為甚麼吳語和粵語是中國話, 而越南語不是呢?

[pazu]

為甚麼吳語和粵語是中國話, 而越南語不是呢? 請指教。

[nnt]

You should already know the answer...

[Quest]

linguists group vietnamese with the austro-asiatic family, but I kinda think Vietnamese if written in characters could very well be another Chinese dialect.... please enlighten me.

[ala]

Min according to some pro-independence Taiwanese linguists has an Austronesian (南岛语) substratum. If Min does, then Wu likely does too, as Min is like a better preserved form of Wu.

Vietnamese is not a dialect because there is historical and linguistic evidence that Chinese words and structures were loaned onto the indigenous non-Chinese Mon-Khmer language. The grammar should make it quite clear, and the use of many non-Sinitic yet very basic and daily-use vocabulary.

Whereas Cantonese has historical and linguistic evidence of migration from the Zhongyuan area. Any non-Chinese words in Cantonese are likely to be loaned at a late stage. Cantonese departed from what is today Mandarin at a stage when the source language had just lost consonant voicing. Wu, Xiang, and Min departed somewhat earlier.

Also, linguistic and ethnic boundaries do not necessarily overlap.

[pazu]

Anh nnt: I raised up this question for discussion, or brushing up, maybe I should change the title a bit to avoid confusion.

Anyway, what's the features of Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan language family?

[nnt]

See the link here:

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Austroasiatic%20languages

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Sino-Tibetan

I think the distinction is just between "autochtonous" and "due to migrations":

It is widely believed that the Austroasiatic languages are the autochtonous languages of Southeast Asia and eastern India, and that the other languages of the region, including the Indo European, Tai-Kadai, and Sino-Tibetan languages, are the result of later movements of people.

Classifications can evolve too...

[Quest]

so, nnt, knowing both, do you think Vietnamese is very close to Mandarin? or Pazu, do you think it's very close to Cantonese?

I know many words sound similar, but what about grammar and other things.

[nnt]

IMHO Vietnamese is not close to Chinese.

Grammar structures may have similarities (no inflexions, measure words, duplicated verbs, basic SVO structure, etc...), but there are many important differences in sentence structures:

.in CHinese "adjectives" are before nouns, in Vietnamese after. Ex. 青天 = trời xanh, in which 天 means "trời" 青 means "xanh"

.in CHinese "adverbs" are often before verbs, in Vietnamese after. Ex: 你快说 = anh nói mau , in which 快 means "mau".

Adverbs structures with "adj+地" are equivalent to Vietnamese "một cách + adjective" structure, ex: 他慢慢地说 = hắn nói một cách chầm chậm, in which 慢慢 means "chầm chậm"

.in CHinese "的 structures" are used while in Vietnamese "của" structures are used (in many case "của" is omitted) , just like the difference between "'s" (的) and "of" ("của") structures in English (ex: John's book vs the book of John)

. Although there is a construction similar to Chinese "把" structures in Vietnamese ("mang" + O + V + C), this latter's scope is much narrower than Chinese "把" structure

... etc...

Also basic vocabulary like numbers (1 một 2 hai 3 ba), body parts (hand = tay foot = chân), sky (trời), water(nước), earth(đất), etc... are not borrowed from Chinese.

To sum up, translation is needed even for the most simple sentences. It's not just a difference in pronunciation, while retaining a common basic grammar. The difference lies in the core of the language, in spite of similarities.

[Quest]

icic thanks

[pazu]

Cantonese grammar is not exactly the same as Mandarin Chinese too, though the difference is not as much as that of Vietnamese.

So let's see a word-by-word translation of an official notice in Vietnamese, it's about Vietnamese boat people in the 1990s and this message was broadcasted very frequently in Hong Kong radio. PS: Anh NNT, don't be offended please, I choose this because I have this text in my computer already. I had some family who were boat people too.

The original message:

Bắt đầu từ nay, một chính sách mới về thuyền dân Việt Nam đã được chấp hành tại Hồng Kông, từ nay về sau, những thuyền dân Việt Nam kiếm cách nhập cảnh Hồng Kông với thân phận những người di tản, vì vấn đề kinh tế, sẽ bị coi là những người nhập cảnh phi pháp, là người nhập cảnh phi pháp, họ sẽ không có chút khả năng nào đi định cư ở nước thứ 3, họ sẽ bị giam cầm, chờ ngày giải về Việt Nam.

Here's the "Han-Viet" translation, a word-by-word translation, the bold text is exactly the same in Chinese.

