousands of more Vietnamese vocabularies can be positively identified, which undoubtedly have been either missed or neglected in the field of Vietnamese historical linguistics up to date from the day those Vietnamese specialists have started abandoning the Sino-Tibetan ship and jumping on the Austroasiatic bandwagon since the later half of the last century.
In the meanwhile, for the term "the Austroasiatic linguistic family" (ALF) I will identify it with linguistic roots of many indigenous languages being spoken by many ethic groups of the Yue (Yueh, or BáchViệt) descendants, also kown as the Yues as termilogically mentioned in Chinese ancient historical records, who are still living in the Southern part of China today, including the largest Zhuang (Nùng) minority whose language is universally classified as that of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family, not to mention several other ethnic groups currently living in those mountainous regions of North Vietnam, in Laos, as well as the peoples of Daic origin in today's Thailand. Those facts will eventually bring us to converge other notions that all ancient Yue dialectal speakers did have common ancestors, who have sometimes been referred to as "the larger Proto-Tai (or Pre-Tai) indigenous stock" that might have split up into many distinct ethnic goups such as Zhuang or Dai as best known in our era. Aboriginals of this stock might have lived in the habitats which in ancient times used to embrace a vast region below the Yangtze River, east and south, all the way to the surrounding seas. Notably, Proto-Tai people coud also have been the ancestors of the Zhou's Kings, as having been long speculated by many renown East Asian historians. They had not only made up the ethnic composition of citizens -- possibly with the exception of those of the Qin State if we equate them with "the Proto-Chinese" -- of the states of Chu, Qi, Jin, Yan, and Han in the Six States in the Warring Period, that in the later time all merged with the Qin's populace to become "the mixed-stock Chinese", but also, at the same time, further broken down into smaller tribal groups and finally evolved into ethnic diversities, hence the Yue peoples as later appeared in Chinese historical records, over the span of many thousand years prior to the unification of a vast pre-China's empire ruled by Qin Shihuang of the Qin Dynasty, of which all the Qin's citizens in the melting pot of the first unified emprire had become "the Early Chinese" of the later Middle Kingdom in periods following the rise of the Han Dynasty. Those Yues who could have not withstood the process of integrating forces of the Han culture fled to mountainous regions. Over the time their forced migratory and fleeing paths had been pushed further southwards into the aforementioned areas and became what they appear at the present time. (Interestingly enough, similar scenarios repeated again exactly the same process that had happened to both those indigenous peoples and migrants who had previously lived or already long resettled in the Northern part of today's Vietnam around the Red River's delta regions when the "composite Han" -- or "the Early Chinese", the Chinese in Han Dynasty from many regions of those states which had fallen under the umbrella of Qin Dynasty in the previous period -- armies came to invade, including those war-savaged immigrants to follow later. Once having reached the new territories those Northerners as conquerers mostly had resettled there forever. Undoubtedly their offsprings over the time had numerously multiplied and give birth to next generations. Again, all could have mixed up with the indigenous people, who in turn would have possibly intermarried with other waves of those mixed-stock Chinese immigrants from the China-North (華北 Huabei) and -South (華南 Huanan) who have come later throughout the next two millenia until our time to form the new "Kinh", ie. Vietnamese, group.) Under such historical circumstances, languages in "the Austroasiatic linguistic family" had been formed out of Pro-Taic languages around 3000 years ago, long before the emergence of the Zhou Dynasty. In other words, on the one hand they all had been stemmed from an ancestral Proto-Taic linguistic form supposedly spoken by the so-called "larger Proto-Tai indigenous people" and finally evolved themselves into linguistic forms of the Yues including those spoken by the Zhuang, the Dai, etc. while, on the other hand, they had branched off to become other languages included in what is now commonly known as the Austroasiatic linguistic family. Furthermore, during the reigns of Zhou's Kings Proto-Taic glosses had also found their way into, intertwined and interpolated, and merged with the Archaic Chinese, also known as Ancient Chinese, that had come a long way since its break-off from the Sino-Tibetan route and evolve itself independently. (See Brodrick, 1942. Norman, 1988. Wiens, 1967. FitzGerald, 1972) Variants of this early form of old Chinese later had followed the Han soldiers and emigrants to go south all the way to Annamese ("Tonking") regions and have blended well gradually with the Proto-Vietic language.
