which of the following asian language sounds most similar to Vietnamese?

Vietnamese
http://www.languageportraits.net/vietnamese.html

Korean
http://www.languageportraits.net/korean.html

Japanese
http://www.languageportraits.net/japanese.html

Chinese Mandarin
http://www.languageportraits.net/chinese.html

Chinese Cantonese
http://www.rfa.org/service/mp3/CAN/ProgNam...6-1020-1800.m3u

Thai
http://www.languageportraits.net/thai.html

Filipino
http://www.languageportraits.net/tagalog.html

Tibetan
http://www.languageportraits.net/tibetan.html

Laotian
http://www.languageportraits.net/laotian.html

Hmong
http://www.languageportraits.net/hmong.html

Cambodia
http://www.languageportraits.net/cambodian.html


Indonesian
http://www.languageportraits.net/indonesian.html

Its lao and hmong.

What happened to your avatar? It was cute.

None of the above.

I already posted sound clip of the Muong language before. To me, it is the only language in the world that sounds like Vietnamese.

Apparently Muong does. I'm not too sure though since I've never heard it.

Can you post it again? Never heard a Muong speaks.

i'm speaking of national level, which means that you think the two languages sound the same when you speak none of the language.

It's the mp3 files
http://globalrecordings.net/program/C07280

you're weird land.

does vietnames have french words?

they don't sound alike to me (well Muong sound like tieng Hue maybe)


no

only a few like mi-ro (microphone)

If I learn Muong grammar I bet I can make sense of what he is saying. I have relatives that speak hard Hue accent in Vietnam so I can already make out some of the compound words.

many vietnamese words have french origin (but have been vietnamised) such as
xích lô, xà phòng, tuốc tua vít, séc măng tuya, ban công, etc

yea but they are nothing compare to the whole language

TV is not French but probably the most famous word in the world.

You'll be suprised how many French borrowed words there are.

Native Vietnamese words are not that many either, most numerous are probably han-viet because you can because they are flexible to form.

sir I've seen a list of french words in vietnamese. it's long, but still 0.5% is the most.

want me to show you?

no need, bà đầm .

well, this is from the outside looking in. i don't know much about viet-muong languages or tai languages, so it gets rather difficult to tell the difference.

IMO:
1. (muong i'm guessing is first, but the rest are based on my opinion)
2. lao
3. thai
4. cambodian (despite the fact that cambodian isn't even tonal.. iunno theyjust sound kind of similar.. weird)
5. chinese cantonese
6. chinese mandarin

the rest don't sound that much like vietnamese. sometimes tagalog and indonesian sound like vietnamese when spoken quickly.

Muong sounds like vietnamese when a vienamese speaker does not speak any Han-Viet words in the sentence. When vietnamese say someting that is han-viet, it sounds like cantonese.

Laos, is another language is close to Muong . Laos Muong is clasified as southeast language. So is some degree, if Han-viet are not used in the speech, Muong, Lao sounds like vietnamese.

dammit it doesnt work..i think i need quicktime or something

Foreigners have difficulty learning Vietnamese and Cantonese because both languages consist more than twice as many tones compared to Mandarin.

Vietnamese is a very distinct language in a sense that it has 18958 distinct syllables. As far as I know, no other Asian languages (except English) that has these many syllables. The Japanese language itself only has a little more or less than 1000 syllables.

"Foreigners have difficulty learning Vietnamese and Cantonese because both languages consist more than twice as many tones compared to Mandarin."

"Vietnamese is a very distinct language in a sense that it has 18958 distinct syllables. As far as I know, no other Asian languages (except English) that has these many syllables. The Japanese language itself only has a little more or less than 1000 syllables."



Very true and accurate. If you want to know something. Just google it.

Its amazing that vietnamese has more syllable sounds than any language , even more than cantonese.

ONe thing is interesting is, vietnamese and cantonese have this syllabe sound as "Eung" and "Uong"

as Cheung and Truong. Only in cantonese you have to open the mouth a litle more than to make Cheung sounds right.

Mandarin has no Eung sound.

Au sounds such as Lau in "Lau Tak Wah" or Ca^u as in Ca^u Ca', Con Tra^u.
Mandarin has no A^u sound.

but mandarin has more Consonant sounds than Cantonese and Vietnamese such as Tx,Sh,Ts sounds.

Mandarin and vietnamese has R sound such as Rau Ria(hairy) and Ren means Nhan or a person. But cantonese has no R sounds.
When a " Nguoi Hoa" in vietnam speaks vietnamese..they make the R sounds as Y sound.

