What Makes Chinese So Vietnamese? - Dchph - VNY2K

Vietnamese Chinese What Makes Chinese so Vietnamese?

An Introduction to Sinitic-Vietnamese Studies

(Ýthức mới về nguồngốc tiếngViệt)

DRAFT Table of Contents

dchph

Chapter Seven [continued]

D) A new dissyllabic sound change approach to be explored

Chinese and Vietnamese are not monosyllabic languages as wrongly believed in the linguistic circle for a long time now. For the novices they just believe and repeat what they were told. The readers just take a look into the stock of modern Vietnamese vocabulary, which is similar to that of Chinese, and will see that both consist of a great majority of dissyllabic words, i.e., ones that are made up with two syllables, interestingly, of mostly Chinese origin as well. They are called either lexical dissyllabicity, dissyllabicism, or dissyllabics. In this section we will deal with dissyllabic words and their respective linguistic changes. The term 'dissyllabic' words can be spelled out with one "s", but they are purposely doubled with "ss" by the author of this research in order to emphasize their dissyllabic characteristics since it is a very important feature of the two major related languages. Recognition of this dissyllabic attribute is a prerequisite to study both Vietnamese and Chinese. Metaphorically, the two languages grow on a monstrous monosyllabic-stemmed linguistic tree that is deeply rooted in so rich a fertile soil mixed with thick Sinitic layers on the top indigenous stratum from ancient times. Its branches now have overgrown with dissyllabic leaves and dotted with polysyllabic fruits of completely different textures and look and feel in its appearance. Recognition of such path of its natural evolution can be described as an unprecedented revelation that will guide researchers all along in identifying more etyma and where they derived from.

Many Sinologists of the 20th century such as Maspero (1912), Karlgren (1915), Haudricourt (1954), Wang Li (1956), Chang (1974), Denlinger (1979), and many others such as Lê (1967), Nguyễn (1979), Ðào (1983), etc., who did make use of Chinese to shed light on the etymology of Sinitic-Vietnamese words that originated from Chinese for the last 2,000 years. They all might see their affinity, whether genetic or not, between Chinese and Vietnamese; however, their studies are mostly based on and limited to monosyllabic words so that many Sinitic-Vietnamese etyma could still slip right under their nose unsuspectedly, that is, they utilized Sino-Vietnamese in their reconstruction of Early Chinese Chinese (EMC) phonology, but failed to catch those Sinitic-Vietnamese of the same root. Let us take an exemplified 東 for illustration; Pulleyblank (1984) posited its sound value as EMC /*downg/ – vs. M /dong1/ – in his construction of Early Mandarin that corresponds to SV 'đông' /doŋʷ1/ [ɗəwŋ˧˧] wherein their closed rounding lip final /-owŋʷ/ division class is extremely peculiarly unique. Pulleyblank was among a very few Sinologists such as Li Fang-Kuei (1971) who saw such Old Chinese articulation. For all of the postulation about the reconstructed sound value of /doŋʷ1/, besides the implication that we can reconstruct and postulate those words having final /-owŋʷ/ could evlove into /-ow/ and then with the sound change pattern that we could posit monosyllabic "đường" (road) for 道 dào, 'đau' (painful) ~ 痛 tòng, 'thau' (bronze) ~ 銅 tóng, or 'đỏ' (red) ~ 彤 tóng, etc. The author doubts if our renown linguists could see the interchanges as cited above.

For such matter, with regard to the Old Chinese reconstruction, renown Sinologists such as Bernhard Kargren or Henri Maspero had been so occupied with Chinese loanwords in Thai, Khmer, or Japanese and Korean, respectively, that they neglected the fact that ancient Annamese indeed articulated some form of Mandarin in their daily speech throughout the 1,000 year rule of imperial China. For example, on a high mandarin level, local officials reported to the China-appointed viceroy in Mandarin; in social intercourse native wives must have spoken some kind of ancient Chinese-mixed Annamese to talk to their Chinese husbands and children and vice versa as well as with other Annamese fellows in some sort of mixed-Chinese lingua-franca in their daily activities in the colony. Phonologically, when Pulleyblank and Wang utilized Sinitic-Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese material in their efforts to do reconstruction of Old Chinese, they might recognize there existed such Chinese elements in early Annamese, part of which later became Sinitic-Vietnamese. Nevertherless, it should be noted that they did have some limitations on their academic Vietnamese that is confined mostly within the perimeters of the Sino-Vietnamese, or Han-Viet, stock. Their proficiency in Vietnamese were dubiously meager based on the frequently quoted Vietnamese misspellings. Their fallacy stemmed from the fact that they were used as premises to support the next theories. In other words, they got stuck with writers' block, namely, the same old issues of one-to-one corespondences as old as the previous Sino-Tibetan theorization on Vietnamese.

Because they could not see how phonemically close both Chinese and Vietnamese are, their aptitude effectively prevented our renown Sinologists from seeing plausible variations in sound changes beyond those same monosyllabic stems. In short, none of them discovered those monosyllabic words with the multiple magnitude when they appear in dissyllabic formation as to be presented in this research.

Figure 7.8 – Monosyllabicity

Monosyllabicity (tínhđơnâmtiết 單音節性) signifies characteristics of a language based on dominance of one-syllable words in its vocabulary stock, for which sometimes in the past Western linguists even implicated its characteristics to be synomynous to the state of primitivity of the languages that some 'savage' tribal groups speak somewhere in some remote Amazon's jungles in the world. The author is unaware that there exists monosyllabic languages on earth. In our case of Vietnamese under discussion, those who so said are linguistically ignorant because of their branding "monosyllabicity" on Vietnamese. They never bothered to figure it out, numerically, how many possible combinations of consonants and vowels for a language consisted of only the monosyllabic words if they follow the usual vocalized syllables that can be made up with the patterns of VC (Vowel+Consonant), V, CV, and CVC, with combination of the 8 tones, including all the possible sounds that can put into use at all, e.g., tac, tap, tat, and so on? In my last count, the SiniticVietnamese lexical collection in my HanNom Etymology dictionary has accummulated more than 68,000 words with possible frequency usage of 25% to above 100% thanks to their monosyllabic words that need to be replaced with polysyllabic ones (tínhđaâmtiết 多音節性). to differentiate their ambiguity in meanings, for example, "manh" 單 dān (single) > "áomanh" 單衣 dānyi (sweater), "manh" 氓 máng (folk) > "lưumanh" 流氓 líumáng (hooligan), etc. .

Arrow up Back to top

For our newcomers in the field, do yourself a favor by starting exploring the Vietnamese etymology in the realm of polysyllabicity, that is, the vocabulary stock with words containing 2 or more morphemic-syllables, e.g., "bảvai" (shoulder), "bângkhuâng" (melancholy), "sựcnhớ" (suddenly remember), "lộnxàngầu" (chaotic), "tóctaibùxù" (uncombed hair), "mặtmàybíxị" (unhappy face), etc., and you will see that among them the vast majority of of two-syllabled words dominate its vocabulary stock, which is identical to the Chinese lexical status. By taking that path, the expedition would lead you into the historical linguistics and enable you to discover a whole lot more than what you have ever known about the Vietnamese language other than that of the presumption that Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language that is simply a result of repetition of a misconception wide-spread even among some native Vietnamese specialists themselves.

Vietnamese, in effect, is something beyond the lexical aspect of a dissyllabic language, say, the capability to coin words with affixes, syllabically, as to be descussed later on in respects of phonology, semantics, and syntactics. In this section, efforts will be geared toward a comprehesive introduction to the new dissyllabicity approach, coupled with explanations of its advantageous edge over some old self-constrained method focusing only monosyllabic words relying on one to one correspondence basis as base units for investigation. Once the linguistic world recognizes the new dissyllabicity approach is superior to the old monosyllabicity one, our new methodology can serve as a framework for newcomers entering into the field to find more Sinitic- Vietnamese etyma like those cited in this survey of which their syllabic components are mostly of Chinese origin; therefore, researches on either Vietnamese or Chinese historical linguistics cannot be complete without referring to one another. As previously mentioned, the two languages are closely related and intertwined not only in terms of both Yue and Sino-Tibetan etymologies but also in the area of historical phonology. In the meanwhile, as Chinese loanwords in Vietnamese make up large portions of Vietnamese vocabulary, they also give rise to either focused or extended derivatives as the language continues to develop into full polysyllabicity, e.g., "xứsở" 出所 chūsuǒ (birthplace), "hợppháp" 合法 héfă (legal), "tửtế" 仔細 zǐxì (kindness), "xàcừ" 硨磲 chēqú (Tridacna), etc..

The message the author is trying to get across is that Vietnamese, characteristically, is not "mo no syl la bic al ly"; it has completely grown into a sophisfication having gone through three thousand years in the making to become what it sounds like today. Polysyllabically speaking, it can be considered as being on par with any modern languages on earth except for the fact that it is still written in monosyllabic orthorgrapy which needs to be reformed into polysyllabic writing system -- applying to Chinese character-block writing also like Korean and future pinyin as well -- that will place them in the same equal footing with English, French, etc. Such attitude will take Vietnamese specialists further down the road from where they used to be confined in for so long by obsolete linguistic perception and antiquated methodologies that have exposed shortcomings. Once reckoning Vietnamese as of the language of polysyllabicity, they will get out of the shell of old norms and SInitic-Vietnamese domain will open a whole new frontier for them to venture and explore in historical linguistics .

Modern Vietnamese shows clearly that it is a language of dissyllabicity in nature as plenty of dissyllabic vocabularies of different types are commonly used In high frequency. Again, the dissyllabic words are those lexicons being formed with either two word-syllables or morphemic-syllables -- both being combined in the dissyllabic formation with the former term to specify each monosyllabic word used as a syllable and the latter one a bound morpheme use as a syllable that cannot functions alone as a unit.

A majority of those dissyllabic words, mostly straightforward Chinese loanwords, was transported in whole to Vietnamese and they might evolve furthermore later within the Vietnamese language. Categorically, on the one hand, Chinese syllables have been used to coin new dissyllabic words the same way as those of modern Chinese, if not to say Vietnamese and Chinese words are simply mirrored counterparts. Those two-syllable compounds, on the other hand, can be created in either synonymous, parallel, or opposite formation, or simply compounds constructed with existing lexical material. For example, structurally, firstly, those specifically comprised of two elements of word-syllable, which are almost synonymous with each other, formed dissyllabic words of parallel, or symetric, compounds, for example,

  • tức|giận 氣憤 qìfèn (mad/angry),
  • thương|yêu 疼愛 téng'ài (affection/love),
  • trước|tiên 首先 shǒuxiān (firstly/initially),
  • kề|cận 切近 qièjìn (by/near),
  • đường|cái 街道 jièdào (road/street),
  • đường|lộ 道路 dàolù (road),
etc.

For those compounds built with opposite, or antonymous, word-syllables, as we have seen before, such as 高低 gāodì (high/low) that implicates "chiềucao" in Vietnamese with the same connotation as that of 'độcao' 高度 gāodù (the height) -- at the same time, 高低 gāodì is also associated with an existing word in place of the cited word as 'caothấp' to denote the concept of 'ranks' in a competition -- or 大小 dàxiăo (large/small) that becomes "kíchthước" (size) which is associated with 尺寸 chǐcùn (SV xíchthốn) -- while with the original 大小 dàxiăo evolved further in Vietnamese literally as 'tonhỏ' to mean 'whisper', with the latter meaning, they are modified dissyllabic words with local innovation.

Similarly, there are many other words that use the same existing vocabulary to carry even more new modified meanings and present themselves as extended and renewed lexical and, of course, they mean what the meanings convey existing only in Vietnamese by means of phonological association, as in the cases of @ 招 zhāo ~ 'chào' 早 zăo, @ 呼 hu ~ 'hỏi' 問 wèn, @ 見 jiàn ~ 'xin' 請 qǐng, etc., as exemplified as follows,

  • chàohỏi 打招呼 dăzhāohu (greeting, 'hello' [ @ 招 zhāo ~ 'chào' 早 zăo, @ 呼 hu ~ 'hỏi' 問 wèn ],
  • xinchào 見過 jiànguò (greeting, 'hello' [ @ 見 jiàn ~ 'xin' 請 qǐng, @ 過 guò ~ 'chào' 早 zăo, archaic usage ],
  • xinlỗi 見諒 jiànliàng (apologize) [ @ 見 jiàn ~ 'xin' 請 qǐng, @ 諒 liàng ~ 'lỗi' archaic usage as opposed to modern M 道歉 dàoxiàn, also a cognate to VS 'xinlỗi' \ @ 歉 xiàn ~ 'xin' 請 qǐng, @ 道 dào ~ 'lỗi' 罪 zuì ~ SV 'tội' => VS 'lỗi' (wrongdoing) ],
  • thươnghại 傷害 shānghài (sympathize) [as opposed to the meaning of 'injure'. cf. modern M 同情 tóngqíng or SV 'đồngtình' (sympathize), alternatively, VS 'thươngtình' (pity) ],
  • tửtế 仔細 zǐxī (kindness) [ as opposed to VS 'tỉmỉ' (meticulous) as originally conveyed in Mandarin. cf. modern M 細心 xīxīn ],
  • lịchsự 歷事 lìshì (polite) [ as opposed to VS "bặtthiệp" -aw, -ang > -ac, -c > - an, -wan > -oi, -u > -ang, etc., not singularly phonemically only those initials n-, đ-, -c, -u, -i, -ng, etc., as they would have taken place in a much later development.

