Here are articles proposing Vietnamese to be written in polysyllabic instead of monosyllabic. The arguments are so weak and ridiculous. Such as writing in polysyllabic will increase abstract thinking. I suppose they expect this abstract thinking will help Vietnam become a developed country instead of a developing one. They will achieve higher mathematic and science. I'm not sure where are the evidences for this, but it sounds all opinions. This is so ridiculous.
The second article proposing the same. In which one of the argument is saving paper and space because words are combine. Also, saving time because when typing the "space" button is hit less often. The reasons are so pathetic.

The Vietnamese has lost their Chữ Nôm writing because belief of switching to Quốc Ngữ will increase literacy. However, that not the case and it is just an assumption
Literacy rate in 2011 from wikipedia as follow...
Vietnam is at 92% using romonanization.
China is around 95% using Simplified Chinese.
Hong Kong is at 94% using Traditional Chinese.
Mali is at 26% using romanization of French.
Just like other Vietnamese's assumption if the south and American won the Vietnam War. They will be like Japan and South Korea. Again, only assumption and no hard evidences.

Chinese and Vietnamese are considered to be monosyllabic. Very few languages are mono and thousands are poly. Mono is unique and rare. I prefer mono because it is quick to talk and get to the point.

In Vietnamese, Xin Chào 2 syllables (hello) Cảm ơn. (Thank You)
In Chinese, 你 好 2 syllables. (hello). 感 恩 găn en
In Japanese, Kon'nichiwa 4 syllables (hello). Arigato

Writing the words sửa đổi with no space like suadoi does not make me feel any smarter. If they say to write with no space will increase your abstract thinking, we might as well start writing English as follow...

Iwenttothestoreandbuysomeapples.

I don't feel smarter writing like this, it is hard reading this already. Imagine reading Vietnamese with diacritic where those marks are so close. It is very painful to read.

I hope Vietnamese keep its mono way, changing the way they write will not turn Vietnam into Japan. The people themselves are responsible for changes, don't blame the language.

Here are the articles link
http://vny2k.net/vny2k/CaitoCachVietTiengV...%20collectively
http://vny2k.net/vny2k/ChangeTheWayWeWriteVietnamese.htm

I am not buying into this, neither should you.

The lower literacy rate in Vietnam is caused by the fact that only 86% of Vietnamese are of ethnic Kinh. In comparison, 92% of Chinese are of Han origin. It has always been difficult to improve the literacy rate in the ethnic minority areas. The reasons range from logistics (ethnic minorities tend to dwell in remote mountainous regions) to the fact that some groups are not on good term with the ethnic majority (thus unwilling to adopt the language of the majority). Has it been Nom instead of Quoc Ngu, the literacy rate would be even lower (86% at best assuming all Kinh Vietnamese were patriotic enough to paintakingly master the language).

Vietnamese (and neither is Chinese for that matter) is not fully monosyllabic (their morphemes are monosyllabic but not the languages themselves).

Example: mênh mông (immense)

Mênh alone bears no meaning whatsoever. The word only exists when coupled with mông. Also, mông alone means butt (vastly different from immense). Hence, mênh mông is not 2 monosyllabic word but only 1 polysyllabic word.

In Vietnamese, there are three classes of words: từ đơn, từ ghép, and từ láy. As far as my memory serves me, only từ đơn are monosyllabic (albeit, they make up the bulk of the language).

I am fine with the way the language is at the moment; though I am not too against the polysyllabic proposal, either. You forgot to mention another argument supporting the proposal. That is writing in polysyllabic style help reducing confusion and improve reading comprehension. As of now, the best way to distinguish từ đơn from others is to read the sentence as a whole and then decide whether a word is a từ đơn or a part of a từ ghép/từ láy based on the context. By bundling all từ ghép and từ láy together, such practice is no longer needed. One can look at the word and is immediately able to tell whether it was a từ đơn.

Earlier, someone was also arguing against the polysyllabic proposal, citing that words such as phát hành and phá thành would both become pháthành, which lead to a new form of confusion. I thought he was right at first, but after a while pondering, I realized that phá thành (seige the wall) is not a polysyllabic word, but rather two monosyllabic words (seige - the wall). Under the new proposal, it would still stay the same, phá and thành. Only phát hành (issue/publish) is a polysyllabic word and would become pháthành. Thus far, I haven't been able to think of an incident in which 2 true polysyllabic words appear the same when their component words are written together.

When did Commie-Vietnam establish Economic system (Banking, Private investment, Stock market, Loan to entrepreneurs to start private small, medium and large enterprise, factory, etc) like in Japan, Singapore, Hong-Kong, Thailand, etc ? Around in the late 1980s right ?

Now, what if Commie-Vietnam waited till 2012 to establish those economic rules ? Then Commie-Vietnam would be delayed by 20 more years.

