What Makes Chinese so Vietnamese?

Vietnamese Chinese
What Makes Chinese so Vietnamese?

An Introduction to Sinitic-Vietnamese Studies

(Ýthức mới về nguồngốc tiếngViệt)

dchph

(Chapter Ten [X] continued)

Everything appears to be in order with the undeniable Sino-Tibetan and Sinitic-Vietnamese affiliation for most of the cited Sino-Tibetan etymologies above. What else could anyone expect from an etymological work like this? Listings of the etyma speak for themselves and their cognates are highly plausible. Also, note that the listings above are not inclusive, depending on what fundamental words are defined as 'basic'.

Unlike those basic lexicons in Luce's listings, Shafer's wordlist provides us with much richer resources of complex layers of Sino-Tibetan etymologiies of which selective etyma happen to map nicely into Vietnamese correspondents, phonologicically and semantically, and, most importantly, they are plausibly cognate. We could certainly further enrich the list with all other results from the latest results of Sino-Tibetan research if available and use those data to verify a wider range of lexicons against those etyma elaborated by Mon-Khmer camp, starting with those overlapping cognates in both Sino-Tibetan and Mon-Khmer languages to confirm where they originated from.

The cross-language etymologies in the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family cited above have actually changed beyond recognition as compared to those Chinese forms under investigation and, interestingly, as said, they appear to be much more closely related to the Vietnamese etymology. So, what is the problem with the wordlist in the previous section as opposed to other AA Mon-Khmer listings then?

Firstly, Shafer's wordlist on Sino-Tibetan etymologies, of course, by any measure, is inexhaustible, though, as some other items have been intentionally left out altogether from the list because the complexity for their cognates are not so obvious that we need to go through many transitional Sino-Tibetan languages in order to prove their affinity. The cited listings, nevertheless, provide enough data for verification of their interrelationship with that of Vietnamese and pave way to establish genetic affility in their etymological roots.

Secondly, we still encounter the same issues suposedly existing priorly in the Mon-Khmer to Vietnamese scenario, though, for example, the Vietnamese cognates with the Mon-Khmer cardinal numbers 1 to 5 cited by the Austroasiatic camp as usual to justify its classifying Vietnamese into the Mon-Khmer sub-family. As we could safely posit those Mon-Khmer numbers beyond 10 with Thai loans that are in turn cognate to those of Chinese, we could also explore other venues to postulate the origin of those Vietnamese numbers from 6 to 9 as they are found completely deviated from what appears in Cambodian, representative of the Mon-Khmer language.

Thirdly, those Chinese quotes by Shafer were mainly extracted from Haudricourt's Chinese lists. For the same reason, since all those etyma seem to have spread out in many different Tai-Kadai languages, it appears that numerous solid Daic-Vietnamese cognates turn out to be Chinese loanwords in both Vietnamese and Thai, representative of the Daic languages, simply based on their articulations being so close that they all must have originated from the same Chinese source. As a result, there exists no longer an issue in postulating their cognates with Sino-Tibetan roots via the Chinese medium.

In the next sections we will examine those standing issues that have posed hinderances – sometimes it appears like a mental block that has stopped the Sino-Tibetan camp to proceed further – in re-instating the Vietnamese seating on par with Sinitic languages. Up until now, it appears that nobody has ever uncovered Shafer's Tibetan wordlist to expose what was hidden beneath that wouldl certainly entice us to stay firm with the Sino-Tibetan theory and let us transcend above the minor numerical realm to shoot for the new discoveries of Vietnamese cognates in Sino-Tibetan etymologies. Let us be occupied with other basic items rather than the meager Mon-Khmer counting numbers 1 to 5 barebones to sway our conviction any longer as they will not make any languages to become kindred.

B) Issues in cognates of cardinal numbers

Obviously one cannot solely base on the similarity in counting systems to draw definite conclusion in genetic affinity because cross-borrowing phenomenon of basic words is not uncommon, especially in cardinal numbers, e.g., numbers in modern Burmese being a good case demonstrating such divergence, or as in the case of Chinese loans in both Korean and Japanese, the ordinal ones widely used in Vietnamese. In fact, there is no linguistic rule to make us to believe otherwise. In other words, even cognacy in complete set of numbers from 1 to 10 in any languages could not make them genetically affiliated.

Counting numbers in Vietnamese from 1 to 5, i.e., 'một', 'hai', 'ba', 'bốn', 'năm', are seen as similar to those numbers spreading out in the Mon-Khmer languages, e.g., in modern Khmer, /mùəy/, /pì:(r)/, /bɤy/, /buən/, /pram/, respectively. By the way, the Khmer 1-5 are toneless, though. Their phonologically similar forms of 1, 3, 4, show that they are cognate, so people apply the logics of analogy for 2, and 5. The recognition of their cognacy would negate whatever we can try to relate them to some other numbers in Chinese, which is just to play for fun with speculation.

Existing issues in comparative analysis for substantiating phonological connections between the Chinese and Vietnamese cardinal numbers with those listed forms appear in major Sino-Tibetan languages, or at least in Chinese alone, it is apparent that the Chinese and Vietnamese numerical forms do not show persuasively uniform patterns of sound change for the whole numerical set even with elaboration on 1 to 2, or 5 to 10.

However, for the dissimilar case of number 2 in Khmer for Vietnamese "hai", let us reckon that in historical linguistics, sometimes genetically-related languages are proved to share as few as only 2 cardinal numbers as cognates, usually two consecutive numbers, especially 1 and 2, having probably originated from "2 hands" representing a binary system. Interestingly, the fact that two-consecutive numerical similarities show in both Vietnamese and other Sino-Tibetan languages also appears to be true for the same matter, which complements and upgrades it into a complete binary 5-digit numericalsystem, i.e., 1 - 5 and 6 - 10.

Merritt Ruhlen in his The Origin of Language: Retrospective and Prospective (pp. 6-7) summarizes his findings on arbitrary vocables for number ‘2’, in the world's languages many of them start with /p-/ or /b-/ sound:

"Dixon [R. M. W. 1980. The Languages of Australia. Cambridge, Eng. ] reconstructs *bula ‘2’ for Proto-Australian, and Blake (1988) shows how this number has been used to form dual pronouns in the Pama-Nyungan subgroup: *nyuN-palV ‘you-2’ and *pula ‘they-2’. Two of the extinct Tasmanian languages (considered by Dixon unrelated to Australian languages) exhibit similar forms, Southeastern boula ‘2’ and Southern pooalih ‘2.’ In the context of his Austro-Tai hypothesis Paul Benedict (1975) pointed out the similarity of the number 2 in all of the major families of Southeast Asia. Benedict reconstructs *ʔ(m)bar ‘2’ for Proto-Austroasiatic (cf. Santali bar, Jeh bal, Khmu’ bār, Old Mon ʔbar) and *(a)war ‘2’ for Proto-Miao-Yao. He also considers Daic forms like Mak wa ‘twin’ and Austronesian forms like Javanese kěmbar ‘twin’ to be cognate with the preceding. In Africa one of the pieces of evidence that Edgar Gregersen (1972) oﬀered in support of Congo-Saharan (his proposal for joining Niger- Kordofanian and Nilo-Saharan in a single family) was forms for the number 2 that hardly diﬀer from those we have seen so far. In Niger-Congo we have Temne (kë)bari ‘twin’, Nimbari bala ‘2’, Mano pere ‘2’, and Proto-Bantu *bàdí ‘2’; Nilo-Saharan has forms such as Nubian bar(-si) ‘twin’, Merarit warē ‘ ‘2’, and Kunama barā ‘ pair.’ In Eurasia one of Illich-Svitych's Nostratic etymologies appears related to the forms discussed so far, but in these families the meaning has shifted from ‘2’ to ‘half’, ‘side’, and ‘part’. Speciﬁcally, Illich-Svitych (1967) connects Proto-Indo-European *pol ‘half, side’ (cf. Sanskrit (ka-)palam ‘half’, Albanian palë ‘side, part, pair’, Russian pol ‘half’, ) with Proto-Uralic *pā-lä/*pole ‘half’ (cf. Yurak Samoyed peele ‘half’, Hungarian fele ‘half, one side of two’, Vogul pāäl ‘side, half’, Votyak pal ‘side, half ’) and Proto-Dravidian *pāl ‘part, portion’ (cf. Tamil pāl ‘part, portion, share’, Telugu pālu ‘share, portion’, Parji pēla ‘portion’). Finally, cognate forms are found in Amerind languages of North and South America (cf. Wintun palo(-l) ‘2’, Wappo p’ala ‘twins’, Huave apool ‘snap in two’, Colorado palu ‘2’, Sabane paʔlin ‘2’).

With all the postulations cited above, the Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer number '2' may be related to Vietnamese "hai" for their having common root remote in time. With the same nature in Chinese, we can find that C 分 fēn (SV 'phân') means "division" and "portion" and 半 bàn (SV 'bán') "half", C 掰 bāi SV 'bai', VS 'bẻ' to mean (break off with both hands, or break into two haves), or 拜 bài for SV 'bái' ~ VS 'vái' (pray with two hands clapping together). The Vietnamese /haj/ for 'two' (SV 'nhị') could be possibly the diversion from the High Chinese /nhej/ for 二 èr /ə:/. Meanwhile, there exist other concepts of "2" such as "second" 二 èr for VS 'nhì' in addition, "twin" 雙 shuāng for SV 'song' ~ VS 'cặp', "pair" 對 duì SV "đôi", "couple" 倆 liăng for SV 'lưỡng' ~ VS 'lứa', "twice, again" 再 zài for SV 'tái' ~ VS 'hai', 'lại', etc., among other things as noted below.

For number 1 to 10 in all Sino-Tibetan languages, let us review some etyma of what we found with their cardinal numbers in Shafer's list as follows:

1 to 10 [ OB g-tśig 1, g-nyis 2, g-sum 3, b-źi 4, l-ńa < *b-l-ńa 5, d-rug 6, b-dun 7, b-rgyad 8, d-gu 9, b-tśu 10 ] (Shafer, pp. 21-23, 29-33, 37, 41, 56)
1 'một' [ M yī 一 ʾit, M Bur. ʾatś, Siamese ʾět_3 || **** Note: cf. the Vietnamese ordinal number: SV 'nhất' /ɲɐt7/ vs. VS 'một' /mot8/ ]
2 'hai' [ M èr 二 nyi\, O Bur. *k-in-hnis, M Bur. hnatś, Luśei hniʾ, Kapwi ka-ni, Aimol ăn-ni, Purum ă-ni, Kom ǐ-hni, Anal ă-hni, Śo hni\, Yawdwin, Tśinbok hni, S. Khami ni, Maram hań-na, Kabui (Si) kă-hnai, Kabui (Mc) kă-nai, Khoirao (Mc) hań-nai, Sopvama ka-hē, Śongge a-nai, Siamese yī\1, Lao nī_ || **** Note: VS ordinal number 'nhì' /ɲej2/ (second); SV 'nhị' /ɲej6/} vs. VS 'hai' /haj1/ (two), also, Vietnamese Central subdialect 'huơ' /hwə1/ vs. modern M èr /ə:4/ ]
3 'ba' [ M sān 三 sām, O Bur. *k-in-tʿum\, S. Khami tʿuń, Ukhrul, Khoirao kʿă-tʿum, Phadang, Kupome, Khunggoi ka-tʿum, Rengma ke-śan, Tengima, Kehena se, Kwoireng sam, Chin sām-, Siamese sām/ || **** Note: VS ordinal number: SV 'tam' /tam1/ vs. VS cardinal 'ba' /ɓa1/ (cf. Hainanese /ta1/, M 仨 sā). Also, Vietnamese variation /băm-/ in tens as in "35"="bămnhăm"="bămlăm"="balăm", cf. Hainnanese /ta1tap8lan2/. ]
4 'bốn' [ M sī 四 si\, OB bźi < *bźli, Siamese sī_1, M Bur. le\, Luśei li || Archaic West Bodish dialects Sbalti bźi, Burig zbźi (p. 78), West Himalayish languages Kanauri pö, Buman, Themor, Mantśati, Almora pi, Jangali pari (p. 134), West Central and East Himal. Dumi bʿyal, Khaling bʿal, Rai bʿalu, Thulung bli (p. 152) || Shafer: The only indication of primitive prefix b- being preserved are in the word "four" in certain dialects: Thulung bli, Tśaurasya pʿi, Dumi bʿyal, Khaling bʿal Rai bʿalu compared with OB bźi < *bźli. (p. 157) while in Northern Assam Taying kă-prei, Midu ka-pi having the ka- prefixes which are preserved from a Kukish *k- ancient prefix has been lost in other Tibeto-Burmic languages due to the following consonantal complex. (p. 186) Other N. Ass. languages: Kukish b-n-d'li\, Miśing, Abor a-pi, Yano, C. Nyising a-pli, E. Nyising a-pl, Apa Tanang pulyi (p. 193), Old Kukish Lamgang, Anal p-il-li (p. 252), Mara, Tlongsai, Sabeu -pali (p. 267), Luhupha Branch Kukish *b-n-dʿli\, Tśungli pezo, Longla pʿé-zé, Monsen 'pʿé-li, Khari pa-li, Tśangki pʿé-li, Tengsa pʿa-l4, Rong fă-li, Hlota mě-zú (p. 304), Dayang, Zumomi bi-di, Keźma pedi, Imenai pa-di (p. 305), Tśairelish, Andro pi-, Sak pri, Kadu pi- (p. 396), Melam a-bli, Khanang ă-bri, Meklam -bə-li (p. 400) | Baric Garo bri, Atong bǐ-ri, Ruga -bri, Tipora brui, Bodo broi, Metś bre, Dimasa biri, Mośang băli, Namsangia běli (p. 441) || *** Note: VS ordinal number SV tứ /tɪ5/ ~ 'tư' /tɪ1/ (fourth) vs. VS cardinal 'bốn' (four) in comparison of all the Sino-Tibetan etymologies cited above for this item "4". ]
5 'năm' [ M wǔ 五 *ńo/ < *ńa ~ OB lńa < Sino-Tibetan *p-l-ńa, Bahing, Tableng ńa, Burmese na\, Luśei ńa\, Dwags liańe, Anal pă-ńa, Purum, Kohlreng, Kom ră-ńa, Lamgang pă-ră-ńa, Abor pǐ-la-ńǒ, Needham p-l-ń@, Siamese hā\ || Southern Bodish Lhoskad, Śarpa ńa (p. 91), Eastern dialects Khams lńa (p. 111), Dwags liańe (p. 115), other Bod. languages Tsangla ńa (p. 117), Gurung, Murmi, Thaksya ńa (p. 123), W. Himal. lang. Bunan, Themor ńa-1, Almora ńa-ii (p.134), Minor group Dhimal na (p. 166), OK Mara -pəna¯ (p. 267) | Baric Garo, Awe bri, Abeng biri, Bodo broi, Metś -bre, Dimasa biri, Hojai -bri, Wanang bri, Atong bǐ ri, bərəi, Ruga -bri (p. 428) || *** Note: VS ordinal number 'năm' as in 'thứnăm' (fifth) vs. SV ngũ /ɲou4/ as in 'đệngũ' 第五 dìwǔ. Also, in Vietnamese there are variations in posterior position when '5' is used in tens, that is, '-nhăm', '-lăm', e.g., "25"="hămnhăm"="hămlăm"="hailăm". Cf. 廿 niàn ="hăm-" (20); Hainanese /-lan2/ ]
6 'sáu' [ M līu 六 luk, O Bur. *t-r1uk, M Bur. kʿ-rok, Kukish *t-r2-uk, Luśei ruk, Mara tśa-ru, Tlongsai tśa-ru (=8?), Maram să-ŕuk, Kwoireng tśă-ruk, Empeo (S) su-ruk, Tengima sǔ-ru, Kehena sě-r@, Chin. luk (the initial *r- < Ch. l-) (p. 32), Old Kukish Sabeu -tśa-ru, Miram -tsə-ŕu(ʾ)-, Lailenpi -tsəŕuʾ\, Lothu tsər(v)ị\ (p. 268), Meithlei tă-ruk (p. 280), Luhupa Branch Rengma se-ŕo, Keźma sa-ŕ, Imemai tśo-ro, Zumomi tso-ɣa, Dayang tsu-gwo, Tśakrima su-ru (p. 298), Tengima su-ru, also Zumomi so-ɣoʿ (p. 320) | Shafer: If the occlusive of *t- prefix had come into direct contact with the r in the Kukish and proto-Chinese words for 'six', as its phonetic correspondent d- does in Old Bodish drug 'six', we should have had Luśei ţuk instead of the ruk we find and perhaps Chin. t'uk instead of luk. (p.32) | Karenic Pwo tśu38, Sinhma sot, Thangthu sʿu (p. 423) || (Haudricourt) Daic *tśr@k, Siamese h@k, Lao, Shan, Tay noir, Tay Blanc, Nung hok, Tho sok, Dioi rok, Sui lyok, Mak, Bê lok (p. 504) || *** Note: VS ordinal number 'sáu' as in 'thứsáu' (sixth) vs. SV lục /luwk8/ as in 'đệlục' 第六 dìlìu. ]
7 'bảy' [ M qī 七 tśʿit, Kharao tśă-ri, Siamese tśěţ_3 || A W. Bod. Sbalti bdun, Burig ŕdun (p. 78) || * Note: V ordinal number: SV 'thất' /t'ɐt7/ as in 'đệthất' (seventh) vs. VS 'thứbảy' ]
8 'tám' [ M bā 八 pat, O Bur. *t-r1iat, Luśei rat, M Bur. hratś, Tarao ti-rit6, Langang tǐ-ret, Amal tă-rik, Tlongsai tśa-ru (=6?), S. and N. Khaimi tă-ya, Hlota ti-za, Tśungli ti10 || A W. Bod. Sbalti bgyad, Burig ŕgyad, -pgyad, -bgyad (p. 78), W. Himal. lang. Kukish t-rkyat?, Almora dźyad (p. 136), Norther Branch *tə-ryat, Matupi -Xŗēt (p. 251), OK Kukish *t-r1iat, Meithlei tă-rēt (p. 284) | Baric Garo, Abeng, Wanang tśet, Atong tśat- Ruga -tśet, Tipora tśa, Bodo źat, Mets dźat, Dimosa, Hojai dźa, Mośang tă-tśat, Sangge ta-tśat, Mulung tʿutʿ, Angwanku tat, Tśang sat (pp. 437, 438) || ** Note: V ordinal number: SV bát /ɓat7/ vs. cardinal VS 'tám' ]
9 'chín' [ M jǐu 九 kǔ/, O Bur. *t-kua, M Bur. kui\, Siamese ko\2, Luśei kua, Mara tśa-ki, Urkhrul tśǐ-ko, Phadang tśǐ-ku | Baric Garo sku, Wanang dźu, Atong tśiku, Ruga -sku, Tipora tśuku, Bodo sʿko, Metś sku (p. 441) || *** Note: V ordinal number: SV cửu /kɪw3/ vs. cardinal VS 'chín' ]
10 'mười' [ M shí 十 || A W. Bod. Sbalti pʿtśu, Burig śtśu (p. 78) || ** Note: V ordinal number: SV thập /t'ɐp/, VS 'chục' /tśuwk8/ ]
20 'hăm' [ Baric Muthun tśa, Angwanku ta, Tśang ha (p. 438) || ** Note: 廿 niàn VS 'hăm' (SV nhập) ]
100 'trăm' 'hundred' [ OB brgya, M Bur. -rya ( Bur.) || Other Bod. languages: Gurung, Thaksya bʿra (p. 123) || ** Note: VS /ʈɐm1/, cf. 一刀草紙 Yīdāo căo zhǐ: VS 'mộttrăm tờgiấy' (one hundred sheets of paper). ]

