[SEALANG] Tai-Viet linguistics question CONTINUED

[Liam C. Kelley]

Dear list,

    Thank you Joe and Chung-pui Tai for your responses. I've translated the Chinese responses that were provided below. I'm not entirely familiar with Chinese linguistic terminology (such as the difference between a fangyan [dialect] and a tuyu [local dialect?]), and I'm not sure what these tone numbers mean, but I think I have redendered the gist correctly.
    The translations are in blue, I have a comment at the end in red.

Liam Kelley
University of Hawaii
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Chung-pui Tai 
  To: SEALANG-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG 
  Sent: Monday, October 20, 2008 1:12 AM
  Subject: Re: [SEALANG] Tai-Viet linguistics question CONTINUED


  Dear List,

  The following is a reply from a friend of mine, who is a native of Debao county, Guangxi, China. Sorry that he can only write Chinese but not English. 

  ------------------------------------------------------
  ***My main question, however is this: does it make any linguistic sense that ke could be a Vietnamese adoption/pronunciation of a Zhuang/Tai term k/koo? Is it logical for those vowels to change in that manner as the term moves from one language to another?



  我认为是极有可能的。一种语言从另外一种语言借用词汇，不可能完全将那个发音也完整地借入，因为不同的语言和方言，其音系都不会相同和吻合，一种语言里从其他语言借入的借词，其发音还是用该语言的近似发音去发的，或者有它的借音规则（如壮语里的汉语老借音和汉语新借音，都和任何汉语方言不完全吻合），不会和原来发音一模一样的。



  况且，越南语是一种源于南亚语系而又先后深受壮侗语、古汉语熏陶和同化的音调语言，它除了有大量的汉语借词之外，也有不少台语借词，反映在很多地名上用到了台语支语言常用的地名用字，如baan（村）paak（口）doi（山）等。所以这个koo完全可能是从壮语南部方言（岱侬语）借入的。



  I think it's highly possible. When one language borrows vocabulary from another it cannot completely adopt the pronounciation, because the sound systems of different languages and dialects are not [entirely] complimentary. When one language borrows a word from another it will use the sounds which are close in its own language, or other rules for borrowing sounds (such as how the sounds of old and new Han Chinese words in Zhuang do not entirely match those of any Han dialect), and will never be exactly the same as in the original language.



  What is more, Vietnamese is an Austroasiatic tonal language which has been deeply influenced by Zhuang-Kam and old Chinese. In addition to having borrowed many words from Chinese, it has also borrowed quite a lot from Tai, which is reflected in the use of common Tai words in many place names, such as baan (village), paak (mouth), doi (mountain), etc. So it is completely possible that this "koo" was borrowed from a southern Zhuang dialect (Tay Nung).



  And yet one other minor question: some Zhuang place names (and old place names in Vietnam) begin with the word duo 多 [ta in old Chn, da in Viet.]. According to the Zhuang place name study, this refers to "land." The SEAlang dictionary has the following entry which seems the closest in sound:
  (WEBRANK:3) tra 1 N a piece (used in reference to land), portion; plot

  However, Li Fang-kuei said that "Siamese also shows tr-, but it exists chiefly in Cambodian and Sanskrit loans."

  Question: What Tai word for "land" could duo 多 [ta in old Chn, da in Viet.] be an attempted transcription of?

  关于这个"多"来记录壮语地名，我以前没有注意过原来这个"多"字开头的壮语地名原来大部分集中在德靖土语地区，直到今天看到这个提问，我才翻阅了《广西壮语地名选集》，居然发现，里面收录的18个以"多"字开头的壮语地名，除了一个在田阳县的桥业乡之外，其他全部都是德保县和靖西县的，而且以德保县为主。而就算是田阳县桥业乡的那个"多感"，也是说德保话的地区，而不是说北壮田阳话的地区。



  但这个"多"字所记录的这些地名，除了有一个"多吉"的"多"字记录的是德靖土语的toi 3 （下面）之外，一个"多感"的"多"记录的是德靖土语的 ta 6（河流）之外， 其他的16个"多"全部记录的是德靖土语的 tei 6（地方，land）。但这个"多"的发音不是 ta/tra，其实是来自汉语借词"地方"的"地"，声母韵母和粤语发音都一致，就是tei 6，第六调，德保话调值是33，靖西话调值是324。所以这个问题提到的以汉字"多"的古音ta之类去推测已经变成了没有任何意义了，实际上大都是 tei 6 而已。如果越南的"多"字开头的地名实际发音是 ta/da 之类，我想也就失去了比较的意义，因为tei是不太可能变成ta/da的。另外，泰语的tra我想李方桂说得没错，应该是来自梵语的借词，而对应壮语tei 6的泰语，实际上是 thi ，泰语的"哪里" 的 thi nai 的"thi"，实际上就是壮语的 tei ，同样是来自古汉语的"地"。



