Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary


Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary is a layer of words and morphemes of the Vietnamese language borrowed from Literary Chinese with consistent pronunciations based on Middle Chinese. They comprise about a third of the Vietnamese lexicon, and may account for as much as 60% of the vocabulary used in formal texts. Together with Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese vocabularies, Sino-Vietnamese has been used in the reconstruction of the sound categories of Middle Chinese.
Samuel Martin grouped the three together as "Sino-xenic".
There also an Old Sino-Vietnamese layer consisting of a few hundred words borrowed individually from Chinese in earlier periods. These words are treated by speakers as native words.

Monosyllabic loanwords

As a result of a thousand years of Chinese control, and a further thousand years of use of Literary Chinese after independence, two main layers of Chinese vocabulary have been borrowed into Vietnamese. These layers were first systematically studied by linguist Wang Li.
Middle Chinese and Vietnamese are of analytic type, with almost all morphemes monosyllabic and lacking inflection.
The phonological structure of their syllables is also similar.
The Old Sino-Vietnamese layer was introduced after the Chinese conquest of the kingdom of Nanyue, including the northern part of Vietnam, in 111 BC.
The influence of the Chinese language was particularly felt during the Eastern Han period, due to increased Chinese immigration and official efforts to sinicize the territory.
This layer consists of roughly 400 words, which have been fully assimilated and are treated by Vietnamese speakers as native words.
The much more extensive Sino-Vietnamese proper was introduced with Chinese rhyme dictionaries such as the Qieyun in the late Tang dynasty.
Vietnamese scholars used a systematic rendering of Middle Chinese within the phonology of Vietnamese to derive consistent pronunciations for the entire Chinese lexicon.
After driving out the Chinese in 938, the Vietnamese sought to build a state on the Chinese model, including using Literary Chinese for all formal writing, including administration and scholarship, until the early 20th century.
Around 3,000 words entered Vietnamese over this period.
Some of these were re-introductions of words borrowed at the Old Sino-Vietnamese stage, with different pronunciations due to intervening sound changes in Vietnamese and Chinese, and often with a shift in meaning.
Chinese
Old Sino-VietnameseSino-Vietnamese
*mjəts > mjɨjHmùi 'smell, odor'vị 'flavor, taste'
*pənʔ > pwonXvốn 'capital, funds'bản 'root, foundation'
*wjek > ywekviệc 'work, event'dịch 'service, corvee'
*muks > mawHmũ 'hat'mạo 'hat'
*gre > hɛgiày 'shoe'hài 'shoe'
*kras > kæHgả 'marry'giá 'marry'
*bjəʔ > bjuwXvợ 'wife'phụ 'woman'
*gjojʔ > gjweXcúi 'bow, prostrate oneself'quị 'kneel'
*rijʔ > lejXlạy 'kowtow'lễ 'ceremony'
*pjap > pjopphép 'rule, law'pháp 'rule, law'

Wang Li followed Henri Maspero in identifying a problematic group of forms with "softened" initials g-, gi, d- and v- as Sino-Vietnamese loans that had been affected by changes in colloquial Vietnamese.
Most scholars now follow André-Georges Haudricourt in assigning these words to the Old Sino-Vietnamese layer.

Modern compounds

Until the early 20th century, Literary Chinese was the language of administration and scholarship, not only in China, but also in Vietnam, Korea and Japan, similar to Latin in medieval Europe.
Though not a spoken language, this shared written language was read aloud in different places according to local traditions derived from Middle Chinese pronunciation, the literary readings in various parts of China and Sino-Xenic pronunciations in the other countries.
As contact with the West grew, Western works were translated into Literary Chinese and read by the literati. In order to translate words for new concepts scholars in these countries coined new compounds formed from Chinese morphemes and written with Chinese characters. The local readings of these compounds were readily adopted into the respective local vernaculars of Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
For example, the Chinese mathematician Li Shanlan created hundreds of translations of mathematical terms, including 代數學 for "algebra", yielding modern Chinese dài shùxué, Vietnamese đại số học, Japanese dai sūgaku and Korean dae suhak. Often, multiple compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries.
A fairly large amount of Sino-Vietnamese have meanings that differ significantly from their usage in other Sinitic vocabularies. For example:
Some Sino-Vietnamese words are entirely invented by the Vietnamese and are not used in Chinese, such as linh mục for pastor, or giả kim thuật, which has been applied popularly to refer to "alchemy". Another example is linh cẩu meaning hyena. Others are no longer used in modern Chinese or have other meanings.

