Regional Pronouns in Vietnam "Qua" and "Mi"

On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 8:46 PM, Grace Chew <gclchew@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Dear List,

I need to verify the following information, and hope that you will be able to share your communication experience with me.

I understand from a dictionary, Tu Dien Tieng Viet (2004), NXB Danang, that mi (you) is still used in the central region of

Vietnam. As for qua (I), GS. Nguyen Thi Lam (2001) explains in her transcription of Thien Nam Ngu Luc, that it is used in the

speech of southern Vietnamese. (I managed to read the hard-copy of Thien Nam Ngu Luc some months ago, but did not manage to

buy one.)

I hope that native-speakers of Vietnamese, especially those from the regions mentioned, as well as those of you who have

heard of these words being used, will be able to verify the information. If you are able to share with me the contexts, I

will be more than happy to read them.

I look forward to your response as usual. Thank you very much.

Best wishes,

Grace

From: Vinh Nguyen <vinhnguyen68@gmail.com>

Date: Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 4:17 PM

Subject: Re: [Vsg] "Mi" (central Vietnam); "Qua" (southern Vietnam) + Thiên Nam Ngữ Lục

To: Grace Chew <gclchew@yahoo.co.uk>

Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Dear Grace,

Perhaps Tuấn Cường can speak more authoritatively about the nôm aspects of the discussion here, but let me give it a first

stab. Though "mi" is commonly associated with the central region dialect, its Hán-Nôm cognate could imply broader historical

usage. The nôm characters for "mi" are based on the Hán "mi" 眉 [either by itself or as a variant with the "man" radical to

the left "bộ nhân đứng"] (eyebrow -> you) which can also be used interchangeably with its nôm synonym "mày" (eyebrow -> you).

The nôm character for "qua" (I/we) is a borrowing of the Hán homophone for "spear" 戈 (see Huỳnh Tịnh Của's Đại Nam Quấc Âm Tự

Vị [1896], Tome II, pp. 214-215). For a much earlier usage/definition, there's Alexandre de Rhodes' Dictionarivm Annamiticvm

Lusiatnvm et Latinvm [1651]. In the entry for "qua" [qva] he wrote: "eu: ego, quando scilicet persona superior loquitur cum

inferioribus" (p. 1:615). The quốc-ngữ translation by Thanh Lãng et als of the 1991 KHXH edition says: "Qua: Tôi; khi người

trên nói với người dưới" (p. 2:185) which means "I; when a superior person speaks to an inferior". It doesn't identify the word

as "Southern" in the 17th century. And if anything, the opening page of De Rhodes' dictionary specified that it was the

Northern Tonkinese dialect that he was recording (even though De Rhodes himself had spent time in both Đàng Trong/Tunkini

[Lê-Trịnh] and Đàng Ngoài/Cocincinae [Nguyễn] and he even mentioned in his preface [ad lectorem] a borderline Cau Bàng (sic.

Cao Bằng) [Mạc] accent): in fact the subtitle of the dictionary is "Dictionativm Annamiticvm Seu Tunkinense cum Lusitana &

Latina declaratione" (Từ Điển Annam hay Đông Kinh diễn nghĩa bằng tiếng Lusitan và tiếng Latin). In modern Vietnamese, however,

"qua" means "I/we" exclusively in Southern speech; so could this be a case of a temporally and spatially removed archaic

residue of an older Hán-Nôm word predating the Trịnh-Nguyễn regional division?

Which brings us to your initial request about the anonymous 17th-century verse-history Thiên Nam Ngữ Lục. I regret that I

don't have a copy of the new 2001 edition by Nguyễn Thị Lâm from the Hán Nôm Institute either. I used to have a copy of the

1958 edition by Nguyễn Lương Ngọc and Đinh Gia Khánh, but it is regrettably in storage and out of access to me at the moment.