This concept of "Austroasiatic", therefore, is only implicitly used in this paper, which is to be often referred to as "the Yue languages" with the implication that this terminology does not include the Mon-Khmer languages in the direct sense of affinity that the ancestral Vietnamese as Proto-Vietmuong had emerged and formed from them even though, they, as a whole, constitute another sub-family in the larger Austroasiatic linguistic family as commonly referred to by modern linguists. That is to say, in this paper Austroasiatic languages may mean the same thing as the Yue languages and this implication inevitably will put Vietnamese in line with popular theories that it originally had started out from a common Austroasiatic linguistic root. It is so because they had actually broken off from the "Proto-Daic" mainstream long before the Proto-Vietmuong formation. Under this perspective, hence, the only difference is that the Mon-Khmer languages are not included in this classification since they are not in synchronic connection with the Sinitic scope we are investigating under which Chinese elements are seen to have been adopted and their materials used profusedly and vehemently to nurture genesis of a new form of speech built around the Proto-Vietic core largely by illiterate common popupace from all walks of life. Both Daic and Archaic Chinese strata in Vietnamese solidly support that point of view.
Nothing is contradictary about this idea if we take into consideration that Chinese and Tibetan, despite of their affinity, are two completely different languages, just like the Vietnamese and Mon-Khmer languages. Nonetheless, in the case of Vietnamese and its becoming, the so-called indigenous Proto-Vietmuong language originally spoken by those people living in the Delta of the Red River began to have split up into those of Proto-Muong, to have gone with those Muong groups who fled into the mountainous regions, and Proto-Vietic, with a much further fusion with what appears to be variations of Ancient Chinese brought in by the Han invaders accompanied by new settlers, to have been spoken by those who stayed behind and integrated with Han expansionists and then their descendants as well as many more other "composite Chinese" who came later waves after waves. Again, many remnants and residues of Ancient Chinese still exist in modern Vietnamese allow us to see the matter as such. From that time on the Vietnamese language has been developed and evolved around the Chinese linguistic cores, though characteriscally unique and separate due to the habit of people's speech, that seem to be a parallellism of the origin and evolution of Zhuang or Tai languages, which are firmly classified as those of Sino-Tibetan linguistic family.
Regarding to the Mon-Khmer origin of the Vietnamese language, what has been discussed to date prior to this study mostly has been based on claims that certain Vietnamese basic words correspond to those basic glosses scatteringly dotting throughout many Mon-Khmer languages, a majority of which, amusingly enough, turns out to be cognate to those of Chinese (so then reasonably a question can be asked: who had borrowed those words from whom?) However, the question of whether those arguments on the matter of Mon-Khmer affinity of Vietnamese are still valid or not after examing the findings presented in this research is open for further discussion and investigation.
How have I gone about this etymological affair? Admittedly I am no Vietnamese historical linguist by training whatsoever except for having taken those linguistic courses taught by Professor Nguyễn Tài Cẩn and Profressor Hoàng Tuệ in the School of Letters of Saigon University back in the late 1970's. In my spare time, however, I simply have been lucky enough for having been exposed to the Chinese language in some scholarly fields for quite a time. The encounter with the Chinese historical linguistics over the years has aroused inside me a curiosity for the Chinese linguistic past and that experience, analogically the same as that of English learnera who know well the Latin and other Roman languages, has widened my knowlege of the Chinese etyma and Vietnamese etymology of Chinese origin. Hence from there has my conviction of the Sino-Tibetan connection, in the sense that all other variants of the Yue languages being regarded as of the same linguistic family, grown much more firmly. For this matter, in the end of this research paper you will find a long list of the bibliography, that I have read word by word -- not just by excerpts for the purpose of citing quotations to support my arguments -- over the past twenty some years, that has led me into such belief. Also, I will try to identify as many related resourceful linguistic websites as possible which I will readily admit I have only skimmed for related information, but not deliberately read them as those in print. Even though the electronic forms have proven their superior strength, the problem of their reliabilty and durability lies in the fact they are in constant changes as their authors see fit and that down the line for the next 20 years, who knows how many of them will still be around and available as they are today in the cyberspace for interested readers to refer to just in case. (Please try to find any cited sources no longer existant in http://archive.org).
Anyway, being totally so fascinated by this subject I have spent enormous time teaching myself Vietnamese and Chinese and their historical linguistics and been compelled to explore the ideas of tracing etymological proofs for many Nôm (N) words of Chinese origin. Metaphorically, just like a pilgrim who is in constant search for sacredly spiritual revelation in his or her life, in this etymological expedition I have unexpectedly stumbled upon hitches and hits in the ancient world of Chinese linguistic sound bits, for which I have jotted down in the old-fashioned index cards, and discovered a whole picture of the Vietnamese etymological structure and essence. Indeed, I have finally come to terms that the Vietnamese and Chinese languages have so much more similarities, even more than what they share among the Sino-Tibetan languages themselves, than those of any other Mon-Khmer languages as have been suggested so far that they all were originated from the same root as that of Vietnamese. It is from this conviction that I have begun sorting things out, literally out of my index cards that are numbered 20,000 plus, and now I am in the process of gathering supporting arguments to nurture my hypothesis that most, if not all, Vietnamese words have a Chinese origin and, sometimes, for those basic vocabularies, they appear to be cognate to those of Chinese, that is, both from the same root.