    In its evolutionary history Chinese has become more and more dissyllabic in nature at a later time, probably well developed and stabilized approximately during the Tang Dynasty. As many Middle Chinese dissyllabic words dynamically changed into Vietnamese, they occurred also in batches to all related clusters of sounds contained within the whole entity as a complete unit, usually of paired syllables, not rigidly as a single vowel into other vowels, nor an initial into another initial, not even syllable by syllable on one-to-one correspondences, regardless of individual semantic values. Even with those dissyllabic to correspondent two-syllable words, many dissyllabic loanwords found syntactically in reverse order with modern Mandarin have originated from periods during and prior to the Middle Age, hence, Middle Chinese (MC), for example, 'bảođảm' ~ #擔保 dànbăo (guarantee), 'liênquan' ~ #聯關 liánguuān (related to), 'thithố' #措施 cuòshì (show), 'vinhquang' ~ #光榮 guāngróng (glorious), 'trángkiện' ~ #健壯 jiànzhuàng (strong), etc.

    Journeymen should pay more attention to dissyllabicity where they can find the sound change pattern as an important process that has given rise to the new approach actively used in this research to look for the Chinese roots of many Sinitic-Vietnamese etyma. The logic behind this argument is, in terms of historical evolution and linguistic characteristics, both Vietnamese and Chinese are polysyllabic, or to be exact, dissyllabic languages. Nowadays, Chinese is already classified as a polysyllabic language by renown linguistic circles from many large universities, academies, and institutes around the world (Chou. 1982, p.106). Without hesitance, Vietnamese could be formally classed as a dissyllabic one, too, based on it word-formation characteristics that show in shared commonalities between it and other Chinese languages. Only in this context and premise can one be able to establish a solid framework of sound change patterns based on results of trust-worthy analysis of how sound changes from Chinese to Vietnamese have taken place. Without such cognition, no one could find 無聊 wúliáo (in extreme depression) as VS "côliêu" (vs. SV 'vôliễu') and 緣分 yuánfèn (lot or luck by couples were brought together) as "duyênnợ" (vs. SV 'duyênphận'). Still, why do many people out there keep considering Vietnamese as a monosyllabic language at present?

    Recognition of each Chinese word-syllable in pairs will change into some different sound independent of it original one in VS has given rise to a newly formulated dissyllabicity approach that has enabled the author to find more than 20,000 Vietnamese etyma that are cognate to those of Chinese from sources of ancient to modern Chinese dialects, literary as well as vernacular, among which many of which have long been regarded by purists as indigenous Nôm or "pure" Vietnamese words, including basic words, for example,

    • "cá" 魚 yú (fish) [ cf. 魚汁 yúzhi (English 'catsup' (or 'anchovy sauce') from Amoy dialect, whereas OC *nga. See APPENDIX M - Ketchup's Chinese origins a sticky subject for US foodies ],
    • "chim" 禽 qín (bird), "chóc" 雀 què (bird) [ M xué, MC 一 /ɲjʌt7/ 'one' (SV nhất) => M yī /ji1/, etc.

      In reality, at the time by the time certain specific Chinese loanwords found their way into the Vietnamese language, sound changes either could have already taken place inside the Chinese language itself first or would later happen after they were borrowed in Vietnamese. In either case, except for synchronically irregular items, sound changes might have occurred within certain linguistic contraints, including cultural factors. For example, local speech habit, e.g., 手板 shǒubăn ~ #"bàntay" instead of "taybàn" (literally "a panel of the hand" for "palm"), localization as in the case of 母 mǔ for "mẹ" /mɛ6/ (mother) evolved into the monosyllabic "mợ" /mə6/ which added a second meaning of "maternal uncle's wife", probably due to the contraction by dropping the word-syllable cậu 舅 jìu (maternal uncle) in Vietnamese thanks to its retention of many Middle Chinese characteristics while in Chinese it could only be paired in a compound 舅母 jìumǔ "maternal uncle's wife" as a dissyllabic word, obviously to avoid homonymous ambiguity. (See Robert D. King, 1969. pp.62, 63)

      There is no doubt that cultural factors have actually facilitated a selective borrowing process and triggered sound changes as well. Phonological variations of the same word reflect the fact that, even when they were first borrowed, a great number of loanwords have followed certain phonological and phonetic patterns, sound changes might not have just caught on their first articulations and fossilized there but continued to change over the time due to cultural factors such as localities, social status, education, time frame, e.g. 他 tā SV tha ('he, him') for 'nẫu, nó, họ', 我 wǒ SV ngã ('I, me') 'tôi, tao, tui, tớ, qua', 咱 zá VS 'ta' ('I, we, us'), 咱們 zánměn VS 'chúngmình' ('we' inclusive) , 我們 wǒmén VS 'tụimình' (we), etc.

      Meanwhile, we can see that borrowing words of other close neighboring Mon-Khmer languages is not as common as from the Chinese language, which shows that Vietnamese speakers have been reluctant to borrow Mon-Khmer words as very few of them exist in Vietnamese, even in settings of mixed social interactions among larger multi-ethnic populace living in those Vietnam's high plateau and southernmost provinces where placenames bear indigenous marks notably, yet, not the living tongue., e.g., Đắklắk, Kontum, Đàlạt, Pleiku, Sóctrăng, Càmau, etc., and they even "Vietnamized" those names with accented tonation.

      In contrast, Vietnamese is readily to import and use words from Chinese amply and liberally, sometimes with additonal words of the same root with similar meanings that have concurrently existed. For example, the dish 'hủtiếu Namvang" (Phnom Penh-style seafood noodles) in which the Vietnamese used the original Chinese 粉條 fěntiáo VS 'phởtiếu' for "hủtiếu" while "Namvang" is the transliteration of the name capital of Cambodia. Similar Chinese loan examples are plentiful with the phenomenon of phonological and semantic changes that they shifted the connotation of 麵條 miàntiáo for 'sợimiến' (mungbean vermicelli) to replace Chinese 粉條 fěntiáo to indicate 'sợiphở' (rice noodles) – in Chinese it means 'sợimiến' or 'miến' 麵 miàn in Vietnamese where 麵, with the meaning 'wheat flour" or "wheat noodles', becomes "mì" – as in "bánhmì" (Vietnamese sanwiches, posited as a cognate of M 麵包 miànbāo where /bao/ being associated with "bánh-" or 餅 bǐng 'bread') instead. – Similarly, "mì" in "mìchính" 味精 wèijīng was derived from 'vịtinh' for 'bộtngọt' (MSG), "suỉcảo" 水餃 shuíjiăo for 'taivạc' (~ 'quaivạc') (shrimp dumpling), "vằngthánh" 餛飩 húndùn for 'hoànhthánh' (wonton), etc. To be exact, semantic shifting phenomenon is common in any languages, but the point to emphasize here is that the Vietnamese speakers like to use Chinese material for their vocabulary. If Mon-Khmer was the root of their language, they would have never done so.

      It is understandable that in the historical context, linguistic development of Vietnamese had gone hand in hand with the evolution of the Chinese language for at least 1,200 years prior to the 10th century, so it is of no surprise should the trend have continued on hundreds of years after that. Numerous Chinese lexical items penetrated deeply into the Vietnamese language via various dialectal contacts in different periods of history and vice versa. Indeed, numerous Vietnamese cognate entries are found in Kangxi Dictionary where mostly they are noted as 'dialect' (方言) such a mềm 面 miàn (soft), ăn 唵 ăn (eat); some are not listed, though, such as 'mèo' 卯 măo (for 'cat' instead of 'hare') simply because the Chinese do not believe that the 卯 măo is cognate to 'mèo'. Ironically, even some Vietnamese scholars even buy that argument (See An Chi. Ibid. 2016, Vol 2.).

      For those loan doublets with different pronunciations, the same words must have entered the Vietnamese language in different periods. They might actually come from a Chinese dialect or sub-dialect synchronically. Naturally, they had mostly occurred following certain acquisitive models, of course, within a linguistic kinship boundary. That is why French "bande" and Vietnamese "băng" and "pot de feu" and V "phở" or English "cut" and Vietnamese "cắt" obviously are not cognate, but Chinese 繃 béng [*baŋ] and VS "băng", C 粉 fěn or 隔 "gé" [*kat] and VS "phở", "cắt" are, respectively.

      The dissyllabics approach is built on the basis of analyses from interchanges of Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, dialectal or Mandarin data, rationalization of their semantic relevancy, and generalization of the process of sound change patterns that match hundreds of Vietnamese words inside their naturally characterized polysyllabic shells in all aspects, including all the tones that exist in all Chinese dialects in approximately sinmilar ranges. Its new tool is now utilized in this paper in order to channel more etyma into the paradigms to further confirm the resourcefulness of its methodology. By centering on the recognition of dissyllabic nature of both Vietnamese and Chinese, we will no longer care much of the sound change patterns that occurred in batches of phonemic shifts anymore – as in the case of Sino-Vietnamese vs. Middle Chinese, e.g., /s- ~ t-/, /sh- ~ th-/, /t- ~ d-/, etc. – but of a dynamic process, synchrony in nature, in which stringed sounds, or cluster of sounds, all changed in unison with a whole entity as one unit that gave rise to several Sinitic-Vietnamese variants each in all shapes and sounds, independent of monosyllabic equivalents those phonemic syllables contained therein.

      Figure 7.9 – Benefits of polysyllabicity

      On the sideline, we will see how smart the brains of those people in the Western world are at work. Cognitively speaking, the net positive result of the similar polysyllabicity in combined written forms of words will benefit us all in absorbing a piece of information quicker by grasping the whole concept chunk by chunk in polysyllabically stringed blocks altogether at the same time in the similar fashion that we have experienced with Latin writing systems in the polysyllabic formation, especially German, where its speakers combined and capitalized all noun strings for the same effect, so do we with any other block writing systems that, except for the Chinese, the Korean or Thai utilize. For the same effects that have on drivers in the US motorways to enable them to easily recognize the street names from afar, just like what the City of San Francisco in California has done in replacing all the signages of street names printed in uppercase letters with those capitalized letter ones in recent years.

      From acknowlegement of such cognitive process in human brains, we shall build a foundation for the new dissyllabicity approach after much of basic concepts and generalized principles have been and will be discussed in this paper. It is certainly that this methodology will help us identify a vast majority of Vietnamese words having Chinese origin. What peculiar about the vocalism of Chinese polysyllabic words as being borrowed into another language, such as Vietnamese, is that their sound changes occurred drastically and veered away from the original pronunciation.

      As illustrated in all examples, scribing dissyllabic words in their truly combining formation is also the centerpiece of our approach to postulate SInitic-Vietnamese etyma. As mentioned earlier, words in polysyllabic formation resulted in sound changes of individual syllables contained within from one form to another, which is of dynamic phonological changes for the patterns they are being articulated, e.g., XX XX X XX X XX XX X XX..., where a space [ ] separates between words in combined forms such as XX is based on the model of block characters as in scientifically denoted in Korean, which is highly recommended for adoption in Chinese as well.

      Arrow up Back to top

      Comparatively, these sound change patterns have occurred just like the patterns to which Latin polysyllabic roots gave rise in varieties of forms in the vocabulary stocks of the Indo-European languages. Their sound change variations are much easier to recognize since all are trascribed in Latin – even Cyrillic or Greek – alphabets. We will try to set up the same process for all data handling with the Sinitic-Vietnamese etyma by treating them as phonetic clusters instead of ideographic blocks as they appear in Chinese which might distort our view conceptually. Unconventionally, in the aspect of Romanized transcriptions, like their counterparts of Chinese, as you have noticed, Vietnamese dissyllabic words in this paper all have been written in combining formation just as Mandarin words of multi-syllables are being transcribed in pinyin, such as

      • 廢話 fèihuà (non-sense) ~ VS baphải,
      • 大話 dàhuà (pompous) ~ VS bahoa,
      • 溫馨 wēnxīng (warm) ~ VS ấmcúng,
      • 溫水 wēnshuǐ (hot water) ~ VS nướcnóng,
      • 溫泉 wēnquán (hot spring) ~ VS suối(nước)nóng,
      • 開心 kāixīn pleased) ~ VS hàilòng,
      • 忍心 rěnxīn (cool-heartedly) ~ VS đànhlòng,
      • 忍讓 rěnràng (forbearing) ~ VS nhườngnhịn,
      • etc.

      We will continue to examine this phonetic phenomenon at length to understand the reason why in many a case sound changes in dissyllabic words are phonologically and semantically distinct from their respective original roots. Expectedly, seeing multiple derived morphs from the same syllable in different dissyllabic forms, at first sight, may help readers recognize that the sound patterns ought to appear in their whole entirety instead of isolated syllables; however, at the same time, the same formation may also cause confusion to the laymen and leave them with an impression that different phonological variants given for the same Chinese monosyllabic stem appear to be ad hoc cases.

