Re: How close is Vietnamese to Mandarin or Cantonese?

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> Lee Sau Dan wrote:
>
> > 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"?
>
> Are you not aware of dialects of English in which /tay/ is pronounced
> [tOj]?
>
> > 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.
>
> Can you point to _any_ English word that ends with, or even contains,
> the sequence "oong" /uwN/?
> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx

Is every little phonotactic gap like this assumed to be the result of a
Rule of English Phonology?
I believe the Aussies have /uN/ in "boong". (And maybe some sinophiles
pronounce names like "Fung" and "Sung" that way.) Even if we imagine
that /uwN/ is somehow impossible, would not /uN/ be a possible English
form for the Cantonese word?
FWIW OED has an 1806 citation in which the word is spelled <ty-foong>.

Ross Clark
.

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