In the process of working on this project, to be specific, I have recorded substantial findings and have started to theorize them and I will, gradually, post them on the internet as I am progressing. This is the goal I am determined to pursue by setting forth the new linguistic expedition going for the Sino-Tibetan direction since I view language as a living thing as what actually appears to me with all its characteristics other than what originally was from start, let's say, ten thousand years ago. With the results found, with its genetic affinity proven valid or not, Vietnamese will probably once again be reconsidered and reclassified as a language that belongs to the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family given the common linguistic peculiarities existant in both Vietnamese and Chinese.
The benefits, accordingly, from such classification come from the fact that it will enable us to approach Vietnamese historical linguistics from a much different and wider pespective by being able to access plenty of research tools and accompishments in Chinese linguistic studies made avalable to us to apply not only in Vietnamese historical linguistics or etymology, but also in various fields of Vietnamese studies as well, such as Vietnamese anthropology and archeology regarding the origin and biological composition of Vietnamese people and their nation.
It is possibly so as we all have known, most largest linguistic institutions on earth all have devoted and invested a large amount of resources and expertise in the field of studying the Chinese linguistics, so those benefits are foreseeable, for instance, any progress in any fields of Chinese linguistics can be equally applied to Vietnamese research without much reservation. Applicably, the same cannot be done much with those achievements in the fields of studies of the Mon-Khmer languages. Let's say, Chinese is now treated as a polysyllabic language and that linguistic characteristic has faithfully reflected in its "pinyin", or romanized Chinese transcription system, so should be the Vietnamese orthography in the context of attempting to reform its current inefficient monosyllabic writing system.
Lastly, as to my goal as stated from the outset, hopefully my final work will also give the Vietnamese etymology this kind of fresh perspective with concrete results with which future lexicographers will make use of to corporate them into a Vietnamese dictionary with all etymological list for each word, which a Vietnamese dictionary has never had before.
1) The unconventional convention:
The unconventional technical approach taken in the writing of this paper is that there will not be a whole section to be devoted to listing all the rules of sound changes, natural or unnatural, from Chinese to Sinitic-Vietnamese as one usually would expects, but only a synopsis will be provided in the last section. The reason is that, firstly, that is tantamount to a complicated task since the sound changes patterns have occurred somewhat rather unsystematically and unnaturally, not in batches and shifts and drifts as in the case of the Sino-Vietnamese sound system which has been quite well documented (see Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, 1979, 2001). The sound changes did happen, though. Throughout the examples cited in this research you will see that Chinese words have infiltrated the Vietnamese vocabulary continuously since the ancient time in different periods and, concurrently, from a viariety of Chinese dialects colloquially, including Mandarin seen as official language of imperial courts of China throughout its history including those of dynasties after Vietnam gained it independence in the 10th century. If my work will later on prove to be of high value, some specialist in categorization will help systemize and catalog all the possible sound change rules accordingly.
Secondly, this research, for the time being, should be treated only as a demonstration of how the application of my two new etymological approaches have been utilized and how their yielded results have come about throughout the whole process in finding the Vietnamese words of Chinese origin, which I call the Sinitic-Vietnamese (VS). Accordingly, the underlined rules of phonological changes by no means can be treated as a complete reference manual because this research, as a matter of fact, is still an on-going work that is constantly being edited and modified in the years to come.
Thirdly, as a result, the methodologies utilized here are more suggestive than definite and, unless stated otherwise, they always should be considered and used only as etymological tools, among others, to explore tentative rules of sound changes from one word to another, that is, what changes into what or how it has happened.
Lastly, it would become a long and boring paper as I have seen in many works if we just cite long list of rules of sound changes instead of focusing on exploring interesting case studies and discussing about the process of how to draw a conclusion of sound changes for specific newly-discovered words found to be of Chinese origin. By doing so, in the end you can learn how to do the same yourself after understanding how I have manipulated my approaches to reach certain conclusions. Therefore, sound change rules will be discussed only in a scattering, but not sparingly though, manner throughout this paper, that can be found in any sections or paragraphs, as needs arise when a demand for explanation of how the final sound changes have actually occurred and which could be only applicable and limited to certain cases and why they did not occur to the other sounds of the same nature. Again, the important thing is to let you understand how the sound changes have occurred in certain ways either by linguistic rules or just a matter of speculation. Similarly, you can learn to apply the same approaches yourself just as I have done.
