alves vietnamese northcentral

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To Appear: Papers from the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the SoutheastAsian Linguistics Society.

A Look at North-Central Vietnamese

Mark J. AlvesMontgomery College

1. IntroductionThe purpose of this paper is twofold. First, this paper presents

phonetic field data on regional varieties of Vietnamese in North-Central Vietnam, data that is not easy widely accessible from othersources. Second, it shows how this data, along with otherinformation about other Vietic languages (such highly conservativelanguages as Ruc (Nguyn V. L. 1993, Nguyn T. C. 1995) and

Arem (Trn1990), underscores the archaic nature of the speech inthis region and the important information for historical linguistics inthis region.

Vietnamese is often divided into three main regional variants:Northern, Central, and Southern Vietnamese.1 The differencesbetween these variants are mainly phonological, but notabledifferences are evident among non-basic content vocabulary and,though less commonly, even more basic vocabulary and thefunctional part of the lexicon. In the latter aspect (basic andgrammatical vocabulary), it is in Central Vietnamese, in contrastwith both Northern and Southern Vietnamese, that the differencesare most striking. North-Central Vietnamese--generally thought of

as the regional variety spoken in the provinces of Thanh Ho, NghAn, and Qung Bnh--has also drawn attention (Maspero 1912,Emeneau 1951, Thompson 1985, Nguyn, Ti Cn 1995, Ferlus1998), but besides the four general regional divisions, relatively littlehas been published about other local varieties.2 This paper presentsphonological and lexical data on several local varieties of North-Central Vietnamese.

In 1997, I took speech recordings of several varieties ofVietnamese from the North-Central province of Ngh An, in additionto representative standard speech from H Ni, Hu, and H ChMinh City.3 The data were collected by the use of (1) wordlists

aimed primarily at identifying a full range of the phoneticrealizations of tones and (2) sentence lists that provided ways to finddistinctive etymologies.4 The data show that, although North-Central Vietnamese (hereafter, NCV) cannot be easily grouped witheither Northern or Central Vietnamese and shares certain


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phonological and lexical characteristics with both, there are a fewdetails that suggest a closer connection to Central Vietnamese. Inaddition, this paper deals with the language/dialect/accent continuumin Vietnam and the historical implications of linguistic data withrespect to regional diversity and linguistic affiliation. NCV showsboth conservative (segmental and lexical) characteristics andinnovations (notable variety in realizations of tones). The sections inthis papers include (1) dialect versus regional accent and vocabulary,(2) the genealogical position of North-Central Vietnamese, (3) somesignificant field data on NCV, and (4) the implications of that data.

2. Dialect versus Regional Accent/VocabularyAs noted the traditional three regions, namely Northern

Vietnamese (NV), Central Vietnamese (CV), and SouthernVietnamese (SV), have as their informally accepted regional centersH Ni, Vinh, Hu, and H Ch MinhCity (cf. Nguyn nh HosVietnamese-English dictionary (1966) and Thompsons Vietnamesegrammar (1985)). There has been dialect neutralization occurringalong the well-traveled coastline,5with some convergence towardsregional center standards, while the restricted inner highlands have,as based on the data collected for this paper, maintained muchsmaller regional linguistic distinctions.

As the distinction between language, dialect, and accent is oftennot a clear one, it is necessary to consider the difference inVietnamese. The difference between a dialect and simply a regionalaccent is the difference of more basic vocabulary, morphology, andsyntax, though not so different as to cause significant interference incommunication. Central Vietnamese has a significantly lowerdegree of comprehensibility to both speakers of Northern andSouthern Vietnamese, a fact both linguistically predicted andanecdotally supported. In Vietnam, such is also the case for NCV,which has not only notable phonological distinctions (especially oftones), but also distinctions in basic vocabulary (such as knee andhead) and even distinctions in the etymologies for variousgrammatical vocabulary. This supports the claim that NCV is adistinct dialect with numerous local varieties.