and, as complements to the postulation of V 'bốn' (4) and 'bảy' (7) note the comment made by Shafer for the 2 numbers distance themselves from those known Chinese articulaton and tend to approach those of the Karenic language:

We may have traces of other labial prefixes in the Karenic words for 'four' and 'seven' both of which have 'infixed' w which is not found in other Sino-Tibetan languages. But a b- prefix found in both these words in Old Bodish. Consequently we may legitimately inquire whether or not there is some connection between the infixed w in these words in Karenic and the b- prefix in Old Bodish.

From Old Bodish bźi four, Dwags pli, Gurung bʿli, vli, etc. I have tentatively reconstructed Bodish bźli and from the Kukish languages the Kukish reconstruction *b-n-d'li\. Actually I can only say that the prefix in this word was a labial which differed from *m- and *p- prefixes. It may have been *v- and *w-, and the Karenic form, let us say *vli, the prefix dropping in Pwo and Bräʾ li and through metathesis becoming lwi in Sgaw and in most of other Karenic languages.

A more daring suggestion to account for O. B. bdun 'seven' – in most other Tibeto-Burmic languages *s-Nis, but *nwi in Karenic – is that the form for 'seven' something like *sibdunis which with an accent *sibdúnis became O. B. *bdun. The combination sbd cannot occur in Old Bodish, and when some phoneme had to give way in Old Bodish it seems to have been the first: Sino-Tibetan *m-lt'ei tongue, O. B. ltśe, Sino-Tibetan *p-l-ŋa O. B. lŋa. But when the accent was *sibdunís, we may infer the development *sibunís > *siwunís >* sinwis Karenic *nwi and the *sibdunís – *sunís > *s-Nis in the majority of Tibeto-Burmic languages. Metathesis has frequently preserved consonants that otherwise would have dropped, as is particularly clear in Bodish dialects, and we may infer a similar preservation in these words in Karenic.

For our purpose, as we would certainly run into all the difficulties unsettled with the Sino-Tibetan numerical forms – b-, w-, m-, etc., as noted above – the Sino-Tibetan numerical cognates in Vietnamese are challenged by the likeness among those Vietnamese and Mon-Khmer cardinal numbers despite of the fact that the Mon-Khmer numbers overall are based on the system of five and in both Old and Modern Khmer there exist portions of populated loans from Thai counting system, namely,

10 dɔp (cf. SV 'thập', VS 'chục'),
20 mphei (cf. SV 'nhịthập', VS 'haichục'),
30 sa:msɤp (cf. SV 'tamthập', VS 'bachục'),
40 saesɤp (cf. SV 'tứthập', VS 'bốnchục'),
50 ha:sɤp (cf. SV 'ngũthập', VS 'nămchục'),
60 hoksɤp (cf. SV 'lụcthập', VS 'sáuchục'),
70 cɤtsɤp (cf. SV 'thấtthập', VS 'bảychục'),
80 paetsɤp (cf. SV 'bátthập', VS 'támchục'),
90 kausɤp (cf. SV 'cửuthập', VS 'chínchục'),
100 roy (cf. SV 'bách', VS 'trăm'),
1000 pean (cf. SV 'thiên', VS 'ngàn'),
10000 mɤ:n (cf. SV 'vạn', VS 'muôn'),

which in turn certainly were derived from those of Chinese, that is, Chinese > Thai > Khmer. With the whole counting system standing on one foot, one may wonder why the Vieanmese numerical system is the ten-based one.

Meanwhile, for the Vietnamese ordinal numbers that count on Chinese for the concept of 1st (nhất 一 yī ~ SV nhất), 2nd (nhì 二 èr ~ SV nhị), 3rd (ba 仨 sā ~ SV tam), and 4th (tư 四 sì ~ SV tứ) and so on as they have been in active usage, we can also take into consideration of all other related counting concepts such as

'chục' 十 shí 'tens'
'trăm' 百 băi 'hundreds' [ cf. 一刀草紙 yīdāo căo zhǐ: VS 'mộttrăm tờgiấy' (one hundred sheets of paper). ],
'ngàn' 千 qiān 'thousands',
'vạn' 萬 wàn 'ten-thousands',
'triệu', 兆 zhào 'million' [ cf. modern Chinese 一百萬 yībăiwàn (1 million) ],
'ức', 'ý' 億 yì 'hundred billion' [ cf. modern Chinese 一億 yīyì (100 billion) ],
'tỷ' 秭 zǐ 'billion' [ cf. modern Chinese 十億 shíyì (1 trillion) ], respectively,

số 數 shù (numbers),
đếm 點 diăn (count),
tính 算 suàn (calculate),
cộng 共 gòng (add),
trừ 除 chú ('substract' in Chinese it means 減 jiăn, though, while 除 chú actually is 'divide' in Chinese and 'chia' 支 zhī in Vietnamese (cf. 分支 fēnzhī: SV 'phânchi'),
nhân 乘 chéng (multiply),
mộtvài 一切 yīqiè (a few),
haiba 再三 zàisān (literally, twice and thrice, again and again),
nămbalượt 三番五次 sānfānwǔcì (literally 'thrice and five times', several times),

'Chủnhật' 主日 zhǔrì (Sunday) [ Also, 'Chúanhật', literally, 'the Day of the Lord', the same concept as in Chinese in modern Mandarin. The day is masked under the associative form 周日 zhōurì (châunhật), Cantonese 禮拜日 lǐbàiirì /lej4bai1jaht8/ (literally, 'Day of Ceremonial Prayers'). ],
'thứhai' 周二 zhōu'èr in Vietnamese that is the second day of the week after 'Chủnhật' or 'Chúanhật' 主日 zhǔrì (Sunday). Meanwhile, in the Chinese language the first day of the week starts with 周一 zhōuyī for 'Monday' and 周二 zhōu'èr is 'Tuesday' and so on – but remember that the 7-day week concept is relavely recently as opposed 'tuần' 旬 xún 'period of 10 days' and 'tuần' means 'week' in Vietnamese,
'thứba' 周三 zhōusān (Tuesday),
'thứtư' 周四 zhōusì (Wednesday),
'thứnăm' 周五 zhōuwǔ (Thursday)
'thứsáu' 周六 zhōulìu (Friday)
'thứbảy' 周七 zhōuqī (Saturday),

一月 yīyuè ('thángmột' or the first month of Lunar calendar),
二月 èryuè ('thánghai' or the second month),
三月 sānyuè ('thángba' or the third month),
四月 sānyuè ('thángtư' or the fourth month), etc.,

'thánggiêng' 正月 zhēngyuè or 元月 yuányuè (the first month of the lunar calendar, or 'January'),
'ngàyrằmthángtám' 八月十五 bàyuèshíwǔ (full moon of the eigth month of the lunar calendar, of 'Moon Festival day'),
'thángchạp' 臘月 làyuè (the twelth month of lunar calendar, or 'December'),
'bamươithángchạp' 臘月三十 làyuèsānshí (the thirtieth day of the twelth month of the lunar calendar or 'Lunar New Year Eve'), etc.,

Grammatically, strictly speaking, the Vietnamese numerical usage, sharply deviates the Mon-Khmer five-based one, showing striking intrinsic dissimilarities of numerical arrangement. In a Khmer phrase, for instance, when a number serves as classifier, or lexical co-efficient, most of the time it is placed after a modified noun while in Vietnamese it must precede the noun. Such Mon-Khmer numerical usage steers away from their common ground of cognacy from 1 to 5.

It is not we who make a big fuss about the etymology of Vietnamese 1 to 5 from the Mon-Khmer common stock while they would not actually make a bit more fundamental change for the true nature of the Vietnamese language. It is they who were in the Austroasiatic camp had done so attempting to attach the importance of those numbers with a genetic affinity among the Mon-Khmer and Vietnamese languages. In any case, it does not mean we have to go with the Mon-Khmer theorization at its face value then without taking into account of syntactic differences in numerical usages in the Mon-Khmer languages as mentioned.

For instance, the English numerical system started with the initial twelve counting numbers with the extra 'eleven' and 'twelve', not to mention other twelve-based stuff such as 12 inches equal to one foot, or names of the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th months of the Julian calendar, i.e., "September" (while the name actually means the 7th month; see next on the French counting system), "October" (the 8th month), November (the 9th month), and "December" (the 10th month), repectively, in addition to what the Roman's numerical system for the French that counts on the 'sixteen-based fusion' from numbers 11 to 16, i.e., un (1), deux (2), trois (3), quartre (4), cinq (5), six (6), sept (7), huit (8), neuf (9), dix (10), onze (11), douze (12), treize (13), quatorze (14), quinze (15), seize (16), then they continue on with dix-sept (17), dix-huit (18), dix-neuf (19), etc., and that is because all of them straightly from High Latin; however, amusingly, at the same time, the French still use 'septembre', 'octobre', 'novembre', and 'décembre' to designate the same months as those of the English language. We would need to work a bit to figure out out the true reason behind of why, how, and when sublimation of the linguistics of numeration occurred. Say, with respect to numerating mentalism in human mind, i.e., feeling more logical in counting with either 2-, 5-, 10-, 12-, or even 16-digit based system, the Vietnamese speakers, like any people numerating with only one set of numerical system in their language for that matter, would not have had the need to utilize two different numerical sets because that would consciously assert more mental efforts from the steeper learning experience.

Speaking of the Vietnamese, their most natural mental onset for numbers is to go with the ten-based digits, or decimal figures, because it might be the most intuitive thing for them to do and that happened to coincide and conform with Chinese mindset. So, their solid acceptance of other similarly Sino-centric ordinal numbers, i.e., "nhất", "nhị", "tam", tứ", "ngũ", "lục", "thất", "bát", "cửu", "thập", or 1st to 10th, etc., has been proved to be natural and popular concurrently in mixed use along side with the more accepted native counting system, that is, 'một', 'hai', "ba", "bốn", "năm", "sáu", "bảy, "tám", "chín"'mười', or 1 to 10, where the cardinal and ordinal numder are cross-referenced with each other, e.g., "nhì" vs. "nhị", "tư' vs. "tứ", "chục" vs. "thập", etc. The same Chinese numerical system has been also widely adopted in Japanese and Korean and both the native and the Chinese cardinal numbers co-exist and work in their advantage. So have the Vietnamese.

