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(Continued)

VII) A SYPNOPSIS OF PHONOLOGICAL SOUND CHANGES FROM CHINESE TO VIETNAMESE:

Based on the new methods of exploring plausible cognates as presented in the foregoing sections, here we will attempt to recap some common sound change patterns as have been discussed throughout.

In short, phonological sound changes from Chinese to Vietnamese have frequently occurred to any sounds among the initial, medial, final, and ending of a word. In polysyllabic words, sound changes of a syllabic ending would have occurred without phonetic restraint of the original syllabic-word. Also, as the same patterns of sound changes could happen internally inside a language, which likely occurs due to the local speech habit, for instance, l- ~ r-, n- ~ l-, tr- ~ ch-, -n ~ -ng, -t ~ -k, etc. certainly we can base on those similar internal correspondences in pattern to apply to both Chinese and Vietnamese inclusively to explore further what could have had taken place reciprocally when they were in contact with each other, for example, krong (Proto-VM) 'sông' ~ jiāng 江 (river) ~ MC /kong/ ~ SV giang [ ¶ kr- ~ - s, kr- ~ g-, g- ~ j-, j- ~ gi-, gi- ~ s-, j- ~ s-] ; chó ~ /kro/ (Proto-VM) ~ 狗 gǒu (dog) ~ MC /kjəw/ ~ /SV cẩu ~ VS cầy [ ¶ kr- ~ - ch-, kr- ~ k-, k- ~ ch-].

A) Sound changes in the neighboring pronouncing positions:

B) Pattern { l- & S-} (same as s, c, x, ch, sh, j, z, zh, q)

C) Pattern S (same as c, x, q, ch, sh, j, z, zh..) { S-~ r- }

D) Pattern S (same as c, x, q, ch, sh, j, z, zh..) { S- ~ T- } (same as d, th, tr, )

E) Pattern { l- ~ r-}

F) Pattern { p- (b-) ~ t- (d-) }

G) In reality, beside those common sound changes, we can say that any sounds can change to any sounds. However, in many cases, we can still recognize the original form:

H) There are also cases that sound changes might have occurred beyond recognition. However, their etymology is still traceable based on the pronunciation rules in Middle-Chinese for Sino-Vietnamese words:

Yet for those Sintic-Vietnamese words that might have changed this way, we are left with virtually no means but analogy to prove their original authentic forms:

I) Sino-Vietnamese sound loans -- sandhi process of association:

In Vietnamese, there are a lot of Sintitic-Vietnamese words that sound like Sino-Vietnamese words, but actually they are not:. Thídụ:

J) Homonymns and synonymns:

There are many words that can be read the same in Chinese, but with different meanings. Similarly, there are also dialectal pronunciations for the same characters variations which have given rise to different usages, especially when they entered the Vietnamese vocabulary. Therefore, it is not surprising to see that with the same word, the Vietnamese language may also have differentiated that very character with different sounds either by means of association with other words or internal localization :

K) Similarities with modern Mandarin:

The case of "mai" (~ 'mainày' 明兒 mínr) has given rise to the idea that we can only search for Vietnamese words of Chinese origin from only Ancient Chinese and Middle Chinese or Sino-Vietnamese, but we can also look for roots in modern Mandarin, for instance:

L) Localization and innovation or "Vietnamized" (Nômhoá, Việthoá):

(1) Reverse of word order (#, "iro"): We can often find correspondences in both Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese words, but they are in reverse order of each other: bảođảm = 擔保 dànbăo (đảmbảo), ânái = 愛恩 àiēn (áiân), đơngiản = 簡單 jiăndàn (giảnđơn), sảnxuất = 出產 chùchăn (xuấtsản)...

