I read somewhere that Vietnamese means something like "non-Chinese people of the south."
That didn't sound right to me so I did a little research. I came up with the following 2 characters:
越南

I came up with something like "beyond the south" for the meaning based on the 2 Chinese characters. Can someone please help me out here?

The literal meaning of Vietnam, or Yuenan in Chinese, is "beyond the south". However, Vietnamese adopted the word "Viet" (Yue) as their identity.

The word "Nam" means "south" in Vietnamese and Chinese but somehow the Chinese always claim that we borrow it from them but not them borrow it from us. I find it very interesting that if a Vietnamese language has a word and the Chinese also has a word, the Chinese claim that we borrow it from them but not them borrow it from us and the only thing that "they" use to back up their claim is that they occupied Vietnam for 1000 years.

Do you have some examples of indigenous Vietnamese words that if Chinese used them it would obviously be a Vietnamese-loaned word?

Oh damn... My History teacher gave us a whole big thing to read about Vietname when we studied the Vietnam war, and half of it was about it's naming, and I don't remember a single word of it. -_-'

I think Vietnam was originally supposed to be something different, as a direct translation of YueNan. But then the people changed it after they got their independence from China to Viet Nam. I'm not really sure about that though. Maybe DAI_VIET can help ya better.

I don't know about the Chinese language so i can't answer your question. What i want to say is that Western linguists have been claiming that 60-70% of Vietnamese words are loaned from the Chinese and these Western linguists base their claim by comparing the Vietnamese language with the Chinese language. If a Vietnamese word happened to be the same as a Chinese word, these linguists right away claim that we borrow it from the Chinese.

Hahahaha... so you're saying that before China made contact with ancestors of Vietnam, we didn't have a word for "south"? Hahaha... also, in Korean, south is "nam" too, I guess you're going to say Korean imported words from Vietnamese too? How about Japan? They have many Chinese-loan words, I guess they were really Vietnamese words?

Have you ever thought of why the word "father" and "mother" sound so the same in many languages?

btw, so i guess every Asian word is borrowed from the Chinese. lol

It is common knowledge that China has always been the most influencial superpower in East Asia. It shouldn't be a surprise that so many Asian languages have Chinese loan words. Look at today, many languages have English loan words because U.S. is very influencial.

If you have any evidence that "nan" (nam) is a native Vietnamese word then please enlighten us. Otherwise stop making your ridiculus claims.

Do you have any evidence to claim that "Nam" is borrowed from China?

Aside from being accepted and acknowledge by scholars worldwide except for maybe a few anti-Chinese Vietnamese supremacists like you? Hahaha

Scholars worldwide (especially the Western linguists) have been fooled by you people to believe that 60-70% of Vietnamese words are loaned from the "superior" Chinese.

Hahahaha...

Hey, if you have evidence to prove otherwise, feel free to share with us. You're the one making a claim remember?

Aren't you "superior" Chinese who have been claiming that Asian words are borrowed from you? Do you have any evidence to back that up? I once conversed with the Chinese linguists and they claimed that because those "words" had been documented in Chinese literature since the Zhou dynasty that's why they were originally Chinese. That's some awesome logic.

You can fool Western linguists to believe that Vietnamese words are borrowed from you but you're not going to fool people like me. It's kinda strange that Chinese supremists like to label people as "supremists" when someone's statement will "contradict" the Chinese egos. lol

lol, then prove it, tqt

I don't think we have to take it that far you guys and I think tqt was just suggesting that there might be the possibility of Vietnamese-loaned Chinese words, it's just a theory, nothing personal.

Yes, tqt, as a famous Vietnamese once said... "I'm waiting"... haha

Actually no one knows for sure what the origin of the Vietnamese language comes from. According to this site the most persuasive theory is that it came from the Khmer.

http://vn-style.com/overview/noidung/language.html

"There have been many theories regarding the origin of the Vietnamese language. The most persuasive one argues that the Vietnamese language previously belonged to the Mon-Khmer group of the Southeast Asian linguistic system, it was later transformed into Viet-Muong language (or old Vietnamese language) and then separated to form the modern Vietnamese language.In the present-day Vietnamese language, many words have been proved to contain Mon-Khmer roots and to be phonetically and semantically relevant to the Muong language.