In this paper I will use both common conventions utilized in the fields of historical linguistics
and some uncommon signs and symbols of my own.
The reader should already be familiar with some commonly used linguistic
symbols, the International Phonetic Symbol (IPA), and
Vietnamese (V) orthography (Quốcngữ) (2).
Abbreviations will be noted once when they first appear. Examples within
a paragraph will be wrapped to the next separate line and numbered or bulleted
(
)
for better illustration. Also, in most of the cases, there may be lengthy comments about
patterns of sound changes and evolution of those Vietnamese words under scrutiny, to be put in
between square brackets as [xxx yyy zzz ], as how they have come about in order to support arguments
about the Chinese origin of those words. After all, that is the purpose of this etymological research.
English meanings will be noted once after each word and by no means exhaustive. Sometimes they will be omitted if deemed irrelevant. The commonly used symbols include
Since the resemblance of both Vietnamese and Chinese in terms of linguistic traits, to be discussed later through this paper, in many a case is closer than those of many Sino-Tibetan languages as they appear to Chinese, I will use the term Sinitic-Vietnamese (VS) or the HánNôm, including Nôm (supposedly indigenous or "pure", but actually not, Vietnamese words), to signify the Chinese linguistic attributes that exist in those Vietnamese words, mostly, of Chinese origin. It is because for those etymons under investigation the Vietnamese counterparts of those Chinese roots are mostly conformable to those phonetic, phonological, semantic, syntactical, lexical, and other linguistic peculiarities such as the tonal system that exist in the Chinese language. Accordingly, the term "Sinitic-Vietnamese Studies" is chosen to denote those fields of studying common linguistic traits shared by both Chinese and Vietnamese and approaches to research the Vietnamese etymology of Chinese origin. Awaiting further studies to be done, neither term necessarily means proven genetic affinity between the two languages, equally applying to other Sino-Tibetan languages, even though obviously they imply a linguistic classification. For now it should be considered only as a mere suggestion that, with all of its little-known “Sinitic”, or Chinese, pecularities, Vietnamese may belong to Sino-Tibetan or, probably a new classification to be created, a Sinitic sub-division in the Sino-Tibetan language family.
In the lexical aspect, in contrast with Sinitic-Vietnamese is the term Sino-Vietnamese (SV), or HánViệt. It is commonly used mostly to refer to the systematic Vietnamese pronunciation of massive Chinese vocabulary essentially used in modern Vietnamese. Analogically Sino-Vietnamese words are just like those of Latin or Greek origin in English. There is a consensus that Sino-Vietnamese is a slight variation of Middle Chinese (MC) sounds. Sometimes the term Sino-Vietnamese loosely embraces some other variants of Sino-Vietnamese lexicons found in the Old Chinese (OC) (also called Archaic Chinese (ArC)), the Ancient Chinese (AC) (sometimes called the Early Middle Chinese (EMC)) loanwords or Tiền-HánViệt (“the Pre-Sino-Vietnamese” (Pre-SV)), and their variants in Vietnamese which sometimes dated as far back to the Proto-Chinese (Pro-C) source, for instance,
etc.
and other compound words not found in a Chinese or Sino-Vietnamese dictionary, such as côngcuộc (incorrectly assumed as 公 gōng + 局 jú) task (see below).In this paper, except where the term Sino-Vietnamese (SV) clearly applies to words as best exhibited in a HánViệt từđiển, i.e. a Sino-Vietnamese dictionary, the Sinitic-Vietnamese (VS) lexicons will include all mono- and dissyllabic words of Chinese origin, including those that appear and sound like a SV term, for example,
is not a Sino-Vietnamese word, but it is an innovation of the sound change from
and merely a local development in Vietnamese. In all probability it, of which its characteristic similarity will be extended to other words of the same nature, was originally derived either from a vernacular form of Northern Chinese dialects (represented by Mandarin (M)) by changing [ts-] to [kw-] and by keeping the old final labiovelar [-ɔk] as demonstrated by the Cantonese /dzwɔk/. Another scenario is that it could be a result of association of the sound and meaning of cục [kʊkʷ] (局 jú), as in 世局 shìjú (SV: thếcục) # 'cuộcđời', which I call the sandhi process of assimilation or association. This phenomenon has commonly taken place in the Vietnamese etymology of Chinese origin, to be discussed in detail later.