      Similar to the description of characteristics of dissyllabicity in the foregoing examples, the following illustrations will further expand and explore other venues of possible alternations through the dynamics of syllabic changes in combed forms as in the case of 廢話 fèihuà (nonsense) as cited above. Given acceptance of instances of a proven case phonologically /bahoa/ to be cognate to /fèihuà/, one may reconcile the sound variant 廢 fèi (waste) being associated with ba in the interchange /f-/ ~ /b-/ along with the +/hoa/ to denote the meaning of 'nonsensible', yet, only in this morphemic form and in this very context.

      One may wonder, predictably, how on earth the two sounds of each syllable in Mandarin pinyin and Vietnamese orthography could be related semantically, that is, "ba" ~ "fèi". As a matter of course, they are etymologically related within the dissyllabic form 廢話 fèihuà only. Obviously each respective word has nothing to do with Vietnamese ba that could mean something else such as "ba" = 'three' or "ba" = 'father'. This /ba/ of /bahoa/ is nothing if it is out of the phonetic shell that encapsulates the sound /fèihuà/. Specifically, the monosyllabic Chinese 廢 fèi conceptually can render meaningfully only SV phế (waste) and VS bỏ (discard), the same meanings as in the original Chinese. In other word, the syllabic-morpheme ba- as well as the second -hoa individually may not mean anything lexically when standing alone except when it functions as an affix other than what we know etymologically of those two-syllable word 廢話 fèihuà in Chinese.

      Meanwhile, the one-syllable morpheme /ba/ is not the same as that of the syllabic-word being encoded in the dissyllabic form 廢話 fèihuà that makes up the concept of "baphải" (non-sense) in Vietnamese. Together, the /ba/ in its wholeness as a bound morph that make up both compounds baphải and bahoa in dissyllabic forms which render two new concepts in two different vocalic shells. In this case, one plus one makes four and more, not only two, several new two-syllable words for new concepts from 'recycled material' in combination with different morphemic syllables in Vietnamese. Many people keep breaking them monosyllablically and they see the sound bit phonetic symbols only, but they do not understand why each morpheme does not mean anything to them.

      In the following expanding examples, with the same "affix" 廢 fèi, structurally, in contrast to ba in baphải (nonsense), however, in line with what it means in bahoa (waste words) it is easier to see why "fèi" has become "bỏ- " 'discard’ as in

      • bỏphế (~ # trừbỏ) 廢除 fèichú, ‘eradicate',
      • bỏđi 廢棄 fèiqì ‘abandon’,
      • đồbỏ #廢物 fèiwù ‘trash’,
      • bỏhoang #荒廢 huāngfèi ‘deserted’,
      • etc.

      Like ba, the Sinitic-Vietnamese word bỏ is not necessarily always associated with that of Chinese 廢 fèi. In this case the former is derived from the process of Chinese to Vietnamese sound changes, that is manifold, especially from words of dissyllabicity. To gain more understanding of the idea that sound changes are independent of their etymological root – originally of one-syllabe word or one Chinese character – and can be greatly influenced by both phonological and semantic associative and dissimilative factors, let’s further compare some Vietnamese words stemmed from those Chinese dissyllabic compounds which have resulted in Vietnamese syllabic homophones with the orthography bỏ:

      • bãibỏ 排除 páichú ‘abolish’,
      • bỏphiếu 投票 tóupiào ‘to cast a ballot’,
      • bỏrơi 抛棄 pàoqì ‘leave behind’,
      • bỏđi 放棄 fàngqì ‘abandon’,
      • bỏqua 放過 fàngguò ‘let go',
      • bỏlỡ 錯過 cuòguò 'miss an opportunity',
      • bỏmặc 不管 bùguăn 'do not care',
      • bỏbê 不理 bùlǐ 'abandon',
      • bỏphí 白費 báifèi 'to waste',
      • or in phrases such as
      • bỏlỡ dịpmay 放過機會 fàngguò jīhuì ‘let go an opportunity’ (~ bỏqua dịpmay),
      • bỏ tiền (vô túi) 把錢(進入口袋里) bă qián (jìnrù kǒudài lǐ) 'put the money (into the pocket)',
      • bỏtiền ra mua 花錢來買 huàqián lái măi 'spend the money to buy',
      • etc.

      The sound change to bỏ as posited in the examples above, including innovation of other words, too, is unquestionably owing to different contextual settings. The whole transforming event involves not only phonological and semantic assimilative process but also syntactic reshuttle, and reordering, through the reversal of word order structure – as exemplified above with đồbỏ, vứtbỏ, and bỏhoang – which was undoubtedly a local development to fit syntactically into Vietnamese speakers’ speech habit.

      Similarly, from "baphải" 廢話 fèihuà (SV phếthoại), the fact that 話 huà phonetically evolves into the morpheme hoa is acceptable, but in which way does it become phải ? The sound change rule { ¶ hw- ~ fw-} applies here since this phonetic pattern is very common in Chinese dialects such as Cantonese and Fukienese in comparison with Middle Chinese or Mandarin sounds [ cf. bông 葩 pā (SV ba) ~ hoa 花 hwā (Cant. /fa1/) ]. Moreover, in dissyllabic formation, /fwa/ could easily be modified as [fai3] [ cf. 話 huà /hwa5/ in its original monosyllabic form could possibly evolve into nói ‘talk’ (SV thoại. Note that correspondent pattern { ¶ th- (sh-) ~ n- } for 水 shuǐ 'water' (SV thuỷ) nước; Vietmuong form /dak5/, parallel to M 踏 tă 'đạp', VS 'chà' (trample) ].

      For the same reasons, sound changes can occur in a variety of other ways, too, for example,

      • 開 kāi ~ mở (open) [ cf. Cant. /hoj1/ | SV 'khai', Cant. /hoj1/, cf. Hai. /k'uj1/, Viet. 'khui'; note pattern { ¶ k- (kh-) ~ m- \ hw- } ],
      • 口 kǒu ~ mỏ (muzzle), [ SV 'khẩu' /kow3/, Cant. /how3/, cf. 'mồm' 吻 wěn 'mouth' (SV vẫn); note pattern { ¶ k- (kw-, kh-) ~ m- \ hw- } ],
      • 底 dǐ ~ trệt (street level) [ ex. 一樓一底 yī lóu yī dǐ (một lầu một trệt) 'the street level and one upper floor') ],
      • 快 kuài becomes mau ('fast', a loangraph from the character that means ‘happy’, SV vui) [ SV 'khoái' /k'waj5/, cf. Cant. /faj1/; note pattern { ¶ k- (kw-, kh-) ~ m- \ hw- } ],
      • 點 diăn as in 快點 kuàidiăn maulên (hurry up) [ It is not hard to understand why becomes -lên as 點 diăn is elaborated below. ]
      • Of course, lên here has nothing to do with ‘ascend, get on’ but over here it functions as a grammatical particle indicating a course of action, a command, similar to ‘up’ in its wholeness of ‘hurry up’. Phonologically, it is easier to see M [tjen3] corresponds to Vietnamese [len1] and, etymologically, as both are cognate to one another, it conveys several simlar concepts, that is,
      • 點 [tjen3] can also be tiếng (hour), châm (ignite), chấm (dot), and (dip), tí (a bit), điểm (point), đếm (count), etc. [ all of which originated from { M 點 diăn < MC tiɛm < OC *te:mʔ } ],
      • and, in effect, interestingly, phonologically and semantically, the different meanings in Vietnamese match exactly what [tjen3] means in every definition of the word 點 diăn as defined in an ancient or modern Chinese dictionary. For the connotation of lên (up) let's compare it with other etyma in other similar context:
      • lênđây: 上來 shànglái (come up here).
      • In this case, shàng 上 corresponds to lên (ascend), though, and '-lái' 來 is a grammatical particle equivalent to VS -đây of which the articulation is assimilated to an adverb of direction in Vietnamese of the same etymon of either cǐ 此 (SV thử) or zhè 這 (SV giả) in Chinese, meaning 'here'.
      • 溫 wēn can be ấm , but in which way does that 馨 xīn become cúng ? Of course, it is not the same as cúng 供 gòng (SV cống) ‘make sacrificial offerings to spirits’, but it is the result of sound change, as 馨 xīn is also pronounced xīng in pinyin, hinh /xejng1/ in SV [ MC xieng < OC *hing ], of which the velar /x-/ becomes a labiovelar /kw-/, /k'w-/ as commonly occurred in Chinese [ cf. 慶, 磬, and 罄, all being pronounced qìng in Mandarin and khánh in Sino-Vietnamese. ] Also, consider more of its phonological variation as in
      • hươngthơm 馨香 xīnxiāng (fragrance) where 馨 xīn as 'thơm' is associated with 香 xiāng, namely, 'thơm'.

      VS #'dưatây' = 'honeydew' ] ),
    • thathiết 體貼: tǐtiè (heartily),
    • bênhvực 包庇: bāobì (take side),
    • bánhmì 麵包: miànbāo (bread),
    • làmviệc 幹活: gànhuó (work),
    • bậnviệc 忙活: mánghuó (busy),
    • cậtruột 骨肉: gǔròu (blood kinship),
    • chảgiò 炸肉: jiàròu (fried spring roll),
    • cẩuthả 苟且: gǒuqiě (~ ẩutả, ẩuxị) (carelessly),
    • nhưngmà 而且: érqiě (but also),
    • mứcđộ 幅度: fúdù (extent),
    • bứcvẽ #畫幅: huàfú (a painting),
    • đòngang 渡江: dùjiāng (ferry boat),
    • núisông 江山: jiāngshān (country),
    • trờinắng 太陽: tàiyáng (sunshine),
    • tạnhtrời 晴天: qīngtiān (dry weather),
    • banngày 白天: báitiān (daylight') [ /bej3/ > /bæt7/ > Vietnamese /bắt-/ ],
    • 起頭 qǐtóu ‘start’ (VS: khởiđầu),
    • 起步 qǐbù 'take steps' (VS cấtbước) [ \ 起 Cant. /hej3/ > /kej3/ > /kʌt7/ > Vietnamese /kất-/ ],
    • 興起 xìngqǐ ‘excited’ (VS hứngchí ), [ \ 起 qǐ > /cij5/ ], which could possibly give rise to # nổihứng (excited) and mừngrỡ (jubilant) ],
    • Similarly, for any other morphemic syllable in a dissyllabic word such as 順 shùn (SV thuận) [ M 順 shùn < MC tʂjwən < OC *djənh (Schuessler : *mljuəns) ], for instance, we have
    • 順利 shùnlì ‘smoothly’ (VS suônsẻ and chótlọt ~ trótlọt),
    • 順風 shùnfēng ‘tail wind’ (VS xuôigió and thuậngió),
    • 順水 shùnshuǐ 'sail with the current' (VS xuôidòng),
    • 順手 shùnshǒu ‘conveniently’ (VS thuậntay, sẵntay, and # luônthể),
    • 順便 shùnbiàn ‘conveniently’ (VS luôntiện and sẵntiện),
    • 孝順 xiàoshùn ‘filial piety’ (VS hiếuthảo),
    • etc.

    The word-morphemes, or morphemic syllables for that matter, 起 and 順 are in binding form and have evolved into different sounds, meanings, and words in Vietnamese. Inside the Chinese language itself similar morphemes like ‘qǐ’ and ‘shùn’ are innumerable. By actively pursuing the dissyllabicity approach in search for words of Chinese origin, almost all the Sinitic-Vietnamese words could be traced back to their Chinese equivalents or roots. As we go on, more Sinitic-Vietnamese etyma will be unravelled through all other illustrations in this paper.

    All such etyma have never been brought into the spotlight due to the deeply rooted misconception of monosyllabicity of both Vietnamese and Chinese that has effectively prevented specialists in the field of Sinitic-Vietnamese etymology from seeing exponential sound changes of individual syllables in dissyllabic formation, of which their sound changes could be independent from its original monosyllabic equivalents. Phologically speaking, originally in ancient times, like any other languages on earth, both Vietnamese and Chinese were likely monosyllabic because languages have developed from states of simplicity to complexity. It is easier to confirm monosyllabic characteristics of Chinese based on literary works of some three thousand years ago than to do so with that of Vietnamese where its last written forms in Chinese characters were dated as recently as the early 20th century. In fact, for 1,100 years after her independence books about ancient Vietnam had been those bits and pieces collected and compiled from ancient Chinese bibliography. Yet, taken off from the written forms in all possibilities, basic words that both languages share in common seem to point to the direction of monosyllabicity except for a few identified items that might have evolved into dissyllabicity to differentiate meanings, which may include dissyllabic words such as "đầugối" 膝蓋 xīgài (knee) or "cùichỏ" 手肘 shǒuzhǒu (elbow), etc.

    What Vietnamese readers see in modern Vietnamese orthography are majority of words of dissyllabicity in nature being disguised underneath those components of monosyllabics. Such unsuspicious masks in effect have deceived untrained eyes when they scan thousands of dissyllabic words – along with a much lesser number of polysyllabic words – in any Vietnamese dictionary because those dissyllabic words are conventionally written in separated syllables, that is, only monosyllabic word one after another. There is a reason for such tolerance because the Vietnamese writing system evolved from each individual Chinese character in compound words but written in separate forms as reflected in a 'tựđiển' "字典" ('dictionary of single character-word' but without related Chinese characters accompanied and illustrated), of which they appear similar to those lexical items listed in Đại-Nam Quấc-âm Tự-vị 大南國音字彙 (Dictionary of National Sounds of the Great Southern Kingdom, compiled by Huình Tịnh Của, published in the late 19th century). In this particular dictionary, each lexical item is listed individually just one Chinese character at a time – for example, 'giang' 江 for 'sông' (river) and 'san' 山 for 'núi' (mountain) and then for those subsequent dissyllabic compounds such as "giang san" 江山, a totally another word to denote another concept to mean 'country', not just 'rivers and mountains', and, unfornuately, they have been written separately with a space in between. Shallow knowledge of linguistics possessed by a few lexicograpers in the early days was partially to blame for such serious shortcomings.