  As for this word duo/da in Zhuang place names, I had not previously noticed that these place names that start with duo/da are concentrated in the area of the Deqing local dialect. After seeing this question I looked through the "Collection of Zhuang Language Place Names in Guangxi" and found that there are 18 places which start with the word duo/da. With the exception of one in Qiaoye Village, Tianyang District, all of the rest are in Debao and Jingxi Districts, with the majority being in Debao. And even the place "Duogan" in Qiaoye, Tianyang is where Debao [speakers] live, not where Northern Zhuang Tianyang [speakers] live.



  However, the places which this character "duo/da" is used to record -- with the exceptions of the "duo" in "duoji" which is the Deqing local dialect for "toi 3" (below/under) and the duo in "duogan" which is the Deqing local dialect for "ta 6" (river) -- the other 16 are all the Deqing dialect for "tei 6" (land). However the pronounciation here is not ta/tra, but is actually borrowed from the Han Chinese word for land "di." The initial and the vowel is the same in Cantonese - tei 6, the 6th tone. The tone in the Deqing local dialect is 33 and in Jingxi is 324. Therefore, using the ancient Chinese pronounciation of "ta" to ascertain is actually meaningless. In actuality, it is just tei 6.



  If Vietnamese place names that begin with the character "多" are pronounced ta/da, then I think that it cannot be compared, because it is not likely that tei would become ta/da. Also, I think that Li Fanggui [i.e., Li Fang-Kuei] was correct in regards to "tra." It was probably borrowed from Sanskrit. And the corresponding word in T[h]ai for "tei" in Zhuang is actually "thi." The "thi" in the T[h]ai expression "thi nai" (where) is the Zhuang "tei." They both came from the Han Chinese term "di."



      This person's comments about the fact that we might be dealing with a "Tai" word which was actually borrowed from Chinese is interesting. The sense that I got in perusing the book on Zhuang place names is that there is a lot of borrowing from Chinese, or at least knowledge of Chinese, in Zhuang place names.

      That said, this person's comments reflect a view which I find prevalent in the work of Vietnamese scholars--namely that they use the ethno-political map of the present to make statements about the past. This person's argument is that if there is a "Vietnamese" place name which uses the character 多, and if the "Vietnamese" pronounce this "da," then it cannot be from Zhuang because in Zhuang it is tei and tei would not become da in moving from Zhuang to Vietnamese. The problem is that these place names most likely do not reflect a linguistic borrowing into Vietnamese.

      The way I picture what happened is that there were Tai peoples living in northern and parts of north-central Vietnam from the BC period into the thousand years of Chinese control (111 BC to 939 AD). It was during that period that these place names were likely coined. The characters which were used to write these place names are probably the result of the interaction between Chinese administrators and local peoples [in this case Tai speakers], which I would imagine is exactly how Zhuang place names first made it into Chinese characters. So if tei became 多 in Guangxi, the same thing would have occurred south of there in what is today Vietnam because at the time it was all part of the same Chinese empire ruled over by the same administrators who were writing down place names the same way in Chinese characters. Once Vietnam broke away from China in the 10th century, those written names were maintained and appear in the works which Vietnamese subsequently wrote.

      So yes, using Vietnamese pronounciations for these characters to guess at the origins of these words is problematic, but in general, Vietnamese pronounciations are close to old Chinese and Cantonese, the two languages that might have played a role when these place names were first recorded in Chinese characters. Another problem is that Zhuang language place names continued to be coined all of the up through the 18th century, which leaves the door open to a lot of potential changes in how this was done. The book which this person cites, and which I used earlier, is very problematic in that it doesn't give any sense of change over time in the way in which Zhuang place names may have been rendered in Chinese characters.

      In any case, the issue is that these place names in Vietnam represent a movement from Tai to Chinese (and then eventually to Vietnamese by virtue of the fact that the Vietnamese continued to use place names which the Chinese had coined), not from Tai to Vietnamese.







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