On the contrary, the Mon-Khmer people being born with a counting system based on the five digits embedded in their gene. Their collective mindset would naturally consider such five-counting system more logical than any others. They would be unlikely to borrow another half of the ten-digit set to add to their already existing 5-digit cardinal numbers because it would become something unnatural to start with. And, in fact, they did not.

The five-based counting scheme, of course, would not work for the Vietnamese, i.e., 5+1, 5+2..., which does not have a slight hint of such numeration in the place of 6 to 10. If they had been able to make do with only five digits as the Mon-Khmer speakers do, the Vietnamese speakers would not have to go the extra length to borrow numbers from another external source to complement theirs, i.e., adding an additional set of cardinal numbers 6 to 10 to their system, because mentally it would present a formidable learning curve with a degree of complication, which could be similar to the way we view the modern binary system as being in use in the computer language to mentally numerate and calculate for a result that is eventually being converted into decimal computation so that we as users would comprehend.

On the one hand, if we go with the Mon-Khmer numeration theory, the Vietnamese speakers initially had the numbers from 1 to 5 first, just like what the Mon-Khmer speakers had already lived with. Since the additional sub-set of 6 to 10 must have never existed previously in their system, they then must have further borrowed "sáu" (six) to "mười" (ten) from elsewhere at a later time, and in this case, that was the Ancient Chinese language to complement or make up the deficiency if their numerical frame of mind had been genetically wired from beginning in the five-digit mindset. That is to say, they must have never used the summing sets 5+1, 5+2, 5+3, 5+4. in the place of number 6, 7, 8, and 9, as naturally as the Khmer speakers having been accustomed to do, i.e., 'bramuoy', 'brapir', 'brabei', 'brabuon', respectively.

Let us be hypnotized into a utopian linguistic world, on the other hand, where the Vietnamese concepts of 'one', two', and 'three', or even 'four' and 'five', all could also be cognate to those same numbers that exist in Chinese. If so, the numeration of 6 to 10 would naturally a part of a complete counting system. In short, today's Vietnamese speakers – at least, the Kinh majority – were no aboriginals, period. .

As manifested by the extant 10-based numeration, it could possibly be that ancient Vietic speakers appeared to have already possessed the ten-digit numeral set prior to what had existed in the brain of the people who were born with the 5-digit frame of mind in the Old Mon-Khmer languages. That is to say, linguistically, fundamentally the ancient Vietnamese had already counted with the ten digits. That is the primary reason why we find it hard to reconcile the disparity of collective cognitiveness of the two peoples, i.e., the Mon-Khmer vs. the Vietnamese, if we accept the scenario that initially the ancient Vietic speakers had first started with the same Mon-Khmer numeration of the 5-digit base but later picked the numbers 6 to 10 to make up the decimal counting system.(U) Such a postulation would go against the view according the Mon-Khmer perspective that is absurd and illogic.

If the ancient Annamese root had been of the same Mon-Khmer stock, both racially and linguistically, their speakers could live comfortably with the five-based numbers; otherwise, the whole logics could have become something illogical to comprehend for the same matter as in the case of other Mon-Khmer neighboring languages – genetically their speakers likely of the admixture of Proto-Vietmuong people with those earlier Mon-Khmer immigrants from the southwest in today's lower region of Laos (see Lacouperie, [1887] 1963, and Nguyen Ngoc San, 1993, ibid.) – numerically, that utilized the same decimal system as the Vietnamese do (see Thomas, 1966, and Luce, 1965, ibid.), which could not, however, be explained as a result of linguistic contacts of those Mon-Khmer speakers in Vietnam's highland with the Kinh people in the lowdland as postulated by the Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer theorization, that is, as earlier mentioned, they had originally started with their first five Mon-Khmer cardinal numbers and later adopted a numerical subset of 6 to 10 derived from the Vietnamese ten-based system to further extend their five-digit rationalization. Such a hypothesis, however, might be unlikely for the reason that the Cambodian-Khmer counting system is cognitively five-digit based one and nothing could change that. We, nevertheless, as having gone back the the square one, are in no position to satisfactorily prove that in terms of etymology for now. Neither did those theorists in the Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer camp to account for the same issue. (M)

Now that we have gone the great length to bring Sino-Tibetan etymologies into the realm of Vietnamese basic words. The Sino-Tibetan camp could now, therefore, be in a better position to refute the hypothesis of Mon-Khmer origin of the Vietnamese language, of which numerical affinity is fractional to the whole linguistic base that could not negate the etymological affinity of Sino-Tibetan to Vietnamese. If necessary, it can still be used to establish the affiliation of the Vietnamese numerical cognates with those in the Sino-Tibetan and Chinese languages phonemically wIth the data provided by Shafer as in the etymology of numbers 1 to 10 as listed above.

To augment the argumentation above, what follows in the next section is just an attempt by the author of this survey to build the numerical case by means of cross-reference – as said, numeration being only a small aspect of the linguistic affinity matter – and whether such attempt is plausible or not, the result will not change the balance of the Sino- and Sinitic-Vietnamese vs. the Austroasiatic and Mon-Khmer words extant in the Vietnamese vocabulary. For this specific matter, they are just numbers, so to speak, no more no less, which cannot be used to postulate the Vietnamese genetic affinity with those Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer languages. In the elaboration of the numeral issue hitherto we could first play with some numbers here, suggestively, for the purpose of pushing ahead some rapport on the irregular sound change patterns to see if we could in this inviting encounter relate them to any Sino-Tibetan or Chinese etymologies that match the Vietnamese cognates; therefore, such an effort could in return give some cues on etymologies of Vietnamese cardinal numbers by following the Sino-Tibetan road. The whole process, as a result, could be then used as a groundwork for an analogical framework that might also be applicable to most of other modules of basic etyma revolving around similar concepts, i.e., chained etyma in the same category.

Theoretically, in historical phonological linguistics if there exist sufficient patterns of sound change for related words, usually more than six items in the same lexical category – specifically in this case, the modern Khmer pì:(r) for "hai" 'two' in Vietnamese being included here – then there are two possibilities that those etyma in the related languages could be of the same "origin" etymologically or simply "loan". "Origin" here exclusively means a word that originated from the same root while "loan" involves loanwords, including those in fundamental realm – not so basic that it could break any current theorem – either abstract or concrete ones as cited in the previous section with plausible cognates in many other fundamental words included in both Luce's (1963, ibid.) and Shafer's (4 Vols., 1970s, ibid.) wordlists that seem to show possible agreement with those listings in the Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan languages.

Returning to the Sino-Tibetan hypothesis, similarities are plentiful as demonstrated in Shafer's list in the previous table above, we could thus raise the question of the origin of the Vietnamese cardinal numbers sáu (6) to mười (10), and later, will return to một (1) to ba (3). In any cases, we have the right to suspect the Chinese cardinal numbers sharing something that are lexically related to those of Vietnamese worth attention.(T)

Let us examine these patterns:

六 lìu ’six’ sáu [ M 六 lìu < MC lʊk < OC *rhuk | FQ 力竹 | According to Starostin, for *rh- cf. Jianyang so8, Shaowu su7. || Shafer: Old Tibetan *drug, Middle Burmese *kʿrok, Lusei ruk || **** Note: ¶ /l- ~ s-/ is a common pattern with Chinese and Vietnamese correspondences, ex. 力 lì (SV lực): VS 'sức' (strength), 蓮 lián (SV liên): VS 'sen' (lotus), etc., and the notable correspondence is the rounded labial ending /-w/ which suggests some timeframe very near, less than 1,000 years perhaps? || See elaboration below and more of Sino-Tibetan etymologies in the Shafer's list above. ],
七 qī 'seven' bảy [ M 七 qī < MC chjit < OC *shit | FQ 親吉 || ** Note: Like Mandarin, most of other Chinese dialects are no longer retaining the final /-t/. See more of Sino-Tibetan etymologies in the Shafer's discussion on O. B. bdun 'seven' above to postulate the possible change for the interchange ¶ /q-(S-) ~ b-(P-)/, a common correspondence between Vietnamese and Mandarin, e.g., 巨 jù: SV 'cự', VS 'bự' (big), 耜 sì: SV 'cử', VS 'bừa' (plow), etc. (See elaboration below on 三 sān: VS 'ba' (three), 四 sì: VS 'bốn' (four). For the ¶ /-t ~ -j/, hence, /-k ~ -j/, Bernhard Karlgren in his Word Families in Chinese (1933. pp. 25-32 ) establised some interchanges form Archaic Chinese > Ancient Chinese > Middle Chinese > Modern Chinese (Mandarin) with which we can easily map them to Vietnamese sounds, e.g, 死 sǐ: VS 'chết' (die) ~ SV 'tử', 水 shuǐ: VS 'nước' ~ SV 'thuỷ' (water), 尸 shǐ: VS 'xác' ~ SV 'thây', 'thi' /t'ej1/ (corpse), 屎 shǐ: VS 'cức' ~ SV 'thử (feces)', etc.|| See more of Sino-Tibetan etymologies in the Shafer's list above. ],
八 bā 'eight’ tám [ M 八 bā < MC pat < OC *pre:t | FQ 博拔 || Per Shafer: Old Tbetan *brgyad, Middle Burmese *hrats, Lusei riat, Sbalti bgyad, Burig rgyad. || ** Note: ¶ /b- ~ t-/ is a common correspondence between Vietnamese and Mandarin, for example, 便 biàn: SV 'tiện' (convenient), 彼 bǐ: VS 'đó' (that), 必 bì: SV 'tất', 比如 birù: SV 'tỷdụ' (example), VS 'bảo': 道 dào: SV 'đạo' (tell), Shaanxi dialect call 爸 bā as 'tā' (dad). See more of Sino-Tibetan etymologies in the Shafer's list above. ],
九 jǐu 'nine’ chín [ M 九 jǐu < MC kʌw < OC *kwjəʔ || Note: See more of Sino-Tibetan etymologies in the Shafer's list above. ],
十 shí ‘ten’ mười [ Also, VS 'chục' | M 十 shí < MC ʂʌp < OC *ʈjəp || Note: See more of Sino-Tibetan etymologies in the Shafer's list above. ]

Let us examine some corresponding patterns for those numbers:

1) ¶ { L- ~ S- } class correspondences – liquid and fricative interchanges – are numerous:

蠟 là (wax) ~ SV sáp ,
臘 là (the 12th month in lunar clendar) ~ SV chạp ,
藍 lán (indigo) ~ VS chàm,
郎 láng (man) ~ VS chàng [ M 郎 láng < MC lʌŋ < OC *ra:ŋ ],
浪 làng (wave) ~ VS sóng [ M 浪 làng < MC laŋ < OC *ra:ŋs ],
愣 lèng (stupefied) ~ VS sửng,
力 lì (force) ~ VS sức,
理 lǐ (texture) ~ VS sớ,
犁 lí (plow) ~ VS xới [ M 犁 (犂) lí < MC liej < OC *rəj ],
亮 liàng (bright, pretty) ~ VS sáng, xinh [ M 亮 liàng < MC lɑŋ < OC *raŋʔs | FQ 力讓 | Hainanese siaŋ | Cf. 朗 *ra:ŋʔ, 景 *kraŋʔ (bright', 爽 *sraŋʔ (bright, dawn) which appear to be doublets. ],
螺 luó (clam) ~ VS sò [ M 螺 luó < MC lwʌ < OC *ro:j ],
蓮 lián (lotus) ~ VS sen[ M 蓮 lián < MC ljen < OC *rjan ],
率 lǜ (rate) ~ SV suất ,
羅 luó (net fishing) ~ SV chài ,
鼻梁 bíliáng (bridge of the nose) ~ VS sóngmũi ,
風浪 fēnglàng (stormy waves) ~ VS sónggió ,
榴槤 líulián (durian) ~ VS sầuriêng [ Note: Both modern Chinese and Vietnamese share the same Malayan root 'durian' (duri = 'thorn') dated some time in the 16th century.],

綢 chóu (silk) ~ VS lụa ,
叢 cóng (bush) ~ VS lùm [ M 叢 cóng < MC tsuŋ < OC *tsoŋ | ¶ c- ~ l- ],
久 jǐu (long time) ~ VS lâu ,
撿 jiăn (pick up) ~ VS lượm ,
潛 qián (submerge, furtive) ~ VS lặn [ Also, VS 'lén', 'lẫn', 'lánh' (hide) | M 潛 qián < MC tsiam < OC *diiam | ¶ q- ~ l-, ng- (OC *d- ~ l-) | cf. 潛逃 qiántăo (SV tiềmđào) ~ VS 'lẫntrốn', # 'trốnlánh' (to hide away) ],
刷 shuā (rub) ~ SV loát [ VS 'chà' ],
鄉 xiāng (village) ~ SV làng,
翔 xiáng (glide) ~ VS lạng [ also, VS 'lượn' ],
心 xīn (heart) ~ VS lòng ,
長 zhăng (grow) ~ VS lớn ,
澤 zé (swamp) ~ VS lầy ,
擇 zé (select) ~ VS lựa [ M 擇 zé, zhái < MC ɖajk < OC *ɫhak || ¶ z- ~ l- ],

2) ¶ { Q-(zh-, ch-, c-, s-, x-, j-...) ~ B-(p-, ph-...) } (affricate, fricative, and labial interchanges) : Words with these patterns are similar to those of 三 sān for VS ba (three) and 四 sì for VS bốn (four) as speculated based on Shafer's comments regarding { OB bźi < *bźli }.

