Talk:Vietnamese language

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Contents

[edit] Truyện Kiều

Why is the chữ nôm version of the Truyện Kiều (under the Examples heading) a JPEG picture instead of actual text? --Frungi 5 July 2005 01:56 (UTC)

Possibly because chữ nôm is not standardized and computer support for it in Unicode is very rudimentary. DHN 5 July 2005 06:07 (UTC)

[edit] genetic classification?

'Britannica claims that Vietnamese is one of the , not descended from Chinese. Do you have a better source?

-- I don't know what an Austroasiatic language is, other than perhaps a language used near Australia or Asia. The old characters are very similar to Ok. The languages you cited are members of the Tai languages, which is a different group altogether. As to what the Austroasiatic languages are, I think the best answer for now is the languages related to Vietnamese and Cambodian, which do not include Chinese. If they sound similar, though, I would bet that Chinese has had a big influence on Vietnamese, including probably the system of writing. Permission to say so above?

--Go ahead and Be bold in updating pages; I don't mind. Interesting that you bring up Cambodian, though, because that's the language I'm most familiar with - and it's closer to Laotian and Thai than anything else. Cambodian and Thai are about as close to each other as Spanish and English - *lots* of roots and words that are similar or the same, and the written languages are also very close. (Thai and Lao are about like Spanish and Italian, or even Spain-Spanish and Mexico-Spanish). Those three all have strong roots in Pali and Sanskrit. Doing a little research, however, http://www.saigon.com/~nguyent/hoa_04.html seems to agree with you, so let's go ahead and make the change.


Quoted from this page: "Cambodian and Thai are about as close to each other as Spanish and English - *lots* of roots and words that are similar or the same, and the written languages are also very close. (Thai and Lao are about like Spanish and Italian, or even Spain-Spanish and Mexico-Spanish)." Comment: The same CANNOT be said of the Vietnamese and Cambodian languages. T.Vd./

Actually, it can't be said even with thai and cambodian becuase they are not actually related while english and spanish are. Vietnamese and Cambodian can be said to be like english and german, or okinawan and japanese. They are actually related but far apart. English have 50% or so of its vocabulary and grammer borrowed other languages, and okinawan grammer is only about 70% the same as japanese. CanCanDuo 03:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vietnamese as Austroasiatic

2002.03.09: As someone who has pretensions of knowing something about linguistics, I can confirm that Vietnamese is considered by linguists to be an Austroasiatic language, part of the Austronesian languages grouping. This language grouping can, very roughly speaking, be divided into four major areas: Vietnamese/Cambodian, Malagasy language, the languages of the Indonesian & Phillipine archipelagos (with exceptions), and then the Oceanic (or Polynesian) languages.

I think Austroasiatic have never officially became a part of Austronesian. ASutroasiatic-Austronesian should be as far as Austronesian~Tai-Kadai Visit this page www.ethnologue.com/family_index.asp --qrasy-- 10:37 PM June 5th, 2005(GMT+7)

[edit] tonogenesis speculation

Most notable is that Vietnamese is, to my knowledge, the only one of these that is tonal. I'd hazard a guess that the tonal system of Vietnamese arises from the influence of the Sino-Tibetan and Tai/Daic languages surrounding it and Khmer. But I'd be overstepping the limits of my knowledge trying to make any actual *claim* that such is the case.

There are other languages related to Vietnamese that have tone. The general hypothesis is that tones were developed historically from the influence of surrounding consonants. (Consonants in all languages affect the frequency of vowel formants.) Here is a cool link about some of this: http://www.anu.edu.au/~u9907217/languages/AAlecture6.html There was an article in Language about this too.
Ish ishwar 14:22, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

By the way some of the terms in that page seems Chinese word, probably loans. Chinese also had tonogenesis for sure.-qrasy- 9 Aug 2005 11:38 (GMT+8) Tsat language is a good proof od tonogenesis

[edit] unicode

I'm inclined to add a section to this page that includes the Unicode characters for several of these symbols. It's kind of hard to connect the written form with these ASCII adaptations. -- Taral

I would recommend using the Unicode forms for the correct orthography in the text where possible (as numeric character references, since we're still using ISO-8859-1 for the text encoding), with ASCII adaptations only as a parenthetical backup for those with old browsers/crappy fonts/text consoles. (Images are another, also unappetizing, possibility.) Brion VIBBER
Already done.  :-) pgdudda
Please can somebody just specify a unicode font or 3 in the text? They are easy enough to get and one at least (Lucida Sans Unicode) seems to come with either Windows or some Windows apps. Numeric character references only work if a suitable font is provided anyway. I would recommend that the font faces be provided explicitly in the HTML rather than the stylesheets, since many browsers cannot understand standard CSS.

[edit] origins of Roman alpha usage?

I'd be curious to know roughly when Vietnam began using the Roman alphabet. Seems that would be useful to add here and/or in History of Vietnam. Wesley

Roman characters were introduced by Portugese and Spanish Catholic Missionaries and Traders in 17th century. At the time, the port of Hop Pho (in central Vietnam) was a trading zone. The first usage of the writing system was the translation of the Bible into Vietnamese. However, the usage was limited around the area.

In late 19th century and early 20th century, modernization movements popularized the use of the writing system and established it as the national standard system of writing. There were many printing presses in major cities and the early 20th century was said to be the Golden Age of vietnamese litterature. Only then that the writing system was standardized by a cooperative effort. Contrary to some belief, the writing system was not standardized to reflect Hanoi speakers pronunciations, but rather was a compromise between different regions.

