Mainland Southeast Asia is home to speakers of around 280 languages spread across 5 families: the Mon-Khmer branch of Austroasiatic (including Vietnamese and Khmer) Sino-Tibetan (including Mandarin and other Sinitic languages, and Burmese and other Tibeto-Burman languages) Tai-Kadai (including Thai and Lao) Hmong-Mien (languages of southwest China) Austronesian (languages spoken mainly in Oceania, but represented…… Continue reading Mainland Southeast Asian languages
Tag: Sounds: tone
Sounds of Vietnamese
Vietnamese (tiếng Việt) is in the Vietic subgroup of the Austroasiatic language family. Vietnamese is spoken as a first language by around 85 million people, mainly in Vietnam, where it is the official language. It has several times as many native speakers as all other Austroasiatic languages combined. This post covers: syllable structure word structure consonants vowels reduplication…… Continue reading Sounds of Vietnamese
More words distinguished only by tones
I posted recently about 4 words in Mandarin and 6 Vietnamese words, each pronounced ma, but distinguished phonetically (and phonologically) by bearing different tones. Some words distinguished only by tones – Language Miscellany I’ve now come across a list of 4 Burmese words, each pronounced ma, and also distinguished by bearing different tones. Burmese…… Continue reading More words distinguished only by tones
Some words distinguished only by tones
If you have ever tried to learn Mandarin, you have probably come across a list of 4 words (with different meanings) that, although they are made up of the same vowel and consonant, have different pronunciations because they bear different tones. I recently came across a similar list exemplifying the 6 tones of Vietnamese. Mandarin…… Continue reading Some words distinguished only by tones
Disyllabic compound nouns in east and southeast Asia
In Chinese, many basic words are made up of one syllable, but many other words are compounds of 2 monosyllabic words. Many of those compounds were also borrowed into Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese, even though none of those three languages has any known genetic relationship to Chinese. The following table lists a few of…… Continue reading Disyllabic compound nouns in east and southeast Asia
Numbers in Vietnamese and Khmer
Vietnamese and Khmer (Cambodian) are both members of the Austro-asiatic family of languages. The ways they construct words for cardinal numbers show some interesting similarities and differences. The smallest numbers I’ll start with zero, and the numbers 1-5 (table 1). VietnameseKhmer0khôngsoon1mộtmuɘy2haipii3babɘy4bốnbuɘn5nămpramTable 1. Zero to 6 in Vietnamese and Khmer. This comparison suggests that both languages…… Continue reading Numbers in Vietnamese and Khmer
Nynorsk writer wins Nobel literature prize
The winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature was someone who writes in Norwegian, Jon Fosse. That award is notable not just because Fosse is the first winner known best for his plays since Harold Pinter (2005). And not just because he is the first winner who writes in Norwegian since Sigrid Undset (1928).…… Continue reading Nynorsk writer wins Nobel literature prize
Language sketch: Danish, Swedish and Norwegian
Here is a summary of some things I learnt about the Mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) a couple of years ago, when I was carrying out a self-imposed language challenge. http://languagemiscellany.com/2021/09/scandinavian-challenge-how-did-it-go/ I am commenting here only on those 3 languages, not their relatives, the insular Scandinavian Languages (Icelandic and Faroese). For an…… Continue reading Language sketch: Danish, Swedish and Norwegian
A Mandarin tongue twister
The following tongue twister in Mandarin contains 8 instances of the syllable ma, differentiated only by the tone they bear, as well as one similar syllable (man). Māma qí mǎ. Mǎ màn. Māma mà mǎ.Mother rides horse. Horse slow. Mother scolds horse. The above example is written in pinyin, the official transliteration system for Mandarin.…… Continue reading A Mandarin tongue twister