Odd, Vietnamese sounds strangely similar to Thai.

I agree. Here's what I think Vietnamese sounds closest to (in order of closeness):

1. Thai
2. Laotian
3. Hmong
4. Cambodian
5. Cantonese

Hmong sounds cantonese to me.


Isn't vietnamese in the Mon-Khmer category while Thai is in the Tai-Kadai speaking groups?

The Vietnamese accent in the clip was close to Northern Vietnamese accent, that is why it sounds similar to Thai. However, the Northern Vietnamese accent when spoken quickly will sound very different.

I think that Lao and Cantonese sound similar to Vietnamese.

how they gonna have a hmong guy speaking for lao. i had a hard time understand some of the stuff he said, doesnt sound like the way its suppose to be spoken.

Vietnamese officially has 6 clearly different tones. Some said 8 or 9 tones depending how you classify tones.

Vietnamese vocabularies is probably over 1 million words. The ones that are most often used (and written into dictionaries) are about 450,000 words. Even a Vietnamese would not be able to know all of them.

Vietnamese could be considered either monosyllabic or pollysyllabic. In addition to monophthongs, Vietnamese has many diphthongs and triphthongs.

Vietnamese have extensive borrowed vocabularies from Chinese, French, Mon and ethnic minorities, also from American and Russian. They are in addition to native Vietnamese words.

The Vietnamese alphabet has 37 letters (29 single and 8 digraphs).

Vietnamese has over 30,000 proverbial expressions which are necessary for mastering the language (http://e-cadao.com/cadaodoor.htm).

Vietnamese poems could be composed by either 1 of the 3 ways: Vietnamese way [vè (3-4 word a sentence) or lục bát (6 and 8 words alternated sentence)], Chinese [ngụ ngôn tứ tuyệt (4-5), ngụ ngôn bát cú (4-8), thất ngôn tứ tuyệt (7-4), etc], Western style [mainly Russian]

Pronunciation of Vietnamese are varied. Vietnam has over 60 provinces with about 54 ethnicity (not all of them speak vietnamese, of course). If you are not a native, there is no guarantee that you will understand different accents of vietnam.

Good luck for anyone wanting to study Vietnamese.

it is still debated. there are many controversial about it. yea I think it's more like Thai.

i have a Thai friend and she asked me how to say stupid in Vietnamese. I said "ngu", and she said wow, that's why when she told Viet guy that he is 'ngo', he understood what she meant, 'ngo' is stupid in Thai. Well I think the guy might think she said "ngố" which is a Viet term for silly (something like that). We have another word "ngốc" which means silly also.

A few similar words does not make a two languages similar.


The languages I think are most similar to Vietnamese are probably Mường, Cantonese, and least of all of them, Thai(or Laos). The other languages from the list sound nothing like Vietnamese, especially that Kmer language.

^ that was just an example sir.

yea the same thing went for Cambodia. Only a few Viet words sound similar to Cambodian, that does not mean the two languages are related.

Why would being in the same category with Mon-Khmer language a bad thing? I do not consider it to be a bad thing. Cambodians had a rich culture. Some terrible things just happened decades ago does not negate that. However, i do think that if Vietnamese is in deed placed in the same group with Mon-Khmer, then Vietnamese should be named the original language of the group. It is due to the fact that the Vietnamese culture has existed since ancient times.

... Or you can say Vietnamese language is so ancient it could a one of the original branch related to Mon-Khmer but not part of the Mon-Khmer family.

it's not a bad thing. but I don't think it should be because the two languages are so different.

LOL where did you read that I or LVF said being in the Mon-Khmer group is a bad thing?

Well languages don't really have to sound alike to be in the same family... English, French and German don't sound alike but are considered part of the same family.

The eung and uong is not ALIKE. The eung sound in cantonese is like "o+ng" (or a long o+n in vietnamese )just like how it's spelled

Are you guys judge similarity on just the tone or what? Because I can't recognize any words from that countries list which are similar to any Vietnamese words.

The eung and uong is not ALIKE. The eung sound in cantonese is like "o+ng" (or a long o+n in vietnamese )just like how it's spelled


Yes..that is why i said you have to make Eung long and open the mouth to make it like Eung+Ong to make it sound correct.

Still its a similar thing.

Reading all the posts from you guys, we can say that language is very interesting.

I would say vietnamese is very rich in a sense it borrowed some words from other languages and it happened to be in class with many different families. For example Mong-Khmer and Thai-Tay.....and Sino Tibetian.

I think regions borderd to Laos and Cambodia by interaction take up some words from Laos and Cambodian and spread the usage througout the country. Then for a certain time, they become vietnamese.