Linh t tran (talk) 18:54, 31 December 2007 (UTC)linh_t_tran

[edit] bad translation

The English translation of the poem is horrible. However, I'm not qualified enough to do it justice. "Four scores and two ten years" is too wordy. The first line of the poem literally says "A hundred year within the life of a person..."

---

Here is my proposed translation:

 One hundred years in the human world,
 Talent and fate seem to oppose each other.
 Through a life shattering event,
 Seeing the fragments of life is extremely painful.
 Strange not, lose that and gain this.
 The god is habitually jealous of beautiful girl.

-- Translator 04:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


Hope you like my version of 23 January 2007:
A hundred years of human existence,
Prodigy and fate intertwined in conflicts,
Mulberry fields turned into open sea,
Enough's been seen to melt the heart.
Little wonder that beauty begets misery,
For Blue Heaven's jealous of exquisite glamour!

TVBZ28 (talk) 20:57, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

"Tram nam" should not be translated litterally to "one hundred years". It should rather be "since hundred years", in the sense of "it has always been". Linh t tran (talk) 18:56, 31 December 2007 (UTC)linh_t_tran

[edit] computers & unicode

It would good if the computer support section mentioned that there are both combining characters and precomposed characters for Vietnamese in Unicode — and the reasons why and possible problems because of the two systems. — Hippietrail 23:21, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] history inaccuracies

The history section isn't totally accurate:

  1. Vietnam actually had two ways to use Chinese characters: chu nho and chu nom.
  2. Vietnam is not surrounded by countries which use "ideographic" characters. Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos all use syllabaries ultimately from the same source as Devanagari.

— Hippietrail 03:08, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Countries around Vietnam uses abugida. CanCanDuo 03:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] diacritics?

Can someone explain why the vietmanese writing has so many markings? Also, can someone list the prounciations of each letter of that is possible like in spanish?

Vietnamese is a tonal language, and some of the diacritical marks signify the tonal quality of a syllable (such as o versus ò, in which o has the level tone and ò has a falling tone). Another class of diacriticals signify whether a vowel is pronounced "long" or "short" (such as o versus ô, where ô is pronounced like "oh" in English, while o is pronounced somewhat similarly to "ah"). These two types of diacritical marks can be combined in the same letter, indicating for example a long "oh" with a rising tone, and can appear somewhat complicated to one unfamiliar with the orthography. Please take caution with my explanation, however, as I am merely a student of the language, and I am neither fluent nor literate in the language.

— Ryanaxp

Vietnamese has 10 basic vowels, with 2 pairs of short-long distinction. ô-o is not long-short difference.

As a native Viet speaker, I just want to add that the Vietnamese alphabet was originally created by non-native speakers, Portugese to be specific. As such, there may have been a tendency to exoticize it. Or it was just plain incompentence. However, there is no reason why ê in Lê cannot be written as Lei or why ô cannot be written as oe or oh as the above user suggested. Or why the normal d is pronounced as a y. For example, Dung is actually pronounced Yung.

As for the tone markings, that is undoubtedly necessary. However, for the most common words, even that can be omitted. For example, every Viets know that Hanoi is pronounced Hànội, just as every English speaker would recognized that hour is pronounced "our" with a silent h.

I would love to see native Vietnamese linguists get together and rationalize the system. — a.t

  • I studied Vietnames in 36 weeks of language school with the US Army. Our teachers were all VN nationals and they all had their little linguistic idiosyncracies that showed how flexible the langage was even though we were being taught with a classic set of rules — and I was studying the Southern dialect. The Vietnamese language was a corruption of the Chinese language in order to disguise it from the ancient enemies of the Han dynasties. This is our original Viet Ngu everyone has heard about. After more than 3,000 years of tossing around, it came to the southerners like most agrarian societies, unbooked and unlearned, It was a Portuguese missionary Alexandre de Rhodes (ca. 1560) who began to romanticize the language (with a romance alphabet) and began compiling a dictionary of the language into Portuguese and Latin. After all that time the language did not become nationalized until about 1920 where the North and the South could somewhat recognize a common language between them. I'm not sure that sitting VN linguists down will solve much because I think they might not be able to reconcile alot of the differences. As for learning VN from parents, many of the VN refugees in the US are from the south. Not to take it away from them, but many are unschooled in the language. As a result I am seeing alot of variation in spellings from the younger generations, and I think we will soon have a new VN language here in So Cal. It happens. Magi Media 04:46, 28 March 2006 (UTC)Magi Media

[edit] pronunciation additions

Hi. I added a lot stuff about vowels & gave my sources. I got rid of the SAMPA vowel chart. SAMPA is very unsophisticated & is only used on the Net. But, since there is the technology to write mostly decent IPA now, I think it should be used. I recommend a comparison of Nguyễn & Thompson. Nguyễn's work is current (he died in 2000, I think). Thompson did his field work around Saigon in the 50s & later had Vietnamese consultants in America in the 60s. But he moved on to Native American linguistics. I would guess that most American textbooks are based on Thompson (?). I want to add more about diphthongs & the writing system, but I that will come later. Comments, you can email.

Ish ishwar 10:59, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] too much?

Am I writing too much? Someone please advise. Create a separate Vietnamese phonology section?