As illustrated in the above examples and throughout this paper, I will provide with related Chinese characters to be accompanied by Pinyin (拼音) for the purpose of identifying the related sounds even though in many circumstances Pinyin transcription is enough and actually less distracting than those illustrated Chinese characters constructed with jiăjiē 假借, or loangraphs. Loangraphs in Chinese mean something like homophones having different meanings such as English ‘yard’, ‘glass’, ‘page’, ‘lie’ and the like. Pinyin is the People's Republic of China’s official romanization system utilized to transcribe Mandarin or “Pŭtōnghuà ” 普通話.
For exact sound transcriptions International Phonetic Alphabet symbols are mostly used to transcribe dialectal, ancient sounds, as well as precise phonetic value (to be put in square brackets “[xxx]”, as opposed to the two slashes "/yyy /" to indicate only an approximate sound value) in certain circumstances to emphasize the true phonetic values of cited lexicons, such as the case of Vietnamese dung , that is [jʊŋʷ1 ] /joung/, but not [dung], or thìn [t'ɤn4] /thein/, but not [thin4], or tin [tin1] /tin/, but not [tɤn1] /tein/, or thu [t'ʊ1] /thou/, but not [thu1] /thu/, etc. for the sake of clarity where subtle phonemes need to be identified as dipthongs for a comparative analysis. To be easier for typography, the above cited symbols are also transcribed as [ou] and [ein] or /ou/ and /ein/, respectively, whenever the true sound values could not be mistaken for something else. This way of transcriptions will be applied to other sound values, too, which will be noted and illustrated when needs arise.
In fact, with the IPA transcriptions, in many cases it will be easier to see the relationship of those exact Vietnamese phonetic values with those of Chinese characters than with pinyin transcriptions, for example, "gu" and "ku" are actually pronounced [ku] and [k'u], not [gu] and [ku], respectively.
This mechanism is also utilized by Pulleyblank (1984) in his reconstruction work of
Old Chinese with his discussion of the possibility of certain phonetic values of Old Chinese
which were seen as vaguely described in the ancient Chinese materials.
Also, to avoid typographical complications and confusion with IPA diacritical symbols, just as
illustrated in the above examples, different tonal indications such as
that of numbers 1, 2 ... to 9 to follow after each sound transcription, as they are specifically
designated for each respective Chinese dialects, such as Fukienese (Fuzhou),
Tchiewchow (Chaozhou), Hainanese, or other languages, i.e., Daic, Thai, Vietnamese, etc.
Per convention these tonal symbols are commonly
used in transcribing Cantonese (Cant.), Fukienese, and other Chinese dialects and, sometimes,
also even in Vietnamese, of which tones specifically are numebred according to the
old traditional 8 tone classification as described in Guăngyùn 廣韻, Jerry Norman (1988. p.55)
Chinese, and other historical linguistic books including
modern Nguồngốc và Quátrình Hìnhthành Cáchđọc Âm HánViệt ('The Origin and
Tranformational Process of the Sino-Vietnamese Pronunciation') by Nguyễn Tài Cẩn
(1979, 2001). Specifically, they are:
| 1. | | 3. | ʔ | 5. | ´ | 7. | ´ -p, -t, -c, -ch |
| 2. | ` | 4. | ~ | 6. | . | 8. | . -p, -t, -c, -ch |
However, this tonal numbering system will be used sparingly only when essentially needed, mainly to avoid confusion with the exact tonal values that are commonly used with other Chinese dialects, each of which may carry a slight different tonal value even with the same numbering denotation.
In transcribing Vietnamese sound and tonal values, its modern diacritics will be the first choice to be used in combination with the IPA system, e.g., [à], [ả], [ã], etc. if they are not to be confused with other phonetic IPA values. Therefore, for a precise tone value of Vietnamese or Mandarin the reader can always refer to Quốcngữ diacritics or Pinyin tonal marks, respectively, e.g., ā, á, ă, à, a, etc., which certainly take on different tonal values than those of Vietnamese diacritical look-alikes.
However, there will be cases of tonal omissions. The reason for occasional omission of the tonal indications is their irrelevancy with the belief that the tones of many Sinitic-Vietnamese words must have been changed completely after having gone through so many cycles of tonal alternations over the span of hundreds of years. In many cases they might have changed back to the exact values of the initial ones! (This phenomenon is found common in Chinese historical linguistics like in other aspects such as initials or syllabic endings.)
