Andrew Johnson [FXS]
Prince
- Joined
- May 15, 2020
- Messages
- 394
I had my mom listened to Ba Trieu's lines, and she said Vietnamese reminds her of her native Hainanese Chinese dialect a bit. And Mongolian sounds like Korean to her.
Caveat: Historical linguistics is hugely speculative and often based on much less evidence than you'd think. Speaking here as someone who has worked with and is friends with historical linguists (in SE Asia, no less).
Neither of these languages are in the same family, and they are certainly miles away from being "mutually intelligible." Kupe (the forum poster, not the leader) is never going to be able to understand Mongolian based on speaking Korean. I'm afraid I can't imagine your mom being able to understand Vietnamese based on Hainanese. However, they each share some links via history.
Vietnamese and Hainanese are technically unrelated, although they've been in close enough contact over the years (both "Yue" tribes in early Chinese history) that there might be some crossover. Vietnamese for a long time was classified as "Mon-Khmer" but is pretty unique. There's a lot of Chinese borrowings, though, and the language is heavily tonal. (Speakers here might be able to comment more on similarities). In sum, I wouldn't be surprised if the two languages seemed close, but the underlying structure is a bit different.
Korean and Mongolian might be closer, but it's debated. Personally, I think they sound alike sometimes, too, but I speak neither language. There was an old theory that a lot of these Central Asian languages (including Finnish) featuring giant words that get increasing suffixes to change their meaning ("agglutinative") were from a common "Altaic" origin, but that's questionable - tracing Asian history back to the Altai Mountains in Siberia is a long and completely ahistorical move.
Historical linguistics is tough - languages and cultures aren't like DNA, where there's a clear descent. Rather, there's always borrowings and shiftings and innovations.
I'll be the obligatory, but unwilling, pedant here "Northern Vietnamese" probably sounded much different when she was around a long time ago.
Yes. It's hard to get reference points for a lot of ancient languages in the area. The Trung sisters, for instance, spoke "Lac", which is an entirely vanished language. Chinese linguists currently suggest that Lac is related to Tai languages (Thai, Lao, Zhuang, Dai, Shan), but not based on much evidence, and with a sort of political desire to link Northern Vietnamese ethnicities with officially recognized Chinese state ethnicities (e.g. the Zhuang). That said, the mountains to the west of Hanoi seem to be where the Tai languages originated - in contradiction to 19th century historiography which places the Tai... where? You guessed it. The Altai Mountains of Siberia (a theory that is completely bonkers and is only repeated now by <checks notes> the Prime Minister of Thailand). So what would the Trung sisters sound like?
Anyone? Anyone?
Nope, we don't have an answer for that. It's like asking what Harappan sounded like. Something lost to the years.