Re: How close is Vietnamese to Mandarin or Cantonese?
- From: Lee Sau Dan <danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 19 May 2005 23:15:18 +0800
>>>>> "ekkilu" == ekkilu <ekkilu@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
ekkilu> I don't know why people still argue about origin of
ekkilu> "typhoon". I have seen people conjecturing it came from
ekkilu> Greek.
ekkilu> The simple fact is that people neglect to look this
ekkilu> expression in Hoklo. In Hoklo, it is not "ty-phoon", it is
ekkilu> "hong thai". Mystery solved. Period. The fact that Hoklo
ekkilu> uses "hong thai" means:
ekkilu> (1) the "phoon" part is 100% sure cognate of modern
ekkilu> Chinese "feng", meaning "wind".
Are you 100% sure? Then, please explain why the /-ng/ would got spelt
with "-n".
ekkilu> (2) the Hoklo term follows Austronesian/Taic grammar of
ekkilu> putting adjective after noun. Therefore, this expression
ekkilu> must existed long before any interaction with the West,
Of course. Nobody is arguing against this idea. I'm only curious in
the source language from which English borrowed this word. While it
is likely that it came from some Chinese language, it is unclear which
one that is.
ekkilu> and cannot possibly have anything to do with European
ekkilu> languages. The Hoklo term must have easily existed one
ekkilu> thousand year ago and likely much more.
But "typhoon" could have been borrowed from Cantonese or Mandarin or
Hokkien or Hakka, too. The question: which one?
ekkilu> Why have all kinds of weird theories about this
ekkilu> expression, when the theorists haven't consulted with the
ekkilu> obvious: who do you think suffered the most from typhoon
ekkilu> in Chinese coast, if not the seafaring Hoklo people?
A lot of people suffer from typhoons. This includes speakers of
Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Hoklo, ... So, which one it is from where
English got this word? You have an answer?
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
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