池 chí (pool) ~ VS bể [ M 池 chí, chè, tuó (SV trì) < MC ɖe < OC *ɫaj ],
津 jīn (river bank) ~ VS bến [ M 津 jīn (SV tân) < MC tɕin < OC cin ],
七 qī (seven) ~ VS bảy [ M 七 qī < MC chjit < OC *shit | FQ 親吉 ],
三 sān (three) ~ VS ba [ M 仨 sā (SV ta) ~ M 三 sān, sàn < MC sɑm < *OC sjə:m ],
嫂 săo (sister) ~ VS bậu [ M 嫂 săo (SV tẩu) < MC saw < OC *saw || Note: VS 'bậu' is more likely derived from 妹 mèi: SV 'muội' (younger siter), though. SV 'tẩu' ~ VS 'bậu' so posited because there is a usage in modern Mandarin that a man may want call a woman as 'săo', 'asăo' 阿嫂, or 'săozi' 嫂子, similar to the English 'miss', which is in the same connotation as that in Vietnamese. So it is noted here to demonstrate the capacity of possible interchange between Mandarin 嫂 săo and VS 'bậu'. ],
曬 shài (sun dry) ~ VS 'phơi' ~ 'sấy' [ M 曬 (晒) shài < MC ʂai < OC *ʂaɨj ],
扇 shàn (fan) ~ SV phiến [ M 扇 shān, shàn < MC ʂen < OC *xen, *xens | FQ 式連 || Also: SV thiên, thiến ],
煽 shān (to fan) ~ SV phiến [ M 煽 shān, shàn < MC ʂen < OC *hen, *xens ],
商 shāng (trade) ~ VS buôn [ M 商 shāng < MC ʂaŋ < OC *taŋ | ¶ sh- ~ b- || ex. 商人 shāngrén: VS 'conbuôn' (merchant) ],
筮 shì (devination) ~ SV phệ [ M 筮 shì, yì < MC tʂej < OC *dhats || Also, SV 'thệ' ],
四 sì (four) ~ VS bốn [ M 四 sì < MC sjɨ < OC *slhijs ],
耜 sì (plough) ~ VS bừa [ M 耜 sì (SV tỷ, cử) < MC zjɨ < OC *lhǝʔ ],
艘 sōu (large boat) ~ VS bầu [ M 艘 sōu (SV tao) ~ phonetic M 搜 sōu < MC ʂəw < OC *ʂuw || ex. 艘船 sōuchuán: VS 'ghebầu' (freighter) ],
餿 sōu (distasteful) ~ VS bựa [ M 餿 sōu (SV sưu) ~ phonetic M 叟 sōu, sǒu, sāo < MC sʌw < OC *srōʔ ],
小 xiăo (little) ~ VS bé [ M 小 xiăo < MC sjɜw < OC *sewʔ || cf. 微 wéi (SV vi)' \ ¶ w- ~ nh-, b- ],
渣 zhá (dregs) ~ VS bả [ M 渣 zhā, zhă, zhà ~ phonetic M 查 chá, chái, zhāi, zhā < MC ɖa < OC *ɫa: ], etc.

疤 bā (scar) ~ VS sẹo [ M 疤 bā < MC pa < OC *pra: ],
板 băn (floor) ~ VS sàn [ M 板 băn < MC pɑn < OC *pra:nʔ ],
比 bǐ (compare) ~ VS so ,
並 bìng (parallel with) ~ VS sánh [ cf. 並行 pìngxíng: VS 'songhành' \ @ 並 pìng ~ 雙 shuāng \ ¶ p- ~ s-,]
怕 pà (afraid) ~ VS sợ [ M 怕 pà < MC pɑ < OC *phra:ks ],
派 pài (dispatch) ~ VS sai [ M 派 pài < MC phaj < OC *phre:ks | cf. 差 chāi: SV 'sai' (depatch) ],
聘 pìng (betroth) ~ SV sính [ M 聘 pìng, pìn < MC phjiaŋ < OC *phjiaŋh ],
別 bié (do not) ~ VS chớ [ M 別 bié < MC bet, pet < OC *brat, *prat || Note: 別 bié is a contraction of 不要 búyào, to be exact. ],

騁 chéng (gallop) (cf. 娉 pìng) ~ SV sính, VS phóng,
秤 chéng (steelyard) (cf. 平 píng) ~ SV bình, VS cân,
津 jīn (river bank) (cf. 筆 bǐ) ~ SV tân, VS bến,
走 zǒu (run) ~ 跑 păo (modern Mand.), VS chạy,
霄 xiāo (vault of sky) ~ SV tiêu; also, 霄 reads báo, bó, VS bầu, as in 'bầutrời'.

The same pattern also appears in dissyllabic forms:

并肩 bìngjiān (shoulder by shoulder) ~ VS sánhvai,
比方 bǐfāng (compare) ~ VS sosánh,
比肩 bǐjiān (side by side) ~ VS sátcánh,
並非 bìngfēi (do not) ~ VS chẳngphải,
傍晚 bángwăn (dusk) ~ VS chạngvạng,
分享 fēnxiăng (share) ~ VS chiasớt ,
聘禮 pìnglǐ (betroth) ~ SV sínhlễ,
起源 qǐyuán (originate) ~ VS bắttnguồn,
起頭 qǐtóu (start) ~ VS bắtđầu,

The intermediate patterns { /s-/ ~ /t-/ } and { /q-/ ~ /th-/ } are acting agents { t-(th-...) ~ b-(p-, ph-) } for the Chinese 七 qī and SV thất to change into 'bảy' /bej3/ (seven) as speculated through the invert pattern { B(p)- ~ T(th)- }, that uniformly occurred in the process of sound change from Middle Chinese to Vietnamese in the 10th century. Speculation of 'ba' ~ 'tam', 'bốn' ~ 'tứ', and 'bảy' ~ 'thất' will be illustrated in the list below, including dissyllabic words.

甭 béng (do not) ~ VS đừng ,
碰 pèng (collide) ~ VS đụng ,
嫖 piáo (intercourse) ~ VS đéo [ Cantonese /tjew3/ ],
婊 biăo (whore) ~ VS đĩ ,
笨 bèn (stupid) ~ VS đần ,
匹 pǐ (mate) ~ SV thất [ M 匹 (疋) pǐ < MC phjit < OC *phit | FQ 譬吉 ],
必 bì (have to) ~ SVtất [ VS 'phải' (must, have) | M 必 bì < MC pjit < OC *pit | FQ 卑吉 ],
比 bǐ (compare) ~ SV tỉ [ Also, VS 'so' ],
譬 pì (compare) ~ SV thí [ ex. 譬如 pìrú: SV 'thídụ' (for instance) ],
頻 pín (channel) ~ SV tần ,
幣 pì (currency) ~ SV tệ ,
俾 bēi (inferior) ~ VS tệ [ SV tỳ | M 卑 bēi < MC pje < OC *pe | FQ 府移 ],
鄙 pì (vile) ~ VS tệ ,
卑 bèi (mediocre) ~ SV tì ,
畢 bì (finish) ~ SV tốt [ M 畢 bì < MC pjit < OC *pit ],
濱 bīn (river bank) ~ SV tân ,
賓 bīn (guest) ~ SV tân ,
髮 fā (hair) ~ VS tóc [ SV phát, bị | M 髮 fà, fă < MC pjɐt < OC *piat || ¶ p- ~ t- | OC 髮 *piat ~> 'tóc' ],
道 dào (tell) ~ VS bảo [ SV đạo ],
燙 tàng (burnt) ~ VS bỏng [ SV thang ],
談 tán (discuss) ~ VS bàn [ SV đàm ],
投 tóu (put in) ~ VS bỏ [ SV đầu | M 投 tóu < MC dɣw < OC *dho: || Ex. 投票 tóupiào: VS 'bỏphiếu' (cast a ballot), 投資 tóuzī: VS 'bỏtiền' (invest) ], etc.

奔波 bènbó (busy oneself for) ~ VS tấttả [ SV bônba | M 奔 bēn < MC pon < OC *pjə:r, *pjə:rs || ¶ -n ~ -t ],
劍柄 jiànbǐng (sword) ~ VS #thanhgươm,
圈套 quāntào (trap) ~ VS cạmbẫy ,
突然 tùrán (suddenly) ~ VS bỗngdưng ,

This type of analogy is questionable, though, should we take into consideration the cases of ba (three) and bốn (four). It appears that we cannot establish any well-defined correlation between the Chinese and Vietnamese cardinal numbers at all but among other Sino-Tabetan languages. (See Shafer's elaboration on 'four' in the comment on the Sino-Tibetan item Old Bodish bźi above.) Note that we take the pain to speculate about the origin of the V 'seven' for the reason that they appear not to have it based on the decimal system. If we are able to find it as not having originated from the Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer languages then other numbers might not of the same roots as well, in this case, 'three' and 'four', and possibly the rest.

The only evidence for to conveniently speculate about the Vietnamese ba and Sino-Vietnamese tam (three) 三 sān is that the VS 'ba' /ba1/ corresponds to Hainanese /ta1/, a little cue buried somewhere in the lowest sub-stratum. The pattern { B(p)- ~ T(th)- } was the major occurence in the process of sound changes from 41 initials MC into those 20 SV ones in the 10th century (Nguyen Ngoc San. Ibid. p. 1993). If both Chinese /sān/ and Vietnamese /ba/ are plausibly cognate, ba might have undergone a process of dropping -m and changing s- (hence alternatively t-) to b- or simply evolved from an ancient Yue language as shown in the Minnan language such as Hainannese. If Hainanese /ta1/ could be a plausible cognate with "ba" /ba1/ ( cf. M 仨 sā ), we could in effect find other words in Chinese isoglosses that repeat this pattern (cf. M 山 shān ~ Hainanese /twa1/ vs. Sino-Vietnamese /san1/ ~ Sinitic-Vietnamese /non1/ ~> /nui5/ (mountain), and a possible đồi /doj2/ (hill) with two major interchanges /sh-/ ~ /n-/ and /n-/ ~ /d-/, and /-n/ ~ /-i/, respectively ). Sound change patterns like /tam1/ > /ta1/ > /ba1/ are diversed, just like the case of "biết" (know). The V "biết" /bjet7/ is cognate to /bat7/ of the Minnan sub-dialects including Hainanese, Amoy, and Fukienese and that in turn corresponds to /taj1/ 知 zhī (SV 'tri' /ʈej1/ => VS 'hay' /hej1/ as in haybiết 'be aware of'). If that is the case for 'ba', it is more likely that it had gone through a dissimilating process that shifted a rounded ending /-wm/ to the front and labialized to become /bw-/ and /ɓ-/ in a much later development in the Vietnamese language internally (cf. MC sam < *som, Proto-C **sawm, Tibetan gsum, gsum-po ‘third’. Also, speakers of Vietnamese sub-dialect 'Quangnam' pronounce /tam1/ like /towm1/, /ba1/ like /bwa1/.) The idea of sound change that occurred causing the transfer of rounding from the final labial to the corresponding initial is not uncommon as noted by Baxter and later by Bodman (1980) in their surveys. If such reasoning is noteworthy, ba must then be very archaic, which had existed even before the emergence of the Kingdom of NanYue.

The sound change from Chinese labials to Vietnamese dentals is noted and speculated by several linguists such as Maspero and Karlgren (1939), Arisaca Hideyo, Paul Nagel, Pulleyblank (1984), Nguyen Ngoc San (1993), and Nguyen Tai Can (2000). According to Pulleyblank, the whole sound change process can be summed up as follows: Vietnamese t- was derived from s- < ts- < psi- < pci- as if they are from ts-. Forrest (1958) credited to AC pj-, bj- and the process of palatalization before certain words beginning with s- were borrowed into Vietnamese. The invert process of s- > p-, therefore, can be deduced.

If the cases of bảy and ba represent anything meaningful, 四 sì (four) SV tứ [tɨj] ~ VS bốn must have gone through the same process. (See Shafer's elaboration on 'four' in the author's comments on the Sino-Tibetan item Old Bodish bźi above.)

3) If the cases of ba, bốn, bảy are correct, tám should fit into the same corresponding pattern { /b-/ ~ /t-/ } as well.

4) The pattern { j-(z-, q-) ~ ch- } seems to justify the case by itself: Chinese 九 jǐu ~ Vietnamese 'chín' (nine). In fact, the corresponding pattern is easy to find: 煎 jiān ~ 'chiên' (fry); 走 zǒu ~ 'chạy' (run), 足 zú ~ 'chân' (foot); 焦 jiāo ~ 'cháy' (burnt), 緊 jǐn ~ 'chặc' (tight), 正 zhèng ~ 'chính' (main), etc.

5) { S(h)- (x-, q-, z-) ~ m- } interchange is not rare if we examine OC intitials */s-/, */sh-/ that had given rise to MC /m-/ from the Western Han period. W. South Coblin (1982. pp 126,127) noted the following while investigating the paranomastic glosses:

戌 *sjwet ~ 滅 *mjiät
杪, 眇 *mjiäu: ~ 小 *sjiäu:

For modern Mandarin the pattern { S(h)- (x-, q-, z-) ~ m- } can still be established as follows:

xiăo 小 ~ mó 尛,
căi 裁: VS 'may' (sew) [ SV 'tài' | M 裁 cái, zài < MC tsaj < OC *dzəj | ¶ c- ~ k-(c-) | ex. 裁衣 căiyī: VS 'mayáo' (tailoring) ],
qìng 慶: VS 'mừng' (celebrate) [ M 慶 qìng < MC khɒiŋ < OC *khraŋs ],
shī 失: VS 'mất' (loss) [ SV 'thất' | M 失 shī < MC ʂit < OC *ɫit ],
xián 鹹: VS 'mặn' (salty) [ M 鹹 xián < MC ham < OC *grjem | Dialects: Changsha xan12, Shuangfeng ɠã12, Nanchang han12, Meixian ham12, Cant. ha:m12, Amoy ham12 ($); kiam12 | ¶ h- ~ m- < *OC grj- ~ m- || See elaboration on this etymology for 'mắm' (anchovy). ],
xiě 血: VS 'máu' (blood) [ SV 'huyết', also, VS 'tiết' | M 血 xiě, xiè < MC xwiet < OC *swit | According to Starostin: Viet. also has tiết 'animal blood' - an archaic loan (with t- regularly representing OC *s-, which was already lost in MC). || cf. huāng 衁 : máu 'blood' \ ¶ MC hw-(xw-) ~ m-, phonetic 芒 māng. According to Bodman (1980. p.120): M 衁 huāng < MC χwâng < OC *hmang < PC **hmam. 'An interesting hapax legomenon for 'blood' appears in Dzo Zhuan (左傳) which has an obvious Austroasiatic origin. Proto-Mnong *mham ('blood'), Proto-North Bahnaric *mham ('blood') ],
xiāo 硝: VS 'muối' (salt) [ SV 'tiêu' | M 硝 xiāo < MC sjew < OC *saw || cf. 硭 máng (SV mang): VS 'muối' (rude salt) ],
zuǐ 嘴: VS 'môi' (lip) [ ~ VS 'mỏ' | M 嘴 zuǐ < MC tsjwɜ < OC *tsjojʔ | According to Starostin, originally written as 觜 (q.v.) and also read OC *tɕej, MC tsje (FQ 即移) 'a horn-shaped curl on the head of birds and cats'. Tibetan: mtʂu lip, beak.],
強 qiáng: VS 'mạnh' (strong),
剩 shèng: VS 'mứa' (leftover) [ Also, VS 'thừa' ~> VS 'chứa' | M 剩 shèng < MC ʑjəŋ < OC *ljəŋs | ex. 剩飯 shèngfàn: VS 'bỏchứa' = 'bỏmứa' (cơmthừa) 'food leftover' ],
請 qǐng: VS 'mời' (invite) [ M 請 qǐng < MC chjɜŋ < OC *sheŋʔ || cf. 邀 yāo /y-/ ~ /m-/ (invite) ],
新 xīn: VS 'mới' (new) [ cf. 萌 méng (new sprout) ], etc.,

míng 明: VS 'sáng' (bright) [ M 明 míng < MC maiŋ < OC *mraŋ ],
mō 摸: VS 'sờ' (touch) [ Also, VS 'mò', 'mó' | M 摸 mō, mó < MC mo < OC *mha: ],
màn 慢: VS 'chậm' (slow) [ M 慢 màn < MC man < OC *mərans || cf. 遲 chí (SV trì) VS 'chậm' ~ 'trễ' (tardy) ],
miào 廟: SV 'miếu' (temple) [ cf. the interchange with M 朝 cháo: VS 'chầu' (attend the imperial court) ].