    Cognitively, such a mo-no-syl-la-bic way of writing in effect appears even worse than the taxing hyphen (-) like 'giang-san' or 'quốc-gia' had been in actively formal use until the late '60s of the 20th century. Laziness of the users and ignorance by educators were partially to blame for what actually has gone wrong in the national orthorgraphy.APPENDIX M

    In the past, many imperfect experts of Vietnamese insisted on its monosyllabicity. Representative views were expressed by Barker (1966, p. 10): “With the exception of certain compounds, reduplicative patterns, and loanwords, Vietnamese and Muong are both monosyllabic languages.” If we take this paradigm seriously and equally apply that to the English language in some similar aspects, then even English also re-appears as a monosyllabic language as well, let alone Vietnamese.

    In any case Barker's statement exposed the weakness in his mastery of the Vietnamese language. Nowadays there still exist some specialists who always mistake Sino-Vietnamese for Sinitic-Vietnamese words. In the old days Western linguists like Barker already had a crowd of Vietnamese "worshippers" coming from some half-baked linguistic circles not lacking inferior complexity. The main reason is, amusingly, Barker was a few of Western linguists of the mid-20th century who did survey about the Vietnamese language. Similar to showbiz, you could now visually imagine a scene of those Vietnamese linguists surrounding to show their admiration to a Westerner who could simply utter Vietnamese sounds, chirping out sound of 'oh', 'ah', and 'wow', 'he can even speak Vietnamese!' Why does nobody woo approximately more than 3 million Vietnamese who can speak English fluently and some 300 individuals would could author a book or two in that language? It is perhaps because Westerners who master Vietnamese are still rare species so their words are as precious as gems. My goodness, I guess you got the idea now, don't you?

    As a matter of fact, Barker was a renown linguist on Southeast Asian languages, academically well equipped with plenty of high-institutional linguistic methodologies and tools, having made numerous fieldtrips on location and readily to apply his academic know-hows. However, that is where his efforts were misplaced and his expertise fell short. In his Vietnamese study Barker only worked with data provided by linguistically untrained informants and interpreters and applied his learned – decoded: 'bookish' – formulae in a language like Vietnamese for which he could teach linguistics, but just passed an 101 primer in Vietnamese. For his conclusion that “certain compounds, reduplicative patterns, and loanwords”, it is enough to disqualify Baker from beginning in black and white print as incompetent in this specific Vietnamese linguistic field. With a name like Barker and based on what his statement meant to say about the monosyllabicity of the Vietnamese language, for those readers who are unfamiliar with the language they may think that there in reality exists only a small number of such types of multi-syllabic words in Vietnamese. Nothing is further from the truth than such statement, to be fair to say.

    Up until now at least three new generations have passed by and no new breakthrough has ever struck a resonating note since the Barker's 60s era. Unfortunately, that is what Vietnamese learners all see in any Vietnamese dictionary with wordlists presented and structured monosyllabically replicated widely across all contemporary internet media and in print. That is to say, our novices in the Vietnamese linguistic field have been long fooled visually by the current orthography of separate listings of syllable-words as being insisted on writing them as characters 字 zì 'chữ', instead of words 辭 cí 'từ'. Comparatively, while it is unimaginable and unacceptable for those who are studying East Asian languages, e.g., Mandarin or Korean, to visualize with romanized monosyllabic syllables as word by any standars, unfortunately, our students of Vietnamese linguistics still hold such a monosyllabic viewpoint and use it as a launchpad to jumpstart their new linguistic passion.

    Even though many of ancient and late dissyllabic lexicons in Vietnamese can be viewed as combination of monosyllabic word of which each can be used independently as an attachment, i.e., affix, to another syllable-word to coin new dissyllabic compounds (cf. English 'homepage', 'website', 'logon', 'blogger', 'facebook', etc.), it should be noted that many of those words are formed the same way, yet, they are to connote a totally new different concept and cannot be considered as 'compounds', analytically, but 'composite words' in technical terms. That is, they are words being composed of two or more syllables in the form of bound morphemes and, semantically, they cannot be broken down further into single syllables to be used as independent words. One of the good examples for such cases is the most basic Vietnamese words about human anatomy, or body parts, which could have existed since ancient times, such as bànchân 'foot', đầugối ‘knee’, mắccá ‘ankle’, cổtay 'wrist', càngcổ 'neck', bảvai 'shoulders', cùichỏ ’elbow’, màngtang ‘temple’, mỏác ‘fontanel’, chânmày ‘eyebrow’, etc.

    All of those dissyllabically composite words are made up of bound morphemes, that is, they must appear in syllabic pairs, of which either or both syllables making up each word are unbreakable. Conceptually, they are just like their translated English counterparts. In this respect, their individual syllable, like a visual Chinese character with its variant sound in its free form with each morpheme in the Chinese language, makes up a complete different word. The original meaning of each syllable in the composite form may mean something else that may have nothing to do with the meaning conveyed in the new forms, especially when each one is identified only through its phonetic shell or symbol. For example, for đầugối 'knee', analytically, đầu (cf. C 頭 tóu) also means ‘head’ and gối (C 枕 zhěn as in 枕頭 zhěntóu) means ‘pillow’ both of which have nothing to do with the Chinese dissyllabic word of the same concept presented by two characters 膝蓋 xìgài that has a direct meaning as is posited as "đầugối" (knee) in Vietnamese. This basic etymon is brought up so as to infer to other cases of Vietnamese and Chinese cognateness in fundamental vocabularies, so to speak.

    Other examples of a great number of dissyllabic words formed with bound morphemes are in different categories such as càunhàu ‘growl’, cằnnhằn ‘grumble’, ‘bângkhuâng ‘pensive’, bồihồi ‘melancholy’, mồhôi 'sweat', mồcôi ‘orphan’, hàilòng 'pleased', taitiếng ‘infamous’, tạmbợ ‘temporary’, tráchmóc ‘reproach’, tuyệtvời ‘wonderful’, tămhơi 'whereabouts', and polysyllabic words such as cườimĩmchi 'shoot a smile', tủmtỉmcười 'hide a smile', mêtítthòlò ‘fatally irresistable attraction’, nhảyđồngđổng 'jump up in protest' ,bađồngbảyđổi ‘changing unpredictably’, hằnghàsasố ‘innumerable’, lộntùngphèo ‘turn upside down’, tuyệtcúmèo ‘fabulous’, etc. (平)

    Polysyllabically and morphemically speaking, for the same matter, even though for those solid Sino-Vietnamese words of verified Sino-Vietnamese with solid Middle Chinese origin such as hiệntại 現在 xiànzài (present), phụnữ 婦女 fùnǚ (woman), sơnhà 山河 shānhé (country), etc., each lexical stem that was made up from a Chinese character of the same characteristic being contained in the formation of syllable-words – i.e., each syllable virtually able to function as full a word in its own capacity – still cannot be used independently as a free form like a monosyllablically-unbound word and each of them must be combined with other word-syllable to form a lexical item in the Vietnamese language. For example, 'núivàng' (gold mountain) for SV 'kimsơn' 金山 jīnshān cannot be broken down into different Sinitic-Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese syllabic morphemes with each of different class to be paired with the other class of word, say, the to-be-combined forms {SV 'sơn' + VS 'vàng'} or {VS 'núi' + SV 'kim'} to mean 'gold-mountain' or {VS 'trèo' + SV 'san'} 'mountaineering' are illegitimate. The only exception is that if in those syllabic-words there exists no "pure" Vietnamese lexical equivalents – fully Vietnamized word of Chinese orign – or a cognate to replace the other syllable-word, e.g., 'bàntay' 手板 shǒubăn (palm), 'phấnviết' 粉筆 fěnbǐ 'chalk', VS 'miếngà' 雞麵 jīmiàn (chicken soup with mungbean vermicelli), etc., of which 'bàn' 板, 'phấn, 粉 fěn, or 'miến' 麵 miàn is of Sino-Vietnamese elements.

    While we are still on the subject of polysyllabicity, academically speaking, should those dissyllabic and polysyllabic words be written in combining formation instead of being singly written as separate syllables in Vietnamese orthorgraphy, they will certainly give Vietnamese kids a good headstart with abstract cognitiveness development and, at the same time, also establish a solid base for foreign learners of Vietnamese to pick up vocabulary logically and quickly and they, including specialists in Vietnamese like Barker himself, less likely have a false impression about the dissyllabicity of the Vietnamese language (cf. the difficulty in acquiring series of English words such as 'keep up', 'go on', 'put up with', 'come on', etc., for ESL learners themselves as apposed to picking up other concepts in combined forms as polysyllabic words in different categories such as 'nevertheless', 'meanwhile', 'aforementioned', 'albeit', 'regarding', 'trans-America', which are similar to the forms 'dùlà', 'trongkhiđó', 'kểtrên', 'dùthế', 'đốivới', 'xuyênMỹ', respectively, etc. ). In other words. to base on the current antiquated Vietnamese orthography is inadequate to label the Vietnamese language as of monosyllability. (Read more details of this discussion in Vietnamese2020 Writing Reform Proposal)

    On the issue of whether Vietnamese is of polysyllabicity or not, in the past renown Vietnamese linguists such as Bùi Ðức Tịnh (1966, p.82), taking side with Hồ Hữu Tường, criticized and rebutted the idea that Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language. The two scholars both treated Vietnamese as a dissyllabic language based on the high frequency of occurence of dissyllabic words in a random passage that is pretty high. In Vietnamese, analogously, just like words having roots from Latin and Greek in the English language, the sole fact that the sheer numbers of Sino-Vietnamese words taking the upper 90 percent in the modern Vietnamese dictionary is sufficient enough to constitute the dissyllabic nature of it.

    To put it in perspectives, languages of the world all appear to be of polysyllabicity overall fand their orthorgraphy are mostly written as such to characteristically reflect their nature, including the recently romanized writing systems such as the Hmong language. Those recent French or English loanwords in Vietnamese were usually borrowed into Vietnamese in forms of polysyllabicity, unbreakable, for example, the French 'acide' becomes 'axít', 'boursebois' > 'buộcboa', 'auto' > 'ôtô', 'compass' > 'cômpa', 'toilet' > 'toalét', etc. The most stupid thing, therefore, for anyone to do is to break the multisyllabe-word apart like 'a xít', 'buộc boa', 'ô tô', 'côm pa', toa lét', etc., the Vietnamese, like what Phan Hữu Dật, Ph.D. (1998), and his fellow scholars have done. The younger generation are probably getting smarter and more logical than their 'petit-minded' forefathers as they have readily accepted the complete loan packages, indivisibly, for new Western loanwords 'Washington', 'New York', 'Canada', 'dollar', 'visa', 'sillicon', 'restroom', 'toilet', 'cellphone', 'smartphone', 'data', 'webpage', 'internet', 'monitor', 'computer', 'iPhone', 'Apple', etc., as opposed to 'Hoa-thịnh-đốn', 'Nữu Ước'. 'Gia-nã-đại', 'đô-la', etc., respectively.

    Those intelligent Koreans and Japanese have long recognized this cognitive matter as they always, scientifically, write polysyllabic words in “groups” to make them "teamwork" efficiently; literally the people have given to the world the best innovative hi-technologies ever shined from their linguistic frame of mind. Their written languages could appear in patterns like XX XXX XX X XX XXX XX... visually. So do the Thai, the Malay people, and the like. In contrast, it is too bad that in today’s writing system of the Vietnamese language each dissyllabic word is still broken into two syllables where each of which, as previously said, when standing alone, may neither be related to the original meanings nor mean anything at all. If they try to do so with the Kanji, romanized Korean, or Chinese pinyin, our monosyllabic theorists will clearly understand the key argument presented herein.

    Closer to home, any Chinese dialect nowadays is also a dissyllabic language per se. The same thing can be said about those of Vietnamese with respect to its dissyllabic characteristics. On the polysyllabicity issue in Chinese, Chou (1982, p.106) quoted others in his article:

    Following Kennedy and de Francis, Eugene Chin said: "If we admit that words, not morphemes, are the construction material of Chinese, we cannot but admit that Chinese is polysyllabic. If we may use the majority rule here, we will have no trouble establishing the fact that Chinese is dissyllabic."

    In fact, to go with the majority rule, the Chinese vocabularies are dominated by a greater amount of dissyllabic words. From this premise the same rule virtually applies to Vietnamese as well for all their linguistic similarities in nature. So for each dissyllabic Chinese loanword – or any words from French or English, etc., for the same matter – in Vietnamese it must be of the same polysyllabicity, so all should be written in combining formation.

