"A Vision of Sexual Order," recognizing words

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

As I was reading the excerpt, besides the many shocking definitions of "jian" and descripstions of how society in different eras perceived it, I noticed that the italicized words (the chinese words) were very similar to the Vietnamese language. Since Vietnam was under Chinese sphere of influence (lightly put, I think), the Vietnamese language has some origin of Han language in it. For instance, I recognized that "jian" is similar to "dam," and "luan lun" (incest) is similar to "loan luan" in Vietnamese. There are many other ones that I noticed. I just found it really interesting, and seeing the relationships between the Chinese and Vietnamese words made me want to read more about the definitions and cannotation of those words. It was surprising to see that in Vietnamese, the words' definition were almost exactly similar as well. I was just wondering if anyone else who speaks Vietnamese, or any other language, noticed such similiarities between the Chinese words and the one in the other languages.

--Minh

[Anonymous]

yeah.. it is really common to see vietnamese and chinese characters overlap, and sometimes even language. Well I am unsure of Cantonese and Mandarin but Teo Chew words often overlap with Vietnamese words. For instance in Vietnamese dac biet (meaning special) has similar pronounciation to diec biet (that's probably spelled incorrectly since I don't know the proper way to write Chinese words in english) which also means special. Before Vietnam was colonized by France, ( yeah...way back then) the Vietnamese did not use latin writing system. Or how the words are written in actual letters instead of characters, like most Asian writing. The reason being that Vietnam used to use Chinese characters. (Probably because many countries back then were paying tribute to China so they followed Chinese traditions, writing). For instance the common Vietnamese last name Tran can be traced back into Chinese characters having the same characters as the surname Tan or Chan in Chinese. And if I recall what my father said correctly, apparently all Vietnamese last names can be written in Chinese. But since my last name is Tran I know for sure that Tan/Tran/Chan are the same character.

[Anonymous]

I also recognized the similarity when reading "A Vision of Sexual Order." =) Like Minh mentioned, "jian", meaning "dam dang" in Vietnamese and "luan lun" which means "loan luan" (incest in Vietnamese), were some of the Chinese/Vietnamese words that mean and sound almost exactly the same. The reason for that is probably because Vietnam was under the influence of China for such a long period of time that Vietnamese have come to adopt a vernacular similar to that of the Chinese.

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