Ish ishwar 05:29, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think you're doing fine. The article is small as it is. DHN 23:58, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Amen to that. Superb job, Mr. Ishwar. Pointing out the inconsistences in the phonetic representations is essential, and you have done that. My only quibble is the choice of Hà Nội as the "main" dialect. It's like choosing British or American variants of English as the correct one. I'm used to the HCMC variant. I might add some corrections a little later to compare HN versus HCMC.
Hi. Thanks for the encouragement. I would like to continue adding more information about some of the other varieties of Vietnamese. I didnt choose the Hanoi variety for any reason other than this variety is the main focus of the works I am consulting (which are mostly Nguyễn 1997 & Thompson 1965). Thompson has published on Saigon (HCMC) Vietnamese in an earlier article in Language. There are some other things (some written in Vietnamese & French) which I dont have. Cheers! - Ish ishwar 07:06, 2005 Jan 19 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, the Northern (Hanoi) dialect is usually considered the more "educated" one. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs, blog) 04:57, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
It's not considered to be more educated, it's only usually thought of as more accurate.--82.23.1.34 20:12, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
I find the three dialects fascinating. For example, most songs are sung in the northern Ha Noi dialect, but TV programs translated from Chinese/Korean are almost always translated into Southern Sai Gon dialect. A friend of mine notes that according to the way Vietnamese is written, all 3 dialects are wrong. The Northern Ha Noi Dialect mispronounces the beginning of the word - "tr" and "ch" are the same, "d", "gi", and "r" are pronounced the same. The Middle Hue Dialect mispronounces the middle or the tone of the word - the neutral and falling tones remain the same, while all the other tones get downgraded to the low-broken tone. On the other hand, the Southern Sai Gon Dialect misprounounces the final consonants of the word - final consonants "c" and "t" sound the same, final consonants "n" and "ng" sound the same, and final consonants "ch" and "t" in certain circumstances sound the same too. In my humble opinion, "correct" Vietnamese should be a combination of all 3 dialects, so that no one dialect could claim that it is the most "prestigious" or "official dialect". Interestingly, there is one singer, Quang Le, that sings in this combination dialect, and I think it sounds very "standard". - Phil Hong Nguyen, MD 21 Oct 2007

[edit] new phonology article

Hi.

I am thinking about making a separate Vietnamese article on the sound system because the page is in excess of 32 kb & I want to add a considerable amount of material on a phonetic description of (1) consonants, (2) tones, (3) orthography, (4) dialectal variation (only phonetics though). This will probably make the page a little unwieldy.

My question to you is: What to call the article?

I cant see a standarized naming convention for this. Below are some names of similar articles from different languages:

So we could have one or two or three articles with names modeled after the above depending on how we divide the information up. I dont see a point in creating separate alphabet and spelling pages (for Vietnamese or English).

Assuming the new article(s) is/are agreed upon by everyone, then the remaining question is what to leave in the main Vietnamese language article.

Suggestions/comments?

- Ish ishwar 19:28, 2005 Jan 28 (UTC)


Great idea.

There seems to be a consensus on phonology for the French and Spanish articles. You can create an article entitled Vietnamese phonology and have Vietnamese pronunciation and Vietnamese dialects redirect there. DHN 22:47, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Phono update:
  • created Vietnamese phonology
  • move detailed info from this article to phonology article
  • inprove tone chart
  • greatly simply phono description
One important thing to note is that I have made a decision to use only the orthography in this article. Readers who are interested in phonetics/phonology are referred to the phonology article for IPA transcription and more detail description & analysis. My reason for doing this is that the use of phonetic notation may be unnecessarily complicated for the non-phonetically-oriented, more casual reader. This practice has been adopted in many pedagogical works and even in the rather technical works by Thompson (1965) and Nguyễn (1997). Some authors may take issue with this, though — so I'm letting you know. (If you are interested, I have a discussion with another linguistically-oriented reader about using orthography in Navajo.)
- Ish ishwar 19:39, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)

[edit] Redirects added

I added the redirects for "Vietnamese pronounciation" and "Vietnamese dialects. I hope it helps.

--Tphcm 06:31, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Khmer Krom and the population of Vietnamese speakers

I noticed the number of speakers of Vietnamese listed in the chart was revised downward with a notice added about the Khmer Krom. However, from my experiences in Vietnam, the great majority (indeed, if not the totality) of Khmer Krom living in the Saigon area spoke Vietnamese natively. This does not mean that they did not also speak Khmer natively, as well, and perhaps the number of Khmer-speakers should include such percentage of Khmer Krom who are believed to speak Khmer. However, I think it would be a mistake to exclude Khmer Krom speakers of Vietnamese from the tally of Vietnamese speakers as much as it would be to exclude, by way of analogy, Welsh-speakers (who indeed number over half a million) from the tally of English-speakers, because as with the Khmer Krom and the Vietnamese language, essentially all native Welsh-speakers (apart from toddlers and possibly a dozen or so elderly people) are also native English-speakers. --Ryanaxp 15:50, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I think we should count second-language speakers since the field is "total speakers". Even if the the Khmer Krom don't speak Vietnamese natively, the vast majority do speak Vietnamese (as do most other minorities in this 80+ million people country). DHN 04:35, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
hi. you could also just list both. a discussion in the article body could explain this further. — ishwar  (SPEAK) 05:25, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

[edit] Use Unicode in language description pages?

Please can somebody more skilled than I put Unicode font faces (eg: Lucida Sans Unicode, Doulos SIL) into language description pages? It is VERY annoying to see little square boxes where we KNOW a readable character must live.