To put it in perspective, in the case of 'ten', shí 十 may not be 'mười', but it is certainly the etymon of 'chục' in Vietnamese as attested by its isoglossal Cantonese sound /ʃʌp8/.

All the assumptions of Chinese and Vietnamese numerical affiliation above, of course, are speculative and they have been negated by those Mon-Khmer cognates. The author just wants to feed those Mon-Khmer specialists some food for thoughts on other aspects besides those Vietnamese and Mon-Khmer cardinal numbers 1 to 5. Readers may want keep their mind open since everything is possible. If the cardinal numbers ‘sáu' (six) to 'chín' (nine) or even 'chục' (ten) in Vietnamese were to fit into the sound change pattern that is related to those in Chinese as foresaid, naturally we could question the genuineness of the first five numbers as being derived from Mon-Khmer languages.

Etymologically, in effect, the more fundamental the basic words are, the more likely that archaic sounds might have changed more drastically, sometimes beyond recognition and losing all historically phonetic traces, including fundamentally basic words, of which some were totally replaced by later loans like many Chinese-origin terms of body parts used in Vietnamese. (See Austro-Thai Language and Culture with a Glossary of Roots by Paul K. Benedict, 1975.) In other words, the closer the similarities are, chances are they are likely loanwords as seen in many of those Sinitic-Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese vocabularies in comparison with other Sino-Tibetan etymologies, like those etyma in the Daic languages.

Such a viewpoint is hold by the non-academic belief that is based on the reasoning that assumes that basic words are more static than others in high-level categories. We have seen that Shafer's etymologies in Sino-Tibetan languages manifest that paradigmatic axiom in this paper. For example, complex and multi-syllabic words such as

"cùichỏ" 胳膊肘子 gēbózhǒuzi (elbow),
"bảvai" 臂膊 bèibó (shoulder),
"màngtang" 太陽穴 tàiyángxué (temple),
"mỏác" 胸骨 xiōnggǔ (sternum),
"chânmày" 眉梢 méishāo (eyebrow),
"đầugối" 膝蓋 xīgài (knee),
"mắtcá" 腳踝 jiăohuái (ankle) [ SV 'cướckhỏa' | M 腳 jiăo, jué < MC kak < OC *kak || QT 踝 huái ~ phonetic M 果 guǒ (hoạ, coạ) < MC kwʌ < OC *kʷajʔ || cf. 踝骨 huáigǔ: VS 'mắtcá' (ankle bone) ] , etc.,

were much vulnerable to changes and easier succumbed to many factors such as dialectal variants after they were loaned into the targeted language. The only exceptions are those that fall into the category that support many fundamental basic words, largely pronounced with very simple monosyllabic sounds, though, such as "ba" 爸 bā (dad), "má" 媽 mā (mom), "mắt" 目 mù (eye), "xơi" 食 shí (eat), "uống" 飲 yǐn (drink), "đất" 土 tǔ (soil), etc., that mostly retain the same articulation; it is more or less so because not all world's languages share the same articulation. The whole theory as such does not contradict the principles of tonal development that they originally consisted of clusters of consonantal initials sans tonality from an ancestral language to have evolved into those tonal languages with simple initials like what appears today, based on Maspero's theory of tonegenesis.

One could see that by rationalizing that many Sino-Tibetan languages such as Chinese or those of Burmic and Daic languages of the same root had started out with the same basic words at a very early ancient stage and each one later went a separate route during a span of several thousand years. That is evidently true in the context that living languages are not fossilized but constantly in dynamic change to evolve from primitive to sophisticated stages, especially for those that must have undergone tremendous change from toneless consonantal clusters to tonal system to differentiate meanings, in this case, the monosyllabic Old Chinese. In fact, drastic sound change phenomena are commonly seen in any languages such as those cognates in Indo-European ones, not to mention semantic shifting that would divert one's attention to other lexical entities and miss a etymological target,for instance, the English names of the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th months of the Julian calendar, i.e., "September" (while the name actually means the 7th month), "October" (the 8th month), November (the 9th month), and "December" (the 10th month), repectively, and the French use similar calendar scheme, and othe including French 'route' ~ English /ru:t/ and /raut/ or French 'mercy' (thankfulness) ~ English /'mɜsi/ (compassion), etc..

One may say the illustrations of the etymological postulation of sáu, bảy, tám, chín, mười are not convincing enough. Let us go back and review other patterns that repeat between Chinese and Vietnamese like the cases bảy, ba, bốn with the pattern { S- ~ B- } and then continue on to the cases of một ‘one’, hai ‘two’. This short list, like other cases illustrated above, is by no means exhaustive:

một ‘one’ < nhất (SV) [ Also Vietnamese 'mốt' as in 'hămmốt' (twenty-one) | M 一 yì < MC ʔjit < OC *ʔit < PC **ʔɨt (~ɠ-) || According to Nguyen Ngoc San (Ibid., p. 74), all the MC initial consonants l-, m-, n-, nh-, ng- had their correspondences in Sino-Vietnamese and when they were imported into the targeted language, all became words of the lower register tones, i.e., /~/ ngã and /./ nặng, except for the case of "nhất", that is supposedly nhật", hence, "một".].

The pattern { /y-/ ~ /m-/ } :

yì 溢: VS 'mứa' (spill),
yì 蟻: VS 'mối' (termite),
yún 雲: VS 'mây' (cloud),
yǔ 雨: VS 'mưa' (rain),
yăo 舀: VS 'môi'~ 'muỗng' ('scoop) [ Also, 'múc' (ladle out) | M 舀 yăo < MC jiaw < OC *jiaw || cf. 舀粥 yăozhōu: VS 'múccháo' (scoop out poridge) ],
yóu 魷: VS 'mực' (cuttlefish) [ M 魷 yóu | Note: phonetic stem M 尤 yóu < MC jəu < OC *wjə || cf. 魷魚 yóuyú = later word 墨魚 mòyú (VS cámực) ],
yăn 眼: (modern usage) ~ mù 目 (old usage) VS 'mắt' (eye),
yāo 邀: VS 'mời' ~ vời' (invite) [ cf. M 請 qǐng (VS 'xin') ],
yán 鹽: VS 'muối' (salt) [ SV 'diêm' | M 鹽 yán < MC jem < OC *am | According to Starostin: Protoform: *jam (r-). Meaning: salt. Chinese: 鹽 *lam salt; 鹹 *grjə:m salt, salty. Tibetan: rgjam-chwa a k. of salt, like crystal, lgyjam-chwa a k. of rock-salt. Burmese: jamh gunpowder, saltpetre. Kachin: jam1 a k. of salt. Kiranti: *ru\m. Comments: Ben. 57; Mat. 184 || Shafer quoted Haudricourt's posit of this word as 硝 xiāo for 'salt'; however, there also exists 硭 máng: SV 'mang' (rude salt) for VS 'muối', cf. 盲 máng: VS 'mù'. ],
giây [dʒjʌj]: 秒 miăo (second) [ M 秒 miăo < MC mjɜw < OC *mews ],
dân [jʌn1]: 民 mín (citizen),
diện [jiən6]: 面 miàn (face),
diệu [jiəw6]: 秒 miào (miraculous),
di [ji1]: 彌 mí (full),
danh [jajɲ1]: 名 míng (name),
diệuvợi [jew6vəj6]: 渺茫 miăománg ('meagerly),

hai ~ 二 èr (two): SV nhị [ Also, VS 'nhì' as in 'thứnhì' (the second) | M 二 èr < MC ɳɨ < OC *nijs | FQ 而至 || Note the dropping of /ɲ- SV 'nhị' /ɲej6/ < /hei1/. cf. 而 MC /ɲej/ ~> ér/. Speakers of the Vietnamese subdialect of Quangnam in Central Vietnam pronounce "hai" as "huơ" /hwə1/],

and,

năm ~ 五 (five): SV ngũ [ Also, VS 'nhăm' ~ 'dăm' ~ 'lăm' as in 'hămlăm' (twenty-five) | M 五 wǔ < MC ŋɔ < OC *ŋha:ʔ | cf. Hainanese /lan2/ | According to Starostin: be five. For *ŋh- cf. Xiamen ŋo|6, Chaozhou ŋou4, Fuzhou ŋo6, Jianou ŋu6, ŋu8. Other dialects: Wenzhou: ŋ22, Changsha: ŋ2; u 2 (lit.), Meixian: ŋ2, Cant.: ŋ22 || Note: For Sino-Tibetan cognates, see Shafer's list in the previous section. ]

The pattern { /w-/ ~ /n-/ } :

偎 wèi: VS 'nể' (respect),
味 wèi: VS 'nếm' (taste),
臥 wò: VS 'nằm' (lie down), Also: VS 'ngủ' (sleep),
握 wò: VS 'nắm' (hold),
國 guó: SV 'quốc' [wʌk7], VS 'nước' (nation),
鍋 guò: SV 'qua' [wa1], VS 'nồi' (pot),
話 huà [hwa4]: VS 'nói' (talk),
壓 yā: VS ép (suppress),
爺 yě: VS 'nội' (grandfather),
語 yǔ: SV 'ngữ', VS 'nói' (speak), etc.,

Nasalization of Sino-Vietnamese numerical vocalism gave rise to articulation of Vietnamese numbers

'nhất' > /jãt/ > /mât/ > 'một'
'nhị' > /nhej/ > /hẽj/ > 'hai'
'tam' > /tã/ > /ɗa/ > 'ba' /ɓa/
'tứ' > /psɨĩ/ > /bữj/ > 'bốn'
'ngũ' > /ngâu/ > /nẫw/ > 'năm'
'lục' > /lũkw/ > /sũkw/ > 'sáu'
'thất' > /tất/ > /bẫt/ > 'bảy'
'bát' > /ɓãt/ > /tãt/ > 'tám'
'cửu' > /kjɨũ/ > /k'jữw/ > 'chín'
'thập' > /chẫp/ > /mập/ > 'mười'

* /~/ = nasalized

Articulation of each Vietnamese number appears to have evolved as late as sometime during the period from Ancient Chinese or early Middle Chinese, around 3rd to 7th centries; they might have been formed via the vocalism being nasalized in ancient Vietnamese, as still being demonstrated in its northern central dialects before their ealy speakers cross the 16th parallel to emigrate southward and resttled in the ancient Champa Kingdom statrting from the 13th century. Today's Huế subdialect conservatively holds tightly the 4 tones in the lower register and left out the upper 4-toned register in the ancient past that might reflect vocal contours of what the ancient Vietnamese might have sounded like. The phenomenon can be explained with the fact that the Kinh people who lived in the lowland and metropolis must have had to transact with the Han colonialists in monetary terms in trading at least from 111 B.C. all along to 939 A.D. The numbers, therefore, must have been the first lexicons that had formed their early Annamese language. In terms of articulation, to test our hypothesis, attempt to pronounce the SV "nhất", so do the same with the "thập", vocally phonemically, with the nasalized initial /m-/; similarly. Try more of it with SV "nhị" /nhei6/ by dropping /n-/ from /nh-/ and retaining /h-/. Keep doing that with SV "tam", "tứ", "thất" with initial /b-/ (cf. Hainanese /ta1/, /tej3/, /sit5/), SV "lục" with /s-/ (cf. Mand. lìu), and "ngũ" (cf. Cant. /ɱ4/) with /n-/ /(nh-/, /l-)/, "bát" with /t-/, "cửu" with /ch-/. All went through nasalizing and denasalizing cycle. What goes around comes around, which explains the extant terms of 6 to 10 in Vietnamese but the Khmer language does not have.

In any cases, the Sino-Vietnamese numeral readings are widely used in numerous popular contexts, not only with ordinal numerals alone, for instance,

"nhất nghệ tinh nhất thân vinh" (one specialized skill will enhance one's profession greatly),
"nhịthậptứ hiếu" (24 filial piety advices),
"bấtquátam" (no more than thrice in any cicumstances),
"tứđỗtường" (four addictive pleasures),
"mâmngũquả" (tray of five different lucky fruits),
"lụcsúctranhcông" (six domestic animals fight for its own recognition),
"thấttìnhlụcdục" (seven passions and six desires),
"thấtđiênbátđảo" ("eight downs and seven ups" – chaotic),
"chốncửutrùng" (the nine off-limited royal palaces),
"thậpmỹthậptoàn" (ten perfections),

"báchchiếnbáchthắng" (a hundred victories out of a hundred fights),
"tìnhthiênthu" (love that last a thousand autumns),
"vạnsựkhởđầunan" (ten-thousand things start with difficulties),
"chín triệu chín chín chín ... đoáhoahồng" (9,999,999 roses),
"hàng tỷ người trên quảđất" (over a billion people on the globe),
"một phần ức giây" (one trillionth of a second),

and so on so forth, respectively, which could be easily understood by Chinese speakers if the Vietnamese texts are translated word by word. Any Vietnamese speakers can give you other examples similar to the above; they are randomly cited with no particular picks. We can go on and on to citemore so examples if we so wish. The point to make here is the Sino-Vietnamese numbers come to the Vietnamese lips most naturally as of second nature. That said, the Vietnamese numbers are much of the same nature, only with different vocales, but they all must have had deep roots in the Vietnamese collective mind.

Needless to say, the weakness of the hypothetical points made here about the origin of cardinal numbers in Vietnamese is apparently still lying in the resemblance of the articulation of Vietnamese "một" to "năm" with those of Mon-Khmer languages while keeping solid distance from those of Chinese that look askance. There would not exist a problem anymore then should we be able to lump them together as of one strain into one basket, or, in other word, had we been able to prove that either parts or the whole set of the first 5 Mon-Khmer cardinal numbers had been a subset of the complete 10 Vietnamese cardinal numbers in terms of the decimal base. Who can say with definiteness that partial cognates in numbers would make two distant languages genetically related? It is not necessary that the etymological logics, numerically speaking, would have always to be the Mon-Khmer ~> Vietnamese, but possbly the reverse direction. Again, be reminded that ancestors of the modern Vietnamese had not emigrated across the 16th parallel until the 13th century. Besides, too close a cognate is more dubious than a distant one.

