Is it possible that there was some wrong notation in Quốc Ngữ?

Because the word răng in Mường language is kasang and the word rết (con rết) in Mường language is sít. There are many cases when R in Vietnamese is correspond to S in Muong and neighboring languages.

So could it be that when the "Quốc Ngữ fathers" were transcribing chữ Nôm to Quốc Ngữ, they ran out of letters and randomly assigned R for the Z sound in Northern Vietnamese? You know there are 3 kinds of Z sounds in Northern Viet and they are represented by 3 letters: Gi, D, and R. Old Hanoians used to be able to distinguish these 3 Z sounds but modern Hanoian seem to have lost it.

But that wouldn't explain why Saigonese and Central Vietnamese say răng instead of yăng (Z sounds in Northern Vietnamese would end up as Y sound in Southern/Central Vietnamese). Maybe the Quốc Ngữ fathers ran out of letters and they saw that Southern/Central Vietnamese said răng, rết so they assigned letter R for this sound?

But based on Mường and neighboring languages, the older sound for R in Vietnamese should be something close to Z.

it's called consonant shift, likewise ph is written as ph and not as F when both Portugese AND French script use "f" to translate that sound. Thus ph was pronounced as aspirated p and not as f in the 17th and 18th century.

I was trying to figure out which one was the more original one. Was it the R or Z?

R exists for z.. the aspirated z is a very recent phenomenal, r also existed in many consonant cluster in the past like tr ( Tl --> tr--->merging to ch).


http://www.amritas.com/080823.htm

I know that. Yet răng in Mường is kasang and rết in Mường is sết. Is Mường language known for changing R to S?

Definitely consonant shift in languages as well as influences of Vietnamese on Muong. The Muong language itself has been greatly influenced by Tai-Kadai languages.

http://www.amritas.com/080823.htm#08180431

this is better link of consonant shift hypothesis

i'm skeptical. If something happens in one language that doesn't mean it happens in another language too. Spanish changes J to H sounds, that doesn't mean other Latin languages do the same thing.

Unless I'm provided with examples of Muong language changing R to S.

Definitely you can say you are skeptical, because I have no idea about Muong language.

All I know is that gi, d, r are pronounced as how they are during the 17th century: gi as dz/*ji, d and dd are pronounced very closely to each other, and r is pronounced as r.

yes I'm well aware of those patters. OC p was patalized to become t in Viet, modern Chinese /j/ (represent by D in Viet) came from L or similar initials, kl > bl/tl > tr, modern Viet n came from dental sounds etc. But those things are within Chinese and Vietnamese, not Muong. I can't assume that some similar pattern would happen in Mường. For example, krong --> rong --> sông in Vietnamese, but in Mường they keep the k initial and drop the r (opposite of Vietnamese), therefore sông is Không in Mường. Similarly sao is Khao in Mường, telling us that ancient Viet form for star was Krao.

BTW this has nothing to do with the topic but I just want to mention because we're talking about the sound change pattern. You know the word tượng (voi, elephant) is written 象 with the part 豕 meaning pig (thỉ) under it. According to the sound change pattern, xiang or tượng would have an L initial in Old Chinese and therefore it would sound something like Lạng, similar to Viet lợn. Is it possible that they borrowed the word lợn from Vietnamese then later the meaning "pig" was changed "elephant"?

ancient Viet form for teeth might have been krang -> karăng -> kasăng in Mường.
that is if there are examples of R ~ S in Muong.

象 is a picture of an elephant
http://www.internationalscientific.org/Cha...tton1=Etymology

How do you know it wasn't a large pig? or maybe Vietnamese used to use the word lợn to call elephant? just some random thought lol. Look at the comment

Look at the Shuowen definition for it

Note the word 南越 (Nam Việt) there. By definition it's a large animal with long teeth from Nam Việt.

speculative at best.

Kangooru is an animal from Australia. What is the Vietnamese word for kangooru?

actually now I need to dig into archealogy to see whether elephant existed in northern china.