BUT, what if "Commie"-Vietnam established those economic rules 50 years ago, in the 1960 ? It's obvious that "Commie"-Vietnam would be on par with Thailand, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Macau, etc., in terms of Economic structures, if they started almost at the same time.

South-Vietnam, South-Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, etc..., all started those Economic rules in the 1950-1960s.

They won't be equal. Equal is the way Commies love to think. UK economic is not Equal to Italy's. France's economy is not equal to Germany's. Singapore's economy is not equal to Thailand's. South-Vietnam's economy if continue to developed will certainly not equal to Japan (more likely less so), not equal to South-Korea (but somewhat on par with South-Korea (because of the higher number of foreign trained scholars and intellectuals Vietnam had in the 1950s-1970s, the rate of people who can read/write French or English in Vietnam at that time is higher, the number of Universities of Vietnam at that time is very likely higher (Law, Medicine, Fine Arts, Architecture and Civil Engineering: in all of those branches, Vietnam already had high-level education for each of them, in the 1950; though South-Korea has the advantage of being very close to Japan); not equal to Philippines (more likely better, because the Philippines, a country of thousands islands, have relatively more social and ethnic problems).

But the important thing is: They have an Economic infrastructure that supports growth of wealth. Whereas for a country with Commie economy system, it's a totally different league: The Commie league.

Must be something wrong with the Vietnamese school system then. In the US, 2010 White made up 63.7 % but Literacy is 99%. stop blaming the minority out of your own fault.

I agree. The argument that grouping syllables together will increase abstract thinking is ridiculous.

This proposal will change very little. If you already understand what the multi syllable word means, whether the 2 syllables are written together as one word or not won't change anything.

But if you never saw the word before and want to search for its meaning in the dictionary, then maybe having the 2 syllables glued together would help.

So this will help beginners trying to study Viet, but people who are already fluent in Viet will not develop abstract thinking from this.

Here are my opinions about this.

I think the Vietnamese in Vietnam tend to not endorse this writing reform I guess because they're used to the current system, they simply think grouping words together is crazy and makes it hard to read. The Vietnamese oversea tend to endorse this polysyllabic writing thing I guess because they're exposed to English, Spanish, French, the romanized Japanese, Chinese, Korean...all write in polysyllabic and that must have had some influence on their perspective and opinion.


I will tell you this. It is true that Vietnamese isn't really a monosyllabic language. If I have to pick a term to describe it, I would say it's a disyllabic one because most Vietnamese words, in order to obtain their contextual meaning, have to go in pair. Despite the seemingly monosyllabic nature of the language, Vietnamese almost never say anything in a single syllable. I'll give you some examples.

When Vietnamese want to say "fruits", they will say either "hoa quả" (literally "flowers and fruits") or "trái cây" (literally "fruit from the tree"). It would sound awkward if they say "quả" or "trái" alone, unless it's paired with another word, like quả táo (literally "apple fruit"), quả dứa (literally "pineapple fruit"), quả xoài (literally "mango fruit). So you see, even though one syllable is enough to represent the meaning of "fruits" or "apples", Vietnamese will almost never say them alone, they will pair it with another syllable.

Other examples are "nhà cửa" (literally "house and door") for houses. If we don't say nhà cửa, we say "cái nhà" or "ngôi nhà" (with "cái" and "ngôi" being classifiers). "Cây cối" (literally "trees and trees") for trees. "Trường lớp" (literally "school and class") for schools, or "trường học" (literally "school + learning/study"), and classes are "lớp học". "Bàn ghế" (literally tables and chairs) for furniture.

When we want to say "Humans are greedy" or "People are greedy", we use "con người/loài người" for "people/human". We don't just use "người". If you say "người thật tham lam", then "người" becomes a pronoun for "you", not a noun for human/people.

With a few exceptions of articles and prepositional words and pronouns...like thì, là, mà, nhưng (but), vẫn (still), những (plural indicator), cũng (also), thật, rất (really/very)...and a handful of adjectives. Vietnamese words usually go in pairs.



But nonetheless, I oppose this writing reform.

Why? There are many reasons.


1. Because average Vietnamese are not linguistics geeks. Because you're not supposed to impose something on a science level, a linguistic level onto the writing of common people.

Vietnamese people speak Vietnamese, but they don't dissect it and analyse every particle of it. Neither do the speakers of English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Italian, whatever you name it. So changing a writing just for the sake of linguistics is absurd to me. Linguists can analyse a language, without disturbing the conventional writing of people.

Seriously, if you want to reform Vietnamese just for the sake of linguistics then there are a lot to change. For example, "chiến" should be written as "chiấn" because the offglide in this diphthong is an "â/ơ" not an "ê". "Anh" should be written as "Ayng". "Chiêu" should be written as "chiơu".


2. You're gonna complicate the matter with this reform. freeter pointed out the issue of "từ đơn" (simple word) and "từ ghép" (compound word). Well lots of times whether something is viewed as "từ đơn" or "từ ghép" is up to the perspectives of people.