    Besides, be reminded that we have postulated previously that, phonologically, a dissyllabic Chinese word could evolve into quite a few different dissyllabic words in Vietnamese, including latest lexicons downright in our modern time. For instance, one Chinese word 三八 sānbā (SV tambát to redicule women in their March 8, International Women's Day), meaning “nonsense”, might have already given rise to, or at least associated with, words that are associated with the same concept such as tầmphào, tầmbậy, tầmbạ, bảláp, bảxàm, basạo, xàbát, xằngbậy, etc., in Vietnamese.

    Not only that, the one-to-many sound change rule of dissyllabic words can also be applied to those of monosyllabicity. We have seen previously the solid cases of the sound change from one Chinese monosyllabic word into multiple interchanges that have given rise to several Vietnamese monosyllabic words. With regard to this matter, what has gone wrong with those linguists of monosyllabicity camp? They have tried to look for only one related Vietnamese word and its equivalent to one Chinese character, equally a monosyllabic word, and, in most of the cases, they seem to be able to associate basically one Chinese character with only one monosyllabic word in the Vietnamese language. And they also try to find only those fit in their corresponding sound patterns for each etymon, for example, 惃 kūn for 'con' (child) or 'hên(h)+xui' 亨 hēng+(?) (by luck) (An Chi. Ibid. 2016. Vol 2, pp 32, 113) instead of 子 zǐ (Fukienese /kẽ/ for VS 'con') or 運氣 yùnqì (VS 'hênxui'), respectively. In contrast, it is the sole fact that for each Chinese character, in many a case, may have several pronunciations in each Chinese dialect could support firmly the one-monosyllabic-word-to-many-dissyllabic-word rule in Vietnamese. Both rules are similar, for example,

    • Tchiewchow 餅 /bẽ/ > Vietnamese 'bánhbẽn'' ~ "bánhpía" (Tchiewchow-styled butter pastry) [ 'bánh' 餅 M bǐng + 'bẽn' 餅 Tchiewchow nasalized /bẽ/ ],
    • Tchiewchow 包餅 /bao1bẽ/ (Tchiewchow-styled springroll) [ 'bò' 包 bao1 + 'bía 餅 /bẽ/' ],
    • M 麵包 miànbāo > VS 'bánhmì' (bread) [ 'bánh' 包 bāo' + 'mì' 麵 miàn ],
    • M 包子 bāozǐ > VS 'bánhbao' (steamed meat dumpling) [ 'bánh' 餅 M bǐng + 'bao' 包 bāo ],
    • M 粽子 zōngzǐ > VS 'bánhchưng' (steamed glutinous rice meat cake) [ 'bánh' 餅 M bǐng + 'chưng' 粽 zōng \ 烝 zhēng VS 'chưng' (steamed) ],
    etc., wherein 餅, 包, 子 have in effect given rise to different dissyllabic words.

    From such analysis, we can see that there is a flaw with the old monosyllabicity approach. While one can extract more Vietnamese etyma out of the same Chinese cognate, the oldtimers' deficit is to limit and confine their focus only to sole monosyllabicity. That is why they could not reconcile all corresponding Vietnamese cognates from Chinese as some examples presented in this paper because for them there might exist only the one-to-one monosyllabic relationship such as 'bánh' = 餅 M bǐng (SV bính) and their brain could not accept other dissyllabic words called 'bánhpía' and 'bánhbẽn' in Chinese out of something else made up from only other "word" such as 包 bāo. Take a note that #麵包 miànbāo as 'bánhmì' (bread) is a French product made in its old Vietnam colony, but the word is cognate to 麵包 via 餅 bǐng for 'bánh', and 麵 miàn for 'mì' in this specific case. Similarly, we can futher elaborate on other expanded derivatives.

    Only when Vietnamese is formally recognized as a dissyllabic language for its consisting mainly of two-syllable words like that of Chinese, linguistic rules of sound changes from Chinese dissyllabic words into Vietnamese ones are just like any of those of other polysyllabic languages in Indo-European family (IE). For example, words of the same root when changing into different languages, at least one of the syllables may not strictly follow the same phonological sound change pattern in all languages, e.g., the word “police”: politi, polizei, policia, polizia, polite, polis, polisi, or even "phúlít" and "cúlít" (both being old Vietnamese loanwords from French; for the latter see An Chi, ibid, 2016, Vol. 2, p 13) or modern "cốm' for English 'cop'. Any Western Austroasiatic historical linguists know better than the author does regarding to IE's complex changes in sound shifts with other roots that are mostly recognized than the cited case above for the same etymological matter throughout all IE languages from proto-sounds in prehistoric to written forms in the middle age.

    What do similarities and linguistic rules in Indo-European linguistics have to do with Vietnamese etyma? As previously mentioned, in the Chinese > Vietnamese scenario as wrongly peceived by orthodox theorists because under their point of view, theoretically, for the most part, one Chinese character corresponds to one word, syllable, or morpheme, when changing into Vietnamese, restrictively, that is, only one equivalent Vietnamese sound (word) exists for each Chinese character, not one-to-many, which will bring chaos to existing order. In reality in so many cases there are undeniably numerous Vietnamese sounds that were derived from each Chinese character, even in the strict interchanges of Middle Chinese ~ Sino-Vietnamese, for example,

    • 元 yuán (beginning, original) SV nguyên, ngươn , VS (tháng)giêng, ngọn, vị (first, top, unit) [ M 元 yuán < MC ŋwjən < OC *ŋon | ex. for VS '-giêng' => 'thánggiêng' #元月 yuányuè ~ 正月 zhèngyuè | According to Starostin, Viet. ngọn may reflect a variant *ŋons. For *ŋ- cf. Xiamen guan2, Chaozhou ŋueŋ2, Fuzhou ŋuoŋ2, Jianou ŋuiŋ2 | Note that the morpheme '-giêng' only is limitedly paired with syllable-word 'tháng-' or as in Sinitic-Vietnamese derivative as 'ragiêng' (過年 guònián 'the New Year'). For '-vị' as in 單元 dānyuán = 單位 dānwèi (unit) where 單元 dānyuán is used like '一弄 Yī Nòng, 二區 Èr Qū, 三單元 Sān Dānyuán, 四樓 Sì Lóu, 五室 Wǔ Shì' (Lot 1, Buildings 2, Unit 3, 4th Floor, Suite 5) ],
    • 貴 guì (precious) SV quý, quới, VS mắc, đắt (expensive) [ M 貴 guì < MC kwui < OC *kuts ],
    • 度 dù (measure) SV độ, VS dò, đo, đạc, đức, tấm [ M 度 dù < MC dʌk < OC *dha:k < PC **dha: | ex. 大度 dàdù SV 'đạiđộ' ~ VS 'đứcđộ' (generosity), 度量 dùliàng SV 'độlượng' ~ VS 'tấmlòng' (inner soul), cf. 渡江 dùjiāng 'đòngang' (ferry boat) | Note the morpheme 'đò-' only goes with the other morphem '-ngang' and 'tấm-' with syllable-word '-lòng'. ],
    • 拜 bài (kowtow) SV bái, VSvái, lạy, van [ M 拜 bài < MC paj < OC *pre:ts | ¶ b- ~ l- : ex. 兵 bīng (SV binh) VS 'lính' ],
    • 粉 fěn (flour, noodle) SV phấn, VS bún, bột, phở, bụi [ See elaboration on its etymology as previously discussed above. ],
    • etc., or in compounds:
    • 場 chăng SV trường, tràng (see below) [ M 場 chăng < MC ɖaŋ < OC *ɫaŋ | According to Starostin, in MC we have here a very rare case of preserving ɖ- < *ɫ- (normally *jaŋ would be expected). cf. 腸 chăng for VS 'ruột' (intestine), 長 cháng (SV trưởng, trường, tràng, VS 'dài' ) ],
    • and in Vietnamese the same Chinese character has evolved into several sounds in compounds:
    • 劇場 jùchăng (SV kịchtrường) # sânkhấu (theatrical stage),
    • 在場 zàichăng (SV tạitrường) tạichỗ ~ tạitrận 'on spot, red-handed',
    • 試場 shìchăng (SV thítrường) # trườngthi (examination site),
    • 戰場 zhànchăng (SV chiếntrường) chiếntrận , hence, # trậnchiến (battle) (note the word order is in reversal for all three cases above), etc.
    • and for the following, in Vietnamese the 場 as a classfier is incorporated into each accompanied syllable-word and make them become more sticky, then fixed, binding lexical forms, for example,
    • 一場夢 yīchăng mèng (SV nhất trường mộng) một giấcmơ, giấcmộng, cơnmơ, cơnmộng (a dream) [ Note that 一場 yīchăng can be written in combined form. ],
    • 一場病 yīchăng bìng (SV nhất trường bệnh) một trậnbệnh, cơnbệnh (illness),
    • 一場戲 yīchăng xì (SV nhất trường hí) một tuồnghát, xuấthát (a show) [ VS 'xuất @ 場 chăng ~ SV 齣 chù 'xuất' ],
    • 一場空 yīchăng kōng (SV nhất trường không) cónhưkhông, córồikhông, một khoảngtrống (emptiness, nada, empty-handedness), etc.

    This is where the process of association kicked in affecting the sound change continuum. Such phenomenon occurred not only in syllables where neighboring sounds with similar syllable-word and meanings could be conditioned and assimilated – that might have taken place before they were ever introduced into Vietnamese as in the case of chăng 場 to be associated with zhèn 陣 (SV 'trận') and chù 齣 (SV 'xuất') – but also accomplished by transferring a whole syllable-word and its associative meaning to match what conveyed in the new dissyllabic counpounds such as 'cơn' (a stream of, a thrust of). Meanwhile, per Starostin's comment on its etymology as noted above, based on their phonology, like in other roots, the Vietnamese variants of 場 chăng could have been likely borrowed into Vietnamese very lately, probably from a vernacular form of Mandarin long after the Middle Chinese period, i.e., /chang*/ ~> 'sân'|chỗ'|'xuất'|'giấc'|'dài'|'ruột' \ ch- ~ j- < *ɫ- ~ *j- .

    Let's examine another case of the syllable-word 匠 jiāng which attaches itself as an affix to different morphemic syllable – from a syllable-word – and that help us to posit it as an equivalent in Vietnamese as 'thợ' (smith):

    • thợmộc [tʰə̰ːʔ˨˩ mə̰ʔwk˨˩] ~ mùjiàng [/mu⁵¹⁻⁵³ ʨi̯ɑŋ⁵¹/]
    • [/mu⁵¹⁻⁵³ ʨi̯ɑŋ⁵¹/] is the Mandarin sound of 木匠 /mùjiàng/ (carpenter) Fukienese /ba̍k-chhiūⁿ/. There is not much to say about the derived SV mộc [mə̰ʔwk˨˩] or /mokʷ8/ ( 'mắm. By the way 'ma81m used be a product of the Chamic people.) ], etc.

    While most words retain their original forms and existing associated meanings, some have evolved their own way by differentiating meanings either with the old pronunciation or new articulation which results in both subtle semantic and sound changes that in turn emerged with new characters. This does not necessarily mean the majority of Chinese loanwords will end up richer in Vietnamese counterparts, i.e., giving rise more derived variants with multiple sounds or words. In contrast to what we have seen in the examples as cited previously, the other way around is also proved to be true for many lexicons like in the case that Vietnamese identify the same associatory sound and meaning that go with other glosses, all under one roof, similar to loangraphs in Chinese itself. Here are some more examples to support the argument on the case of many-to-one from Chinese ~> Vietnamese glosses:

    • sợ (fear, dread, fearful, scared): (1) 嚇 xià, (2) 怕 pà, (3) 怵 chù, (4) 恄 xì, (5) 悚 sǒn, (6) 愳 jù, (7) 懼 jù, (8) 慴 zhé 懾, (9) shè 怯 qiē,
    • đời (life, generation): (1) 世 shì, (2) 代 dài, (3) 輩 bèi, (4) 生 shēng, [ ex. 人生 rénshēng 'đờingười' (life), cf. 'đẻ' (give birth), 'tái' (raw, uncooked), 'sống' (unripe) ],
    • chết (death, die, die young, pass away): (1) 死 sǐ, (2) 折 zhé, (3) 逝 shì, (4) 殛 jí, (5) 殊 shū, (6) 陟 zhì,
    • mưa (drizzle, rain, shower): (1) 溟 míng, (2) 雨 yǔ, (3) 霂 mù, (4) 霡 mò,
    • mây (overcast, cloud, fog, haze): (1) 蔓 mán, (2) 雲 yún, (3) 霨 wèi, (4) 霧 wù, (5) 霾 măi,
    • nhà (house, family, -ist, dynasty): (1) 屋 wù, (2) 家 jiā (SV gia), (3) 者 zhě (SV giả), (4) 朝 cháo,
    • đường (path, road, route): (1) 唐 táng, (2) 道 dào, (3) 途 tú, (4) 沖 chòng,
    • việc (work, task, duty): (1) 活 huó (SV hoạt), (2) 作 zuò (SV tác), (3) 役 yí (SV dịch), (4) 務 wù (SV vụ),
    • xanh (green, blue, azure): (1) 倉 cāng (SV xanh), (2) 滄 cāng (SV xanh), (3) 蒼 cāng (SV xanh), (4) 青 qīng (SV thanh), (5) 清 qīng, (6) 葱 cōng (SV song),
    • đỏ (red, burgundy): (1) 丹 dān (SV đơn), (2) 彤 tóng (SV đồng), (3) 朱 zhū, (4) 絑 zhū, (5) 赭 zhé,
    • trường (campus, school): (1) 場 cháng, (2) 堂 táng (SV đường), (3) 庠 xiáng (SV tường), (4) 校 xiào,
    • tàu (canoe, boat, ship): (1) 刀 dāo (SV đao), (2) 舠 dāo, (3) 槽 cáo (SV tào), (4) 舟 zhōu, (5) 艚 cáo (SV tào), (6) 艇 tǐng,
    • cho (give, allow): (1) 給 jǐ, (2) 準 zhǔ, (3) 許 xǔ, (4) 賜 cì, (5) 贈 zèng, [ See more of their enumeration further below. ]
    • disyllabically, we have word-concept being associated with word-sound, that is, puting different words under one umbrella for words that somehow sound alike, e.g.,
    • tónggăn 同感: 'thôngcảm' (sympathy) vs. 同情 tóngqíng: 'đồngtình' (sympathy),
    • bāngmáng 幫忙: 'bênhvực' (side with) vs. 包庇 bāobì: ''bảobọc' (support),
    • húndàn 混蛋: 'khốnnạn' (wretch, bastard) vs. 困難 kùnnăn (wretched, in difficulties),
    • tánghuáng 堂皇: 'đànghoàng' (stately, magnificent) vs. 端莊 duānzhuāng: 'đoantrang' (dignified, demure, sedate),
    • yóudàng 遊蕩: 'duđảng' (loaf about, loiter) vs. 流氓 líumáng: 'lưumanh' (hoodlum, hooligan),
    • yǒuqián 有錢: 'giàusang' (affluent) vs. 富有 fùyǒu: 'giàucó' (rich),
    • gāoshàng 高尚: 'caosang' (noble) vs. 高望 gāowàng: 'caovọng' (socially high class),
    • etc.