It should also be noted that NCV is regarded as a kind ofcuriosity. It has been posited an archaic pocket by Maspero (1912)

and later by Nguyn Ti Cn (1995). In addition to the archaiclinguistic features of rural NCV, there are also speakers of theclosely related but more conservative Muong and highlyconservative Minor Vietic languages. While Vietnamese has no


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complex initial consonant clusters, Muong does of obstruents plus[l]. More significantly, the Minor Vietic languages, with their morebasic or even incipient tone systems, have complete presyllableswith Mon-Khmer morphology. While this raises the issue oflanguage contact as a source of mutual influence, in fact, puttogether, this scenario makes this region of Vietnam unique withregards to the historical background of Vietnamese, having all threesubbrances of Vietic in one small region.

3. The Linguistic Position of North-Central VietnameseNorth-Central Vietnamese, as represented by speech in the city

of Vinh, can be historically grouped with Central Vietnamese, asrepresented by the speech of Hue, due to their primary similarities inthe unmarked tones and both grammatical and content vocabulary.The even tones (ngang and huyn) generally have the samecontour, as in Table 1. Also, they share several notable grammaticallexical items, as in Table 2.

NV SV CV NCVngang 33 33 35 35

huyn 21 21 33 33

Table 1: Phonetic realizations of level tones

Gloss NV SV CV NCVthus vy vy ra ra

how sao sao rang rangwhere u u m mthis ny ny ni ni

Table 2: Vietnamese lexical variants

Nonetheless, NCV maintains a modern dialectal distinction fromCV since the segmental phonological distinctions are great enoughfor interference in interregional communication (as discussed insection 4). There are, in addition, some notable lexical distinctions,for example differences within the region for the word expressingnegation (n no, as opposed to several other mainstream

alternatives khng, chng, and ch) and the reflexive (chc eachother), spoken in Thanh Chng Vietnamese in Ngh Anprovince(Alves and Nguyn forthcoming).


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4. Segmental CharacteristicsNCV is phonologically conservative, maintaining more

segmental phonemic distinctions than any of the other three mainregional varities of Vietnamese. In Table 3, the regional variationsare shown with respect to Vietnamese Quc Ng orthography (QNherefafter), which represents the original maximal number ofphonemic distinctions in Vietnamese. In geographic terms, thenumber of phonemic distinctions decreases either north or south ofthe region where NCV is spoken. Table 3 shows a geographic rangeof distinctions among varieties of Vietnamese, with NCV in thecenter. Whereas NCV has distinct phonemes for all the QN sounds,NV, CV, and SV all show mergers as indicated by the lack of linesbetween certain cells in the table.

QN NV NCV CV SV

s s

x s s s s

tr c

ch c c c c

r z

d z j j

gi z z j j

v v v j j

-nh n n

-n n n n/N n/N

-ng N N N N

-ch c c t t

-t t t t/k t/k

-c k k k k

Table 3: Realizations of Quc Ngin Regional Varieties5. Field Data on NCV

Linguistic data were collected through acoustic phoneticrecordings using SILs Wincecil.6 Speakers were given word lists

(monosyllabic and bisyllabic words and short phrases andsentences). NCV showed a significant amount of both segmentaland tonal variation, mostly restricted to specific lexical items, thoughsome represented differences in phonemic systems. Some lexical


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differences were found between the rural and metropolitan varietiesof central Vietnamese, as shown in Tables 4 and 5. The tone valuesare indicated by the numbes 1 to 5, which show the starting andfinishing points of the tones, while g indicates glottalizationaccompanying tones. In Tables 4 and 5, the regional variants fromVinh downward are rural NCV variants. NL refers to the regionalsubdistrict Nghi Lm.