Is "trường học" a compound word or two simple words? What about "theo đuổi"? What about "yêu thương"? What about "học bài"? Or even "bài học"?

You can argue that "học bài" is a compound word. But you can also argue that "học bài" are two simple words (học and bài). It depends on the perspective.

Then so many heated debates will spark over which are từ đơn, which are từ ghép. To go through all these debates just to determine how to write something, "yêuthương" or "yêu thương", "họcbài" or "học bài"... so much energy over something unnecessary.


3. Because Vietnamese is a very fluid language and it doesn't strictly adhere to any rule or regulation like Western languages. This reform will impose a set of rule, a set of regulation on Vietnamese, and it will change the fluid nature of our language. It will make Vietnamese become more rigid, more structured, and it will ruin free thinking and language creativity of our people.

Do you know why Vietnamese poems often sound better than English? Or should I say do you know why average Vietnamese compose poems more easily than average Westerners? (Well look at the enormous amount of folk poems that our people left, and even today composing poems is a common hobby of Vietnamese students, even though their styles are different). It's because of the fluidity of the Vietnamese language. It's because Vietnamese isn't bound by strict rules and regulations. The meanings of our vocabs are also very fluid. So Vietnamese people can freely express themselves in poetry without being limited by rigid conventions.

Do you know why they say "phong ba bảo táp chẳng bằng ngữ pháp Việt Nam?" It's not because our grammar is so hard. It's because our grammar is so fluid, because it's always changing from one situation to another, that it's hard to pinpoint any set of rule to teach foreigners. It doesn't mean there's no structure in Vietnamese language, but it's kinda a fluid structure that only people raised in Vietnam know and foreigners can't grasp.

When you make this reform, you're gonna make a set of rules and regulations on which are từ đơn and which are từ ghép. And by doing that you inhibit the free thinking and language creativity of the new Vietnamese generation. You're gonna make them think "theođuổi" is one word, and that they can't break down theo and đuổi and use those in interesting ways in combination with other words.

Given the fluidity nature of Vietnamese language, any word combination is possible. New words are generated by breaking down old words and make new combinations. What will happen if a student or a poet generates a new word? Do they have to go through the nuances if determining how to write it?

What if I want to take tinh from "tinh vy" and khôn from "khôn lanh" and combine them together and make "tinh khôn"?

Speaking of which, is "khôn lanh" a compound word or two simple words? Do you think of it as "khôn" (wise) and "lanh" (smart)? Or do you think of it as one compound word "khôn lanh"? It's really up to personal perspective. You see we can make countless debates on rules for từ đơn and từ ghép issues. Even the words "từ đơn" and "từ ghép" themselves can be a subject of debate. Do you think of "từ ghép" as a single compound word or two simple words?

But I guess none of the issues about new generated words would happen since people would be less language-creative anyway since we impose a rule on them, we tell them how to think.

You see, our language is fundamentally different from Western languages. Well for one, you can't break down syllables in most English words and combine them with syllables from other words to generate a new word. Well you can argue that they have stuff like biology, biosphere (bio+sphere) etc. But that's only for science and political terms, they can't really do things like taking "beau" from "beauty" and combine it with "fect" from "perfect" and make "beaufect" (for beautiful and perfect). But in Vietnamese, we do have things like "hoàn mỹ", which by the way can represent the concept of "beautiful and perfect" or "perfectly beautiful" or "perfect beauty" or beautifully perfect or just merely perfect.

So you can't apply writing norms in other languages to Vietnamese. You may ruin the very essence of the language itself - its fluidity.


4. It will make reading slower in my opinion. Some people argue that it makes reading quicker. Well yeah it's only quicker if you clear out the concepts of từ đơn and từ ghép as I said above, it's only quicker if you make rules on which are từ đơn and từ ghép, but there are many problems in trying to do so.

Seriously, average Vietnamese don't think much about which are từ đơn and which are từ ghép. So of course they're gonna spend time (like a few seconds), trying to figure out whether "pháthành" is phát hành or phá thành. Of course they're gonna figure it out, they're smart. But it's gonna take a few seconds. It's like reading Vietnamese without diacritics, you'll figure it out, but it'll slow you down, it'll be never as quick as reading Vietnamese with diacritics. And really, I'm sure most Vietnamese don't want to go over process that freeter presented, that process of "oh phá thành are two từ đơn so this must be phát hành", every time they read a line or a paragraph.


5. As far as I know, the proposer of this reform did this at first not for the sake of practicality in Vietnamese, but because it helps him search for similarities between Vietnamese and other languages.

Like đôilứa is supposed to be similar to 我倆 wǒliăng
And chúngmình is supposed to be similar to 咱們 zánměn (we)

And cơngió is supposed to be similar to some Austronesian term for wind that starts with the k'

Yeah sure they look similar when you put them together like that But it's ridiculous and I won't let others abuse this. The meaning of each respective syllable in a pair aren't even the same.