In the hypothetical case of cardinal numbers, including numbers "tám" (8) and "mười" (10), their postulation for numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9, as analyzed and examined in an analytic approach as elaborated above could not be totally all wrong, though. Even though the plausibility of cognateness of the cardinal numbers themselves is uncertain and indefinite, including the argument about people's mindset of the five-based system vs. the ten-based one, the foregoing theorization is upheld as is each with its own merit in comparison to those Mon-Khmer numbers except for what was hypothesized in Benedict's elaboration on the numerical cognates in his proposed Austro-Thai languages (1975. pp. 29-30), all speculative. What has been discussed so far in Vietnamese cardinal numbers is simply a partial attempt to explore other etymologies that may be give some cues on how to search for other Sinitic-Vietnamese words with Chinese cognates.

To put things in perspective, the relationship between the cardinal numbers of 1 to 5 between Vietnamese and modern Khmer ended where the Vietnamese 'six' begins to share with Chinese 六 lìu and probably more other cardinal numbers to infinity, including their usages. However, the reasoning that the stronger culture usually exerted more influential power onto the weaker one could not be established given that the Khmer Kingdom rose in the southwestern parts of today's Indo-Chinese peninsula, where the nation of the Khmer people's Cambodia is located that used to be the most powerful nation in the very late period from 802 to 1432 A.D. For that matter, the mere Khmer and Vietnamese counting system share of the etyma 1 to 5 were probably be remnants of their genetic affinity if there had existed one before in the faraway remote past of prehistoric era, and the Vietnamese numbers of 6 and higher could possibly be late Chinese loanwords brought in to the ancient Annamese speech by the Han colonialists, so to speak.

C) The unfinished work

Etymologically, we can speculate that the difference in the sound changes in other basic words, similar to the numbers, might have been a result of phonemic transition that could have evolved either from Sino-Tibetan or even a form of proto-Chinese in a much later traceable time. For example, as 臥 wò (SV 'ngoạ') evolved into both VS 'ngủ' (sleep) and 'nằm' (lie down) that in turn each corresponds to OB *snyid and S. Bod. Groma nyiʾ-, respectively, instead of those Chinese variants of 睡 shuì (sleep) and 躺 tăng (lie down) that were of a later development as demontrated with their associative radicals 目 (eye) and 身 (body) to denote the meaning while phonemically the initials /sh-/ interchanges with /th-/, and /sh-/ interchanges with V /ng-/, and /th-/ with /n-/, respectively, all postulated having originated from the same root, so to speak.

In 1912 [1911], Maspero (1912. BEFEO, XII), and 1952, reclassified Vietnamese with the Thai (or T’ai, Tai, Dai, Tay, of Daic, so to speak) languages, members of the Daic division of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family, to further confirm its affiliation with those of Sinitic languages, so to speak, because Vietnamese shares a similar tonal system, among other things, equivalent to one of Chinese models.

In 1953, in rebuttals to such classification, Haudricourt in his La Place du Vietnamien dans les Langues Austro Asiatique (BSLP 49, 1953, pp. 122, 128) pointed out that those Daic-Vietnamese cognates found in Thai and Laotian were actually loanwords from those Mon-Khmer languages. In his book on the origin of the Vietnamese language (1954) he proved that by showing the process of the tonal development of corresponding word endings that was taking place from the 6th to 12th centuries. He concluded that Vietnamese belonged tho the Mon-Khmer sub-family of a larger Austrasiatic linguistic family.

However, Maspero's viewpoint was upheld by Forrest (1958) who inserted that

“before the Chinese conquest, Annam [Vietnam] and Kwangtung [Guangdong or Canton] were long under one rule; but everything points to that rule having been T’ai [Dai] rather than Mon-Khmer.[...] When first recorded by European Missionaries in the seventeenth century, Annamese [Vietnamese] still had compound initial groups of consonants in cases where they are now reduced to simple sounds. The phonetic history in this respect is parallel to that of T’ai and Chinese, and this fact, so far as it goes, tells in favour of a T’ai basis for the language rather than a Mon-Khmer” (p.102).

Until the late twenty century few linguists like Peng Chu’nan (1984) still believe Vietnamese belongs the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family. In the Chinese ~ Vietnamese scenario, Pulleyblank (Ibid. 1984) also acknowledged that “Vietnamese is typologically closer to Chinese than are either Japanese or Korean and, in many ways, even Tibetan, in spite of the fact that Chinese and Tibetan are genetically related while Chinese and Vietnamese are not (unless the relationship is an exceedingly remote one.)” (p. 91) In the same token, with such uncertainty, Roland J-L Breton and Harold F. Schiffman in their Geolinguistics (1991) decided not to group Vietnamese in the Austroasiatic linguistic family.

Until now, overall, the general belief that Vietnamese belongs to the Mon-Khmer group of the Austroasiatic linguistic family, or sub-family for the same matter, over the past 110 years or so still dominate the historical linguistic circle.

Theories change over times, though, especially for those historical linguistic hypotheses as new evidences and data are introduced. With all the existing prominent Sinitic elements that have permeated deeply through all linguistic areas to have made up the modern Vietnamese language, the author of this paper prefers to further pin Vietnamese, terminologically, into a newly designated sub-group called 'Sinitic-Yue' (SY) where "Sinitic" is technically on par with the Sinitic division under the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family in spite of the fact that Sinitic division consists of all Chinese dialects including the Cantonese and Minnan (Amoy) groups that will overlap with the newly-desinated Sinitic-Yue division – actually the Cantonese and Fukiense are so classified as of Sinitic languages for their more than 2,100 years of accumulation of Han's and Tang's Chinese on top of residual layers of Yue substrata – that is to say, they historically could be placed under this "Sinitic-Yue" division as well. Look at the maps of Sino-Tibetan linguistic regions and compare them with those of ancient Vietnam's history of territorial expansionism, it appears that the Yue linguistic pockets embrace the whole region of China South that geographically coveres all stretches of land in present China's provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, not to mention overlapping Jiangxi, Henan, Hebei regions where the ancient state of Chu existed hundreds of years B.C.

To some extent, linguistic differences among Vietnamese and other Sinitic languages are like those Cantonese or Fukienese (Amoy) as compared with other five major Chinese dialects. However, by all means the author did not implicitly or explicitly mean to say Vietnamese had been originally a Chinese dialect up until when Vietnam broke up from the Middle Kingdom some 1,100 years ago. In comparison the Cantonese and Fukienese have continuously evolved and developed under total rule by the Han Chinese for some 2,200 years B.P. Any historical linguists who know Cantonese and Fukienese will be able to pick up easily the extant Yue elements, lexically and syntactically, from the aboriginal strata that are clearly separate from the main stream of northern Chinese dialects that spread cross China from Shaanxi to Shanxi to Shandong to Jiangxi to Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan provinces.

One of the most important reason for renouncing Vietnamese being grouped within the Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer languages is that all those basic words about nature, family relationship, etc., are mostly cognate to those Chinese ones. In terms of basic words that might have existed in the proto-Vietic language before the break-up of the Viet-Muong group that the early Vietnamese had in common with those of the Mon-Khmer speakers, throughout 1,000 years as a China's prefecture and almost 1,100 years after Annam gained its independence, the Muong subdialects might have acted as a vehicle to export other Chinese-influenced Annamese loanwords to other Mon-Khmer languages that those syntactic attributes of an unidentified stratum as such; therefore, a substratum of meager basic words similar to those numbers of Mon-Khmer origin, including the cardinal numbers 1 to 5, have become a formidable issue as an obstruction to a resolution of linguistic affiliation.

In Vietnamese, speaking of Sinitic elements, many of them actually were infused with other Yue native residues. At first sight, we can quickly recognize virtually that all Vietnamese grammatical functional words were derived directly from Chinese xuci (虛辭), such as prepositions, conjunctions, etc., all cognate to those in Chinese of which each one could give rise to multiple Sinitic-Vietnamese functional words, e.g., 和 hé: VS 'và' (and), 輿 yú: VS 'với' (with), 雖 suī: SV 'tuy' > VS 'dù' ~ 'dẫu' (though), 然 rán: VS 'vậy' (then), etc., (see more xuci included in the Table 10B-2 below.) To wrap up, as discussed in the previous sections and chapters, we have seen that many fundamental words were also cognate to those in Chinese, e.g., 'mắt' 目 mù (eye), 'thấy' 視 shì (see), etc., as opposed to other native residues in Cantonese /pin5dow2/ (where), /fan1gao1/ (sleep), or Fukienese /kẽ/ (child), /bat7/ (know), etc., for the latter languages, to be exact, Vietnamese share many native basic words as well. While grammatical xuci functional words are necessarary to build modern sentences, nevertheless, syntactically, Vietnamese marks off from Chinese by some of its remarkably distinct grammatical feature of [ noun + adjective ] order as discussed in previous chapters; traces of them are still found in some southern Chinese dialects, such as Hainanese, Fukienese, and Cantonese, e.g., 雞公 /kei5kong1/ 'rooster' or 大老 /dai2lou4/ 'big brother' as opposed to modern Mandarin 公雞 or 老大. In other words, we can therefrom bring about the newly designated group called Sintic-Yue as previously foresaid.

As a matter of fact, even with those words that have been classed as such in several Austroasiatic and Mon-Khmer wordlists the author still could not associate them with anything else but either Sino-Tibetan or Sinitic etymologies, for example, "bò" ('ox, cow' as compared to "trâu" 牛 níu 'water buffallo') definitely having Sino-Tibetan origin (see the above Sino-Tibetan section for its etymology). For those Vietnamese lexicons that are not clearly identified as having Chinese origin even though there also exists words of the same category such as Chinese 哺 bǔ for Vietnamese "bú" (suck) vs. "sữa" (milk)which could be neither plausibly cognate to Chinese 乳 rǔ nor Mon-Khmer /tukdaohko/ but also possibly 'susu' as attested in Indonesian. The author suspects that the etyma might have lost their original meanings when they had not been in use and substituted with other homonyms in different context as commonly seen in many semantic shifting cases. They are what everybody used to see. How are about those Sinitic-Vietnamese etyma that many people have not seen quite often in other similar cases such as those etyma cited below that are not included in any wordlists having been brought up in this paper until now?

"đực" (male): 特 tè (SV đặc),
"mái" (female): 母 mǔ (SV mẫu),
"quà" (presents): 饋 kuì (SV quý),
"gỏi" (minced meat with salad): 膾 kuài (SV khoái),
"lạc" (in place of 'đậuphụng' 花生 huāshēng 'peanut' [Hai. /wun1dow2/]) 落 luò (SV lạc) [ ~ VS 'đậulạc' #落豆 luòdòu. Also, an etymon of VS 'rơi', 'rớt', 'rụng' <~ M 落 luò < MC lak < OC *ra:k as in modern Chinese for both 落花 'fallen flowers' and 落花生 'earth-nut' (Arachis hypogaea) (attested in Qing classics) which is obviously related to Vietnamese 'lạc' (earth-nut) although the direction of borrowing is not quite clear. Cf. perhaps also (as a more archaic loan) Viet. rắc 'to sprinkle, to dredge, to sow' ('to let fall') ],
'bánhdày' ('bánhgiầy') # 糍粑 cíbā, and 'bánhchưng' # 蒸餅 zhēngbǐng – modern M 粽子 zòngzi – (both being different kinds of glutinous rice cakes) as they have been previously believed to be indigenous glosses. This is an important point since because, in the cultural context, these words are closely related to the mystic legends of 18 ancestral Hồngbàng Kings of the Vietnamese people.
"dưahấu" (watermelon) [ M 塊瓜 kuàiguā (khốiqua) | @# M 塊瓜 kuàiguā \ @ 塊 kuài ~ 'hấu'. "Hấu" is a monosyllabic syllable not to be used alone, it must go with 瓜 guā as 'dưa' (melon) to make up the dissyllabic word "dưahấu". | M 瓜 guā < MC kwɑ < OC *kwra: || Note: as apposed to modern M 西瓜 xīguā, which becomes another word in Vietnamese as 'dưatây' (literally 'western melon') to mean a different kind of non-native melons. ],

For all those reasons above along with its undeniably intimate closeness with the Chinese languages – to be applied equally to all Chinese dialects – in its all capacity as soon to be discussed in this paper, the Vietnamese language should be grouped into the aforementioned newly designated 'Sinitic-Yue' (SY) branch of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family, i.e., which is, until now, nearly 400 languages and dialects as have been recorded and classified within this family.

With respect to the Tibetan and Chinese languages, it is said in the pre-historic time the Tibetans and the pre-historic “Chinese” were originally the same people who had spoken the same proto-Tibetan mother's tongue before it diverted into different languages later on. The formation of Archaic Chinese (ArC) – the ancestral form of the Old Chinese (OC) supposed spoken in the pre-Qin and Han era – is the result of the fusion of Tibetan and Taic-Yue languages spoken by the native people in the habitats around today’s Henan Province. On becoming itself, ArC speakers had been equally influenced by those aboriginal languages, which included those of the early Yue speeches. Norman (1988, p.17) speculated “the fact that only a relatively few Chinese words have been shown to be Sino-Tibetan may indicate that a considerable proportion of the Chinese lexicon is of foreign origin [...], languages which have since become extinct.”

We can imagine that the "foreign origin" languages that Norman mentioned must have been of the proto-Taic root, the same origin of the Taic stock that gave rise to all Daic-Kaida and other Yue languages that comprised of the ancient Vietnamese and other Cantonese and Fukienese, and possibly other Austrosiatic Mon-Khmer languages as well. All speakers of those languages had lived through the rule of the Han Chinese, especially the latter Chinese dialects that have gone through Sinicizing immersion and came out under the Sinitic Division and now become part of 7 major Chinese dialects.

The ancient "Yue" basic words in the ancestral Vietnamese also shared with those in Chinese that had existed even before the Han ruled the ancient Annam from 111 B.C. until 939 A.D. when it broke away from the last Southern Han State (南漢帝國 NamHán). By then, linguistically, even though the development of each language, i.e,, the Baihua (白話) used in NamHan and ancient Annamese, went separately on each own way, the ancient basic stock the Chinese and Vietnamese still shared are found in Buddist teachings in the era of "Phậtthuyết" (short form for Phậtthuyết Đại Báo Phụmẫu Ân Trọngkính" 佛說大報父母恩重敬), a kind of Buddhist Canon with the 15th-centuried Nôm language teachings on how to respectfully return good deeds to one's parents, which must have been purposely written for the common mass – as it said, "Cho người thiểnhọc nghĩ xem nghĩ nhuần." ('For the uneducated easy to read and pick up.') Phậtthuyết – in a country where Buddhism was regarded as a national religion then.