lighter bt laLocation QN IPA Tone Value

H Ni bt la bt l 11-31g

Hue bt la bk l 22-31g

Nha Trang bt la bk l 11-35

Vinh bt la bt l 22-31g

Thanh Chng bt l bt l 22-31g

Nam n m l me la 33-31

NL, Nghi n bt lo bt l 22-24

NL, Nghi Hng m la me l 35-31

NL, Nghi Khanh bt la bt l 22-31

NL, Nghi Lm my la mj l 22-31

Table 4: NCV lexical variants for lighterolder sisterch

Location QN IPA Tone ValueH Ni ch ci 11

Hue ch ci 22

Nha Trang ch ci 12

Vinh ch ci 22

Thanh Chng / 33

Nam n /a 33

NL, Nghi n / 33

NL, Nghi Hng a /a 33

NL, Nghi Khanh /a 33

NL, Nghi Lm /a 33Table 5: NCV lexical variants for elder sister


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As another indication of the high degree of dialectal variation,Table 6 shows diphthongization and additional vocalic mutation.

QN NV Nghi n Category

gin zan jun Ga:

lot lwat lut

ngoi Nwaj Nuj

qung kwaN kwN

bc bak bk a:

vng vaN vN

dng zaN N

ra ra r

phi faj fjtri aj j

ma ma m

h ha h

qu kwa k

Table 6: Nghi Lc, Nghi n SpeechFinally, in field data, the tones in this region show a very high

amount of phonetic variation according to township, as can be seenin Table 7. Despite the small geographic region, the varieties of

NCV show differences among all categories. Most tone variation isamong the phonetically non-level trc tones, though even the levelbngtones showed some variation.7 There is a phonetic distinctionin some varieties between the sc tone in open and syllables withfinal voiceless stops.


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Table 7: Tone Contour in Varieties of Vietnamese

Area City/Town Ngang Huyn scopen)

scclosed)

nng hi North H Ni 33 21 24 45 22g 31 South H Ch Minh 33 21 45 23 24

Central Hu 35 33 13g 45 22g 31Vinh 35 33 11 11/55 22 31 Nam n 35 33 13g 13g/45 22 31Thanh Chng 35 33 11g/13g 22g 31Nghi Khanh 35 33 55 53 Nghi Hng 44 33 45 22 31 Nghi Lm 35 33 13g 45 22 31


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6. ImplicationsThis paper has presented various phonetic and lexical data on NorthCentral Vietnamese, which is, though closer typologically to Central thanto Northern Vietnamese, a distinct main dialect of Vietnamese withnumerous local varieties even at the township level. NCV shows thelargest number of segmental phonemic distinctions and amount ofregional phonetic variation, particularly tones. Moreover, a high amountof archaic vocabulary and phonemic preservations further highlight theconservative aspects of NCV and fill in some of the blanks that linkVietic with other Mon-Khmer languages.

While not directly stated, these dialectal distinctions are reflective ofthe historical spread and differentation of modern Vietnamese.

Historical records show that during the Chinese Han dynasty, thereexisted in modern North and North-Central Vietnam the historicalregions of Giao Chi and Cuu Chan respectively (Taylor 1983),corresponding to the north versus central dialect division in Vietnam, asnoted by Ferlus 1999. Thus, NCV maintains a significant geographicposition between these two historically significant regions and near bothMuong and Minor Vietic languages. The amount of regional variation isinteresting as it identifies the known time depth of the speech in the areafor diversification to have occurred.

Send comments to [email protected].

Notes1 See Thompson 1985 and Friberg 1973. The French colonial period saw thedivision of Vietnam roughly into the three regions recognized as dialectal

boundaries, although, administrative boundaries have existed in North Vietnamsince the Han dynasty two millenia ago (see Taylor 1983 for historical detailsand Ferlus 1999 for discussion of the relationship between those ancientdivisions and modern dialectal differences).2Two such works are Vng1981 and Hong 1989.3The project was undertaken with the assistance of Nguyn Duy Hngof theInstitute of Linguistics in H Ni.4The work on Thanh ChngVietnamese (Alves and Nguyn) was presented atthe Eighth SEALS conference held in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.5

As acknowledged to me in personal communication with Vietnamese linguists.6 The website www.sil.org contains numerous software programs related tolinguistic research.