The HTML entity construction {&[#]nnnn;} does not always work, especially on older browsers -- I use IE5.01 and Opera 6.05.

I would also suggest that a larger range of Unicode fonts be given for users' browsers to choose from -- I mentioned Lucida and Doulos simply because they fell into my machine on another excursion. This is especially important if the font faces are embedded in external stylesheets.

[edit] Lead paragraph

"Although it contains much vocabulary borrowed from Chinese and was originally written using Chinese characters, it is considered by linguists to be one of the Austroasiatic languages, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (three to four times the number of speakers of the other languages combined)".

Is this sentence a little backwards? In other words, wouldn't it be more informative to mention the genetic language family first, and only after the Chinese information? In a way that would be more objective, more centered on Vietnamese itself and less centered on a foreign language as a point of reference. ~ Dpr 06:32, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
yes, it is a little bit misleading. it was written by authors who apparently thought it was related to Chinese languages (you can get this from some of the first comments on this talk page), and thus worded in this way. perhaps some were surprised to find that it wasnt. i associate this type of confusion with thinking that Chinese and Japanese languages are related or that all Native Americans speak the same language, etc. please continue your edits. peace. – ishwar  (speak) 06:54, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)

[edit] Overseas Vietnamese

Can we get a link for overseas Vietnamese? Thanks ~ Dpr 06:33, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Try Viet Kieu and Vietnamese American. DHN 09:01, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
DHN, thanks for the help but if you read the definition of Viet Kieu in the article, it clearly applies only to a subset of overseas Vietnamese and inherently NOT "overseas Vietnamese" as a comprehensive group: namely, it defines Viet Kieu as only those who left after 1975...an enormous part of the overseas Vietnamese left far before 1975. Therefore Viet Kieu should be separate from overseas Vietnamese (OV), or the definition of OV and Viet Kieu should be defined in the article to be the same entity, and also to include those who emigrated pre-1975. Hope that makes sense. Thanks! ~ Dpr 00:55, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The article's definition is wrong. Việt Kiều in Vietnamese had nothing to do with whether they left before or after 1975. This is similar to huáqiáo in Chinese (with Viet replacing Hoa). This term was in use long before 1975. BTW: Of the about 3 million overseas Vietnamese, about 300,000 left before 1975 (mainly to neighboring countries and France). DHN 05:58, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Cool. I already suspected what you just confirmed...though I had overestimated the size of pre-75 emigrants. I can fix the article when I have time, or anyone else can go ahead. Peace! ~ Dpr 06:18, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Additions

Are the additions of User:172.155.60.145 linguistically sound? The "influence" of Mandarin? ~ Dpr 07:26, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The text you refer to was re-added on June 30, 2005, although the editor who added it has not justified such an assertion by providing documentation. I therefore reverted the article to an earlier version that did not include the text that asserts a connection between Vietnamese and Mandarin Chinese phonologies. Without any appropriate documentation, such a theory apparently amounts only to a pet theory—which is impermissible original research. —Ryanaxp June 30, 2005 15:53 (UTC)
It is conceivable that the author meant "similarity" rather than "influence", thereby being attempting a descriptive not a causative statement? ~ Dpr 1 July 2005 01:53 (UTC)

[edit] Vowels

This is absolutely incorrect!

There are two of these semivowels: y and w. Vietnamese has many diphthongs of this type. Furthermore, these semivowels may also follow the first three diphthongs (iâ, uâ, ưâ ) resulting in triphthongs.

Vietnamese, for example, has no "w" – not even the W sound, except in foreign words embedded in the text. (The Vietnamese Wikipedia is named "Wikipedia", but it'd be phonetically written as Ui-khi-pé-đi-a or something like that.) Such a sound at the end of a word would be written as an o following another vowel. Furthermore, there's no such thing as iâ or ưâ in Vietnamese text.

 –Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs, blog) 29 June 2005 01:23 (UTC)

I see what the writer wanted to explain, but it's a little bit short and not accurate. I think the writer wanted to say that Vietnamese has diphtongs and triphtongs and how they are built. That can be better seen in the section about syllable structure in the Vietnamese phonology article. Vietnamese has 14 nuclei: 11 are a,ă,â,e,ê,i,o,ô,ơ,u,ư. The other 3 are: iê/ia, uô/uo, and ươ/ưa. Vietnamese has indeed the two semivowels /w/ and /j/ that can combine with the above nucleuses (but some combinations are not allowed!) The W-sound in Vietnamese is written u or o like in uă, uâ, oa, oe, uy, uơ, for example Wikipedia would be rendered as Uy-ki-pê-đia, pronounced We-ghee-pay-dear. /w/ can be before OR after certain nucleuses. In contrast /j/ can only appear after the nucleus like in hai or cây. That's how triphthongs are built: a /w/ before and another /w/ or /j/ after the nucleus: e.g. ngoai (/Nwaj/), khuỷu (/Kwiw/). To sum it up: Vietnamese has semivowels that can add to the full vowels to form diphthongs and triphthongs.
--- Retval 29 June 2005 21:06 (UTC) ---

[edit] "Obvious"

To whom is it obvious that labeling the Vietnamese name of the language as Vietnamese? To most, surely. But at the risk of sounding condescending, yet--I believe--accurate, I suggest it is necessary to appeal to the broadest common denominator. Moreover, sometimes language names are glossed in a language other than that being described, thus leading to possible confusion. Thanks ~ Dpr 1 July 2005 01:55 (UTC)

It seems ridiculous to me to use the term that we're defining to define it. DHN 1 July 2005 02:51 (UTC)
It may very well be ridiculous to refer to the very language we're defining in such close proximity to its own definition, but not intrinsically ridiculous because there is still some remote possibility for ambiguity. In any case, I fully concede, as your proposed approach seems to be the standard across Wikipedia. Thanks ~ Dpr 4 July 2005 04:30 (UTC)

[edit] "Generally accepted" Austric super-family?