For example,
In chúngmình, "chúng" is the plural indicator, "mình" is the word for I, which btw came from "body".
In zanmen, "zan" is I, and "men" is the plural indicator.

You see, they're not even the same, but people are somehow able to make such ridiculous connection because the two syllables are written together.

That's the main reason why they started this reform proposal at first. It's ridiculous.


You know well từ láy are special cases that can't be used to represent majority of Vietnamese vocabs. Từ láy happens when one syllable (which has a meaning) is duplicated, adding a second (meaningless) syllable that is similar to the first. When neither syllable has a meaning, it's an onomatopoeia or similar sorts.

Most Vietnamese words still make sense even when you break them down, even though they carry slightly different meanings. But the meanings of those monosyllabic words are what make up the concepts behind the disyllabic compound words.



BTW sometimes, a word in old Vietnamese lost its independent use and only appears in a compound word, leading us to think they're từ láy when the lost word is similar to the other syllable of the compound word. For example, Alexander Rhodes listed "trọt" as to plant in Vietnamese. Well in modern Vietnamese trọt doesn't have any meaning on its own, but it appears in "trồng trọt" which means to plant.

So trồng trọt is "to plant + to plant". Similar to "ca hát" (to sing + to sing). Theo đuối (to follow + to chase). Chạy nhảy (to run + to jump). Học hỏi (to learn + to ask). Thăm viếng (to visit + to visit). This way of combining words of similar meanings is very common in Vietnamese.

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I think you read into that one sentence too much, UnknownUser. I'm sure he meant "modern Japan". ROK took various Japanese and Western models in her rapid development.

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Never mind

I seemed to be too sensitive for some personal reasons.. i'm sorry about that.

Very informative post.

Yeah, it seems like a lot of Vietnamese revolutionaries composed poems. I notice that it's easier to make alliterations and rhymes in Vietnamese than in English or French, so Vietnamese proverbs and poems have a very pleasant sound to them. Plus the fluid Vietnamese grammar allows for ease of composition and freedom like you mentioned.

Maybe there are parallels between Vietnamese people wanting a free flowing, unregulated language and the fact that Vietnamese people were governed in a very decentralized way for most of history?

I heard that for centuries Vietnamese politics were governed at the village level. The people at the capital couldn't really dictate or control people's lives. So maybe that's why Vietnamese people today resent having a central authority enforce new rules on their language.

I'm not sure if you can connect the fluidity of Vietnamese language to any political aspect of old Vietnamese society.

First of all, I don't think Vietnamese power structure in the old time was decentralized. You may think so because of the proverb "Phép vua thua lệ làng" (meaning "The laws of the kings have to give way to the customs of the village"). Well, I don't think it signifies that Vietnamese society was decentralized in term of power. It just shows the significance of village customs. You know in Vietnam, when you enter a village, you have to follow that village's customs as a sign of respect. When kings made laws, they had to take into consideration the traditions and customs of villages, or of common people in general, I guess that's what it means. I think some times the villagers could disregard the laws of the kings to accommodate their village's customs, but sometimes they couldn't. It depends on what law you know.


Second, even though Vietnamese language is very fluid, the structures of Vietnamese poetry aren't. You know most Vietnamese poems have very strict rules on rhymes, rhythms, tones, and the number of syllables in each line. Even today, free verse is still not popular in Vietnam, though it is in the Western world. Most Vietnamese still follow the strict rules of lục bát, thất ngôn, tứ tuyệt etc. when they compose poems.

So yea I'm not sure if you can make any connection between this and the power structures in Vietnamese society in the old time or modern time.

the only polysyllabic i know is Vietnam used it to difference Han-Viet in old time


Gia dinh 家庭
Giao duc 教育
Thao luan 讨论
Thuc hanh 施行
Van de 问题
Xuan ban 出版


I think in Chinese, it is 多谢 (đa tạ) / 谢谢

Wow, we have a lot of educated Vietnamese on this board! Those examples are right on such as the one about "dream" "expanse" and "fruits". Even the words for blue and green are not really monosyllabic in Vietnamese.

Most of compound words are Han-Viet.
Dream - Mộng 梦 ; mộng mơ 梦迷 ; mộng tưởng 梦想 ; mộng mị 梦靡
Fruit - Quả 果 ; Hoa quả 花果 ; kết quả 结果

blue and green used to be only 1 word. green light people still call blue light - đèn xanh as a habit

papen, don't let me lecture you in a hard away again

First of all, 迷 is mê, not mơ. Mơ is thuần Việt, not Hán Việt. *sigh*

Mộng mơ is a combination of one Han Viet word and one thuan Viet word. Similar to the case of "thiên lệch" (thiên = lệch), "thâm sâu" (thâm = sâu), "cổ xưa" (cổ = xưa), "muôn vạn" (muôn = vạn), buồn phiền (buồn is similar to phiền)

And this is just similar to the cases where words of similar meanings are put together like I listed above - ca hát (ca = hát), trồng trọt (trồng = trọt), đùa giỡn (đùa = giỡn), rỉ sét (rỉ = sét), nghề nghiệp (nghề = nghiệp) đào bới (đào is similar to bới)


Also seriously? Most compound words are Hán Việt?