For those Sinitic-Vietnamese words the order seems to be always in reverse in comparison with those of modern Mandarin equivalents:

As we all may know, this is a result of re-arrangement of syntactical order in the Vietnamese language where a modifier mostly is put after the modified. This phenomenon demonstrates clearly in synonymous dissyllabic words in which two syllables were originated from either two different Chinese characters or just one which may still convey the same original meaning if it still retains an older form and its sound has not been altered by mean of reduplicative process, for example:

(2) Local innovations: Other common linguistic phenomena such as combinations of ancient roots with modern words, applying concepts of certain words to other words, or adding new elements and local innovations, etc. which have happened in other languages also take place in Vietnamese:

(3) Integration and combination -- Combinations of ancient words with modern words or with both Sinitic-Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese words:

(4) Permanent word formation made up with associated classifiers:

(5) Assimilation -- Word formations through the sandhi process of association:

(6) Analogical word formation -- If a Vietnamese word is derived from a word of Chinese origin, chances are that an antonymn of that is also from the same source, of which both word-syllables make up a dissyllabic word:

(7) Sound omissions -- It is not unusual to see that many monosyllabic word in Vietnamese correspond to only those polysyllabic equivalents in Chinese. That is is the result of sound ommissions or contractions. This sound change phenomenon can be the products of localization, simplification, or retention of old way of pronunciation or meanings. However, that is not always the case. Again, as in many examples (marked with *) below, many of the loanwords were originally monosyllabic, then later they evolved into dissyllabics to avoid homonymns as in monosyllabics in the Chinese language itself. This type of word formation can also be considered as a local innovation and lexical development internally because it characterizes itself as independent entities by either retaining the original form or adjusting the polysyllabic development to the minimum and not distorting the intended significance despite of changes in the original borrowing language. Here are some examples:

In many cases, when sound omissions occurred in both languages, with the same dissyllabic word, Chinese took on the original monosyllabic one, i.e., the one that had existed before the development of an equivalent dissyllabic word, while Vietnamese might take on a later developed sound and adopted it as the main word and, in some other cases, it was assimilated with another word, for instance,

(8) Influence from other Chinese dialects:

Chinese characters are pronounced differently in different dialects and sometimes even has different pronunciations in just one dialect just as it does in Vietnamese. Moreover, a Chinese character sometimes appears to have many sounds in Vietnamese just because they had been pronounced according to different Chinese dialects which were brought into the Vietnamese language in different periods of time in the past.

In fact, we can find all characteristics of each Chinese dialect, including Mandarin, in Vietnamese beside the overall features such as morphology, phonology or idiomatic expressions, which they all have in common. For example, the Vietnamese second tone at the lower register “õ” is somewhat similar to nasalized final vowels in Fukienese, i.e., ẽ, ã... and those of Beijing dialect suffix -er 兒, e.g.

or tonal system in the Hunan dialect, as accented in Mao Zhedong's Mandarin, resembles that of Huế dialect of Vietnamese, etc.

In any cases the fact that Mandarin sound is selected to represent modern Chinese is only a matter of convenience and oftentimes it is useful to make comparative analysis to see how sound changes from the same source turn out to be in two different languages, i.e., Mandarin and Vietnamese. That does not always mean that Vietnamese words directly originated only from those of Mandarin because they might have been originated also from other Chinese dialects. However, there is strong evidence that modern Vietnamese appears to have a lot of similarities with Mandarin. For instance,

which appears as they are just "twisted sound" of the original Mandarin pronunciations.

Also, it is interesting to see that some other sounds of other Chinese dialects resemble much more pronunciations of certain Vietnamese words of Chinese origin or of the same roots with those of Chinese. For example, in Mandarin ‘mango’ is called

These examples manifest the lowest linguistic stratum of Vietnamese in which words of the same root shared by the Yue peoples are still in use by their descendants at present day while other words might have been variants of either direct influence from one language to the other or merely a uniform result of sound changes.

Other cognates can also be found in daily common words such as

Some linguists will argue that words like those have cultural influence from China and cannot be used to establish a genetic kinship with Chinese, that is, only common basic words count. Many linguists, after eliminating obvious Chinese loanwords and other areas like grammar and phonology, work only with the residue of what is leftover called ‘fundamental or basic words’. Many of these leftover words are thought as non-Han (non-Chinese) origin, but they never know that some of them really are.