I changed the claim that the Austric super-family is generally accepted - that is simply incorrect; the language super-families are controversial and a minority view. See e.g. the last chapter of "The Power of Babel", John McWhorter (Berkeley linguistics professor). Reaverdrop 04:52, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Archaic Chinese Features

Syllables with plosive endings are not found in Japanese. They rather become 2 syllables. Also, actually many non-Chinese languages also have those plosive endings, thus does not represent Archaic Chinese features. -qrasy-

RoyW 22:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)==pronunciation== Vietnamese 't' is different from English 'd' (at beginning of the word). The Vietnamese 'đ' is instead. Vietnamese 't' is the same as the Mandarin 'd'. — Mashizen (talk · contribs) (08:16, 2005 December 1)

hi. this is incorrect. Vietnamese 't' (IPA: [t]) is most similar to English 'd' as it is pronounced at the beginning of words. This pronunciation is usually a voiceless consonant (sometimes it's partially voiced, like in extremely careful speech; but this is not the usual pronunciation). A Vietnamese 't' is more like French 't' or Spanish 't' or Mandarin 'd' which are usually voiceless more consistently than English. (note that the reason why the symbol 'd' is used for Mandarin transliteration is because it is based on the usual pronunciation of this symbol in English).
Vietnamese 'đ' (IPA: [ʔd~ʔɗ]) is like English 'd' as it is pronounced in the middle of words before an unstressed vowel (however, sometimes these are partially voiceless, too), unless, of course, it is flapped (in which case, English 'd' may be like Vietnamese 'r'). Vietnamese 'đ' is more similar to French 'd' or Spanish 'd' which are fully voiced more consistently than English. Actually, to be more precise, Vietnamese 'đ' is different from all these sounds, but for the purposes of pedagogy these differences may be overlooked to some extent.
In other words,
Viet 't' = Fr 't', Sp 't', Man 'd', Eng 'd' (word-initial), Eng 't' (after 's')
Viet 'đ' = Fr 'd', Sp 'd', Eng 'd' (in unstressed syllable)
peace – ishwar  (speak) 16:28, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I removed "or Spanish." Spanish /d/ is a fricative in most realizations, so the comparison is liable to confuse.RoyW 22:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speakers in China

Although the absolute number of Vietnamese speakers in China is negligable (20-30 000), it is important to note it as a "native" language among one of China's minority nationalities: the Gin people or Kinh. Le Anh-Huy 05:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tr vs. Ch

What the article says about the pronounciation of "tr" and "ch" in the Northern, and Central dialects should be the other way around, for Southern dialects, at least. I'm a native speaker of the Northern dialect and I've lived around Southerners and those from Central Vietnam all my life. In fact, the Romanized version of written Vietnamese is based on largely on the Hanoi dialect. That is why "tr" and "ch" exist for the words châu, pearl, and trâu, water buffalo. People who speak northern dialects have two very distinct pronounciations of "tr" and "ch." As one travels south, the pronounciation of "tr" and "ch" become more blended until the Southern "ch" is used for both "tr" and "ch". If the Romanized version were based largely on the Southern dialects, châu and trâu would be homonyms because Southerners make no spoken distinction between them. --FernNation

I am a Southerner and can distinguish the difference between châu and trâu but can't when Northerners pronounce them. For example, consider the words for "tea". The northern word "chè" for the tea plant is indistinguishable from the word "trà" for processed tea. DHN 08:53, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
hi. Although I cant answer this question, I offer the following comments:
Obviously saying that the Vietnamese language(s) can be divided into 3 regional variants is a very broad generalization. The actual distribution of dialectal features (such as differing pronunciations) will be more complicated. (In fact, it may be very misleading to say there is a 3-way division, but since I dont know the literature I dont if this is so). There is definitely more written on this & you can consult some of the works in the bibliography for more detailed description.
I will point out that there is a rather detailed descriptive work which is written in Vietnamese:
  • Hoàng, Thị Châu. (1989). Tiếng Việt trên các miền đất nước: Phương ngữ học. Hà Nội: Khoa học xã hội.
I havent found the time to read this book, but I understand that it has an amazing amount detail. (Just flipping through it, I see that it has some dialect maps). So, it may be useful to compare your observations with Hoàng's observations.
good luck investigating! – ishwar  (speak) 14:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
I suppose this issue is a debateable one. I've come across sites that verify the Vietnamese Language article says [1], but I can't disregard my own what my own ear heard either. FernNation 22:33, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More Pronouns

I think there should be also Tao (as the complement to May) and Cau (close buddy). Some Vietnamese native might want to add them.

See Vietnamese pronouns. DHN 08:33, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dialects

In general, dialects do not only differ in pronounciation, but also in grammar and vocabulary. IMHO the article right now focusses only on the proncounciation, where at least there is also a difference in vocuabulary.

Next, based on used vocabulary (and maybe grammar) in official documents like the constitution, laws, etc. it should be possible to define the official written dialect.