Then what do you make of bóc lột, chuyện trò, bàn bạc, nô đùa, vui chơi, rỉ sét, bão táp, đùa giỡn, đào bới, say đắm, nồng thắm, xua đuổi, chạnh lòng, chăm sóc, trông nom, canh chừng, coi chừng, sâu bọ, đục đẽo, may vá, xế chiều, chiều tà, tinh mơ, nháy mắt, cửa sổ, chôn vùi, vùi lắp, cắt xén, mai mòn, mệt nhọc, mệt mỏi, mỏi mòn, bao la, tươi tốt, trìu mến, ghen tuông, lo âu, đau xót, tiếc nuối...and many many many more?

If you add in all the từ láy, the amount would increase by 10 folds.

Don't tell me the words listed above are Hán Việt. You got trouble telling Hán Việt from thuần Việt in general.


Well you can argue that there are more Han Viet compound words than thuan Viet compound words. Well DUH! Because Han Viet makes up 70% of the language, and thuan Viet makes up only 30%, so of course you're gonna have more Han Viet compounds. You just have more Han Viet words in Vietnamese in general.

Maybe vietnamese should learn to use characters again so itd be easier for chinese to read.

What did Unknownuser say?Im curious.

Norther viet are related to southern Chinese.

stop bsing buddha love, most Southern Chinese don't have C3 haplotypes, related? maybe a little, after thousand year of migration it is not a surprise, but most of Vietnamese are not related to southern chinese, about the relation Vietnamese perhap related to Buryat, Khalkh, Eskimo,... of course a little, but Vietnamese is kinda unique because we have C3 haplotype.

damn i got banned again Asiafinest hates cute kittens, how wicked...

let me post my full post at least:

stop bsing buddha love, most Southern Chinese don't have C3 haplotypes, related? maybe a little, after thousand year of migration it is not a surprise, but most of Vietnamese are not related to southern chinese, about the relation Vietnamese perhap related to Buryat, Khalkh, Eskimo,... of course a little, but Vietnamese is kinda unique because we have C3 haplotype.

Beside acient Vietnamese (Vietnamese Nam Tu (nanzi) and Vietnamese Madarin (bo tau only). ) is different from Cantonese (bo me).

Just my 2 cents, but shouldn't Thuan Viet be more prone to have polysyllabic words? After all, it is the more austro-asiatic component of Vietnamese (of course one can always argue that Vietnamese doesn't belong to the austro-asiatic group and is an isolated language on its own), and most austro-asiatic languages are polysyllabic.

Also, Vietnamese, or rather the Thuan Viet part, used to be toneless; the more the reason that it ought to be polysyllabic.

^ Ehhh no. There are many reasons...well where do I start

1. Thuần Việt words aren't necessarily connected to Austro-asiatic. They are usually similar to Tai-Kadai, can be Hmong-Mien and Austronesian, and of course even Chinese. Vietnamese isn't an isolated language. It's rather a very very mixed language.

2. Which language family it's connected to got nothing to do with it being polysyllabic or monosyllabic. Eg: mắt got an Austronesian and Austro-astic origin (mata) but it's still monosyllabic. Of course Vietnamese usually don't just say mắt, they say "con mắt" or "đôi mắt", but the polysyllabic nature arises from combination with classifiers and other words of related meanings, not because of its original form.

3. All languages are toneless originally and tones were developed from shifts of initials and finals, yes this applies to Chinese too. At least that's the current understand of linguists. The tones got little to do with the polysyllabic or monosyllabic nature of a language.

4. Most Austro-asiatic languages are polysyllabic? Hm okay maybe you can say that though I'm sure you as well as most linguists in the world got little knowledge of AA languages aside from Khmer, Mon, and Vietnamese. Mon seem quite monosyllabic though, but I wouldn't say it's monosyllabic. You can say that most languages in this world are polysyllabic - Japanese, Korean, Austronesians, Sino-Tibean, Indo-European, most languages in these families are polysyllabic. So again, you can't really make a conclusion on whether HanViet or ThuanViet is more prone to polysyllabic.

IMO, indeed Chinese characters are monosyllabic but Chinese words really aren't, because most Chinese words are composed of at least 2 characters,
although each character can stand alone mean something, but it'd be very weird to not to use at least 2 characters,
for example, 孤(gu) means alone, in day to day dialogues, people will at least say 孤单(gudan) or 孤独(gudu) that also mean alone.