(Both editions are available at Yale if you just search for them on Worldcat). I have access, however, to some sizeable

excepts (more than 1000 lines of the 8000+ total) of the 1958 edition that was included in the Tổng Tập Văn Học Việt Nam,

volume 6. If you let me know which lines in particular you are looking for, I can check to see if they are included in the

excerpts. But I assume you're looking for the context of the word "qua" as a first-person pronoun here. Then I can tell you

that a quick check of the self-justified epilogue (lines 8053-8136) shows that the author repeatedly refers to himself in the

first-person pronoun "tôi" and the occurrences of "qua" are related to the other meanings of the word (spear/fight; passing

time; over). I don't know where Ms. Nguyễn Thị Lâm finds such an instance of first-person pronoun "qua" in her transcription

of the Thiên Nam Ngữ Lục; and assuming that she actually has textual evidence for it, I'm a bit skeptical about the

explanation that "qua" denotes the peculiarity of Southern speech at that time (mid-17th century) because (1) even Alexandre

de Rhodes wouldn't make such a claim in his gloss of the word in his contemporary dictionary; and (2) if you read the

contents of the text, the Thiên Nam Ngữ Lục is most likely (if not infallibly) a work by a Northern author who wrote glowingly

about the current glorious reign of the Lê-Trịnh regime, something that would be highly unusual for a supposedly Southern

author from the rival breakaway Nguyễn camp.

Of course, these are just my hunches in the dark, so you'll need to take them with a lot of salt, I'm afraid :-)

Best,

NQVinh

From: Tom Nguyen <nguyencungthong@yahoo.com>

To: Dien Nguyen <nguyendien519@gmail.com>; nguyen <utuu2001@yahoo.com.au>; Thien Do <thiend44@gmail.com>; Frank Trinh

<franktrinh@hotmail.com>; "vinhnguyen68@gmail.com" <vinhnguyen68@gmail.com>; "gclchew@yahoo.co.uk" <gclchew@yahoo.co.uk>;

"vsg@u.washington.edu" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Cc: nguyencungthong <nguyencungthong@yahoo.com>

Sent: Friday, 13 December 2013 4:45 PM

Subject: Re: Fwd: [Vsg] "Mi" (central Vietnam); "Qua" (southern Vietnam) + Thiên Nam Ngữ Lục

Hi anh Dien,

My interpretation of qua (I, me) is a variation of ua (我 I, me in ZhaoChou/Trieu Chau/Minnan - wǒ according to pinyin); for

similar traces of recent Minnan dialect in Vietnamese (particularly in Southern dialect of Vietnamese) refer to my attached

article - or you can read this article on the website

http://khoavanhoc-ngonngu.edu.vn/home/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4493%3Atn-mn-v-t-han-vit-ap-dng-phien-

thit-phn-9&catid=71%3Angon-ng-hc&Itemid=107&lang=vi

My brief comment on this theme

Nguyen Cung Thong

On Saturday, 14 December 2013, 13:23, Vinh Nguyen <vinhnguyen68@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you, anh Nguyễn Cung Thông, for the insightful discussion notes on phiên thiết, and the detailed case study of "ngã" 我.

However, call me a skeptic, I still find the intriguing hypothetical relationship between the phonemes "ngã" and "qua"

[kwa]/"oa" [wa] to be rather problematic. For one thing, from anh Thông's list of phiên thiết examples for "ngã" below, it

seems they all point to a sound with a "thượng thanh" (rising tone?) [ie."khả"] which doesn't square with the "bình thanh"

(level tone) of "qua"/'oa". So even if we might somehow derive some plausible connection between the initial consonants for

"ngã"/"qua"/"oa"/"wa" in South Chinese - Vietnamese dialects, we still can't reach the proper tone because the two don't

match (3rd tone in mandarin "wǒ", and 2nd tone in Chaozhou "ua2" and Minnan "gua2" dialects, are on opposite ends of the level

tone in the Vietnamese "qua"/"oa").

For another thing, I would venture to agree with Paul Schneider (in his 1992 Dictionaire Historique des Idéographes

Vietnamiens [Từ Vựng Lịch Sử Chữ Nôm]) to exclude the word "ngã" 我 meaning "I/we" from nôm lexicography (only counting the

vernacular meanings of "to fall/slip", "slant/direction", "strike a deal/price [as in "ngã giá"]", etc, with possible

variations between dấu hỏi and dấu ngã [Schneider 1992, pp. 566-567]), because that meaning of "ngã" 我 as first-person pronoun

belongs to classical Chinese/Hán and not vernacular or pure Vietnamese/thuần Việt. And it has stayed quite stable in the