    At the same time, the sound changes that have evolved into some innovated words could become independent of their original form. Historically, this similar path of development is commonplace in many languages. For example, as in the case of English, we have the word albeit < 'all be it' for 'though' (semantically changed) or the etymology of 'morning' < 'morn' < Old English 'morgen' while evening < 'æfnung', a noun from the verb "æfnian" ‘grow towards night’. Following the pattern of 'evening' the 'morn' had become 'morning'.

    All of the above characterize conceptually and metaphorically of what – except for the true meaning of the concepts of 'lexemic idiom' and 'lexeme' –Addam Makkai uses to refer to for the idiomatic meanings of "Emperor of Japan, old wife, hot potatoes, and red herring" (the first two being fish names, and the latter two for 'embarassment' and 'phony', respectively), as described in his paper enttiled "Pragmo-Ecological Grammar (PEG): Toward a New Synthesis of Linguistics and Anthropology" in Proceedings of the IXth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographic Sciences: 327-61, Mouton, The Hague, Sol Tax (General Ed.), Approaches to Language" (William McCormack & Stephen Wurm [Eds.] ), 1978 (p. 346):

    "[..]the participant morphemes once had (and in other environments still have) separate lexemic status with separate sememic realizates, and these past (or elsewhere still active) meanings have a definite shining-through effect, suffusing the meaning of these lexemic idioms with the old, suppressed, literal meanings. The denotatum in each case is primary or lexical meaning, and the TRANSLUCENT CONNOTATUM is the original literal meaning of the form. What makes lexical idioms unusual is that they, therefore, have two meanings simultaneously, i.e., the REFLECTING DENOTATUM together with the meaning TRANSLUCENT CONNOTATUM. Whether the language has a heavy morpheme reinvestment ratio or not in its lexeme inventory becomes an interesting typological question, but there is little doubt that there are any real languages that do not somehow utilize morpheme reinvestment in the building of new lexemes. "

    In Vietnamese, specifically, the author justifies that kind of phenomenal occurrence of association as "assimilative sandhi", or, alternately, the sandhi process of assimilation or association, a common 'reinvestment' in phonological, hence, lexical development. They are likely products of time which have come into play naturally without much of human conscious interference.

    To illustrate the meaning of all concepts in the passage quoted above, let's examine a few more of associatory variations in the case of the lexeme 待 dài (wait) with this assimilation process. Pay attention to the sound change in "待 dài" and note that each sound is associated with something related in Vietnamese.

    • 待 dài đãi in SV, đợi in VS (wait) [ M 待 dài < MC dɣj < OC *dhɑ:ʔ | FQ 徒亥 (=> VS 'đợi') \ 亥 hài ~ 'hợi' (SV) ],
    • and the articulation of this character, or lexeme, will change it into some other sounds in the context of lexemic idioms when it is attached in other dissyllabic forms, or words, and, in this case, they are compound words, such as
    • 等待 děngdài (SV đẵngđãi ) chờđợi (wait for) [ < #'chờđón' < 'đónchờ' < 等待 děngdài | M 等 děng < MC tɤŋ, tej < OC *tjə:ŋʔ, *tə:ʔ (which is associated with Viet. 'đợi' = 待 dài ~ SV 'đãi') || cf. the sound change pattern of sì 寺 SV 'tự' (/si4/ ~ VS 'chùa') and chéng 承 SV 'thừa' (/cheng2/ ~ VS 'đằng' – see elaboration on 待承 dàichéng below.) Its vocal shell is being phoneticized as such because that is a result of association of the denotatum 期待 qídài, an etymon for VS chờđợi (wait) with a later semantically reversed change to become a connotatum chờđón (expect) that has been incorporated into the existing compound with "等" děng "đón" being treated as "待" dài "đợi" (wait), hence, semantically 等 děng being a doublet of 待 in Chinese. ]
    • 期待 qídài (SV kỳđãi ) chờđón (expect) [ M 期 qī < MC gy < OC *gjə | Note: In Vietnamese, literally 期待 qídài is cognate to the connotatum "chờđợi" (wait for), but it means 'expect' in Chinese. ]
    • Hence, it appears as if 等待 děngdài and 期待 qídài switched their meanings in Vietnamese then. In the meanwhile, 待 dài in different context means 'treat' in VS. For example,
    • 對待 duìdài (SV đốiđãi ) becomes đốixử 'treat' [ In this case 待 dài is associated with 處 chǔ 'xử''; cf. 寺 sì 'chùa' (pagoda) ]
    • 待承 dàichéng (SV đãithừa ) đãiđằng, literally, (treat with a feast, entertain guests' [ M 承 chéng, zhēng, zhěng, zhèng, zèng < MC ʐiŋ < OC *dhjəŋ ],
    • 接待 jiēdài (SV tiếpđãi ) tiếpđón 'reception, to greet' [ M 接 jiē, jié, chá, shà, xiè < MC tsjep < OC *ca || Note: 待 dài is in association with "đón" meaning 'to receive guests' while 接 jiē in 接送 jiēsòng VS "đưađón" which as a whole means 'to pick up and see off' ], etc.

    In another direction of development of new vocabularies, consciously the principle of lexical association serves as an important tool for coining new compounds with existing lexemes. That is, new coinnage can be a word of local innovation of an existing word to be made-to-order as (1) needs arise, (2) new word being coined, (3) all to be created from the Chinese material that has been already assimilated in the donor language or concurrently being used in the borrowing language with different meanings, for instance,

    (1)

    • táichế "再製 zàizhì" [ to mean 'recycle' that in modern Mandarin the Chinese use 回收 huíshōu (SV thuhồi) ],
    • bấmnút "按紐" (also, 'nhấnnút') ànnǐu 'press the button' > 'click' (the button),
    • mạnglưới "網絡" wăngluò 'net' > 'network' > 'computer network' ('lưới' is associated with 羅 luò 'net' in Sinitic-Vietnamese),
    • viênchức #"職員" zhíyuán 'civil servant' > 'governmental officer' (also in C, 'staff' = Vietnamese 'nhânviên' 人員 rényuán),
    • trangmạng "網頁" wăngyè 'web page' ('trang' is associated with 張 zhāng 'sheet' as 'tranggiấy' 張紙 in Sinitic-Vietnamese),
    • tinnhắn "短信" duănxìn 'text message' [ where 短 duăn ~ SV 'đoản' (short) evolves into 'ngắn' > 'vắn' > 'nhắn' ],

    (2)

    • bánhbao "餅+包" (bǐng+bāo) 'dumpling' [ associated with 包子 bāozi ],
    • bòbía "包餅" (bāo+bǐng) (a Tchiewchow style spring rolls wrapped with Vietnamese rice paper, called /popẽ/; also, a different kind of sweetened Tchiewchow -style butter pastry, called in Vietnamese as 'bánhbẽn' or 'bánpía'.),
    • tủlạnh "冷+櫝" (# lěng+dú) 'refrigerator' [ associated with 冷箱 lěngxiāng (SV lãnhtương) where modern M 冰箱 bīngxiāng ],
    • thangmáy "梯+機" (tī+jī) 'elevator' [ modern M 電梯 diàntī, literally, VS 'thangđiện' ],
    • thangcuốn "梯+捲' (tī+juān) 'escalator' [ modern M 電扶梯 diànfútī, also called 'thangmáy' in VS ],
    • xếhộp "盒+車" (# hé+chē) 'automobile sedan' [ modern M 轎車 jiàochē ],
    • nhuliệu "柔+料" (róu+liào) 'software',
    • phầncứng "份+剛" (fèn+gāng) 'hardware',
    • trangnhà "張+家" (zhāng+jiā) 'homepage',
    • liênmạng "聯+網" (lián+wăng) 'internet',

    (3)

    • trànggiangđạihải "長江+大海" (chángjiāng+dàhăi) 'lengthy writing' [ following the paradigm SV "týsửudầnmẹo" 子丑寅卯 zǐchǒuyínmǎo ( in an orderly way) ],
    • vòngvotamquốc "三國演義" (sānguóyănyì) 'beat around the bush' [ following the paradigm SV "hằnghàsasố" 恒河沙數 Hénghéshashù (as numerous as the sands of the Ganges),
    • rượuchè "酒+茶" (jǐu+chá) 'alcoholic' [ assosiated with 應酬 yìngchóu VS #'nhậunhẹt' (eat and drink) ],
    • cờbạc "棋+博" (qí+bó) 'gamble) [ assosiated with 賭博 dǔbó (gamble) ],
    • côngnhânviên "公+人員" (gōng+rényuán) 'civil servant,' ~ côngchức "公+職" (gōng + zhí) [ associated with 公務員 gōngwùyuán, from which the VS gives rise to 'nhânviêncôngvụ' or #公務人員 gōngwùrényuán,
    • toàán "座+案" (zuò+àn) 'court' [ assosiated with 法庭 fătíng ],
    • quantoà "官+座" (guān+zuò) 'judge' [ assosiated with 法官 făguān (judge) ],
    • ratoà "出庭" (chūtíng) ', 'appear in court' [ currently in use in modern Mandarin; in Vietnamese 庭 tíng (hall), SV đình' /deijng2/ being associated with 'toà'), etc.]

    For those who do not accept the fact that both Chinese and Vietnamese are dissyllabic languages, they may find it hard to see why the same monosyllabic word in Vietnamese originally cognate to mostly only one character in Chinese could ever evolve into such varieties of sound changes in several different dissyllabic formations; therefore, only with the recognition that Vietnamese – like Chinese or any other languages on earth – absolutely a dissyllabic language will one be able to see how two-syllable Vietnamese words consisting of Chinese lexical components have changed without the need to follow the strict phonetic rules that governs linguistic sound changes diachronically; they have their own rules instead, of which one matches the associative sandhi rule, that is, the way the sound changes is quite different from the one that occurrs following predictable phonetic patterns – as in the case that only a monosyllabic word becomes mostly one monosyllabic word given certain phonological characteristics – like in most of the cases of Sino-Vietnamese lexicons in historical phonology linguistics. It is not hard to see that the longer the multisyllables are, the more drastical did changes happen.

    Sound changes may happen with or without human intervention, but locality and time play an important role, especially in historical contacts, the longer the more. To reconstruct the old-timed pronunciation of Sino-Vietnamese lexicons – ones that happened previously in a series – for those uncommon Vietnamese transcription of a Chinese character, scholars do follow spelling rules called Fănqiè (反切) to spell out of how a character is being read out of the Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典) or Guangyun (廣韻) or Tangyun (唐韻) rhyming books; otherwise, nobody, including researchers, knows how to say it accurately. For those common characters used in daily spoken words, like those in the cases of previously cited examples of qǐ 起 ~ SV 'khởi', shùn 順 ~ SV 'thuận', chăng 場 ~ SV 'trường', they should come out as parts of the language itself.

    As we amass more examples, many words derived from the Old Cinese and Middle Chinese can complicate the matter further with multiple lexical and phonological developments, which would confuse unbelievers if the premises of the dissyllabicity principle discussed above could not be comprehended and digested beforehand, such as 沖 chōng ~ xung (trùng), dà 大 ~ đại, hăi 海 ~ hải in Sino-Vietnamese as opposed to all those Sinitic-Vietnamese variants below, repectively.

