Japan Becomes #1 Destination for Viet Students

[AViet]

I agree with Wolfwind on this one. Vietic language is Mon-Khmer. This is not that controversial anymore. You are using very old outdated views about Vietic being in the same family with Sino-Tibetan or Tai-Kadai. Not many reputable linguistics experts agree with that any more, there is almost a consensus amongst modern lingustics that Vietics is in the same family with Mon-Khmer.

Also your views about “Yue”, Lac Viet, etc. is also outdated and not accurate. “Yue” used by the Chinese was just a loose term for tribes in the southern China region and some of them speak Tai-Kadai, some speak Hmong-mien and some even speak Austronesian, not just Tai-Kadai...so no, “Yue speaking some kind of Tai-kadai” is not accurate and not the “most accepted theory”.

Basically, the Mon-Khmer speaking people is one of the the oldest people group in mainland Southeast Asia and the Viet (Kinh) people, even the modern generations in Hanoi, have the older upstream genetic markers as opposed to the “yue” tribes in southern China who have more later downstream genetic markers. This is more evidence that the Vietnamese language used by modern Viet people has Mon-Khmer root indigenous to mainland southeast asia and not Tai-Kadai or the others related to south China. There used to be a thread on this.

Thank you for your reasonable reply.

However, once again, your point is mostly based on Western so-called experts. I am not a professional linguistist and do not say that all their works are trash, but in general, I have very low regards on the quality of Western scholars on social science.

Most of them lacks the scientific spirit of Sima Qian (Tư Mã Thiên) (on the Records of Grand Historian - Sử Ký) and Confucius (Khổng Tử), who would honestly write down what he see, hear and feel and would only go to conclusion or judgement when he is almost sure about a point. If he is not sure, he would say that it cannot be concluded now and needs to wait for further proof or judgement by later generations.

Western scholars, especially during colonial times, lacked the scientific mind but were full of colonialist thinking. Therefore, they would conclude anything which fit their Eurocentric belief, whatever unscientific the conclusion was.

I give my respect to the Confucian-minded Vietnamese scholars, like Trần Trọng Kim, Nguyễn Hiến Lê (both were educated in French system, but retained their scientific spirits). Their conclusions about history were limited, but with solid ground and hundreds years later, we can still safely use them.

In the meantime, some modern Vietnamese scholars, like Trần Quốc Vượng, who was educated in Vietnam after 1945, or Tạ Đức (who wrote the controversial "Nguồn gốc người Việt người Mường", have types of Western style working attitude. Their works were (and are) full of controversial points and conclusions without backup. If Ta Đức can prove firmly only one point in his book "Nguồn gốc...", e.g. Lý Thường Kiệt had his origin in China Gansu province, then he would be equal to the like of Phan Huy Lê. But in his book, he went to thousand of similar conclusions

Therefore, I still retain my point that modern Vietnamese language may have Mon Khmer root, but whether Vietnamese is fully Mon-Khmer is still very complicated issue and subject to further works.