Examples like these are numerous. They are worth discussing much more than just listing simple corresponding phonetic patterns, especially the sound change rules from Old Chinese to modern Chinese and Vietnamese.

Nevertheless, the point to be made here is that sound changes are multifaceted in both time and space. That is, one Chinese word can evolve into different Vietnamese words at different periods as Haudricourt (1961) noted that Chinese words of classical Chinese are pronounced differently from words of the vernacular language which were from an older form of Chinese.

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VIII) CONCLUSION:

So far as it is concerned, in the field of Sinitic-Vietnamese studies Vietnamese words of Chinese origin have not been fully explored as they deserve. Though some Sinitic-Vietnamese aspects have been addressed under different subject matters, most specialists of Vietnamese have examined the Vietnamese etymology of Chinese origin to date by comparing only monosyllabic words with individual equivalents of Chinese characters. Their common approach is to treat Sinitic-Vietnamese words only within the framework of the phonological systems of Sino-Vietnamese as compared to Middle Chinese while Ancient Chinese, Old Chinese, and modern Chinese dialects have been neglected for the most parts even though they have given rise to numerous modern Vietnamese words.

Additionally if there is any meaningful work having been done in the Sinitic-Vietnamese fields, it has been plagued with a misconception about the true nature of both Chinese and Vietnamese as those of monosyllabics where the monosyllabic Vietnamese words of Chinese origin have been investigated only on one-to-one basis monosyllabically. To make the matter worse, unfortunately, the misconception of Vietnamese and Chinese monosyllabics is still widely accepted as a matter of fact. As we see in today’s linguistic books whenever a case study of a monosyllabic language needs to be presented, Vietnamese or Chinese are often cited as examples of monosyllabic languages. Unfortunately, such short-sightedness is par for the course these days. This defficient approach has certainly hindered further development of break-through nature in the Vietnamese etymological study, that is, no new discovery of Vietnamese words of Chinese origin has been made. Therefore, the subject of dissyllabics has been discussed in length with different perspectives and how to derive etymologically a great number of Vietnamese words from dissyllabic variations of Chinese orin as a result.

The new dissyllabic and analogical approaches discussed in this research will certainly help linguists of Vietnamese discover more Vietnamese words of Chinese origin, which, in turn, will clarify some other etymological issues revolving around basic word stratum since that can be also examined with the same methodologies. With this new way of exploring the field of Sinitic-Vietnamese studies, once we have come up solid cases as proofs of Chinese origin of a majority of Vietnamese words and, for those glosses that are not, of any other origin, for the same matter, lexicologists of Vietnamese will be able to compile a modern Vietnamese dictionary completed with lexical etymology for the first time in history. Finally, we may contemplate the ideas of reclassifying Vietnamese as a member of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family once again.

(To be continued -- this research is still in the process of extensive editing.)

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WEB SITES

http://www.archive.org/. 2006. Internet Archive

Đặng, Thế-Kiệt. 2007. 漢越辭典 Hán Việt Từ Điển Thiền Chửu (v1.0)

Huệ Diệp Chi. 2004. Bách thảo trong Thi ca

MDBG. 2007. Chinese-English Dictionary

Mei, Tsu-Lin 梅祖麟 (with Jerry Norman). 1976a. "Austroasiatics in Ancient South China: some Lexical Evidence", Monumenta Serica 32.274-301

Sheik, Adam. 石亞當. 2007. http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk. Cantonese-English Dictionary

http://www.zdict.net/. 2006. Chinese Academic Reference Dictionary

Wells, John. 2002. International Phonetic Alphabet in Unicode

Phan, Anh-Dũng, and Trần, Văn Kiệm. 2006. Tự điển Trực tuyến Việt-Hán-Nôm

Starostin, Sergei. 2005. The Tower of Babel An Etymological Database Project

WorldLingo. 2007. Free Website Translator

http://vdict.com/. 2006. Vietnamese-English-French Dictionary

 

 

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