    • 沖 chōng, chòng (xung, trùng) [ M 沖 chōng, chòng (trùng, xung) < MC ʈiuwŋ < OC *druwŋ ] giving rise to: (1) xối 'to wash out', (2) dội 'pour water on', (3) sôi 'boil up', (4) xông 'to charge', (5) xấn 'to dash (against)', (6) tông 'to collide', (7) đụng 'to collide', (8) đường 'public road', even with words in modern usage such as (9) sang 'develop and print photo' as in 'sanghình' ~ 'sangảnh' 沖印 chōngyìn, etc.
    • 大 dà ‘big, elder’ (SV đại) [ M 大 dà < MC dɒj < OC *dha:ts ] could become to, cả, sơ, tào, ba, tất, đủ, đáng, lồ... as in dàipăn大販: láibuôn (merchant) [Cant. /tai2pan3/], dàifu 大夫: đạiphu (minister, high rank official) [ modern M. 'physician' ], dàge 大哥: đạica (big brother), dàdăn 大膽: togan, cảgan (daring), dàshēng 大聲: totiếng (raise one's voice), dàyǔ 大雨: #mưato (big rain), dàxiōng 大兄: # anhcả (elder brother), dàjiě 大姐: # chịcả (elder sister), dàhăi 大海: # bểcả (big ocean. See below for etymology of "bể"), dàhuǒ 大夥: cảlũ (the whole group), dàjiā 大家: tấtcả (all, everyone), dàjiāng 大江: sôngcả (large river), dàyì 大意: sơý (inattentive), dàhuà 大話: tàolao (talk nonsense), dàyuè 大月: # thángđủ (full lunar month of 30 days), dà'ài 大礙: đángngại (formidable), pángdà 龐大: khổnglồ (enermous), hóngdà 宏大: #tolớn (great), lăodà 老大: thằnglớn (eldest son) [ cf. Cant. 大老 /tai2lou4/ ], dàgézi 大格子: ® tocon (big body), lăotàbùshăo 老大不少: ® lớnđầu (grown-up), dàhóngdàliáng 大宏大量: tấmlòngđạilượng
    • and
    • 海 hăi (1) biển ~> bể , (2) khơi (SV hải) 'the sea' [ < phonetic stem 母 mǔ > mái > mệ > mể > bể > biển | M 海 hăi < MC xʊj < OC *smjə:ʔ | ¶ h- ~ m-, m- ~ b- | cf. 每 měi 'mỗi', 敏 mǐn 'mẫn', 梅 méi 'mai', 酸梅 suānmé (VS mechua 'tamarind'); for VS 'khơi', see Guangyun: 海 海 hu改 曉 咍 海 上聲 一等 開口 咍 蟹 上十五海 xɑ̆i xɒi xᴀi xɒi hʌi həi həj hai3 haix xoj 說文曰天池也以納百川者亦州禹項徐州之域七國時屬楚秦爲薛郡漢爲東海郡後魏爲海州亦姓呼改切 ], hence, 大海 dàhăi > biểncả (bểcả), (SV đạihải) 'big sea' 苦海 kǔhăi > bểkhổ (khổải) (SV khổhải) '(sea of) suffering' 海浪 hăilàng > sóngbể 'sea wave' 海口 hăikǒu > cửabể (SV hảikhẩu) 'seaport' 海窛 hăikòu > cướpbể (SV hảikhấu) 'sea pirate' [ modern Vietnamese 'hảitặc' 海賊 hăizéi (VS 'giặcbể')] , including "khơi" as in 出海 chūhăi > rakhơi 'put out to sea' [ @ 海 hăi ~ 'khơi' \ h- /x/ ~ kh- /k'/ ], 外海 wàihăi > 'ngoàikhơi' ~ 'ngànkhơi' 'in the open seas', 'open seas', etc.

    For cases of the model of many-to-one from Chinese to Vietnamese, it is also a phenomenon that one word, either in monosyllabic or in dissyllabic formation, in Vietnamese can point to different sources in C, depending on the context. To further rebut the outdated monosyllabicity viewpoint that sound change had to be restricted mostly on the basis of one-to-one correspondence, these are cases that show dynamic sound changes, e.g.,

    "cho":

    • cho 給 jǐ, gěi 'give' (SV cấp) [ M 給 jǐ, gěi < MC kip < OC *kjəp < PC **qjəp | Dialects: Yangzhou (A) kjəi2; $ tʂiɔʔ4, (B) kjəi 2; Chaozhou (A) tʂijəʔ41, (B) tʂiɔʔ41, Wenzhou (A) tʂiai41, (B) tʂiai41; Changsha (A) tʂi4, (B) tʂi4; Shuangfeng (A) tʂi12, (B) tʂi12 | According to Starostin, Mand. gěi is quite irregular; there exists, however, a regular (literary) reading jǐ. || Note: ¶ j- ~ ch- ],
    • cho(phép) 準 zhǔn 'allow' (SV chuẩn) [ M 準 zhǔn < MC tʂyn < OC *tɕwin | ex. 'chophép' @# 批準 pīzhǔn (SV phêchuẩn) 'permit, allow' ]
    • cho 許 xǔ 'allow' (SV hứa) [ M 許 xǔ < MC xo < OC * sŋaʔ | ex. 'khôngcho' 不許 bùxǔ (SV bấthứa) 'do not allow' ],
    • cho 賜 cì 'present with' (SV tứ) [ M 賜 cì < MC sjɜ < OC *slheks | According to Starostin, to give, present with. The word is frequently written as 錫 (and in these cases consequently usually read as MC siek - which is probably due to confusion with the basic reading of 錫 - MC siek 'tin' q.v.). See the discussion in Schuessler 98. ],
    • cho 贈 zèng 'give a gift' (SV tặng) [ M 贈 zèng < MC tsɦəɒŋ < OC *dzəŋ ],
    • and other compounds lexemically built with Vietnamese lexeme 'cho':
    • chodầu 雖然 suīrán 'although' (SV tuynhiên) [ ~ VS 'chodẫu', 'chodù', #'dẫucho', #'dùcho'... | M 雖然 suīrán | M 雖 suī < MC sjwi OC *swhij ],
    • chonên 所以 'therefore' suóyǐ (SV sỡdĩ) [ M 所以 suóyǐ \ @ 所 suǒ ~ cho, @ 以 yǐ ~ nên \ ¶ y ~ n- {應 yìng (SV ứng) nên} ],
    • chotới 直到 zhídào 'until' (SV trựcđáo) [ M 直到 zhídào \ @ 直 zhí ~ cho, @ 到 dào ~ tới ],
    • chotiền 捐錢 juānqián 'donation' (SV quyêntiền) [ M 捐 juān < MC jwen < OC *wen ],
    • dànhcho 專用 zhuānyòng 'specialized for' (SV chuyêndụng) [ @# M 專用 zhuānyòng \ @ 專 zhuān ~ cho | M 專 zhuān < MC tɕwen < OC *ton ],
    • khiếncho 引起 yǐnqǐ 'cause' (SV dẫnkhởi) [ M 引起 yǐnqǐ \ @ 起 qǐ ~ cho \ ¶ q- ~ ch-, r- ], etc.

    "làm":

    • làm 幹 gàn 'do, make, work' (SV cán) [ M 幹 < MC kan < OC *ka:rs | ex. 'làmviệc' 幹活 gànhuó 'work' ],
    • làm 辦 bàn 'to handle' (SV bạn) [ M 辦 bàn < MC bɑn < OC *bhre:ns | According to Starostin, to deal with, handle, manage. For *bh- cf. Chaozhou phõĩ6. | ¶ b- ~ l-, ex. 兵 bīng (binh) lính. cf. VS 'làmgương' 旁樣 pángyāng (SV 'bàngdạng') (exemplify) ],
    • làm 弄 nòng, lòng, nèng 'make' (SV lộng) [ M 弄 nòng, nèng, lòng < MC ləwŋ < OC *ləwŋ | ¶ n-~ l- | ex. 'làmtiền' 弄錢 nòngqián (SV lộngtiền) 'make money', 弄樣子 nòngyàngzǐ (SV lộngnhantử): 'làmdángvẻ' (làmravẻ) 'make oneself look like' ],
    • làm 令 lǐng 'cause' (SV linh, lịnh, lệnh) [ M 令 lǐng, líng, lìng < MC leŋ < OC *riŋ | FQ 呂貞 | ex. 令人驚訝 lìng rén jīngyá 'làm (ngườita) kinhngạc' (it caused surprise to everybody.) ],
    • làmruộng (làmđồng) 耕田 gēngtián 'to farm' (SV canhđiền) [ M 耕 gēng < MC 耕 kaijŋ < OC *kre:ŋ | Dialects: Chaozhou kẽ11, Wenzhou kiɜ11, Shuangfeng kiẽ11 | cf. 'cày' (a plough, to plow the paddy), hence, càyruộng 耕田 gēngtián ],
    • làmcàn 蠻干 mángàn 'foolhardy' (SV mancán) [ @# M 蠻干 mángàn | M 蠻 mán < MC mwan < OC *məran ],
    • làmơn 頒恩 bān'ēn 'bestow' (SV banân) [ M 頒恩 bān'ēn \ @ 頒 bān ~ 'làm' 辦 bàn (bạn) \ ¶ b- ~ l-, ex. 拜 bài (SV 'bái)' VS 'vái' (pray), 'lạy' (kowtow) ],
    • làmdốc 排架子 báijiàzi 'pretend' (SV bàigiátử) [ @ 排 bái ~ 'làm' 辦 bàn \ ¶ b- ~ l-, @ 架子 jiàzi ~>® contracted to 'dốc', hence, 'làmdốc' /lam2zowk7 ],
    • làmgương 旁樣 pángyāng 'exemplify' (SV bàngnhan) [ @ 旁 páng ~ 'làm' 辦 bàn (bạn) \ ¶ b- ~ l-, @ 樣 yāng ~ 'gương' 鏡 jìng (kính) ],
    • làmphiền 勞煩 láofán 'please help' (SV lạophiền) [ @ 勞 láo ~ 'làm' 幹 gàn | cf. 麻煩 măfăn (VS 'làmphiền') ],
    • làmăn 生意 shēngyì 'make a living' (SV sinhý) [ @# M 生意 shēngyì \ @ shēngyì ~ 'làmăn' (& '幹 gàn + 吃 chī') | ¶ sh- ~ l- ],
    • làmviệc 幹活 gànhuó 'work' [ @ 幹 gàn ~ 'làm', @ 活 huó ~ việc \ ¶ hw- ~ Ø -, v- | M 幹 gàn < MC kaʌn < OC *ka:rs || M 活 huó < MC ɠwʌt < OC *ghwa:t ],
    • làmthinh 安靜 ānjìng 'keep quiet' (SV an tịnh) [ ~ VS 'yênlặng', 'imlặng', 'imlìm', 'lặngim', 'lặngyên', 'tĩnhlặng' | M 安靜 ānjìng \ @ 安 ān ~ 'làm' | M 靜 jìng < MC tsjɜŋ < ʑheŋ || M 安 ān < MC ʔɒn < OC *ʔa:n ],
    • làmkhôngkịp 來不及 láibùjí 'cannot make it' (SV laibấtcập) [ @ M 來不及 láibùjí | @ M 來 lái ~ 'làm' ],
    • làmlại 再來 zàilái 'try again' (SV táilai) [ @# M 再來 zàilái | M 再 zài < MC cɤj < OC *ɕjə:s | According to Starostin, twice; again, and again || 來 lái (lai) ~ M 來 lái < MC lɣj < OC *rjə: ],
    • làmcông 勞工 láogōng 'to labor, work for' (SV laocông) [ @ M 勞工 láogōng \ @ 勞 láo ~ 'làm' 幹 gàn ],
    • làmlụng 勞動 láodòng 'to labor' (SV laođộng) [ M 勞動 láodòng \ @ 勞 láo ~ 'làm' 幹 gàn, @ 動 dòng (động) ~ lụng (reduplicative)],
    • làmquan 當官 dàngguān 'be an official' (SV đángquan) [ M 當官 dàngguān \ @ 當 dàng ~ 'làm' 幹 gàn ],
    • làmlính 當兵 dàngbīng 'be a soldier' (SV đángbinh) [ M 當兵 dàngbīng \ @ 當 dàng ~ 'làm' 幹 gàn ],
    • làmchủ 當家 dàngjiā 'be the boss' (SV đánggia) [ M 當家 dàngjiā \ @ 當 dàng ~ 'làm' 幹 gàn ],
    • làmtóc 理髮 lǐfá 'hairdo' (SV líphát) [ M 理髮 lǐfá 'hairdo' \ @ 理 lǐ ~ 'làm' 弄 nòng (SV lộng) | M 理 lǐ < MC lɤ < OC *rhjəʔ ],
    • làmtiền 賺錢 zhuànqián 'make money' (SV chuyếntiền) [ M 賺錢 zhuànqián \ @ 賺 zhuàn ~ 'làm' 弄 nòng (SV lộng) | M 賺 zhuàn < MC tɕwen < OC *kje:m ],
    • làmtiền 勒索 lèsuǒ 'extortion' (SV lặctác) [ ~ 敲詐 qiāozhà 'extortion' ~ cf. 賺錢 zhuànqián (make money) || M 敲 qiāo < MC khiaw < OC *khɛw || M 詐 zhà, zhă < MC tʂa < OC *cra:ks || M 勒 lēi, lèi, lè, lē, yè < MC lək, lʌk < OC *lək < PC **rək || M 索 suǒ, suó, sù, sài (sách, tác) < MC sʌk < OC *sa:k ],
    • and the listings go on. 'làmtình', 'làmnư', 'làmtàng', làmkhó', 'làmbộ', etc..