However, comparing e.g. to German, where there exists one official dialect ("High German") that is taught in schools, that you hear on National Television etc, there seems to be no official spoken dialect in Vietnam.

Finally, it might be worthwhile noting, that as far as I know, there is a continuum in Vietnamese dialects, without any strict border. That is different e.g. from Germay, where there exist e.g. often quite clear borders (e.g. a river) between dialects like Bavarian, Suebian, Franconian. Of course inside one dialect area the dialect then changes continuously, same like in the whole of Vietnam.

Stefan in Hanoi

[edit] Viet-Muong to Vietic in the databox?

Currently Viet-Muong languages redirects to Vietic, should that article be renamed or the databox here?--KingZog 05:19, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sound changes from Chinese - expansion

It would really be nice if we had a whole section or article describing the sound changes and shifts from Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese to Vietnamese. If you compare Vietnamese and Chinese, many words seem to follow a special pattern, like the High German consonant shift or Grimm's Law. http://www.vny2k.com/vny2k/SiniticVietnamese6.htm might be a fairly good source, although it does appear to have some bias and inaccuracies because it is a draft of a student paper. — Stevey7788 (talk) 05:58, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help with translation

I'm currently working on a script intended to create short articles on political parties on a variety of wikipedias simultaneously. However, in order for the technique to work I need help with translations to various languages. If you know any of the languages listed at User:Soman/Lang-Help, then please help by filling in the blanks. For example I need help with Vietnamese. Thanks, --Soman 15:08, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help to update my Win98 to display VN correctly?

Can my Win98 be updated to display VN correctly? Instead of the correct letter, I just see a "box". The CDs aren't available to me. Can I do something so that I can see the correct letters instead of boxes? Can someone walk me thru it step-by-step? Feel free to email me on pwt898 at msn dot com

[edit] Most words disyllabic?

"however, most words are indeed disyllabic. This is largely because of the many reduplication words that appear in household vocabulary, or adjectives."

The second part of this is very confusing--how is "or adjectives" related to the rest of the sentence? Does "household vocabulary" mean that reduplicated forms are confined to certain informal registers?

The main statement is also puzzling--it is surely not true that most of the words in a typical Vietnamese text are reduplicated forms, and otherwise the vast majority of words appear to be monosyllables.

RoyW 22:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Vietnamese Is Sinitic

Tonality is not known as an attribute of Mon-Khmer languages. Yet, they put a tonal language in a basket of non-tonal languages and call it Mon-Khmer, and they keep defending the indefensible. [Something under dispute cannot be described as a "generally accepted view", by the way.] To justify their doings, they would go such lengths, as far as to claim that tones in Vietnamese were a recent acquisition! [Haudricourt: The Vietnamese tone development evolved from none to being completely formed by the 12th century!]

Go ahead and claim that -like Vietnamese- Japanese and Korean have developed tones, too! Jokes aside, face it, there is something severely wrong there in their way of reasoning. The examples of Japanese and Korean are enough to rebut the theory.

The tones set Vietnamese apart from all the rest. Refusing to see that is sheer ignorance. T.Vd./

More than 150 years of research have pretty much concluded that Vietnamese is Mon-Khmer. Only a few Chinese researchers are still under the delusion that Vietnamese is Sinitic (hint: look at the grammatical structure and base words). DHN 02:41, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
The names Maspero, Forrest, Pulleyblank, Campbell and the like are all Chinese names, according to DHN, Cf. post above. T.Vd./
You claim that korean never developed tones doesn not back up your argument. Korean have been shown to historically have tones, as evident by its hangul writing system but tones were simply lost. Much words in Japanese is accented. To further distort you claim that vietnamese is sinitic, there are many languages in Mon-Khmer besides vietnamese that have tones. Even an austronesian language (Tsat) have tone. CanCanDuo 03:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


Do accented words in Japanese mean the same as tones in Vietnamese & Chinese?
No.
How do the arguments listed above support the theory of tone acquisition?
They don't. Claiming that some languages (Korean in the example) "simply lost" tones at some stage in history does nothing to support Haudricourt's argument.
Meanwhile however, the author of that claim [CanCanDuo 03:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)] seems to have switched his way of reasoning by 180 degrees in direction, coming from "...tones were simply lost..." to "...You must know, tonality is easily gained..." [Cf. message below, CanCanDuo 23:35, 7 April 2007 (UTC)]. Apparently, tones can be "simply lost" and yet at the same time also "easily gained", according to CanCanDuo. And the world "must know". That much of CanCanDuo's reasoning.
Vietnamese and Chinese have often been cited as examples of tonal and monosyllabic languages [More recently, also referred to as dissyllabic]. For comparison, why aren't Mon-Khmer languages cited for such examples?
Because they are not known as such. Cambodian in particular is not a tonal language. T.Vd./


There has never been any evidence of "toneless" Vietnamese at any stage in history, from the Hundred Yüeh to the present days. The modern Vietnamese tonal system fits well into the Middle-Chinese tonal scheme that had been completely formed around the 9th century [with four tones in two registers.] Had Haudricourt's theory been dated back to the 2nd century, it might have been plausible, but how would they explain the tones in Vietnamese folksongs, believed to have originated from ancient times?