Hm...I don't think there's any true monosyllabic language in this world.

That was why I said the language has monosyllabic morphemes, but the language itself is not monosyllabic. A morpheme is the smallest unit in a language that carries meaning. English even has polysyllabic morphemes, such as "able".

The reason I said toneless languages are less likely to be monosyllabic is because you need all those tones to support the word pool. Imagine how word-limited a language would be if it is both toneless and monosyllabic. But of course, again, no language that we know is truly monosyllabic anyway.

But didn't you see the flaws in your argument? Thuần Việt is tonal and whether it was non-tonal in the past got little to do with the polysyllabic nature of its current form. Ok just take Chinese as an example to illustrate this point. Chinese was toneless in the past and it might have been polysyllabic but that got little to do with its current nature, whether its current form is monosyllabic or polysyllabic. Try to say this "Chinese is currently polysyllabic because it was once non-tonal in the past". How does it sound? The two clauses have little to do with each other. The fact that it was non-tonal in the past isn't an explanation for its polysyllabic nature today.

P/S: I used the Chinese analogy to illustrate my point, but I hope I didn't offend any Chinese and I hope no one would start an argument on whether Chinese was tonal originally. Tibetan, a language in the Sino-Tibetan family, isn't tonal.


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Oh also maybe this would help you see where I'm coming from. In the so-called "polysyllabic" words in Vietnamese (rather disyllabic), each syllable has a meaning (most of the times, yea, if one of them doesn't, it's often because they lost the meaning. Từ láy are exceptions).

So we have
coi chừng = coi + chừng
Each word has a meaning of its own
But coi chừng isn't the same as coi or chừng

And coi chừng is polysyllabic not because in the past it was coichung, cajung or something like that. It's because it's composed of coi + chừng.

The once polysyllabic words of non-tonal languages have all become monosyllabic in Vietnamese.

For example:

mata (two-syllable) got reduced down to mắt (one syllable)

kuru (Indonesian for turtle) got reduced down to rùa (Chinese kui/gui also got a root from this)

So the roots in non-tonal languages are not responsible for the current polysyllabic form of Vietnamese

You see where I'm coming from?

As I had put it in an interrogative sentence, whether Thuan Viet is polysyllabic was just a speculation. I did get carry away by using the word "ought" in the second paragraph, but fundamentally I was just wondering if "Thuan Viet is more prone to have polysyllabic words".

About disyllabic, I have run into tri or even quadrupsyllabic words, though (Stuff like: Sạch sành sanh (yes it is tu lay), and vô tuyến truyền hình, ...). Of course, disyllabic words make up the vast majority of Vietnamese polysyllabic words.

Okay, 迷 is mê , the problem with nôm is too many characters and it's not always easy to pick the right one. Maybe I should be clearer that most of compound words including 1 Han-Viet. And what's wrong of saying most when you even agree that Han-Viet takes 70% and more Han-Viet compounds?

The problem with ThuanViet is even a word originally Han-Viet, after a long period of time it became ThuanViet. For example, tết . It was tiết 節。
Besides, your example is not really the same as mine. For example the word mộng. If I say: Mày đang mộng à? I doubt the listener will understand if I don't explain. Because mơ is ThuanViet, if I say it, I don't need to explain anything.
Same for example of


If I say: mày cô 孤 à? or mày đơn/độc à? Can the listener understand it? (孤单 cô đơn 孤独 cô độc)

While with your examples, most of them with only 1 single word, the listener already could get the meaning.
Not mention the double sounding: Mày đơn đơn độc độc 单单独独 vào đó làm gi.

I dont think so,我很孤，thats weird.

Hey papen, what's wrong with your Vietnamese, seriously?

I'm really tired of this.

Mày đang mộng à? What kind of Vietnamese doesn't understand this except the white-washed oversea ones?

And you're Vietnamese but you can't distinguish things like mơ and mê? No, I'm not talking about the character. Maybe you studied Chinese too much that you don't even know Vietnamese anymore. You always apply Chinese to Vietnamese and it's always problematic.

Mơ [mə] = Dream
Mê = Fall into a coma, becomes unconscious (also means to become infatuated with something, be crazy about something)

Mơ itself is thuần Việt. Why would you call mộng mơ a Hán Việt compound when mơ is thuần Việt? While you're at it, may as well put "ca hát" into the list.

Your twist of the argument doesn't make it anymore right either.



Sir because you implied that compound words can only be Hán Việt and you literally spelled it out in the previous posts.



Plus, most imply 90% or so. Are you kidding? If you count từ láy then TV compounds should be roughly the same if not more than HV compounds. So your comment "most compounds are HV" is very misleading.

Want me to spell it out stuff like mênh mang, lung linh, thanh thảng, hững hờ, thờ ơ, âu yêm, ngớ ngẩn, thướt tha, nhởn nhơ, nhẹ nhàng, xinh xắn, lạnh lẽo...There are just too many to even type out.