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The bng (meaning level) category refers to the mid-level/ngang and mid-falling tones/huyen tones, while the trc(meaning uneven) category refers toall other Vietnamese tones, which have more distinctive contours and sometimesglottalization.

ReferencesAlves, Mark and Nguyen Duy Huong. forthcoming. Notes on Thanh Chuong

Vietnamese in Nghe An Province. Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meetingof the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, Mark Alves ed.

Emeneau, Murray B. 1951. Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar.Berkeley.

Ferlus, Michel. 1998. Les systmes de ton dans les langues Viet-Muong.Diachronica XV.1:1-27.

_____. 1999. Les disharmonies tonales en Viet-Muong et leurs implicationshistoriques. Cahiers de Linguistique - Asie Orientale 28.1:83-99.

Friberg, Barbara. 1973. Generative phonology as applied to Vietnamesedialects: a study based on middle Vietnamese, comparing the three majordialects of modern Vietnamese. Saigon University MA thesis.

Hong, Th Chu. 1989. Ting Vit trn cc min t nc (phng ng hc)(Vietnamese in regions of our land (dialect studies)). H Ni: Nh XutBn Khoa Hc X Hi.

Maspero, Henri. 1912. tudes sur la phontique historique de la langueAnnamite: les initiales. Bulletin de lcole Franoise dExtrme-Orient12:1-127.

Nguyn, nh Ho. 1966. Vietnamese-English Dictionary. Rutland, Vermon:

Charles E. Tuttle Co.Nguyn, Ph Phong. 1988. Lexique Vietnamien-Rc-Francais. Universitie deParis VII.

Nguyn, Vn Li. 1993. Ting Rc (The Ruc language). H Ni: Nh Xut BnKhoa Hc X Hi.

Nguyn, Ti Cn. 1995. Gio trnh lch s ng m ting Vit (Textbook ofVietnamese historical phonology). H Ni: Nh Xut Bn Gao Dc.

Taylor, Keith W. 1983. The Birth of Vietnam. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press.

Thompson, Laurence. 1965. A Vietnamese grammar. Seattle: University ofWashington Press.

Trn, Tr Di. 1990. Nhn xt v thanh iu trong th ng Arem(Some notes ofthe tones of the Arem dialect). Tp Ch Khoa Hc 1990.20:37-40.

Vng, Hu L. 1981. Vi nhn xt v c dim ca vn trong th m QungNam Hi An (Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang


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nam speech in Hoi An). Mt S Vn Ngn Ng Hc Vit Nam (SomeLinguistics Issues in Vietnam): 311-320. H Ni: Nh Xut Bn i Hcv Trung Hc Chuyn Nghip.


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1 See Thompson 1985 and Friberg 1973. The French colonial period saw thedivision of Vietnam roughly into the three regions recognized as dialectal

boundaries, although, administrative boundaries have existed in North Vietnamsince the Han dynasty two millenia ago (see Taylor 1983 for historical detailsand Ferlus 1999 for discussion of the relationship between those ancientdivisions and modern dialectal differences).2Two such works are Vng1981 and Hong 1989.3The project was undertaken with the assistance of Nguyn Duy Hngof theInstitute of Linguistics in H Ni.4The work on Thanh ChngVietnamese (Alves and Nguyn) was presented atthe Eighth SEALS conference held in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.5

As acknowledged to me in personal communication with Vietnamese linguists.6 The website www.sil.org contains numerous software programs related tolinguistic research.7The bng(meaning level) category refers to the mid-level/ngang and mid-falling tones/huyen tones, while the trc(meaning uneven) category refers toall other Vietnamese tones, which have more distinctive contours and sometimesglottalization.

alves vietnamese northcentral

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