While most of the ancient basic words used in the "Phậtthuyết" were cognate to equivalent Chinese etyma that are still in use today, they are nowhere to be found in those Mon-Khmer languages. What readers see often are those basic Mon-Khmer words that were commonly quoted, but many of them could also be cognate to those in Sino-Tibetan and Chinese languages. Below are some samples of those basic words, among which some are grammatical functional ones, that you do not usually see in the Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer camp that specialists are yet to fetch cognates for them (readers can also save them as another worksheet for exercises.) Note that many vocabularies were selected in other ancient Vietnamese literary works, such as the 15th-centuried "Hồngđức" (or Hồngđức Quốcâm Thitập 宏德國音詩集) by King Lê Thánh Tôn, Quốcâm Thitập (國音詩集) by Nguyễn Trãi, the 17th-centuried "Kiều" or Đoạntrường Tânthanh (斷腸新聲) by Nguyễn Du, hexa-octosyllabic poems by Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, Lâm Tuyền Kỳngộ (林泉奇遇), etc., are also quoted here. (See Nguyễn Ngọc San. Ibid. 1993. pp. 95-104, 138-142)

Table 10B. Some ancient Nôm basic vocabularies and their Chinese correspondents

English	Ancient Vietnamese	Mon-Khmer (?)	Sino-Vietnamese	Vietnamese	Mandarin	Example

don't	mựa	-	mạc	chớ	莫 mò	"Nghĩa, nhân, lễ, trị mựa cho khuây." (Quốcâm Thitập)
only	chỉn	-	tận	chỉ	儘 jǐn	"Chỉn thực quannhân dạ sắtvàng." (Lâm Tuyền Kỳngộ)
already	đà	-	dĩ	đà, đã	已 yǐ	"Khách đà lênngựa người còn ngoáitheo." (Kiều)
solely	bui	-	duy	duy	維 wéi	"Bui có một niền chăng nỡ trễ." (Quốcâm Thitập)
even	liễn	-	liên	lẫn	連 lián	"Đạo làm con liễn đạo làm tôi." (Quốcâm Thitập)
to be	thì	-	thị	thị	是 shì	"Vô sự thì hơn kẻo phải lo." (Nguyên Bỉnh Khiêm)
there	nào	-	na	đó	那 nà	"Nào hồn ômã lạcloài đâu." (Hồngđức)
no	nọ	-	nã	nào	哪 ná	"Dânghương nọ kẻ nện chàykình." (Hồngđức)
though	là	-	la	là	啦 là	"Đêm chia nửa, khéo hay là." (Hồngđức)
then	chưng	-	đang	đang	當 dāng	"Già này chưng thuỡ mặttrời tà." (Lâmtuyền Kỳngộ)
endure	khắng	-	khẳn	khẳng	肯 kěn	"Mảy chút trầnai chi khắng luỵ." (Lâmtuyền Kỳngộ)
classifier (time period of the day)	ban	-	phạn	bữa, buổi	飯 fàn	"Cáo kêo eoéo ban trờitối." (Hồngđức)
when	thuở	-	thời	thuở	時 shí	"Gối mác nằm sương thuở Tấn Tần." (Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm)
mix, and	hoà	-	hoà	và	和 hé	"Ắtlà khôn hết cả hoà hai." (Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm)
how	há	-	hà	há	何 hé	"Lộc nặng há quên hơn chúa nặng." (Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm)
private	tây	-	tư	tư	私 sī	"Mựa nghe sàmnịnh có lòng tây." (Quốcâm Thitập)
wrong	thác	-	thác	sai	錯 cuò	"Sámhối tội thác." (Phậtthuyết)
what	sở	-	xá	gì	啥 shé	"Trong thếgian chẳng sở nào tày." (Phậtthuyết)
would like	sính	-	tưởng	trông	想 xiăng	"Sính làm con yênlành." (Phậtthuyết)
wish	mòng	-	vọng	mong	望 wàng	"Cảnhcũ non quê nhặt chốcmòng." (Quốcâm Thitập)
easy	nghĩ	-	dĩ	dễ	易 yì	"Cho người thiểnhọc nghĩ xem nghĩ nhuần." (Phậtthuyết)
s/he	nghĩ	-	y	nó	伊 yī	"Gia tư nghĩ cũng thườngthường bậctrung." (Kiều)
if	nhược	-	hược	nếu	若 nuò	"Nhượccó người nào ngheđược." (Phậtthuyết)
purchase	chác	-	thụ	tậu	售 shòu	"Chác được của rẻ." (Phậtthuyết)
dumb	nghê	-	ngu	ngô	愚 yú	"Nghêdại chẳng hay cóc." (Phậtthuyết)
stupid	dại	-	ngai	ngốc	呆 dài	"Làm những kế dại." (Phậtthuyết)
morning	dao	-	hiểu	sớm	曉 xiáo	"Hômdao đủ bữa bátcơm." (Quốcâm Thitập)
evening	hôm	-	vãn	hôm	晚 wăn	"Hômdao lòng chẳng với." (Phậtthuyết)
attend to	chực	-	chờ	tý	伺 sì	"Mộtmình chực mộ nhàđường." (Phậtthuyết)
worry	âu	-	ưu	âu	憂 yōu	"Chẳng âu ngặt chẳng âu già." (Quốcâm Thitập)
that	của	-	sở	sự	所 suǒ	"Vợcon cầmbắt mỗi của nươngđòi." (Phậtthuyết)
large	cả	-	đại	to	大 dà	"cảthẹn", "bểcả"
brothers	anhtam	-	hynhđệ	anhem	兄弟 xiōngdì	"Tin ngườixa làm anhtam" (Phậtthuyết)
ask	han	-	vấn	hỏi	問 wèn	"Vội han ditrú nơinao." (Kiều)
hear	mắng	-	văn	nghe	聞 wén	"Mắngtin xiết nỗi ngạingùng." (Kiều)
mother	ná	-	nương	nạ	娘 niáng	"Chẳng biếtơn áng ná." (Phậtthuyết)
love	dấu	-	ái	yêu	愛 ài	"Ángná lòng thực dấu." (Phậtthuyết)
quiet	ắng	-	yên	im	安 ān	"Từ chưng ấy ắng mất." (Phậtthuyết)
respect	vì	-	uý	nể	畏 wèi	"Nhà ngặt bằng ta ai kẻ vỉ." (Quốcâm Thitập)

After taking into account of all historical Chinese circumstances what contributed to the emergence of the later-to-be-called the "Han" had been the fusion of the ancient proto-Tibetan and proto-Taic people, or the original indigenes of China South (see Lacouperie. Ibid. 1966 [1887]) whose descendants spread out the mainland of China and later became speakers of variant Chinese dialects. Such observation is drawn from the deduction based on the fact that in Chinese there exist a great number of loanwords from the Southern Yue (南越 NamViệt) aborginals that made up many languages spoken in seven major states in pre-Qin era that were later collected in the Kangxi Dictionary and later designated as 方言 (dialect) as we happen to come across now and then.

As a matter of fact, there are numerous Chinese dialects and subdialects. Their differences lie mainly in their different pronunciations of the same written characters as derived from commonly spoken Mandarin (普通話 putonghua) in addition to some different usages. However, even choices of word usage though their grammar, those of Wu, Kegan (客赣), Minnan, and Cantonese are noticably different. While a Beijinger says, "你先說吧!" (literally, 'You first speak then!'), the Cantonese speaker in Guangzhou would say, "你講先喇!" (literally, 'You talk first then!); Beijinger, "我給你這個." (literally, 'I give you this.'), Cantonese speakers say, "我卑呢個你." (literally, 'I have this one you.'); a Beijinger says, "我說,你聽得懂, 你說, 我聽不懂." (literally, 'I speak, you hear to understand, you speak, I hear not understand.), an Amoy speaker would say, "咱講汝聽有, 汝講咱聽無." (literally, 'Me talk thou hear yes, thou talk me hear no.'); Beijingers say, "給我點水." (literally, 'Give me a little water.'), Shanghainese says, "撥點水我." ('Pass a little water me.'); Beijingers ask, "你有沒有錢?" (literally, 'You have no have money?'), Shaoxing of Wu dialect speakers would ask, "你啊有銅鈿?" (literally, 'You have copper coin?'), etc. However, except for the 5 big dialects: Cantonese, Minnan, Kegan, and Wu dialects, the remaning subdialects descended from Nothern dialect such as those spoken in Shaanxi, Shanxi, Shandong, Sichuan, etc., all other appears as variation of the other. (See Zhou Zumo 周祖謨 in Wang Li, et al., 1956. Hanzu de Gongtongyu he Piaozhunyin, p. 63). It is not hard to see that the other five major speeches were originally of the Yue languages, now they all grouped into Sinitic languages.

By the same token, interpretation for Chinese and Vietnamese lexical cognacy revealed that the formation of the "Vietnamese" language has repeated the same developmental process of any Chinese southern dialects have gone through, that is, they, Cantonese, Minnan, Kegan, and Wu speeches, absorbed a lot of northern Mandarin with a vast amount of its vocabulary on top of their distinctive layers in the fossilized aboriginal linguistic strata.

After the Han 'conquistadors' annexed the NamViet Kingdom in 111 B.C., the Vietic language was formed as the admixture of languages spoken by the Han colonists and the aforesaid Yue speakers, that might have included those early Mon-Khmer speakers moved in from the southwestern in today's Lower Laos, which used to explain the presence of the Mon-Khmer words of those peiods as ealier as 2 millenia B.C. They were descended from the stock of mixed race of those indigenous Yue natives in north of today's Vietnam before the Han infantrymen advanced en mass further southward to the ancient Annamese land, which would last for the next hundreds of years. That is to say, the long marching Han foot soldiers by then were descendants of the populace inhabiting across the whole region of China South comprised of those subjects of the earlier Chu State (楚國) and NamViet Kingdom. In Giaochâu (交州) prefecture, those who had stayed behind in the metropolitan areas and cooperated with the Han invaders gave birth to the early "Kinh" people. The Chinese colonialists, along with their infantrymen and displaced diasporas, later married the local wives and permanently resettled there; their descendants hundreds of years later would in turn rule the independent State of the Southern Viets called Việtnam, namely, another way to write 南越 NánYuè.

Theoretical merits of the historical development of Vietnam help explain the linguistic commonalities thare are shared by both Chinese and Vietnamese from the same roots from the ancient times in "China before the Chinese" as depicted by Lacouperie (ibid. 1887), which was proved to be truely close to archaeological findings as presentedby Zhang Zengqi (1990) in his Zhongguo Xinan Minzu Kaogu (Archaeology of Ethnic Minorities in China's Southwestern Regions) (中國西南民族考古). The artifact excavations in fact lend supports Lacouperie's theory about the Chinese languages, including those of what we called the Taic-Yue linguistic family. Specifically, ancient Annamese was formed by the fusion of

firstly, early proto-Vietic form with those basic elements of ancient Taic languages spoken by the native indigenes, who were later collectively grouped into the Yue category, having originally inhabited the whole region south of Yangtze River. The basic lexicons in the languages they had spoken were found in the Tai-Kadai languages, also known as the "Tày" language as attested in comparative wordlists cited in the previous chapter,
secondly, archaic forms of early Chinese languages spoken by the northwestern Qin people in the pre-Qin (先秦=pre-Chinese) era before 250 B.C.,
thirdly, the Old Chinese spoken by the Han (漢族 Hànzú) since the Han Dynasty (漢朝 Hàncháo) founded by Liu Bang (劉邦) and his generals, all having been the former Chu subjects (楚國人), had been also of Daic origin, whom the Vietnamese author Bình Nguyên Lộc (1972) who referred to as 'the Malay people',
finally, altogether the admixture of all those speeches spoken by those China South immigrants who came and resettled in today's northern Vietnam had started some 3,000 years ago and that phenomenon is still going on in the modern time. (V).

How is about the extant Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer elements in the Vietnamese language? History of the formation of modern nation of Vietnam has been that of the racial mixture intermingled with other languages that ancient Annamese emigrants encountered further in the southern territory along their migratory route that abosorbed the Chamic and Mon-Khmer words along the way, which made up modern Vietnamese both with Austroasiatic and Autronesian elements on top of the Taic-Yue strata descended from the past. They include remnants passed from the Muong languages. As history had its course, ancient Annamese speakers were those who had formed the Kinh ethnicity in ancient Annam from the Việt-Mường group (300 B.C. to 100 A.D) until the total split into Mường and "Annamese" branches about 1000 years ago. Modern Vietnamese evolved from the Ancient Annamese speech formed after its the break-off from the Viet-Muong common language. Meanwhile, the Mon-Khmer languages spoken by the other minorities inhabiting in Vietnam's western mountainous ranges along the borders of Cambodia and Laos had brought in their native words, including basic words as seen the Muong dialects. Evidently, their fundamental layer consisted of what lie underneath of such admixture of Proto-Chinese, Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, Early Mandarin and, surprisingly, including even Mandarin, that is, now being called 'Putonghua'. As of now, traces of those linguistic stratra of the ancient Yue speeches still show in those languages spoken by the speakers of other variants of Daic, Miao-Yao, and Mon languages in the China South region and further up north in present Vietnam. Obviously, their linguistic elements have become much more foreign to Vietnamese than those of Chinese ones.

Figure 10B - Overview of proportional Vietnamese linguistic "foreign strata"

Sinitic components		Vietnamese linguistic strata
Proto-Chinese (to 1028 B.C.)	«««««« o »»»»»	Sinitic-Vietnamese e.g., nạ, mắt, giò, đi, chạy, lá, cá, gà, gió, cộ, chài, cửa, etc.
Old Chinese (ca. 600 B.C.)	«««««« o »»»»»	Sinitic-Vietnamese e.g., tía, mẹ, buồng, ngủ, bếp, tủ, đũa, sông, buồm, tàu, etc.
Ancient Chinese (from the second century A.D..)	«««««« o »»»»»	Sinitic-Vietnamese e.g., giông, gió, biển, khơi, ngoài, giấy, viết, etc.
Middle Chinese (from 601 A.D.)	»»»»»»»»»»»»	Sino-Vietnamese e.g., mục, kê, hổ, giangsơn, quốcgia, sơnhà, etc.
Early Mandarin (from 1324 A.D.) and modern Mandarin	«««««« o »»»»»	"Sinicized-Vietnamese" e.g., nonsông, nướcnhà, ytá, bácsĩ, tửtế, lịchsự, bồihồi, langbạt, etc.
Sino-Tibetan and other foreign elements	««««« o »»»»»	Daic, Mao-Yao, and other Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer elements e.g., mũi, ngón, ổi, cốc, nem, ớt, bươmbướm, etc.