Sino-Vietnamese/Hán Việt vocabulary of the educated Vietnamese for thousands of years. So much so that in the early 15th

century [1428] Nguyễn Trãi had hammered it into the psyche of the Vietnamese scholar-official class with the ringing

declaration: 惟我大越之國 Duy ngã Đại Việt chi quốc // 實為文獻之邦 Thực vi văn hiến chi bang [Considering our state of ĐạiViệt // it

is truly "a domain of manifest civility" (to borrow Liam Kelley's elegant rendition)]. This classical sense of "ngã" 我 is so

well-intuited and well-entrenched the pre-modern Vietnamese mind and vocabulary that I don't believe it could so easily

mutate into some vernacular form of first-person pronoun "qua" 戈 by the mid-17th century when Alexandre de Rhodes recorded it

down in his dictionary of spoken (vernacular?) Vietnamese. And interestingly enough, De Rhodes included the vernacular

first-person "qua" [qva] but not the classical first person "ngã" (but only the vernacular meanings of "ngã"/"ngả" [De Rhodes,

1651/1991, p. 1: 517]).

To get back to the word "qua" 戈, I'm grateful to cô Huệ-Tâm's timely reminder of the historical context of Minh-Hương

migration to Đàng Trong in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Since that timeframe post-dates rather than predates the

appearance of "qua" in De Rhodes's 1651 dictionary of the Tonkinese language in the Northern Region, there could be no Minh-

Hương influence on the pronunciation of "qua" at this early date (before it mutated from [kwa] to [wa] perhaps?). And

therefore for a third thing, the link between the classical first-person "ngã" and vernacular first-person "qua" through the

historical phonology of Southern Chinese/Vietnamese dialects would be highly implausible at this point as well. How/when/why

the first-person "qua" later became identified with the Southern region/dialect to the exclusion of its Northern roots is a

big open question that's way beyond my meager working Hán-Nôm exposure. I can still pose questions and make life murkier and

more difficult for us all though, can't I? :-)

To get back to Thiên Nam Ngữ Lục, again I thank anh Thông for providing the textual examples of the first-person "qua" 戈. But

I still disagree with Nguyễn Thị Lâm's explanation of it as a case of southern speech, because this text has to be from the

North by a partisan or admirer of the Lê-Trịnh regime. For incontrovertible evidence I'd like to point to such shamelessly

panegyric lines in the epilogue as: "Nguyện xin như ý sở cầu // Muôn đời Lê Trịnh sống lâu vô cùng" [May my prayer be answered

// For tens of thousands of generations the Lê-Trịnh regime will live on forever] (lines 8069-8070) and "Dõi đời trị nước lâu

dài // Còn trời, còn đất, còn đời Trịnh Lê" [Following the reigns to rule the country for a long time // For as long as heaven

and earth remains, so will remain the Lê-Trịnh reign] (lines 8077-8078). The presence of the first-person pronouns "qua" and

"tôi" [I, a royal subject] in Thiên Nam Ngữ Lục is not mutually exclusive, even though they come from different tonal

registers: "qua" is from a superior person talking down to an inferior, whereas the submissive "tôi" is a generic term of

self-address for all royal subjects. And both of these vernacular first-person pronouns were included in De Rhodes'

contemporaneous dictionary. To cite De Rhodes again: (1) "qua" [qva]: eu: ego, quando scilicet persona superior loquitur cum

inferioribus; [Tôi: khi người trên nói với người dưới] (1651/1991, pp. 1:615; 2:185); (2a) "tôi": eu, meu: ego, meus, a, um

[vm]: loquendo demissr [Tôi, của tôi: nói cách khiêm hạ] (ibid. pp. 1:821; 2:234); and (2b) "tôi": esarauo, criodo, vassallo:

feruus, i. famulus, i. subditus [Đầy tớ, gia nhân, thuộc hạ] (ibid. pp. 1:822; 2:235). Note again (and to beat a dead horse),

both of these vernacular first-person "qua" and "tôi" were included in De Rhodes but not the classical first-person "ngã",

and all three were integral to the language of Đàng Ngoài/Tonkin/Northern Region in the 17th century. I rest my case.