I think they did. so my speculation was probably wrong

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/lofiversi....php/t6536.html

Well, I think the original pronounciation for the letter r is the southern pronounciation as a hard r, because the letter r is pronounced in almost all latin based languages as a hard r, especially french and portuguese. The northern pronounciation of r as z does not make sense to me at all, maybe our northern ancestors wanted a more softly sound r, so they changed to z? I don´t know. My parents are Hanoins, they pronounced r as z and my grandparents are also hanoians and they pronounced exactly as z, too. That is why I myself, too. But I somehow like the southern pronounciation, because it does not soudn like other letters. ^^

I noticed a lot of southerners pronounce the r like the french J. Which sounds pretty close to z. Maybe northerners used to pronounce the r that way and it slowly turned into z. Luckily it did though. I've heard several northerners pronounce the r and it sounds really awkward.

I think Quoc Ngu is based on accent of Nghe An or Thanh Hoa. The French Missionairy learned Vietnamese from a boy in this region. The northern vietnamese can't pronounce r because of Chinese influence, I think.

The northern accents for r, d, and gi are more easier to distinct when compare to the southern accent.
We say r like the way Spanish say r.
Sometime it is confusing for me to distinguish those r, d, and gi when i write in Vietnamese.
Kangaroo: chuo^.t tu'i

chinese doesn't have the z sound. closest is ts.

and they do pronounce their r's much like southern Vietnamese.

Who cares! As long as people can understand each other then it is good. You guys know that language is very dynamic right? What is spoken right now wouldn't be the same 20 years from now and so on.

I just think it's either Chinese influence or Meo/Thai/Dao influence on north vietnamese accent that they speak more on the tips of the tongue than the in the throat like south vietnamese. It's just easier for them to say z than r.

I don't know about R but Z --> Y is not uncommon.

In my experience Chinese words that have Y initial (and D initial in Vietnamese) used to have aspirated z initial (almost like an s).

Like Yang (sun) was onced pronouced Zang in Chinese, Yao was onced pronounced Zao.

Southern Vietnamese changed Z sound to Y sound probably because of Chinese influence since Chinese doesn't have Z sound and they had a history of changing Z to Y. This is also evident in the way Southern Viet changed Gi to Y too. Gia Dinh becomes Ya Dinh, Giang Son becomes Yang Son. Historically Gi wasn't Y. So it's more probable that Southern Viet folks changed any sound that was closed to Z into Y.

Yang, Giàng (Hmong), Giàng (Central Highland Vietnam), i suddenly found out these words are kinda similar in meaning. Hanoi dialect is far different from \"Nghề A(? mix with `)n\" dialect. R and D may sound the same but it is not exactly alike, people can easily detect it when Southerners mimic that R sound from the North.

a few Northern Vietnamese I befriended with have told me that R,D, and Gi sound different but when I told them up to say each one they sounded almost alike to me. I think their Gi is "heavier" than their D, right?

I don´t think so. The 3 all sound the same. And my ancestors are all hanoians.

^ That doesn't mean you can speak accurate Hanoian. You have to be born and raised in Hanoi in order to have that ability. You were born oversea so you're just like one of those Vietnamese American kids. As I said outsiders seem to think all 3 letters sound the same but Hanoi speakers told me that they are different, they're just not easily distinguished by outsiders. It's like how American people can't distinguish tones in Vietnamese language.

I can pronounce but it is hard for the listener to distinguish it.
You use your tongue to emphasize the rrrrr giiiii ddddd like in VRRRRROOOOMMM and softer voice for certain words.
It's one of those inherited sound.

So in other words... It's more like an emphasis on the words using a certain one of those? For instance, gi words would be softer than d, and d would be softer than r?
Something like gian, daAn, raAAAN?

Cause I don't know how the Z's can be pronounced in different ways, that'd would be particularly hard.

If there is, would you mind posting up a clip to try and show us? I'm pretty curious now.

I am sure the Z spoken by Northern Vietnamese is softer than the English Z. Try to incorporate the English Z to your speech and you see you don't sound like Northern Vietnamese at all. Many Southern Vietnamese use the English Z when they try to imitate Northern Viet accent.

I don't know how Gi, D, and R are different in Northern accent though. One Hanoian told me that you do some níu lưỡi when you say Gi (or D? I forgot which one he was talking about). But I wasn't sure what he meant by "níu lưỡi".

Softer yes, but in three different ways? WOW