開始自此, 一政策新, 關於船民越南, 已經執行在香港(*)。自此到後, 眾船民越南, 設法入境香港, 以身份眾人移散, 因為問題經濟, 將被(**)看作眾人入境非法。是人入境非法, 他們將沒有一點可能甚麼去定居在國第三, 他們將被監禁, 待日解(**)回越南。

* 「香港」的越文為 Hồng Kông 或 Hong Kong, 是英文譯詞。按「漢越詞」的譯法, 香港應是「Hương Cảng」, 但很少人用了。

** Correct me if this is not Han-Viet vocab.

The grammar is fundamentally different, but I'm quite sure it's still quite comprehensible for a Chinese.

nhất nhị tam tứ ngũ (一二三四五) is still quite commonly used in Vietnamese, but usually used in Chinese loan words, or some specific expression.

[nnt]

As you said, it's already a word by word translation

船民越南 is not the same as 越南船民

問題經濟 ------------------ 經濟問題

(not much left for bold characters after that...)

"Bắt đầu" has been translated into 開始, "đầu" being 头(頭)

nay ... into 此

một ....... 一

mới ....... 新, etc...

I think it's a like guessing a Japanese text (which usually has more Kanji) when you only know Kanji.

No doubt it's easy for a Chinese to learn Vietnamese, but it's just to say "it's different" (not a marketing slogan...)

[pazu]

呢啲嘢其實我都唔多知, 我都唔知呢啲算唔算喺翻譯啊。

The above is a typical Cantonese phrase, and it also requires translation to be understood fully.

[Quest]

well, it seems to me you just put adjectives behind nouns and you get the vietnamese version

[pazu]

This is the basic thing you have to do to translate a VN text into Chinese. But it's not the only thing you have to do.

開始自此, 一政策新, 關於船民越南, 已經執行在香。

should be translated as

從現在開始, 香港已執行有關越南船民的新政策。

Sometimes I wonder the differences of a language and a dialect, Cantonese differs from Mandarin in many aspects too.

And a note to my previous translation.

Though you can also translate an English text using a similar way to get a similar results:

e.g. A new policy about Vietnamese boat people has been implemented in Hong Kong.

一個 新 政策 有關 越南船民 已經 執行 在香港

But there's still a fundamental difference between this example and Vietnamese/Chinese.

You can't take the 政 from policy to form a word like "policy-house" to denote Chinh Phu (政府); you can also say "nam america" to mean "south america" in English, you can't say "plement-dong" to mean 行動.

Isn't this way of coining new words more important to define a language rather than just the position of the adjectives? (this is a question, not a statement.)

[nnt]

Isn't this way of coining new words more important to define a language rather than just the position of the adjectives

What I've written:

but there are many important differences in sentence structures:

.in CHinese "adjectives" are before nouns, in Vietnamese after. Ex. 青天 = trời xanh, in which 天 means "trời" 青 means "xanh"

.in CHinese "adverbs" are often before verbs, in Vietnamese after. Ex: 你快说 = anh nói mau , in which 快 means "mau".

Adverbs structures with "adj+地" are equivalent to Vietnamese "một cách + adjective" structure, ex: 他慢慢地说 = hắn nói một cách chầm chậm, in which 慢慢 means "chầm chậm"

.in CHinese "的 structures" are used while in Vietnamese "của" structures are used (in many case "của" is omitted) , just like the difference between "'s" (的) and "of" ("của") structures in English (ex: John's book vs the book of John)

. Although there is a construction similar to Chinese "把" structures in Vietnamese ("mang" + O + V + C), this latter's scope is much narrower than Chinese "把" structure

... etc...

Also basic vocabulary like numbers (1 một 2 hai 3 ba), body parts (hand = tay foot = chân), sky (trời), water(nước), earth(đất), etc... are not borrowed from Chinese.

To sum up, translation is needed even for the most simple sentences. It's not just a difference in pronunciation, while retaining a common basic grammar. The difference lies in the core of the language, in spite of similarities.

[pazu]

It seems to me that Vietnamese has quite a few similarities to English in grammar, also some usage of words, e.g. "thuc hien" is "shixian" in Chinese but the usage is more similar to "undergo" in English.

I somehow remembered once NNT said that modern Vietnamese was influenced by English to become more concise (or what word did NNT use?)

Are there any other influence of the other Western languages (like English or French?) to Vietnamese?

PS: Where's NNT now? I haven't seen him for quite a long time.

[HashiriKata]

I somehow remembered once NNT said that modern Vietnamese was influenced by English to become more concise (or what word did NNT use?)

It's very difficult for a language to be grammatically influenced by another unless it's exposed to the other over a very long period of time (such as Vietnamese-Chinese). I don't therefore think that English has yet any gramatical influence on Veitnamese, since Vietnamese has not got extensive contact with English to any significant measure.

