Re: How close is Vietnamese to Mandarin or Cantonese?

>>>>> "ekkilu" == ekkilu <ekkilu@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

ekkilu> Lee Sau Dan wrote:
>> 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?

ekkilu> Of course. It's Cantonese. The modern form is recorded and
ekkilu> traceable to one source, with name and date. That's not a
ekkilu> problem.

Then, how come the Cantonese word [fUN55] would be spelt as "phoon"?
The final consonant is /-N/, not /-n/, which are phonemically
different in both Cantonese and English.


ekkilu> The problem is that people tried to ascribe Greek origin
ekkilu> to this word, and many Chinese people even believed that
ekkilu> typhoon was imported from English into Chinese. That's the
ekkilu> silly part. Your -ng -> -n is answered as well in the
ekkilu> following:

ekkilu> "The modern form of typhoon was influenced by a borrowing
ekkilu> from the Cantonese variety of Chinese, namely the word
ekkilu> taaîfung, and respelled to make it look more like
ekkilu> Greek.

Really? Why do they spell the Cantonese syllable [t'Oi] as "tai" or
"ty", rather than "toy"?


FYI, "typhoon" is [t'Oi22 fUN55] in Cantonese. So, if you think
"typhoon" came from Cantonese, you not only have to explain the
discrepancy in the final "n", but also the wrongly spelt diphthong in
the first syllable.



ekkilu> Taaîfung, meaning literally "great wind," was
ekkilu> coincidentally similar to the Arabic borrowing and is
ekkilu> first recorded in English guise as tuffoon in 1699. The
ekkilu> various forms coalesced and finally became typhoon, a
ekkilu> spelling that first appeared in 1819 in Shelley's
ekkilu> Prometheus Unbound."

By spelling that Cantonese word as "taaifung" instead of "toifung",
the author of this paragraph has lost his creditability to speakers of
Cantonese.


ekkilu> See: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=typhoon

ekkilu> You've been missing this information a long time?

No. I've already point out IN THIS NEWSGROUP a few months ago, that I
don't find this paragraph a reliable source of information, because it
spelt the Cantonese word [tOi22 fUN55] as "taaifung".


Further, that paragraph didn't explain why "typhoon" is spelt with a
final "n", not "ng" if it were to meant to transcribe the Cantonese
pronunciation [tOi22 fUN55].


So, no, it's not me who misses information. It is you who didn't read
this group carefully a few months back.


--
Lee Sau Dan

E-mail: danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
.

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