Throughout a millennium of Chinese domination and under the Vietnamese feudal dynasties, the official language was the Han (Chinese), but the Vietnamese always demonstrated its strength for self-preservation and development. The Chinese language was pronounced in the Vietnamese way, called the Sino-Vietnamese way of pronunciation, and Vietnamized in various ways to create many commonly used Vietnamese words. The diverse development of the Vietnamese language brought about the birth of a system of writing scripts transcribing the Vietnamese language on the basis of the Chinese characters in the 13th century, called the Nom character.

Under the French domination, Chinese characters were gradually no longer in common use, replaced by French that was considered to be official language in administrative, educational and diplomatic affairs. Thanks to the National language that boasts the advantages of simple figure, composition, spelling and pronunciationm, the modern Vietnamese prose was actually formed and then accepted positive influence from the Western cultural language. The National language characters were produced by some Western evangelists including Alexandre de Rhodes. They cooperated with some Vietnamese to transcribe the Vietnamese language on the basis of the Latin alphabet for using in evangelism in the 17th century. The National language characters were completed and popularized to become a significant cultural tool. In late 19th century, publications were published in the National language characters.

After the August 1945 Revolution, the Vietnamese language and the National language characters have seized a dominating position and strongly developed and established itself as a multi-functional language that has been used in every field, every educational level and has reflected every reality of life. Today, thanks to the Revolution, some ethnic minority groups have their own writing scripts.

The Vietnamese language is characterized by mono-phonology with a concrete, abundant, acoustic and imaginary vocabulary and a proportionate, rhythmical, lively, flexible, symbolic and emotional way of expression, which tremendously facilitates artistic and literary creation. The Vietnamese dictionary published by the Center of Lexicography in 1997 consists of 38,410 entries."

I developed my own interpretation of what it means. Nam meaning "5" and Viet meaning "region" I'd like to believe it means people of 5 places or cultures since Vietnam ancestory stems from 5 cultures.
Okay give or take, i'm improvising, and it sounds cool shoot me. :P
Oh yeah and they all live in harmony and peace like the coke commercials.
bad american...
Jenny

hehehe nice try jenny, the meaning for "5" is năm not nam...

nam means south and male.

sigh...yeah I know..but ya just had to crush it didn't ya hehe
Jenny

I'm still waiting for our Chinese "friends" to prove that Vietnamese words are borrowed from Chinese. These "friends" have been claiming that they influenced our language and i'm still waiting for evidence.

Ok did anyone read my above post? I provided an article that says that it is still unclear about where the Vietnamese language came from but the most likely theory is that the language was influenced from the Khmers. What a shocker.

tqt, I think there's plenty of evidence that Chinese influenced Vietnamese. While I respect your suggestion that there's a possibility of Vietnamese-loaned words, I do not doubt Chinese influence on our language.

HAHAHA... that's like asking us to prove to you gravity exists or the world is round.

You were the one who claimed that Chinese borrowed words from Vietnamese and not the other way around. YOU should be the one providing evidence to back up YOUR claim.

"Come on, I want to see numbers!!!" Hahaha

The Vietnamese language and the Khmer languages are from one family.



I believe you Chinese have been claiming that 60-70% of Vietnames words are borrowed from you. Now prove it.

This is not proven yet. Tqt, please drop the argument, you mean to tell me Chinese had no influence on our language???

I didn't claim a thing hahaha... read up tqt

I just find your claim to be laughable, that's all

If my claim is "laughable" then the claim that you Chinese supremists have been claiming that 60-70% of our words are borrowed from you people is even more laughable.

btw, why don't you re read your posts. You have been implying that the word "nam" is originated from the Chinese.

Although I understand your urge to believe that everything Vietnamese have was created by Vietnamese, but that's simply not true. Whether you believe how much of Vietnamese vocabulary was imported from Chinese is up to you. But if you have proof that Chinese borrowed words from Vietnamese and not the other way around, please share with us. I would love to see some solid, reliable evidence on that matter.

Kulong now you know that's quite difficult. It's a good area of study though huh huh? Forgive tqt, I think he's being way too stubborn about this.