Specially the Ngu in viet and the Ngo in Thai . It may be vice versa..that neigbors borrowed words from us too.

Then we have vocabularies from Han-Viet. And we know chinese belongs to Sino-Tibetian Language.

We have ancient vietnamese that sounds like Muong, a very close ethic to us.
T
he reason we have the most syllable and 6 tones and many vocaburies from many branches might have been the personality of the vietnamese.

During Colonial time, Frech was used so we have some Vietnamised French words.

Eventhough we all have a very strong sense of nationality and origin, we always welcome and learn from others. Even in language that is why we have more than everybody else.

Another thing is for new vocabularies related to new invention such as Computer and Information system.
There are new terms other language has to invent new words for them. But i know for the fact that in the language of vietnamese, we just use other words and put them toghether...

For example : Computer=Vi Tinh...........Where Vi means small or in micro and Tinh means to calculate.

These two words..Vi and Tinh we already have them such as in Vi Phan=Differentiation as supposed to Tich Phan=Intergration in Math..

Or..Tinh as in Tinh Toan ...or Suy Tinh.

In that pattern..many new terms in Science and Technology areas we just use words we already have and combine them .

One thing is interesting about vientamese is You can say things backward "No'i La'i" or but still make sense... such as Tu~ Lanh.= Lanh~Tu. as supossed to A Refrigenerator=Leader.

However it does not make sense all the times..but if you know how to manipulate , you can say it and say it backward and still make sense of something.

I dont know other language has that, but im sure chinese can't do that. Even if you say a word in a wrong tone..they dont understand you.

No it's not similar, the eung appears more in korean and thai, while the uong sound in vietnamese only appear in cambodian.

Mandarin does have a AU sound, but it's spelled AO

老 = lao (LAU)

"No it's not similar, the eung appears more in korean and thai, while the uong sound in vietnamese only appear in cambodian."


Cheun ,Seun sounds dont exist in Thai, nor in Viet. But "uong" is a similar sound to Eun.

Thats true that korean has eun but neither eun in korean or uong in viet sounds like eun in cantonese.

you have to speak cantonese to really get what i mean.

Because i based on the way Han-viet system to notice the similarity.

Seun Fan=Tuong PHan=Contrast

Seun Ngoi=Tuong Ai=to love each other

I dont here any Thai sounds that has Eun in there they do have Uon like vietnamese.

oh they do have eung, maybe because you've never seen it, but it appears much more often in cambodian

what is the point? we're not debating which language belongs to which family here


I mean the accent, the way the sound. not the words in the language.


why not other people borrowed from us? why are we have to always be the one who borrow? People see Fish in Thai and Fish in Vietnamese are the same (Ka/Cá), and they say Vietnamese borrow from Thai. WTH. Why not the Thai borrowed from us?

Borrowing is a wrong word, I would call it sharing. Vietnamese may borrow words from the Chinese but those words shared with other ethnics around us must come from a period before we even have a Viet ethnic identity. Those words must come from all those small tribes before merging and forming a Viet ethnic identity.

Take a look at a Muong legend:

Ngày xưa có một nàng công chúa Mường tên là Ngu Kơ vốn tiền kiếp là một con nai có sao đốm cưới một ông vua Yịt (Việt) tên là Lương Wong vốn gốc loài cá ở dưới biển. Ít lâu sau Ngu Kơ sinh ra 50 người con trai và 50 người con gái.

(Chuyện trăm trứng nở trăm con của người Mường)

The ancient story mentions a Viet king and a Muong princess...meaning Muong and Viet were two separate identities at that time, before 100 children were born.

The more tones a language has, the rougher it sounds, I guess this part of the reason why so many people hate on Vietnamese and Cantonese.

Anyways back to the topic, I think out of all the languages on this list, Thai to me sounds most similar to Viet but maybe that's just me. Surprisingly Khmer doesn't sound too much like Viet because I was always under the impression that those two sound similar as well.

If we Viets all came from those 100 kids from the same egg, then you said there was another "Viet" identity before our "Viet" identity right??? I don't take our legend literally, especially with the egg bag with 100 kids came from it part. I do believe some part of it, I believe it tells use we're a merge of different tribes/ethnics. BTW, Muong is in the Mon-Khmer language group, and all other Yue/Viet tribes are in the Tai-Kadai language group.

^ phss Ngu Kơ is Âu Cơ and Lương Wong is Long Quân. Long Quân was a Yue king, we are his children.

the language thing is still debated. it's not necessarily Mon-Khmer.