Ethnic groups

Fri May 18 01:16:21 PDT 2007

Dear List: Can someone please tell me what these groups are called in the Chinese language? (1) Xa. phang (2) Thoo`ng nha`n (with a disc over 'a') (3) He. And what this is called in Vietnamese? ‘ÐˆË‘° Dai 4 yi 1 zu 2 Is this "Tay"? Many thanks in advance, Grace

Hue-Tam Ho Tai hhtai at fas.harvard.edu

Fri May 18 06:14:46 PDT 2007

(3) He is Hakka.

Tran So Le tran.sole at gmail.com

Fri May 18 09:29:28 PDT 2007

Hi Grace,

(1) Is Xa phang. "Ha Xa phang", seems to be a language in Yue Chinese http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/get-familyid.cfm?CFTREEITEMKEY=STA Xa phang is a group of Hoa living in Northern provinces such as Lao Cai. I'm not sure how it is called in Chinese language though.

(2) Thoo`ng nha`n or Tong-yan (Cantonese) - Tangren (Mandarin) or deung nang (Dio Jiu dialect) = 唐人： The name Tang comes from the Tang Dynasty (618- 907 AD. It was during the Tang Dynasty that South China was finally and fully Sinicized; hence it is usually South Chinese who refer to themselves as "Tang". For example, Chinatowns worldwide are usually dominantly from South China, especially Cantonese; they are then referred to generally as Tong-yan-gaai (pinyin: tángrénjieē), while China is called Tong-saan, or "Tang Mountain". This term has been the term overseas Chinese (from South China) refers to themselves in their own languages.

(3) He. in Chinese language is Kejia (客家)

Grace Chew gclchew at yahoo.co.uk

Wed May 23 18:33:00 PDT 2007

Many thanks, Le and Professor Tai for your prompt responses. They have confirmed that this piece of data that I am reading contains some errors. Le, the website link you pasted below (that of Eastern Michigan and Wayne State Uni for Linguistics) is inaccurate. From a glance, I have spotted several mistakes. Appreciation, Grace