Talk:Vietnamese language

Recognised minority language

The infobox currently lists China, Czech Republic and Slovakia as countries in which Vietnamese is a recognized minority language. This seems inappropriate:

• While the Gin people are a recognized minority group in China, their original language has no official status.
• There seems to be no evidence that the rights afforded to Vietnamese in the Czech Republic and Slovakia are any different from those afforded to Vietnamese and other minority languages across the countries of the EU.

Kanguole 08:07, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Some remarks for the section Language variation ...Why just Hanoi dialect?

...'The movements have also resulted in some blending of dialects and more significantly have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa..:'

In 1954 million of people from North Vietnam are fled to South Vietnam. Since then the northern dialect is not something new for people in South Vietnam. But for people from North Vietnam moving to the South after 1975, some of them have problem unterstanding the southern dialect.

... Most Southerners, when singing modern/old popular Vietnamese songs or addressing the public, do so in the standardized accent if possible, which uses the Northern pronunciation. That is true in both Vietnam and overseas Vietnamese communities...:

For some unknown historical reason people are singing western-based music almost always in northern dialect.and that before 1975.

... Modern Standard Vietnamese is based on the Hanoi dialect...:

The reason is that the Hanoi regime in Hanoi systematicaly and officially suppresses and bans the southern dialect (written and spoken language) from all public media (Radio, TV, Press) with exception of some talkshows.

In the dictionaries published in Vietnam all southern words are marked as dialectic. All courses for vietnamese language are taught "of course" in northern dialect.That also applies to the courses done by pro-Hanoi regime vietnamese communities abroad.

Note that in South Vietnam before 1975 all 3 dialects are written and spoken in all public media, in all schools, words in dictionaries are just marked as from "North, Central or South", but not dialectic.

All 3 dialects are of the same value in the everyday life of the society of South Vietnam before 1975.

The Hanoi regime just tries to "sell" the northern dialect as an "official language" of Vietnam, even e.g. the letter "R" is spoken as "Z", the letter "D" (pronounced like yes, yellow, in English or ja in German) is spoken as "Z", the letter combination "TR" is spoken as "CH" in northern dialect. As far as I know, northern dialect from Vietnam is the unique dialect ("language" according to the Hanoi regime) in which "R" is pronounced/spoken as "Z". The Hanoi regime forces and dictates to use the northern dialect as the so-called "standard vietnamese language", as a further political step to "erase" the culture of South Vietnam.

The Hanoi regime does not understand that standard languages ​​are not necessarily more logical or frequent than dialects. Often the opposite is the case, because speakers of dialects are less concerned with "correct" or "incorrect" language and therefore tend to use more frequent language/dialect when speaking.

Hence the communist Hanoi regime is committing the murder of the southern dialect, of the southern culture and ultimately the vietnamese culture.

>>> What are the western "intellectuals" saying about the "cultural crime" committed by the Hanoi regime? Beautiful Bavaria (talk) 17:10, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Misunderstandings about John Phan's paper

Recently there have been contributors adding to the article claiming that Vietnamese is theoretically a mixed language or a creole language, but this is incorrect. On page 330, John Phan explicitly mentions that in his chart showcasing Hybridized Proto-Viet-Muong, that he uses the term "hybridized" very loosely. As he quotes, "In this scheme, I use the term “hybridized” loosely and not to indicate full convergence or the formation of a true creole."

In this context, he uses "hybridized" to refer to the language shift that sinicized both the Mường language and the Vietnamese language after a population of theorised Annamese Middle Chinese speakers shifted from speaking Middle Chinese to Proto-Viet-Muong causing vocabulary from Middle Chinese to form a Old-Sino-Vietnamese substrate. (298)

Even if this was found to be true, it does not change the fact that Vietnamese is still descended from Proto-Viet-Muong and is still an Austroasiatic language.

For reference, https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Vietnamese_language&diff=1177773526&oldid=1177639045, https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Vietnamese_language&diff=1236262748&oldid=1234975662 Lachy70 (talk) 19:58, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Also in John Phan's 2010 paper, Re-Imagining “Annam”: A New Analysis of Sino–Viet– Muong Linguistic Contact, he also said, "While I use the term “hybridized” in this scheme, I do not here make the claim that Proto-Viet–Muong was a true hybrid language, i. e., a creole that developed from a pidgin. The sense is weaker here, and is meant only to denote a strong adstratum effect from Annamese Middle Chinese." Lachy70 (talk) 04:19, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if we're giving too much weight to Phan's views here. Has anyone else picked up his Annamese Middle Chinese idea? Kanguole 10:04, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I have seen authors such as Zev Handel (author of Sinography), Grant Evans, K. W. Taylor (author of A History of the Vietnamese), etc mention Annamese Middle Chinese. The issue is not with Annamese Middle Chinese, the issue is with people see the word "hybridized" and thinking that Vietnamese is a creole, when John Phan states that is not the case. What he is claiming rather he is claiming that there is the possible existence of Annamese Middle Chinese and it was an adstratum that affected Proto-Viet-Muong. Lachy70 (talk) 04:09, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

His wording is not always clear, but I believe that what he means by "hybridized" is that Vietnamese is the result of speakers of Annamese Middle Chinese switching to Proto-Viet-Muong in the 11th century (thesis p332). Taylor, a historian rather than a linguist, accepts this (p5), but I'm not aware of acceptance by linguists. Some of them talk about AMC or some other southern variety being the source behind Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations, but that's not the same thing. Kanguole 16:57, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Re-insertion of Maspero's periodization

The problem with re-inserting the list of periods from an old version of the article is that the introduction to the History section now repeats itself. Also Proto-Viet-Muong (= Proto-Vietic in modern terminology) isn't actually a phase of Vietnamese, and is not listed by Maspero as such. I don't think the translated terms Proto-Vietnamese and Archaic Vietnamese are much used these days, though of course everyone agrees there was a time before the introduction of Sino-Vietnamese and a time after. Kanguole 12:06, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Oh yes, nobody wants history to repeat itself :) But the subsection §Proto–Viet–Muong based on Ferlus (2009) employs the two terms Proto-Vietnamese and Archaic Vietnamese, so we probably need to add some context at least there. –Austronesier (talk) 12:18, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

It appears there was a bit of extrapolation from the sources there. Kanguole 15:06, 12 December 2024 (UTC)