I think the listener would only be able to guess what you're trying to say, as to a foreigner, if you say it with a sad face, the response you'd get would be like "huh??are you trying to say 'Wo heng gudan'"

Uh...what?

Except for the fact that Thuần Việt reading are always older than Hán Việt reading. So how did that occur?

Take muôn (thuần Việt) and vạn (Hán Việt) for example.

Muôn is no doubt older than vạn.
The m- initial was an older form
The v/w initial came from a drop of m-


It's the same case for múa and vũ. Múa is phonologically older than vũ.

We can go on about this

dời and di ---> dời is older
nàng and nương ---> nàng is older
đánh and đả ---> đánh is older
buông and phóng ---> buông is older
buồng and phòng ---> buồng is older
rèm and liêm ---> rèm is older
sen and liên ---> sen is closer to the older form

You say tết was tiết. But the reading of tết is older than the reading of tiết.

The -e- vowel came before the -iê-
(like in the case of rèm and liêm, sen and liên)


Do you know why? Because those Thuần Việt came from Old Chinese (pre-Han, like Shang, Zhou...until Han) whereas Hán Việt came from Middle Chinese (Tang dynasty)

It's kinda ironic that a huge part of the so called Thuần Việt (Native Vietnamese, pure Vietnamese) also came from Chinese, but rather an old, unrecognizable form of Chinese.

When you say cô 孤 alone, Vietnamese think you're saying Miss or Auntie 姑

mày cô à wouldn't make any sense

If you add là in the middle, it may become "Are you a teacher?" or "Are you that "Miss"?" (supposedly they were talking about some) or "You became an aunt?"?

??? How much of Vietnamese is actually Chinese?

Does the 70% include Thuan Viet or just the Tang Dynasty vocabulary?

The 70% are only Hán Việt.

A bit confused.

I'm guessing that means in actuality Vietnamese contains an even higher percentage of Chinese vocabulary?

What do you mean by "Chinese vocabulary"?

The thing is no one can be sure about the loan direction of all cases...It's like sông and giang. Giang is obviously a loan but sông may be not even though it is similar.

Besides such words are common vocabs of the peasant class the common class, so you can't just put a loan label on them. Like there are similarities between Vietnamese vocabs and some Malay vocabs, but no one goes ahead and call those words "Malay-Viet" or "Malaysian vocabs". See where I'm coming from?


Also the similarities between Thuần Việt and Chinese are usually not recognizable through patterns, they only appear if you do some analysis. With Hán-Việt, you can always connect it to Chinese dialect.

For example, sư and thầy. Sư is easily connected to Chinese dialect.

But thầy isn't obvious. Nobody thinks thầy could have any connection to Chinese really.

But when you think about it, many Vietnamese th- came from sh- and s-. It's an obvious pattern that I don't even need to explain. So thầy in older Vietnamese was "Shầy" and if you connect it to an older form of Chinese Shij (notice that it got a glide there), then it's spot on. Plus consider the huyền ~ ngang pattern from Thuần Việt to Hán Việt (rèm ~ liêm, nàng ~ nương, dời ~ di, dì ~ di, chàng ~ lang, chàm ~ lam...), then thầy ~ sư pretty much fits in.

Yeah but I'm confused cause you said those thuan Viet came from Old Chinese.

I thought thuan Viet meant native Vietnamese, how come Old Chinese words are considered Thuan Viet?

Ok we have to be careful with our wording.

Thuần Việt says nothing about the linguistic origin of the words, they just mean words that Vietnamese natively use before being sinicized by Chinese.


I didn't say they come from Old Chinese. Well what I meant was a lot of them have connection to Old Chinese.

They could have origin in any language - Malay, Thai, Mon, Chinese, Hmong

This is weird.

So that means Vietnamese use older forms of the same word for casual conversations
and newer forms of the same words for more proper/educated speech.



Show us some of those cognates.

Hm...no. It's not like that. How do I say this? It's like the older forms are more incorporated into Vietnamese language than the younger forms because it entered Vietnamese earlier. So it occurs more in conversational Vietnamese, it's become our native language.

Being "polysyllabic"is Sinitic.Polysyllabic is fitted exactly for Khmer,Malay or generally Southeast Asian but not for Kinh people.Its weird also that Malays will turn to monosyllabic and Viets for polysllabic

Ok here are more cognates like that


Thuần Việt on the left, Hán Việt on the right


Đi (to go) ~ chi 之 (of) --- Old Chinese: tǝ --- Old Chinese meaning: to go, proceed

lúa (rice plant) ~ đạo 稻 --- Old Chinese: lhūʔ (notice the glottal stop ʔ there, it's known for giving rise to sắc tone in Vietnamese)

thóc (the rice grain before the husk comes off) ~ túc 粟 --- Old Chinese: shok

nắng (sunny) ~ dương 陽 --- Old Chinese: Łaŋ (Ł is pronounced more like đ, which reminds me that it's đắng in some Vietic language, possibly Mường)