Proper names

Because Sino-Vietnamese provides a Vietnamese form for almost all Chinese characters, it can be used to derive a Vietnamese form for any Chinese name. For example, the name of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping consists of the Chinese characters 習近平. Applying a Sino-Vietnamese reading to each character in turn yields the Vietnamese name Tập Cận Bình.
Western names, approximated in Chinese, were further "garbled" in Vietnamese pronunciations. For example, Portugal is transliterated as Putaoya in Chinese, became Bồ Đào Nha in Vietnamese. England became Anh Cát Lợi, shortened to Anh, while United States became Mỹ Lợi Gia, shortened to Mỹ. The official name for the United States in Vietnamese is Hoa Kỳ ; this is a former Chinese name of the United States and translates literally as "flower flag".
CountryChinese nameVietnamese name
Australia澳大利亞Úc
Austria奧地利Áo
Belgium比利時Bỉ
Czechoslovakia捷克斯洛伐克Tiệp Khắc
France法蘭西Pháp
Germany德意志Đức
Italy意大利Ý
Russia俄羅斯Nga
Yugoslavia南斯拉夫Nam Tư

Except for the oldest and most deeply ingrained Sino-Vietnamese names, modern Vietnamese instead uses direct phonetic transliterations for foreign names, in order to preserve the original spelling and pronunciation. Today, the written form of such transliterated names are almost always left unaltered; with rising levels of proficiency in English spelling and pronunciation in Vietnam, readers generally no longer need to be instructed on the correct pronunciation for common foreign names. For example, while the Sino-Vietnamese Luân Đôn remains in common usage in Vietnamese, the English equivalent London is also commonplace. Calques have also arisen to replace some Sino-Vietnamese terms. For example, the White House is usually referred to as Nhà Trắng in Vietnam, though Tòa Bạch Ốc retains some currency among overseas Vietnamese.
However, China-specific names such as Trung Quốc, as well as Korean names with Chinese roots, continue to be rendered in Sino-Vietnamese rather than the romanization systems used in other languages. Examples include Triều Tiên for both Korea as a whole and North Korea in particular; Hàn Quốc for South Korea, and Bình Nhưỡng. Seoul, unlike most Korean place names, has no corresponding hanja; it is therefore phonetically transliterated as Xê-un.

Usage

Sino-Vietnamese words have a status similar to that of Latin-based words in English: they are used more in formal context than in everyday life. Because Chinese and Vietnamese use different order for subject and modifier, compound Sino-Vietnamese words or phrases might appear ungrammatical in Vietnamese sentences. For example, the Sino-Vietnamese phrase bạch mã can be expressed in Vietnamese as ngựa trắng. For this reason, compound words containing native Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese words are very rare and are considered improper by some. For example, chung cư was originally derived from chúng cư , but with the syllable chúng "multiple" replaced with chung, a "pure" Vietnamese word meaning "shared" or "together". Similarly, the literal translation of "United States", Hợp chúng quốc is commonly mistakenly rendered as Hợp chủng quốc, with chúng replaced by chủng. Another example is tiệt diện being replaced by tiết diện. This phenomenon is known as phonetic modulation.
Writing Sino-Vietnamese words with the Vietnamese alphabet causes some confusion about the origins of some terms, due to the large number of homophones in Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese. For example, both and are read as minh, thus the word "minh" has two contradictory meanings: bright and dark. Perhaps for this reason, the Vietnamese name for Pluto is not Minh Vương Tinh as in other East Asian languages, but is Diêm Vương Tinh, named after the Hindu and Buddhist deity Yama. During the Hồ Dynasty, Vietnam was officially known as Đại Ngu. However, most modern Vietnamese know ngu as "stupid"; consequently, some misinterpret it as "Big Idiot". Conversely, the Han River in South Korea is often erroneously translated as sông Hàn when it should be sông Hán due to the name's similarity with the country name. However, the homograph/homophone problem is not as serious as it appears, because although many Sino-Vietnamese words have multiple meanings when written with the Vietnamese alphabet, usually only one has widespread usage, while the others are relegated to obscurity. Furthermore, Sino-Vietnamese words are usually not used alone, but in compound words, thus the meaning of the compound word is preserved even if individually each has multiple meanings.
Today Hán-Việt is learnt and used mostly only by Buddhist monks since important texts such as the scriptures to pacify spirits are still recited in traditional Hán-Việt.

Citations