Phonemically, like their initial and medial counterparts, such as ch- [c], kh- [k'], ph- [pf], r-[rh] th-[t'], tr-[ʈ], and nh-[ɲ] (sometimes to be transcribed as c-, kh-, f-, r-, th-, tr-, and ɲ- or nh-, respectively) and -uy -[ wej] or -iê -[iə] (which are transcribed in IPA, respectively, as [wej] and [iə], not [wi] and [ie]), ending consonants in Vietnamese orthography do not always represent exact phonetic values, especially those ending with unaspirated -p [p], -t [t], -ch [jt], -c [k], and -nh [jŋ], which will be assigned with the IPA symbols -p, -t, -jt, -k, -jŋ, respectively. Variant labiovelars preceded by a rounded vowel, e.g. o- or ɔ-, or a medial -w-, will be transcribed in IPA either as -kw, -wk or -kʷ for [kʷ], either -wŋ, -ŋw, -ŋʷ for [ŋʷ ] respectively. Similarly ng of the velar [ŋ] will be transcribed as both [ŋ] or [ng]. This convention applies equally to Cant. or any other Chinese dialects that share the same articulation.
D) A revised course in the adaption of the reconstructed ancient sound values:
As you have seen in the foregoing examples, the Old Chinese must be taken into account when studying either Chinese or Vietnamese. Chinese linguists in the fields of Chinese historical linguistics all have followed this approach. However, with more than half a dozen versions of Old Chinese reconstruction work completed by distinguished linguists in related fields in existence to date, the question is which one represents the best ready for our own use in the Sinitic-Vietnamese study? It is hard to resist the temptation to follow Pulleyblank’s reconstruction (1984) which shows many similarities in vocalism and consonantal articulation with modern Vietnamese. Nevertheless, unless noted otherwise, I will provide a modified version of my own adapted from many sources. This version may certainly disappoint many of those who try to find another interpretation of the sound system of Old Chinese because of the relative variations in the presentation of precise values of sounds of many Old Chinese words in this paper, for example, for
Actually nothing is contradictary about this revised course of reconstructive methodology since each reconstructed sound from different sources can be considered actually as a variation from the same original sound in the Old Chinese. In this case let’s assume that they are all originated from the form [lwo]. The important thing is that, phonetically, all these possible sounds could have been derived from /*jraih/, the most plausible sound value -- in comparison with other slightly variants reconstructed by several Chinese historical linguists at the same time -- at a certain time in ancient days when both "Chinese" and "Vietnamese" were in contact, which had also given rise to chài. The synonymous syllable-word structure of the compound 'chài+lưới' are commonly seen like other Vietnamese glosses which are composed of two-syllabic words of the same root.
This revised approach used in this paper to treat ancient Chinese sounds with such generosity is based on the belief that no matter how good a reconstruction work of the ancient Chinese language is, as demonstrated by a dozen works of several renowned linguists, actual reconstructed sound values of the Old Chinese characters cited in such works are impossibly absolutely correct and precise to the exact sound value of what was pronounced hundreds of years ago. One sound value may be true in a certain period of time and place, but it was not true in other cases. They are, understandably, merely suggestive representations of the sound system of the Chinese language by and large in a particular locality and time frame. That is to say, for a certain Chinese character or word, there likely have existed different versions with several ways of interpretations; however, in general, those reconstructions, in fact, only represent the most generally accepted presentation, all of which are merely reconstructed values derived from historical records of linguistic materials. As a result, unsurprisingly one version may appear very similar to the others with only minor variations, just like with the same character 羅 of which we have different pronunciations in many Chinese dialects nowadays and the core sound value of it, let's say /xxx/, has given rise to "luó" in modern Mandarin.
To understand this notion better, let's first pick a Chinese word and ask ourselves how it was pronounced or said 2000 years ago. Then after studying this word in depth we would probably have found out that many specialists in this historical linguistic field have already done so and there have been no precise sound values. Naturally we would like to take the face value of one or more ways of their interpretation and incorporate their results into those of our own research. Only then, naturally, could we see that they are only of relatively approximate reconstructed values for which we may end up coming up with the same sound values.
In any cases, “all of them are hypotheses,” as stated in Axel Schuessler’s (1987, p.xi) words, “most of them contain one or other idea which I believe ought to be taken into consideration when attempting to retrieve the Old Chinese language.”
Of course, old sound values can not be done arbitrarily, as in the case of 'chài+lưới', of which 'chài' is closer to /*jraih/, synonymous to 'lưới' in the synonymous compound construction. Diachronically 'chài' must be an older form of 'lưới', which, in turn, is older than 'la' as in SV, which appears as 'luó' in Mandarin (M) of which the sound value might have been close to what was said in Middle Chinese (MC).