đánh (beat, fight) ~ đả 打 --- Old Chinese: tēŋʔ (notice how the vowel ē there is similar to the vowel in đánh, because đánh in Northern is basically pronounce as as daing, with ai being similar to IPA e)

thổi (to blow ) ~ xuy 吹 --- Old Chinese: thoj (Note that [j] in ending is basically like y)

giường (bed) ~ sàng 床 --- Old Chinese: ʒ́(h)raŋ (Note that gi in IPA is ʒ)

ngủ (to sleep) ~ ngọa [ŋwa] 臥 --- Old Chinese: ŋhōjs (Notice the -s ending. It's known to give rise to hỏi/ngã in Vietnamese) "lie down, sleep [attested in Late Zhou]"

việc (work) ~ dịch 役 --- Old Chinese: wek

rụng (fall) ~ hàng, giáng 降 --- Old Chinese: grungs

xuống (descend, go gown) ~ giáng 降 --- Old Chinese: krungs (It's the same character as above but with two different readings. I pick krungs for xuống because kr- usually turn into s/x in Viet)

lòng (inner, inside) ~ dung 容 --- Old Chinese: loŋ

rèn (forge, train) ~ luyện 煉 --- Old Chinese: rēns

rồng (dragon) ~ long 龍 --- Old Chinese: rong

búa ~ phủ 斧--- OC paʔ --- Early post classic Chinese: pwó (explains búa)

bay ~ phi 飛 --- OC pǝj

bụt ~ phật 佛

buôc ~ phược 縛

đáy ~ để 底

giấy ~ chỉ 紙

chị ~ tỉ 姊

chợ ~ thị 市

chùa ~ tự 寺

chữ ~ tự 字

con (children) ~ côn 昆 (descendants) --- Notice the o ~ ô pattern

lọc (filter) ~ lộc 漉

đọc (read) ~ độc 讀

khóc (cry) ~ khốc 哭

khó (difficult) ~ khổ 苦

....
Ok I'll stop here


well I must say sometimes they are pretty similar that you can't tell which one is older, but when they're drastically different (like đi and chi, lúa and đào), the TV one is usually older

hm...interesting, mind if I ask where did you get the old Chinese pronunciations ?

I found this on wiki
from left to right: English->old chinese->tibetan->burmese-->modern Chinese

"I" 吾 ŋa nga ŋa wu
"you" 汝 njaʔ – naŋ ru
"not" 無 *mja ma ma’ wu
"two" 二 *njijs gnyis hnać < *hnik er
"three" 三 sum gsum sûm san
"five" 五 * ŋaʔ lnga ŋâ wu
"six" 六 *C-rjuk drug khrok < *khruk liu
"sun", "day" 日 *njit nyi-ma ne < niy ri
"name" 名 *mjeŋ ming ə-mañ < *ə-miŋ ming
"eye" 目 *mjuk mig myak mu
"fish" 魚 *ŋja nya ŋâ yu
"dog" 犬 *kʷʰenʔ khyi khwe < khuy quan

I never paid attention to Burma, but it seems that the burmese language has some connections to ours, and the Bamars used to live up north around south sichuan and north yunan area, where are actually pretty close to Tibet, and the according to some historical documents, original Chinese were from north-west, where is also close to Tibet, very interesting......

Here http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/query.cgi...a\bigchina

Just enter the character.

Note that it's not 100% accurate but it's close. There are other sources but I don't have access to their data. For example another linguist (I forgot name) reconstructed 稻 as glǝw instead of lhu. So different linguists may reconstruct it slightly different but they're basically pretty close.

P/S: make sure you have some basic knowledge about IPA because words may not sound as they're written. For example [j] in IPA sounds like a Y, not an English J

i heard that our Han Viet is kinda like acient chinese, not so sure myself, but now its clear that there is a similar, thanks for the site.

btw, nice avatar, you looks cute.

Ancient Chinese means people the in Xia, Shang period...the language at that time had consonant clusters which don't exist in Vietnamese today, so you can't say they're similar to ancient Chinese. Han Viet is similar at most to Middle Chinese and Classical Chinese. The Chinese stratum of Thuần Việt may go back to the pre-Han.

So delusional.Ancient chinese?At what dynasty?Which region?Theres like 8 hunderd dialects now how many do you expect back then?

No need compare words, just listen Myanmar song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRmf5pb62Q8

I think Dai Ly (大理) they are Tai people. Shan (Burma), Lanna (northern Thai), Lao (claim by Savan) are orgin from Yunan. Only Lanna keep sinosphere element in their culture.

Shan song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTdeEAWz8nY

Lanna song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oXGzfR6W14

I have heard that Đoàn clan in Vietnam is descendant of Đoàn Dự or Đoàn Chính Thuần .