Japanese and Korean are the two languages that have borrowed massively from Chinese just like Vietnamese has. Cf. Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese. [Not to mention the overwhelmingly large amount of Sinitic-Vietnamese.] The Japanese Kanji was devised without the tones however. The same for Korean. Contrary to Haudricourt's theory, they did not acquire tones from Chinese. It is unconceivable that "toneless" Vietnamese borrowed words without tones fisrt and then added them later. In contrast to non-tonal Japanese and Korean, the Vietnamese Chu Nom [based on Han-Chinese and in use for over a thousand years, now nearly extinct] had to accommodate for tones inherent to Vietnamese. [The ChuNom characters usually consisted of a phonetic element and a semantic element.] Tones in Chu Nom asides, the examples of Japanese and Korean alone are enough to reject the theory of tone acquisition.

The Vietnamese pronunciation of some Chinese characters is closest to Cantonese, Cantonese known as a tonal Yüeh language; For example Zhao Wu Wang/Chiu Mu Wong/Trieu Vu Vuong are, respectively, Mandarin/Cantonese/Vietnamese pronunciations of the same characters for "Zhao, the Martial Emperor", with Vietnamese "Trieu" in the 6th tone pronounced the same as Cantonese "Chiu". [The characters refer to the first ruler of Nan Yüeh (or Nam Viet); Cf. Trieu or Zhao dynasty, 208BC - 111BC.]

Vietnamese shares a tonal system with the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family, on the Chinese model among other things, such as mono-syllabics/dis-syllabics, no inflection, grammar highly relying on word order, noun classifiers.

Like Chinese, the grammar relies on word order for intelligibility, even though adverbs can commute: [Adverb(s)] Subject [Adverb(s)] Verb [Adverb(s)] Object. The present days' order of adjectives & nouns separates Vietnamese from Chinese, but actually the "proper" order (adjective followed by noun) has always been used interchangeably in the language. [Examples of adjectives followed by nouns are: "Dai Viet Su Ky" (13th century usage) -> "Great Viet Historical Records"; "Viet Nam Cach Mang Donh Minh Hoi" (20th century usage) -> "Vietnamese Revolutionary Allied League"; "Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang" (20th century usage) -> "Vietnamese National People's Party". The symbol "->" means "...translating word by word (in the order shown) literally into..."]

Maspero, H. (1952) classified Vietnamese with the Thai languages of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family. Forrest, R. (1958) shared his viewpoint. Pulleyblank, E.G. (1984) recognized that Vietnamese is typologically closer to Chinese than is Japanese or Korean and, in many ways, even Tibetan. The view that Vietnamese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family is also shared by Peng Chu’nan (1984) and others.

Vietnamese originally started out from a common Yüeh linguistic root and then, quoting from http://vny2k.net/vny2k/SiniticVietnamese5.htm#sino-tibetan, it had gone its way in the Sino-Tibetan route, intertwined and interpolated with Chinese, blending itself beautifully with all Chinese elements, and finally evolved as a language of that linguistic family. T.Vd./

So does many unrelated languages to Chinese. Tsat, a descendant of Cham Malay is tonal, monosyllabic. Mon uses noun classifiers, no inflection, and is mostly monosyllabic also. Your argument is should be on the Mon-Khmer page. You must know, tonality is easily gained. Old Chinese was not tonal, the overwhelming amount of sino-tibetan languages are neither monosyllabic or tonal just because Chinese is. Not good enough. Mon-Khmer rely on the same system. Thai is unrelated to Chinese. It is best assumed they were Sinicized. No, actually Yue refers to may people. Many people of Mon-Khmer descent live around China and Burma. Based on linguistic evidence it is best assumed that Mon-Khmer dominated eastern India all the way to southern china and northern Vietnam until Sino-Tibetan migrated downwards CanCanDuo 23:35, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't think this is the place to have arguments about what the correct classification is. The question is which view is the mainstream, and I believe the answer is the view that Vietnamese is Mon-Khmer. If there's a significant minority that think Vietnamese is Sino-Tibetan, it could be added to the article alongside the Mon-Khmer theory, but it should be made clear who holds that view and who doesn't. --Ptcamn 08:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
You're right, what should be add is the mainstream view. The mainstream view is that Vietnamese, although heavily affected by Chinese is not related to Chinese. Tones and monosyllabic is not unique to Sino-Tibetan languages, they are also presented in many African languages. CanCanDuo 23:35, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
CanCanDuo 23:35, 7 April 2007 (UTC):"best assumed" that "...Mon-Khmer dominated eastern India all the way to southern china...". Something falling out of the sky and take it! What a way to "reason"! What is more, reasoning CanCanDuo's way, Sino-Tibetan & African should be classified as subbranches of Khmer! There is a line to draw between scientific speculations and hoaxes. CanCanDuo has gone beyond the scope of thsi discussion, also beyond his technical competence.
Returning to the discussion, unable to support Haudricourt, yet he reiterated "...You must know, tonality is easily gained...". That, in making such a statement, he completely ignored the post above on Korean & Japanese is remarkable enough. CanCanDuo 03:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC): "...tones were simply lost...". In view of a tone acquisition argument, CanCanDuo had lost orientation right from his very fisrt message on. T.Vd./
It is assumed that Mon-Khmer, or more accurately austroasiatic are the spoken languages in the region before the migrations of Tais, Sino-Tibetans, and Indo-Aryan. Why does this sound like propaganda? Because it claims something that is sensitive to many. But if you look at the evidence, there are Austroasiatic loans in many Sino-Tibetan languages from chinese to even munda words in Nepal.