Aside from all resemblances in phonological and semantic aspects in the Sino-Tibetan listings by Shafer, the basis for their inclusion is further strengthened as we continue to examine the classic example of tonality that has set Vietnamese apart from the Mon-Khmer linguistic sub-family. It is, therefore, worthwhile to elaborate on the matter that the Mon-Khmer languages are toneless while Vietnamese is a tonal language like other languages of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family, one mirrored the other, so to speak.

Vietnamese in modern orthography visually is accented with 5 diacritical marks on repective modified vowels to differentiate eigth tones, e.g., 'nhược' /ɲɨək8/ (weak), ngược /ŋɨək8/ (reverse), etc.. To be exact, morphemically, the diacritics in combination with those endings -p, -t, k-, represent eight tones altogether as categorized according to Vietnamese and Chinese traditional phonological scheme in historical linguistics and that tonal system of 4 two-registered pitches fits exactly into the 8 tonal scheme as used in Ancient Chinese (Norman 1988, p.55). (音) Sticking to the tradional 8-toned scheme, we can justify many Vietnamese cognates in different Chinese dialects. For example, modern Mandarin 血 xiě (blood) and 目 mù (eye) will be a bit harder for novices to associate them with Vietnamese "tiết" and "mắt" than /tjet7/ and /makw7/, respectively. In other words, the 7th and the 8th tones help us identify the 2 etyma quicker than with the forms /sje3/ and /mu4/.

Just like what Henri Maspero (1912) proposed in his research is that tone is an inherent feature of languages and cannot be derived from non-tonal elements; a corollary of this view is that tonal languages could not be genetically related to languages which lacked one. (Norman. 1988. p. 54). While Chinese cursive scripts having been still in use in contemporary Korean texts as late as in the 60s of the 20th century, unlike tonal Sino-Vietnamese romanized words, modern Korean writings partially rely on context in order to make out the meaning of those transliterated toneles Chinese loanwords. For example, for each Chinese loanword below in the Korean language they are pronounced somewhat the same with no tonal distinction to differentiate their meanings when written in the Korean Hangul without their Hanja forms, or the original Chinese characters of those words. A classic example is of those Chinese loanwords such as

防火 fánghuǒ: SV 'phònghoả' (to prevent fire) and 放火 fànghuǒ: SV 'phónghoả' (to set fire),
水稻 shuǐdào: SV 'thuỷđạo' (aquatic rice) and 水道 shuǐdào: SV 'thuỷđạo' (aquatic duct),
首都 shǒudū: SV 'thủđô' (capital') and 手刀 shǒudāo: SV 'thủđao' (hand knife), etc.

That said, to grasp the idea of non-inherent tonality, try to pronounce those Chinese and Vietnamese loanwords in the English language, such as "chowmein", "kowtow", "taipoon", "sampan", "vietcong", "pho", "banhmi", or "aodai", etc. As they have been spelled without accompanied diacritics marked for tones, those words are mostly pronounced only with a little intonation by stresses which have no connection with the original tones. Compare those French or English words that appear in the non-tonal Khmer and tonal Vietnamese languages, you will see that some distinctive pronunciations of those foreign words in each respective language. Since Vietnamese is characteristically a tonal language, inherently, it would intrinsically accentuate English or French loanwords with tones. That phenomenon will explain why loanwords from a non-tonal language will become tonal in a borrowing language because they will be eventually dilated with additonal tonal contours to make a loanword more native. A good example of this case is that most of the foreign loanwords in Vietnamese are all accented with tones, e.g., caobồi (cowboy), quánhtùtì (one-two-three), 'súpquay' (subway), 'mêtrô' (métro), buộcboa (pourboire), phẹcmatuya (fermature), etc. (See some wordlists in APPENDIX A).

In terms of spatial usages for the same words of the languages listed in all the tables in the previous sections, it is noted that the Mon-Khmer and Vietnamese correspondences among their basic words are not uniform at all, and usually scatter here and there across several Mon-Khmer isoglosses. That is to say, those Mon-Khmer and Vietnamese cognates are on a collateral line, as in the case of numbers. The whole scenario is somewhat parallel to the situation where Vietnamese cognates found in different Sino-Tibetan etymologies as cited previously, which is not much different from the way many Sinitic-Vietnamese etyma are affiliated with those in Old Chinese (上古漢語) of the pre-Han period (秦漢), commonly found in Shijing Odes (詩經) of the Zhou and Chuci (楚辭) of the Chu courts. In contrast, compared to the lexical correspondences between the Sino-Vietnamese and Middle Chinese, they show their affiliation on a straight line, similar to that of Ancient Chinese (古漢語) to Middle Chinese. Coupled wIth all other linguistic factors – except for the syntactic module where a modified word is followed by its modifier – the Vietnamese linguistic affiliation all points to the Chinese connection as well.

Why is Vietnamese not grouped into the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family for all aforementioned justifications but still considered as a language of the Austrosiatic Mon-Khmer origin as being viewed in the current linguistic circles? In summary, they were quite complacent with some dozen basic words that are cognates to the Vietnamese equivalents and totally are not ware that more than half of the listed items – as based on the wordlists surveyed by either Thomson's, Taylor's, or Nguyễn Ngọc San – also share the Sino-Tibetan etyma as shown in Shafer's list. In this research, on the contrary, the author looks at the most striking governing factors that characterize the true linguistic nature embedded in Chinese instead with holistic approach, that is, to examine not only the roots of the Sino-Tibetan etymologies but also explore how they are related with Vietnamese etyma. We are talking about an intrinsic affiliation, explicitly or not, that is all about a living language. What makes it to become an independent linguistic entity with its attributes and peculiarities like sovereignty of its speakers' country with unique position of history as a sole nation of the Southern Yue that survived the Chinese dominion as compared with their cousin neighbors, Guangxi, Hainan, Guangdong, Fujian, etc. In other words, Vietnamese is characteristically more Chinese than Mon-Khmer regardless of how many spears being thrown at their long-rooted affiliation, unquestionably, as already having been over-emphasized throughout this paper. Think hard again in historical terms regarding the 1,000 years of ancient Vietnam under the rule of China, and you will find the light in the end of the tunnel.

To further lend supports to our SInitic-Yue theory, in the following chapters more of basic listings of essential Chinese etyma of Vietnamese cognates will continue on being cited next. It is the core matter of this research and its companion's database work entitled "The Etymology of Nôm of Chinese Origin", that will put forward, statistically, approximately over 90% of Vietnamese vocabulary, including almost all basic words, as of Chinese origin, many of which are made available only in this research. (S)

(U) Another example, the US Congress has long passed the Metric Conversion Act since 1975 from the current English measurement system but it seems to have been all into the void after it already passed the year 2015 for ful implementation. The point to make here is people were mostly born with the numerical systems being encoded in their gene, so to speak metaphorically.

(M) Vietnamese speakers counting cognitively with the ten-based concepts are conscious of all things that signify their meanings in pairs; they are perhaps seeking balance and equilibrium in the back of their mind. For example, for 'cặp' 雙 shuāng (double) and 'đôi' 對 duì (pair), there exist 'cócặp' 有雙 yǒushuāng (in pairs), 'songđôi' 雙對 shuāngduì (paired), for 'lưỡng' 兩 liăng (couple), there existing variant 'lứađôi 咱倆 záliăng (the two of us), "đôimươi" ('đôi' 對 duì + 'mươi' 十 shí = 20), "đôitám" ('đôi' 對 duì + 'tám' 八 bā =16), or 'chẳn' 整 zhěng (wholeness), 'sốchẳn' 整數 zhěngshù (even numbers), etc. Besides, for those numbers 6, 8, 9, 10, they are superstitiously believed to be the lucky ones, originating from the same minset as those of the Chinese, because they stand for "lộc" (blessings) 祿 lù, "phát" (prosperity) 發 fā, "cửu" (everlasting) 久 jǐu, and "thập" (wholesomeness) 十 shí (VS "chục" =10), as in the concepts of "thậptoàn" 十全 shíquán (completeness), "thậpmỹ" 十美 shíměi (perfection), etc., respectively, as opposed to other bad numbers such as 4 and 7 for their sounding like "chết" (death) as in SV 'tử' (死 sǐ) and "mất" (lost) 失 shì (SV "thất"), respectively, all of which is much at odds with the Mon-Khmer 'pram' five-based system, not in the same mindset. Just for reference, here are some samples of modern Khmer from 6 to 9, etc.:

6: pram-mùəy (five plus one)
7: pram-pì:(r) (five plus two)
8: pram-bɤy (five plus three)
9: pram-buən (five plus four)
18: dɔp-pram-bɤy (ten and five plus three)
25: mphɯy-pram (twenty plus five)
56: ha:sɤp-pram-mùəy (fifty plus five plus one)

and some alternative forms which certainly have nothing to relate to those in Vietnamese, neither do those Middle or Old Khmer.

(T)To refresh one's memory, loanwords in the 12 animal zodiac table in Chinese borrowed from the ancient Yue language could include 子 zǐ (SV tý, cf. VS 'chuột') for 'rat', 丑 chǒu (SV sửu, cf. VS 'trâu') for 'ox' (to be exact, an etymon for 'water buffallo'), 午 wǔ (SV 'ngọ', cf. VS 'ngựa') for 'horse', wèi 未 (SV mùi, cf. VS 'dê' vs. /wei4/) for 'goat', 亥 hài (SV 'hợi', cf. VS 'heo') for 'boar', etc., as they appear as representatives for 12 animals – with the only exception of 'hare' 兔 tù (SV 'thố', VS 'thỏ'), for some reason, that of taboo, perhaps, which has been used to substiute 卯 măo (SV 'mão', cf. VS 'mèo') while the sound of this word is obviously derived from /mew2/ to denote 'cat' as it appears uniformly in other languages including those of Daic and Mon-Khmer languages.

However, that may not the same case with the Chinese 江 jiāng: V 'sông' (river), 虎 hǔ: V 'cọp' (tiger), 狗 gǒu: V 'chó' (dog), 犬 quán: V 'cún' (poppy), or 牙 yá: V 'ngà' (ivory). Even though these words also have Yue origin, they could be considered as to have originated from the same root as those in Sinitic Vietnamese. This fact constitutes no genetic affiliation for what appears in Chinese characters as found in the Kangxi Dictionary, neither could we speak of those cardinal numbers in Vietnamese in comparison to what appears in Mon-Khmer languages. While the Vietnamese terms for 'răngkhểnh' (canine tooth, cuspid) or 'ngồixổm' and 'chồmhổm' (to squat like a dog) should be seen as having their origin from the Chinese 犬齒 quánchǐ (=犬牙 quányá \ @ 牙 yá ~ VS 'răng' 齡 líng) and 犬坐 quánzuò (犬 quán = 'dog'), respectively, both the Vietnamese 'nonsông' (country) and 'hùnghổ' (gung-ho) are culturally-accented loanwords from 江山 jiāngshān (cf. SV 'giangsan') and 猛虎 měnghǔ (SV 'mãnhhổ') which entered the Vietnamese vocabulary only after the Vietnamese language had been long well established and already developed with its own distinctiveness, that is, after it had completed its total break-up from the Viet-Muong group to form its own Vietic-Annamese. Nowadays, as a dynamic language of dissyllabicity in nature, many dissyllabic words of Chinese origin were built with Chinese materials even though they are mostly in reverse order, i.e., the modified + modifer model.

(V) Just like the becoming of what is known as the Chinese languages, the fusion of the "pre-Chinese" migrants who came from the upper north of the Yellow River with those aboriginals who had already been inhabiting in both sides of the Yangtze River bank in ancient times had given rise to what is now known as the Han and the later Chinese thereafter. The whole process is similar to how the Chinese linguistic elements got into some ancient form of Annamese spoken by the mixed populace of 'Giaochi' Prefecture (交州 Jiaozhou or SV 'Giaochâu' < '交趾 Jiaozhi') by the turn of the first century B.C..

(音) Let us pause a bit here to take an interesting note about tonality. In the last few decades, linguists and language educators alike in the USA, Canada, and other countries such as Australia and France, in doing research on Vietnamese and Chinese youngsters' process of acquisition of their mother's tongue have wondered at what age they acquire "tones" whether the kids pick them up when they first learn the first words in their life or later on as a second language. The answer for this question is definite: the toddlers have acquired the tones as they first acquired their mother's tongues, that is, the tones did not come at later stages of language acquisition. For those kids who were not taught their mother's tonguge until adulthood, they speak Vietnamese as western foreigners with somewhat monotonous tones, so to speak.

(S) I get this percentage figure by arbitrarily taking sample pages from a typical Vietnamese dictionary and count them. Give me a sample page, I will be able to show you approximately the same statistical number as foresaid, or you can just examine examples of those etyma cited throughout this paper you will reconcile yourself to that figure.

ā ē ě ī ǐ ă ō ǒ ū ǔ ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ ü û ɔ ɑ ɪ ɨ ɛ ɤ ə¯ ŋ ɯ î i̯ ʔ ʃ ö ä a̍ ü ɐ ɒ æ χ ɓ ɗ ɖ ɱ ʿ ʾ θ ñ ŕ ţ ť tś ı ć ¢ ď Ā ź dź ƫ ć ń ç ď ş ŗ ż ſ ņ ʷ ɲ ʈ ɫ ɬ ʈ ƫ ʐ ɣ Ś – ¯¯ ¯ ˉ – - Ø ¹ ̯ ̯ i̯ ¶ ± •iy•ɨʉ•ɯu•ɪʏ•ɪ̈ʊ̈•ɯ̽ʊ•eø•ɘɵ•ɤo•e̞ø̞ ə•ɤ̞o̞•ɛœ• ɜ ɞ•ʌɔ•æ ɐ•aɶ•äɒ̈•ɑɒ

Issues in cognates of cardinal numbers

Sintic-Yue vs. Sinitic branch in the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family

Overview of Vietnamese linguistic strata

Some ancient Nôm vocabularies

Vietnamese Chinese
What Makes Chinese so Vietnamese?

An Introduction to Sinitic-Vietnamese Studies

(Ýthức mới về nguồngốc tiếngViệt)

B) Issues in cognates of cardinal numbers

C) The unfinished work

Table 10B. Some ancient Nôm basic vocabularies and their Chinese correspondents

Figure 10B - Overview of proportional Vietnamese linguistic "foreign strata"

Issues in cognates of cardinal numbers

Sintic-Yue vs. Sinitic branch in the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family

Overview of Vietnamese linguistic strata

Some ancient Nôm vocabularies

Vietnamese Chinese What Makes Chinese so Vietnamese?

An Introduction to Sinitic-Vietnamese Studies

(Ýthức mới về nguồngốc tiếngViệt)

B) Issues in cognates of cardinal numbers

C) The unfinished work

Table 10B. Some ancient Nôm basic vocabularies and their Chinese correspondents

Figure 10B - Overview of proportional Vietnamese linguistic "foreign strata"

Vietnamese Chinese
What Makes Chinese so Vietnamese?