Best,

NQVinh

Dear List,

As I recall, in an interview conducted by a group of college students about 20 years ago, General Dương Văn Minh, RVN's last

President, used the term "qua" instead of "tôi".

Even though both of my parents were born in Huế, my maternal grandmother was from Hanoi. She used "mi" or "tụi mi" to

intimately address us.

Calvin Thai

PS: My grandmother was my grandfather's second wife (out of 4) whom he met while attending the medical school in Hanoi at the

beginning of WWI. All four got along very well.

On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 7:42 AM, vo que <vxque@yahoo.com> wrote:

Dear Grace and List,

I am from northern part of central Vietnam (particularly Ha Tinh province now). In my province (as well as in central region)

people often use "Mi" (you) than "Mày" and "Tau"/"Tui" (I) than "Tôi". To express the first single and the third plural person

too, the central Vietnamese also have another pronoun: "Choa". Its definitions are “Tao, chúng tao” in "Từ điển Tiếng Việt"

(published by Nhà xuất bản Đà Nẵng 2005, p.166) and "Từ điển tiếng địa phương Nghệ Tĩnh" (published by Nhà xuất bản Văn hóa Thông

tin, 1999, p.87). I doubt that “Choa” is a variation of “Qua” or vice virsa.

As for "Qua", I share Vinh Nguyen's citation from Alexandre de Rhodes' Dictionarivm Annamiticvm Lusiatnvm et Latinvm [1651]

in which "Qua" is defined: Tôi; khi người trên nói với người dưới" and Vinh Nguyen's himself explanation: "It doesn't identify

the word as "Southern" in the 17th century". However, it is worthy noted that beside "Qua", de Rhodes' also mentioned a

compound "Mớ qua" in his dictionary. And in Piere Pigneaux de Beshaine's Dictionarium Anamitico Latinum 1772-1773, translated

by Hồng Nhuệ Nguyễn Khắc Xuyên, Nhà xuất bản Trẻ 1999, the word “Qua” is defined: “Chúng tôi, đi qua, ta, người trên nói với người

dưới/we, go through/pass, I, a superior person speaks to an inferior.” (p.384). In J.L. Taberd’s Dictionarium Annamitico-

Latinum printed in Serampore 1838, reprinted by Nhà Xuất bản Văn học and Trung Tâm Quốc học Huế 2004, “Qua” is defined as in

P.P de Beshaine’s Dictionary, but there are also: “Mớ qua”, “Chúng qua” (p.403).

Nowadays, as some others have provided, “Qua” is used with the meaning of "first-person pronoun" in southern Vietnamese.

However, I found interestingly that instead of using “Choa” as villagers from most villages in the central Vietnam, my native

villagers (20km from Vinh City) use "Qua" for both the first single person (I) and the third plural person (we) nowadays, but

the latter is more common than the first. And, it is mainly used by higher status/older persons when speaking with lower

status/younger persons, or at least between the same status/age persons for both men and women.

Return to “Qua” in Thiên Nam Ngữ Lục, I luckily found in a copy published by Nhà xuất bản Văn học and Trung tâm Văn hóa Đông

Tây (2011) that “Qua” is used in the p.177, line 3670. Hopefully this is a copy of the edition that Grew mentioned.

Here are the context from that “Qua” can be understood:

3667 “Đông gia có một láng giềng3668. Thấy rỗi, bèn mới dỗ khuyên rằng vầy3669. Ngồi dưng (ngồi rồi, không làm gì cả) cũng luống

công may3670. Chăn trâu, qua (Từ cổ, nghĩa như ta, tôi. Nay đã thành tiếng địa phương ở miền Nam) sẽ tính ngày trả công.” (in

blanket are noted by Nguyễn Thị Lâm)

As I understood, this stave describes Đinh Bộ Lĩnh’s livelihood when he is still young. In this context, “Qua” implies “Đông

gia/A family on the east” who is “láng giềng/a neighbour” of Đinh Bộ Lĩnh’s family and he is older and may be in higher status

than Đinh Bộ Lĩnh. So,in my opinion the usage of “Qua” in Thiên Nam Ngữ Lục can be seen the same as it is still used in my

native village as well as in the southern Vietnam.

Hopefully this gives a note for your discursion.

Best,Vo Xuan Que

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