If you have solid evidence to prove such "phenomena" like "nam" is a Chinese word but not a Vietnamese word then i'm interesting to hear. Claiming something like 60-70% of Vietnamese words are from the Chinese without any solid evidence to back it up is just bogus to me.

Whether it's difficult or not isn't my problem I'm not the one who's trying to go against mainstream knowledge and try to prove that Chinese borrowed words from Vietnamese instead of the opposite.

When a scholar is trying to prove something new, other scholars don't give him or her a break simply because it's "too difficult".



I really wish I could get my energy back from typing my posts to you...

Look, I could care less what you think. But if you wish to convince other rational Vietnamese that Chinese borrowed words from Vietnamese instead of the other way around, you'd need some evidence. Good luck.

I meant non-linguists experts like us would have a quite difficult time trying to prove something at this moment with nothing but webpages to back up our claim. I was not talking about it being difficult as a scholarly field and did not suggest it's a hopeless arena.

So does that excuse the likes of tqt from making laughable, ridiculus claims?

Ok I guess no one's been reading my articles that said the Vietnamese language most likely came from the Khmer language, so basically your both wrong about Chinese influened the Vietnamese language and vice versa. End of Story.

So you, too, are saying Chinese didn't influence Vietnamese? Oh well, at least you're better than tqt, who claims that Vietnamese influenced Chinese

No it doesn't and it's his problem to provide the evidence but then again I wouldn't waste my energy on something I know is ridiculous, that's just your bad if you argue with him and waste energy.

If you Chinese want to prove that 60-70% of our words are borrowed from you (which you Chinese have been claiming for years), then you need solid evidence to back up your claim. You people have been claimng such word like "nam" is originated from the Chinese but it's not a Vietnamese words but the reality is that you don't have any evidence to back up your claim. The "best" logical argument that you Chinese linguists have ever given is that such word like "nam" had already existed in the Zhou era so it is clearly a Chinese word. lol

Byron I've read your article and books last quarter but it's still not proven that Vietnamese derived from the Mon-Khmer family. The operative word was "might have", that doesn't sound solid to me.

I didn't say Chinese didn't influence the Vietnamese at all, but for the Vietnamese language it wasn't influenced by the Chinese. I'm sure the Chinese influenced the Vietnamese in a lot of things but using the evidence I provided the Vietnamese language wasn't one of them.

The only reason I even wasted energy to notice his post was because I thought he might have some evidence as to maybe one or two Chinese words that were imported from Vietnamese, which is much more believable rather than having basic words such as "south" being from Vietnamese

But now that I know he was just pulling all of this stuff out of his behind, I am back to focusing on comments from more interesting members on AF, such as yourself

Let's go back to the Nom forum and revive it!

Right behind ya

I find it very pathetic that even some Vietnamese would believe that the majority of Vietnamese words are borrowed from the Chinese because the Chinese once ruled Vietnam for 1000 years or because the Chinese scholars or Western linguists say so. A rational person would challenge such statement made by these scholars, not to obey and believe in what they tell you.

China exists before Vietnam as a civilization with written language. Chinese writing on tortoise shells date back to the Shang dynasty.

I don't think there is any shame in saying that we borrow words from other people. English is notorious for borrowing foreign words. Look how rich it is.

Watch who you are quoting Doan Du. It was tqt who claimed that Chinese borrowed words from Vietnamese.

But like my article says no one knows for sure where the Vietnamese language came from but it is most likely from the Khmer. I don't mind if it did come from China, but I just want to show all the evidence and facts.

I personally believe that Vietnamese is most likely originated from Khmer but were deeply influenced by Chinese.

It's kind of like how Japanese and English are not related. But a large amount of new Japanese words are imported from English. Japanese and Chinese are not related either, but much of Japanese words are also imported from Chinese.

Chinese scholars are well-known for their ability to brainwash Western linguists or others to obey and believe that the majority of Vietnamese words are borrowed from the Chinese.

I did challenge Chinese linguists to prove to me that such word like "nam" is a Chinese word but not a Vietnamese word and the best argument that they gave me was that such words like "nam" had already come about during the Zhou era so it is clearly a Chinese word. That's some superior logical thinking from those so-called "experts".