Therefore, taking results completed by renowned specialists -- we do not need to re-invent the wheel, do we? -- and adapt them to this Sinitic-Vietnamese study is the author’s intended approach and is regarded as a better way to deal with variations of Old Chinese historical phonology. If we strictly follow one reconstruction version, either of our own or of somebody else, putting the question of its authencity aside, sooner or later we will face problems of sound reconciliation in order to match those etymons under investigation which may obviously appear to be cognates in both Chinese and Vietnamese.
E) Vietnamese and Chinese commonalities
1) Modern dialectal similarities
The fact that numerous Vietnamese words are quite similar to those of contemporary Chinese dialects, including Mandarin, commonly used in a colloquial manner suggests something quite subtle about their kinship beside the cultural context that both the Vietnamese and Chinese have long been sharing. Let's consider these solid examples:
and so on...
Though those cullturally accented words listed above do not include all the basic words, which are to be discussed later on, as one would expect, at least many of them suggest some unique linguistic characteristics and pecularities that Chinese and Vietnamese both share in common speech. No other Mon-Khmer languages have ever come close in this respect.
Unsurprisingly many people still cannot make connections with a great number of examples cited above and throughout this paper because those words do not look like cognates at all simply because parts of those words, either an initial, medial, final, or ending, do not show close similarities that usually appear in patterns as in the case of SV.
In historical linguistics, with a span of more than 3000 years in traceable contact (Zhang. 1990) as in the case of Vietnamese and Chinese words, except for those later loanwords, of the same source, ancient ones as well as those of local renovation or results of lexical development, you cannot always find definite one-to-one correspondences occurring concurrently in all phonetic fileds of initials, medials, finals, and/or syllabic endings (or ending for short, that is, vần -- SV vận -- or yùn 韻, the second part of a whole syllabic sound ending in a string of a monosyllabic word without the attachment of the initials, for instance, -at, -ang, -uyên, etc.. This is considered as an important phonological element in the fields of Chinese and Vietnamese linguistic studies.)
Historically words in each respective language must have evolved in their own way independent of each other after they found their way into the borrowing language. They have been always in the state of being ready to change to suit speech habits of local people. That phenomenon would have likely happened right after the first stage of infiltration of those very words into Vietnamese. As the time went by sound changes must have kept taking place, naturally, according to the linguistic internal rules of sound changes. In modern time French and English loanwords in Vietnamese have illustrated best this statement (See APPENDIX A) To understand how sound changes have their way of affecting on cognates, or words of the same roots, let's examine that phenomenon in some examples below (with most of them intentionally taken from the HánViệt or Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary stock for its unquestionable authencity on the patterns of sound changes):
Take a closer look and we will see that many of them, in comparison with modern Mandarin, have been changed beyond recognition in both initials and endings, including finals; they were dropped and changed completely at the same time. Further compare them with Cantonese, a fairly close phonological system with today's Sino-Vietnamese, you will have an overall picture of such similar sound changes. In any cases, we can always draw patterns by tracing the lexical and phonological trails that sound changes have left in each language under examination.
As a matter of fact, sound changes might have occurred systematically following strict linguistic rules as clearly shown in Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary stock (từ HánViệt) with which it is easier to draw general rules than with the older colloquial Sinitic-Vietnamese words, which seemed not to have happened by shifts and bounces in batches as those of scholarly Sino-Vietnamese sound system. Penetration of French words, again, into the Vietnamese vocabularies during the first half of last century must have evolved into local pronunciation in a somewhat similar manner (See APPENDIX A).
Another aspect of this matter should be considered is that most of the Sinitic-Vietnamese words are not directly derived from those of Sino-Vietnamese words. Even though many of them are close in sound, they must have been originated from one or more major Chinese dialects spoken at different times and places in the long past history when the then "Vietnamese" ancestors, i.e. all those people who spoke some form of Proto-Vietic speech, had been in closer contact with the people who spoke those dialects. It is not difficult to see that many of those Vietnamese words of Chinese origin appear to be much older than the Sino-Vietnamese words of the same cognates such as those of
As you can see, modern Mandarin pinyin transcription is chosen to illustrate mostly throughout this paper. One may ask how on earth Vietnamese has to do with Mandarin at the time when Vietnam had already gained its independence from China in the 10th century while Mandarin, a spoken Northern Chinese dialect, had just taken its later forms and shapes in somewhat similarity with its present state only sometime in the Northern Song's Dynasty in the 11th century? In this aspect, certainly Mandarin may not be a good pick to do the comparative work in historical linguistics. Nonetheless, patterns of correspondences can still be established and, at the same time, it can be used to serve as a guide to pronunciation of cited words that are under investigation. In the meanwhile Old Chinese sounds are still used to prove their cognates. Historically Mandarin is a direct descendant of Middle Chinese which, in turn, is a direct descent of Old Chinese even though the phonological system of Mandarin has undergone a great deal of changes, e.g., its tonal system was reduced to a 4 tone, instead of the original 8 tone, system and its syllabic ending stock, or yùn 韻 vần, became much less. (Zhou Zumo. 1991. Zhōngyuán Yīnyùn)
Historically, these deviatory factors in sound changes in Mandarin were attributed to some strong influence of some non-Han northern languages, which were spoken by the Kims, or Jīn 金, ancestors of the later Manchurians, who had been dominating China's vast areas of northern territories for more than 900 years which only ended in the early 12th century when the Mongolians came and ruled the whole China for the next 100 years. (Bo Yang 1983. Zī Zhì Tōngjiàn) Then came the Machurians, in the 16th century, who established the Qing Dynasty and had been ruling China until the early 20th century.