Another argument, Tones are easily gained(vietnamese) and lost(korean), but it is not simply enough to categorize languages base on this. Khmer and Chinese are no where close to related, but a Mon-Khmer language under heavy chinese influence will develop chinese like characteristics, but at the same time still preserve its own ones. Vietnamese have three tones that are delivered through two registers, registers being common to Mon-Khmer. Vietnamese is more like chinese than most mon-khmer languages, but like I said, are not actually related. But does it corresponds to the standard comparative method? If not then it likely not related. Khmer is not related to Thai, but Khmer syntax is closer to thai than Mon. But then, Wikipedia is strict about veriable mainstream facts, not what we want to believe. CanCanDuo 11:47, 25 July 2007 (UTC):

[edit] The Map

The map is quite missleading in my opinion. It gives the impression that Vietnamese is a major language in countries like the USA, Australia and France, which it is not. Aaker 18:27, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The map is labeled "major Vietnamese-speaking communities", not "countries where Vietnamese is a major language". The countries colored in the map all have substantial Vietnamese-speaking populations. DHN 19:49, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pronouns "Tao" and "May"

First time user here, so please accept my apologies for any unwitting breaches of etiquette.

The description on this page of "Tao" and "May" is somewhat inaccurate. It's a little better on the "Vietnamese Pronouns" page, but still doesn't really cover it.

Here, they are listed as:

Tao: I (speaking to subordinates, or extremely informal) Mày: you singular (to subordinates, or extremely informal)

Here in Hanoi, or at least the middle-class part of it I inhabit, "Tao" and "May" are highly pejorative.

Very close friends use them, in much the same way that in Britain very close friends may call one another "wanker" or similar (i.e. the insult is used to show the strength of the friendship, that the bond is far stronger than mere insults could disrupt), but outside of a very strong friendship, use of "Tao" or "May" shows extreme anger/displeasure, and I've certainly never heard it occur except in vicious arguments.

This is a minor point of course, but as the article stands an unwitting reader could get the impression that these pronouns aren't loaded. I think the article could benefit from a note somewhere pointing out (for the benefit of non-Native Vietnamese speakers) that it's best not to use them as they do carry the potential to cause offence.

Thien Dylan 05:02, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] pronunciation guide

the following is a pronunciation guide, which I originally added to the article long ago. However, it should probably be moved to wikibooks as it is rather pedagogically oriented. Although this article lacks a spelling-to-sound correspondence mapping and Vietnamese alphabet does not have a complete explanation of the mapping, this information should be added in a way that is not like a pronunciation guide, I think. So, I removed it. – ishwar  (speak) 17:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

{start cut&paste}

====Simplified pronunciation guide====

Wikibooks

At the beginning of syllables, sounds are pronounced as in English except for the following:

  • c is like English k (and never like English c in cede or s in seed but c in code).
  • ch is like Mandarin zh, similar to the j in English jar. (but never aspirated, as in English ch)
  • Northern d is like English z. Southern d is like English y.
  • đ is like French or Spanish d (except with the air being sucked inwards).
  • g is like Dutch g or modern Greek gh (Γ).
  • Northern gi is like English z while Southern gi is like English y.
  • kh is like German or Scottish ch or Arabic or Persian kh.
  • ng is like Korean ng (ㅇ) or English ng (without a g sound at the end)
  • nh is like Portuguese nh, Spanish ñ, or French gn.
  • ph is like English f.
  • Southern qu is like English w. (Northern qu is the same as English qu (or kw)).
  • Northern r is the same as English z. Southern r is variously like
    • a) English r or
    • b) French g or
    • c) Spanish r or
    • d) Spanish rr.
  • Southern s is like English sh. (Northern s is the same as English s).
  • t is like French or Spanish t or like Mandarin d (or like English t after s or English d at the beginning of words).
  • th is like Hindi th (थ) or like English t at the beginning of words.
  • Southern tr is like Hindi ṭ+ṣ (ट+ष) or like English tr with the tongue tip curled backwards.
  • x is like English s.
  • Southern v is like English y. (But, Northern v is the same as English v.)

{end cut&paste}

[edit] footnotes

the < ref > footnotes are not working right. the numbering is off by one number. anyone know why? – ishwar  (speak) 17:59, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

nevermind, i figured out how to fix it. Although I removed a note to do so. Maybe something changed in the behaviour of < ref >? – ishwar  (speak) 18:07, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Doubt

One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted.

For someone still not well-acquainted with Vietnamese, this is a tantalizing yet poorly explained piece of information. Could anyone here ellaborate? If the meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted, then what is the origin of the word? Native Vietnamese or Chinese?189.7.125.222 (talk) 08:25, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Generally, native Vietnamese words will retain their meanings when their tones are shifted. Sino-Vietnamese words will change their meanings. DHN (talk) 19:30, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I guess this info could be included in the article.

[edit] Syntactic classification (Grammar section)

Is Vietnamese analytic or isolating? These two terms are not identical. (I would edit it and choose the right one, only I don't know much about Vietnamese.) 89.138.151.18 (talk) 10:43, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] triphthongs

I added semivowel diacritics to the triphthongs per the description in the article. Please check I got them right. Also, the triphthong article lists the additional triphthongs [ui̯ʊ̯] as in khụyu 'to fall on one's knees' and [uɛ̯ʊ̯] as in quẹo 'to turn/twist'. This violates the phonotactics described in this article. Could someone check this too? Thanks, kwami (talk) 22:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think quẹo contains a triphthong, since qu is considered the consonant part and ẹo is the vowel part, but I'm not a linguist. DHN (talk) 23:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)