Viet–Muong
| Vietic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution |
Mainland Southeast Asia |
| Linguistic classification |
Austroasiatic
|
| Subdivisions | |
| Glottolog | viet1250 |
The Vietic languages are a branch of the Austroasiatic language family. The branch was once referred to by the terms Việt–Mường, Annamese–Muong, and Vietnamuong; the term Vietic was proposed by Hayes (1992), who proposed to redefine Việt–Mường as referring to a sub-branch of Vietic containing only Vietnamese and Mường.
Many of the Vietic languages have tonal or phonational systems intermediate between that of Viet–Muong and other branches of Austroasiatic that have not had significant Chinese or Tai influence.
Vietnamese, today, has had significant Chinese influence especially in vocabulary and tonal system. Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary accounts for about 30–60% of Vietnamese vocabulary, not including calques from China.
Based on linguistic diversity, the most probable homeland of the Vietic languages appears to have been located in modern-day Bolikhamsai Province and Khammouane Province in Laos as well as parts of Nghệ An Province and Quảng Bình Province in Vietnam. The time depth of the Vietic branch dates back at least 2,000 years.
Vietnamese was identified as an Austroasiatic language in the mid-nineteenth century, and there is now strong evidence for this classification. Modern Vietnamese is a monosyllabic tonal language like Cantonese and has lost many Proto-Austroasiatic phonological and morphological features. Vietnamese also has large stocks of borrowed Chinese and Tai vocabulary. However, there continues to be resistance to the idea that Vietnamese could be more closely related to Khmer than to Chinese or Tai languages. The vast majority of scholars attribute these typological similarities to language contact rather than to common inheritance.
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Wikipedia