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Vietnamese Language

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Vietnamese Language
    Posted: 18-Aug-2005 at 00:36

Korea and Japan are heavily influenced by China and their language has some sort of connection to Chinese (probably the basis to their language). But what about modern vietnamese? there some words which sounds the same. Ma in chinese is mum in vietnamese it is also Ma but with a different tone.

I heard that vietnamese was actually created by some french dude? can anyone clarify this for me?

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Gubook Janggoon View Drop Down
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  Quote Gubook Janggoon Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Aug-2005 at 02:07
Hey Yu Fei.  I have heard of the general you've named yourself after.  Southern Song right?  Fought against the Jin dynasty?  Very cool general, but steeped in controversy.

Okay, in terms of your question.  What do you mean by language?  Spoken or Written?

Spoken wise.

Vietnamese, Korean, and Japan have borrowed many loan words from Chinese, but Chinese is hardly the basis of those languages.  They're not related at all.

Written wise.

Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese all used Chinese characters in the past.

For Korea, King Sejong the Great created a Korean alphabet in the 15th century, although it didn't gain much speed until the enlightenment movements of the late Daehan Empire.  Korean was probably based on Phagspha, an alphabet the Yuan dynasty had designed by a Tibetan Monk.

Japan has its own set of writing, but it isn't quite an alphabet.  Certain characters represent a certain syllable.  IIRC, Japan uses a mix of both Chinese characters and its own native writing.  That native writing though is derived from certain Chinese characters. 

Vietnam also used to use Chinese characters, but at some point they switched over to Latin characters.  :/  I don't know much about this.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Aug-2005 at 05:21
Originally posted by Yue Fei

Korea and Japan are heavily influenced by China and their language has some sort of connection to Chinese (probably the basis to their language). But what about modern vietnamese? there some words which sounds the same. Ma in chinese is mum in vietnamese it is also Ma but with a different tone.

I heard that vietnamese was actually created by some french dude? can anyone clarify this for me?

Má seems quite a slang in Southern Vietnamese. Mẹ is the standard one.

There so many Chinese words borrowed into Vietnamese. Some are even from Old Chinese, very much earlier than the Japanese and Korean. You can tell which one is old just by looking the "Standard", Middle-Chinese based Sino-Vietnamese.

Vietnamese used Chinese characters like Korean and Japanese did, but they turned to make their own characters, called Chữ Nôm, which was (in my opinion) a lousy writing. After that European missionarists created new writing system. (seems Portuguese, especially the usage of nh instead of nj, ny, ñ)

If I recall correctly the current script Quốc Ngữ started to be national writing since Vietnamese independence from France.



Edited by qrasy
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Aug-2005 at 05:37

Gubook Janggoon - yea, Yue Fei was from the southern song, i believe he was an amazing person although alot of information about him is like you said, contraversal.

thanks for your input both of you, really helpful. although i would really like to know who exactly created the language (i hope it would easier to find out who since it was done in modern times)

 

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Aug-2005 at 05:43

Originally posted by Yue Fei

Thanks for your input both of you, really helpful. although i would really like to know who exactly created the language (i hope it would easier to find out who since it was done in modern times)

By the way, what did you mean by 'who created the language'?

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  Quote Maju Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Aug-2005 at 12:39
Originally posted by Yue Fei

Korea and Japan are heavily influenced by China and their language has some sort of connection to Chinese (probably the basis to their language). But what about modern vietnamese? there some words which sounds the same. Ma in chinese is mum in vietnamese it is also Ma but with a different tone.

I heard that vietnamese was actually created by some french dude? can anyone clarify this for me?



None of those languages has too much to do with Chinese, except for the fact that China has influenced all those cultures historically. Japanese and Korean are usually classified as Altaic (along with Turk and Monogolian) but there are some doubts about this classification.

Chinese is usually classified together with Tibeto-Burman languages in one linguistic family: Sino-Tibetan, often the Native American Na-Den family is associated to this one (Sino-Na-Den superfamily).

Vietnamese is usually assigned to the Austroasiatic family (Mon-Khmer subfamily), but others believe it is an isolate. In any case, it should be grouped with other SE Asian linguistic families in the Austric superfamily.

Though French colonial influence is notorious in modern Vietnamese, this ancient language was not invented by any Frenchman in the 20th century. . Reference: Vietnamese language.


NO GOD, NO MASTER!
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Aug-2005 at 09:17

"Normal" (SIL) classification:

Japanese-> Japonic

Korean->isolate

Mongolian, Turkic-> Altaic

Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese->Sino-Tibetan

Vietnamese->Austroasiatic.

 

 

"Usual" Abnormal classifications:

Austric (Austroasiatic+Austronesian+Miao Yao+Thai Kadai), Macro-Altaic(Altaic+Japanese+Korean), Sino-Tai

Other abnormals:

Dene-(Sino)-Caucasian, Sino-Austric, Sino-Caucasian, Sino-Austroasiatic, Sino-Indo-European, Sino-Dene

some taken from www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/gpc/behr/RTF/chineseness.rtf

structurically Chinese seems to have been affected much by the Southeast Asians.



Edited by qrasy
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Hmongshaman View Drop Down
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  Quote Hmongshaman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Sep-2005 at 00:09
hmong = SINO-TIBETAN......family is MIAO-YAO.... hmong people is not put under AUSTRIC...how can we be put in austric if our language consist of chinese and hmong together..and pulse it sound more like chinese and tibetan..
Hmong is the beautiful people of Western China.
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  Quote johannes Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Feb-2006 at 13:15

.."Create the language"..???..?..

Uh... i think God created language.  Or you can say the PEOPLE created the language.

Writing system of Vietnamese

http://www.cjvlang.com/Writing/writsys/writviet.html

Yes, modern Vietnamese orthography was indeed designed by Portuguese Jesuits.  i tried telling my Vietnamese friends but they kept insisting that it's from French!  Hello!?!?!  The 'nh' gives it all away.

and for the more hardcore, Vietnamese phonology, morphology & historical linguistics

http://www.vny2k.net/vny2k/SiniticVietnamese.htm



Edited by johannes
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