Are there any other influence of the other Western languages (like English or French?) to Vietnamese?

Vocabularywise, yes, you can find some English words start coming in but the more numerous are French words, due to the long period under French rule.

[pazu]

Then how about Vietnamese influenced by French in the grammar (not just vocab)?

[HashiriKata]

Hi pazu, nice to hear from you!

Then how about Vietnamese influenced by French in the grammar (not just vocab)?

I may have to do some research to answer the question properly but off-hand, what I can say is this: since grammar is the most resistent aspect of any language; and if Chinese hasn't left any significant grammatical influence on Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean in spite of more than a thousand years of extensive language contact and borrowing, I think the case of French on Vietnamese can safely be assumed to be (almost) non-existent. Of course, I've heard some people saying that the fact that adjective coming after the noun in Vietnamese is an evidence of the influence but this is a gross mistake, as this is one of the most basic structures of Vietnamese (and Thai, a neighboring language) which has been in existence since the language is known.

Now re-reading the thread, I think I should make a little contribution regarding a central point you discussed earlier:

There are many differences between Vietnamese and Chinese which are too fundamental for Vietnamese to be considered a dialect of Chinese. The one already mentioned is the word order between (modifying) adjectives and (modified) nouns:

Vietnamese: Modified (N) + Modifying (Adj)

Chinese : Modifying (Adj) + Modified (N)

Both languages follow the principle consistently (English doesn't, by the way!) even when the modifying elements are more complicated structures such as clauses/sentences rather than just adjectives; and this gives the 2 languages complete different appearances which can confuse even the most seasoned speakers:

一政策新關於船民越南 (Vietnamese word order)

一個 關於越南船民的新政策 (Chinese word order)

(and if you try translating the English sentence I just said above into Vietnamese and Chinese, you'll see the contrast more clearly in everyday speech).

What is interesting is in Pazu's "word-by-word translation" of the Vietnamese passage into Chinese, so many extra punctuation marks which are not in the original Vietnamese have unintentionally crept into the Chinese version, to make it more interpretable in Chinese and therefore, closer to Chinese than it really is. (ie, puntuations alter structures, even within the same language!)

Bắt đầu từ nay, một chính sách mới về thuyền dân Việt Nam đã được chấp hành tại Hồng Kông, từ nay về sau, những thuyền dân Việt Nam kiếm cách nhập cảnh Hồng Kông với thân phận những người di tản, vì vấn đề kinh tế, sẽ bị coi là những người nhập cảnh phi pháp, là người nhập cảnh phi pháp, họ sẽ không có chút khả năng nào đi định cư ở nước thứ 3, họ sẽ bị giam cầm, chờ ngày giải về Việt Nam.

Here's the "Han-Viet" translation, a word-by-word translation, the bold text is exactly the same in Chinese.

開始自此, 一政策新, 關於船民越南, 已經執行在香港(*)。自此到後, 眾船民越南, 設法入境香港, 以身份眾人移散, 因為問題經濟, 將被(**)看作眾人入境非法。是人入境非法, 他們將沒有一點可能甚麼去定居在國第三, 他們將被監禁, 待日解(**)回越南。

Another thing is, sharing a large common word stock with Chinese often makes Vietnamese appear closer to Chinese but I think Vietnamese is much closer to Thai language; and unless Thai language is considered a dialect of Chinese (which it isn't), Vietnamese definitely can't be.

Cheers,

HK

[rmontelatici]

I also believe that Vietnamese is not of chinese origin.

Here are a few more arguments in favor of it (please vietnamese speakers correct me if I'm wrong):

* the use of measure words is a little bit different (different categorization of objects and concepts): I have to say that classifiers are not a feature which is specific to chinese languages.

* the use of pronouns is way more complex than in chinese

* reduplicative verbs have a more general scope than in chinese:

they are used to increase or decrease the intensity of the original adjectival verb (ngai ngái is lighter than ngai, but rầm rầm is stronger than rầm).

The repetition of the word often involves consonants or tones modifications (there are rules about that), like in chúm chím, đủng đỉnh, xốc xếch or ngan ngát.

There are also duplications of duplications: xốc xa xốc xếch or đủng đa đủng đỉnh.

Please tell me if there are such things in Chinese

* I also don't know if there are chinese equivalents to vietnamese structures based on undetermined pairs like gì/nấy or đâu/đấy (please nnt or HashiriKata help me on this topic), for instance : "hỏi gì đáp nấy" (answer anything you're asked)

Raphael