    With a little linguistic common sense one will readily accept some implicit mechanisms – in generalized Vietnamese 'làm' (cf. Eng. 'do', 'make', 'work', 'perform', etc.) – that underline the sound changes that have given rise to the lexical variants above, e.g., 弄 nòng, 幹 gàn, 當 dāng, etc., because it is easy to identify phonological relations between the cognates, i.e., words of the same root as they also appear in different forms in different languages.

    We also should know that in Chinese there may be several Chinese characters representing a concept-word (either a lexeme, morpheme, allophone, or doublet, as opposed to an individual syllable-word or character) and they may be transcbided or pronounced similarly or differently depending on other factors such as the time frame and locality, e.g., 作 zuò (SV tác) and 做 zuò (SV tố), both for 'do' and 'make'. In this case sound changes that appear in many different forms in the Chinese language itself and their variants in Vietnamese may need more analyses in order to understand how they happened, for example:

    • phong 風 fēng 'wind' [ > giông > gió [ also, meaning 'custom' | M 風 fēng < MC pjuŋ < OC *pjɔm, prɔm < PC: **pryŋʷ, *prym | M 風 fēng (SV phong /pfɔŋʷ/) ~ 'giông' => 'gió' \ 'giông' /dʒoŋʷ1/ => 'gió' /dʒɔ5/, © 凬 | cf. 虫 chóng (SV trùng) ~ VS 'trùn', 'giun' (worm), 富 fù (SV 'phú') ~ VS 'giàu' (rich) ], hence, we have 颱風 táifēng > giôngtố (taiphoon), 暴風 băofēng > bãogiông> gióbão (storm), 風雨 fēngyǔ > giómưa > mưagió (rainstorm) [ cf. 凍雨 dōngyǔ 'mưadông' (rainstorm) ],
    • 蜂 fēng >phong > ong (bee) [ | M 蜂 fēng < MC phouŋ < OC *phoŋ | According to Starostin, also read *bhōŋ, MC buŋ || Note: 螉 wēng ~ ong, a doublet of the same root ) ],
    • 公 gōng công, cồ, ông, trống (male, mister, baron, public) [ Note: for "ông" we have the cognate 翁 wēng as a doublet form, to be exact, a loanword, that means originally 'hair' (VS lông), etc. | M 公 gōng < MC kuŋ < OC *klo:ŋ | FQ 古紅 | MC description 通合一平東見 | According to Starostin, clan head, Gong; palace, court. Later also used for 'the whole clan' < 'public'. | cf. 鞏 gǒng => 'cáitrống' ~ 鼓 gǔ (SV 'cổ'). Similarly, 母 mǔ (mother, female) is cognate to Vietnamese 'mẫu', 'mẹ', 'mợ', 'mái', etc. in different connotations. ].
    • In the cases of ong and cồ, công, ông, trống, these multiple forms of sound change can easily be recognized thanks to the phonological similarity between them as doublets – characters of the same root that appear in different forms – in the Chinese language.

    In many cases, it is not always that there is a clear-cut association among the sounds, for example:

    • jiànkāng 健康 SV 'kiệnkhang', 'kiệnkhương' (health, healthy):
    • It is plausible that jiànkāng 健康 itself has given rise VS 'sứckhoẻ' (health) and this should be the case. Etymologically, it is possible that the initial kh- /k'-/ in the second syllable could become sandhized with /-n/ of the first syllable /jiàn/ of which the first syllable is identified with 'sức' [ ~ 力 lì SV 'lực' (strength) ] and the second 'khang' 康 kāng [ note an alternate, probably older, SV sound as 'khương' /k'jɨəŋ1/ ] becomes 'khoẻ' (strong). We could explore further to see if that is the case or it could possibly have been an innovation of 力氣 lìqì (SV lựckhí) 'power' [ > 'sứckhoẻ' ~ # 'hơisức' (strength) to imply 'having strength to do heavy thing', hence, 'being healthy' and 'having a good health' for the general concept of 'health' ] or a newly coined word in Vietnamese by using Chinese material. Etymologically, in the first case, 力氣 lìqì (lựckhí) as "sứckhoẻ" [ > ® "khoẻ" ], denotes mainly 'strong, powerful, stamina' while jiànkāng 健康 "sứckhoẻ" conveys the exact meaning of both 'health' and 'healthy'. Critically, we could break up the two syllables in 'khoẻmạnh' and rebuild the Vietnamese "khoẻ"+"mạnh" with two separate elements such as '壯 zhuàng" + "猛 měng"'strong'+'powerful', or reversely with 'mạnhkhoẻ' 猛壯 měngzhuàng (SV 'mãnhtráng'). As we can now argue, they are likely not the cases for neither力氣 nor 猛壯 given their being both actual Chinese words which convey more of the meanings 'energetic', 'powerful', and 'strong' and less of 'health' and 'healthy' than what is conveyed in 健康 jiànkāng, though. Furthermore, there must already exist the solid concept 'khoẻ' as in "Chào, có khoẻ không?" which is equivalent to the modern expression of "早, 你好嗎?" (Hello, how are you?) where "khoẻ" appears to match 好 hăo (SV hảo) which is posited for the pre-existing word "khoẻ". So 健 jiàn is much more plausible as we apply the associative sandhi process rule of sound changes for the above case we will also find the origin of another word, that is, 'khoẻkhoắn' ~ jiànzhuàng 健壯 (SV #trángkiện) 'feeling fit, well' with the same lexeme 健 jiàn (SV kiến) for "khoẻ". In this case we can easily associate zhuàng 壯 with kāng 康 (SV khang, khương) which could have given rise either reduplicative 'khoắn' or 'mạnh' [ /majŋ6/ < /k'wəɒn5/ (khoắn) < /k'aŋ1/ < /k'jɨəŋ1/ (khương) \ k'w ~> w- > m-. ] Other examples include
    • bắtđầu 劈頭 pītóu (start) [ Vh @ M 劈 pī ~ 'bắt' | M 劈 pī​ , pǐ < MC phiek < OC *phek || Note: 開頭,起首。 《朱子全書》卷六六:“劈頭一箇王正月,便説不去。” 鄒韜奮 《民族解放與人民戰線》:“本報的目的,劈頭第一句話就是'努力促進民族解放運動'。” ]
    • bắtcóc 綁架 băngjià (kidnap) [ @ 綁 băng ~ bắt 捕 bǔ (bổ), @ 架 jià ~ 'cóc' | M 綁 băng (bảng, báng) < MC pjəŋ || M 架 jià < MC kɑ < OC *kra:js | Note each morpheme in 綁架 băngjià does not have anything to do with each individual meaning. ] ,
    • bắtđền 賠償 péichăng (demand a compensation) [ ~ VS 'bắtthường'. Originally from 賠償 péichăng (~ VS # "đềnbồi", or in SV 'bồithường', 'compensate'), that is, 賠 péi for "bắt-" (逼 bī 'to force') has been more associated with "bắt" as in "bắtbuộc" 逼迫 bīpò (SV bứcbách) 'to force' { M 逼迫 bīpò \ @ 逼 bī ~ 迫 pò (bách) buộc | M 逼 bī < MC pʊk < OC *pjək } than with 捕 bǔ (bộ) 'capture' (VS vồ, bắt 'arrest', vớt 'catch') | M 捕 bǔ < MC bɔ < OC *bha:s | cf. 捕魚 bǔyú 'bắtcá' ~ 'vớtcá' (catch fish) ].
    • bắtnạt 撥弄 bōnòng (order about) [ @ 撥 bō ~ 'bắt', @ 弄 nòng ~ 'nạt' | M 撥 bō, fá, fā < MC pwʌt < OC *pāt || M 弄 nòng, lòng, nèng < MC ləwŋ < OC *ləwŋ || Guoyu Cidian: 撥弄 bōnòng (1) 來回撥動。 紅樓夢.第五十四回:「二人聽說,忙和絃按調撥弄起來。」 (2) 挑撥。如:「撥弄是非」。 (3) 擺布、玩弄。 文明小史.第四回:「一個西崽,畢竟粗人,由人撥弄,只是不知。」 ],
    • mĩmcười 含笑 hánxiào (smile) [ SV 'hàmtiếu', also, VS 'ngậmcười', cf. 'ngậmcườichínsuối' 含笑九泉 hánxiàojǐuquán, literally 'be resting with a smile in the underworld' | Note: 笑 xiào "cười" (smile), and "mĩm" could be a contracted form of 笑眯眯 xiàomīmī "cườimĩmchi" (crack a smile) or evolved from "nụcười" 微笑 wēixiào \ 微 wēi ~ "nụ" \ w- ~ n-, m- (smile). In the meanwhile "ngậm" (literally, 'hold in one's mouth') is derived from 含 hán, which also means "hàm" (jaw) and "cằm" ('chin'), so when they say a dead person will 'ngậmcườichínsuối', it actually means 'mĩmcườichínsuối' (to smile in the underworld). ]
    • khócthútthít 哭泣 kùqì (weep) [ @ 哭泣 kùqì > "thútthít" ~ kùqì > khóc 哭 kù + thútthít ].
    • lỗtai 耳朵 ěrduō (ear, ear drum) [ ~> 'tai' for 朵 duō. With the omission of 耳 ěr, a case of corrupted contraction. It could also an innovative tool to coin new words in Vietnamese. cf. tai 耷 dà 'big ear', obviously phonetically both etyma are related. ]
    • bạttai 巴掌 bāzhăng (spank) [ ~> 'bàntay' (palm) ~ 手板 shǒubăn ) – bā gives us two different sounds in Vietnamese, "bạt" and "bàn" and the whole word gives us a hint of zhăng > tay (~ 手 shǒu) 'hand'. ]
    • bạtmạng 拼命 pìnmìng (risk one's life), which show /pìn/ could evolve into "bạt" [ Also, possibly a plausible cognate with 'bánmạng', for { ¶ p- ~ b-, -n ~ -t }; it is not neccessarily that only /bì/, /bā/, and /bó/, gives rise to Vietnamese 'bạt'.]
    • đồngbạc 銅板 tóngbăn (monetary unit) [ ~> tóng 'đồng' while 'bạc' is associated with 錢幣 qiánbì (SV tiềntệ) VS 'tiềnbạc' { ¶ -n ~ -k } Cf. modern M 頓 dùn ].
    • đitiền 隨錢 suíqián (monetary gift) [ ~> VS 'điđám', @ 隨 suí ~ 'đi', @ 錢 qián ~ 'đám' | M 隨 suí < MC zjwe < OC *lhoj || M 錢 qián < MC tsjen < OC *ʑan || ex. 他結婚我隨錢100美金. Tā jiéhūn wǒ suíqián 100 měijīn. (Đámcưới nó tao điđám 100 đô.) ]
    • thầytrò 師徒 shītú (teacher and students) [ which strengthens the plausibility of 師 shī as "thầy" and establishes the sound change pattern ¶ "đ-" ~ "tr-" where "đ-" might be much older than the Vietnamese "tr-" /ʈ/, but both could have evolved from OC /*ʈ/. Also, it may have given rise to 'thầythợ' as previously discussed.]
    • họctrò 學子 xuézǐ 'student' [ 'nhènhẹ' cf. 輕重 qīngzhòng 'nặngnhẹ' (M 重 zhòng, Hai /dang5/ ) "weight", which gives us an analogy of 'nhẹ' = 輕 qīng (light) by way of { ¶ /q- ~ nh-/ and /-ng ~ Ø/ } ].
    • chungquanh 周圍 zhōuwéi (around) [ ~> 'xungquanh', which has given rise to VS "quanh" [ as in "quanh ta" or (around us)].
    • thôinôi 周年 zhōunián SV 'châuniên' (anniversary) [ ~> VS 'thôinôi' to mean solely 'one year old baby showers' ],
    • nhiềunăm 有年 yǒunián (many years),
    • mấynămnay 近年來 jìnniánlái (in recent years),
    • hoahồng 花紅 huāhóng 'commission' [ ~ VS 'huêhồng', cf. 分紅 fēnhóng (commission) while 分 fēn ~ 花 huā [ ¶ f- ~ hw-; cf. 花 huā ~ Cant. /fa1/. cf. 華 huá (SV 'hoa', 'huê'). ],
    • etc. Apparently, based on the dissyllabicity approach as illustrated above and, additionally, throughout this study, we could further secure and strengthen the plausibility of those monosyllabic words "bắt", "thầy", "thợ", "trò", "trường", "hàm", "ngậm", "mĩm", "tai", "tay", "quanh", "thôi", "nôi", "năm", "đồng", "bạc", "nhiều", etc., and dissyllabic words "bạtmạng" or "bạttai", and understand better the meaning of mysterical morphs in those polysyllabic composite words, such as "bắt", "mĩm" in "mĩmcười" or "mĩmchi" in "cườimĩmchi", "thútthít" in "khócthútthít", or "bạt" in "bạtmạng".

    It is a rule of thumb that it is only in dissyllabic formation that a phonetic sandhi process could occur. To reinforce our postulation, let us further examine some other unique examples as follows.

    • 垃圾 lāji: 'rác' (trash) [ ®

Từ khóa » đao Loát Office