Throughout those periods Mandarin had been the official language used in the imperial court and examinations. This language has evolved into a relatively different appearance in comparison with its Middle Chinese predecessor. In the meanwhile other dialects such as Cantonese (a southern Chinese dialect with a 9 tone system, usually referred to as the Tang's language '唐話' /toŋwa/) and Fukienese (or Amoy 廈門方言, Xiàmén dialect, also a southern Chinese dialect with 7 tone system, regarded as remnants of the original speech in Han Dynasty), still retain many ancient phonological pecularities, beside tones, rich in syllabic endings until this day. Those charateristics are no longer existing in Mandarin.
However, Mandarin still can be used as an illustrative tool for the same old reason of the past that it serves as an offical language of China at the present time that any Chinese learners must know, so it is easier to relate to it in present forms. On the other hand, it is from this popular dialect, among them, interestingly enough, from the Beijing dialect, a very close variant of Mandarin, that I have found all living proofs that show both subtleness and uniqueness of Chinese linguistic elements that exist in the Vietnamese language (VS) as well, for example, bênh 幫 bàng 'to side with', chào 早 zǎo 'hello, (VS) bye', mai 明兒 mínr 'tomorrow', đừng 甭 péng 'do not', đuợc 得 dé 'OK', xong 成 chéng 'OK, done, fine (Beijing dialect)', luônluôn 老老 láoláo (Beijing dialect), xịn 新 xīn 'brand new', keokiệt 小氣 xiǎoqì 'stingy', bàxã 媳婦 xífù 'honey (husband to call his wife)', etc.. That undeniable connection implicitly suggests that many of Sinitic-Vietnamese words probably have something to do with this northern spoken dialect Mandarin. In the meanwhile, Mandarin, like Cantonese of Fukienese or any Chinese dialects for that matter, undoubtedly has directly been evolved from the Middle Chinese. Again, it is from this Middle Chinese that had given rise to the systematic transformation of its sounds into the existing Sino-Vietnamese lexicons as we have come to know today and they all co-exist with all other VS words as well!
In fact, Mandarin, a dynamic and lively language -- which language is not? -- with its sounds having tremendously changed from its Middle Chinese form over the time, still shows all traceable linguistic rules of sound changes from ancient time just as those of Sino-Vietnamese lexicons from the same source. In the meanwhile Sinitic-Vietnamese words, or HánNôm stock, so be it called for its Chinese origin, which are commonly used by all the Vietnamese people in a much more colloquial manner than in scholarly and literary Sino-Vietnamese forms, must have also changed according the same linguistic rules, externally and internally. Putting them together we will have an overall phonological picture of sound-change patterns for us to examine. Starting from this foundation we are able to trace back the Vietnamese etymons to the ancient and archaic forms that have given rise to the Nôm sounds by employing the same comparative historical linguistic mechanisms to establish corresponding sound change patterns with modern Mandarin.
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(1) I think the verbage for the last clause should be stated as "whether initially it was originated from the same root as those of Mon-Khmer languages or not." However, most of the specialists of Vietnamese prefer the other and this is where all the debates start since one cannot say other Mon-Khmer languages were originated from "the Vietnamese linguistic family" since there exists no such a thing, so when one sees there are Mon-Khmer elements in Vietnamese, it is easier to say that Vietnamese was originated from the Mon-Khmer linguistic family. See more in section
III) The Mon-Khmer Association.(2) For a guide to an approximal pronunciation of Vietnamese, refer to Vietnamese-English dictionary by Nguyễn Ðình-Hoà (1966) or Nguyễn Văn Khôn (1967)
ā ē ě ī ǐ ă ō ǒ ū ǔ ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ ü