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How could one expect to find an old word, presumed lost into depths of time, in some entranched tiny corner of the human intellect, like a secret treasure, a gift emerging from the cradle of humanity?
Well, it's not that hard .... because, in reality, a word never dies!
Each of them has successfully tried to survive the vicissitudes of language, the common consciousness of the human society that shaped it.
It was nothing but a reflection, among others, of the collective soul that preserves forever the miraculous survival of human thought, since the birth of the individual until his death, since the cradle of a people until its marriage with another people, giving rise to other forms of life and survival language.
A word evolved to maturity, was used as a tool of trade, of emotions and facts, seemingly shaping new contours to fit the nuances of human emotions, hiding partly behind disappointing combinations, even playing hide and seek with linguistic research, even playing tricks with cunning linguists, surprising them in their scholarly work, forever tempting and fascinating!
Vong Hy Nguyen, M.D.
Lexicographer
Language Comparisons
The Chinese are so poor in number of phonemes: 3,600 all in all. Moreover, their present monosyllabism makes out a poor prognosis for its future. It does not matter whether they write in abc or in ideographs.
The Japanese are burdened with three writing systems, but because they think much more, they are stronger, more civilized, and more prosperous.
The Vietnamese language is also monosyllabic, but the number of phonemes is staggering: less than 17,500, and they write abc. Its prognosis is just a little better, but they need to think more.
The world phonetic champion is Cambodian: 41,000 phonemes. Alas, the prognosis is even worse, they simply do not think.
To me, the thought is everything. The speech, its conveyor, is only as good as the thoughts, and the writing, the poor carrier for both, is faring even worse.
The world belongs to the new thinkers, not to the old men of wisdom.
The primum movens of mankind is the richness of ideas and thoughts which result in the quality of speech and writing, and not vice versa.
The French is lazier in their thinking and their language is now relocated to a second or third order.
English is the language of freedom because their people are richer in new ideas and thoughts.
The Chinese world is a century lagging behind, and still counting!
Vong Hy Nguyen, M.D.
Lexicographer
About the Mon Khmer Languages
Links between the Mon Khmer languages with others have been surmised but are still lacking thorough evaluations. The Cognatic Dictionary of the Vietnamese Language will remedy to this lack of knowledge. There are about 100 Mon Khmer languages. This dictionary has explored 58 of them, including the most spoken languages: Vietnamese, Khmer, Thai, and Laotian. Only in Vietnam and Cambodia are the Mon Khmer languages considered official. Long ago, they were spoken in present Southern China and present Indonesia, and have braced with other neighboring groups of languages.
The Mon Khmer languages possess the most vowels in the world. Some have up to 40. Their grammar are typically by word order: the qualificatives follow/modify the head word and the basic sentence is: subject - verb - object. Some linguists group them together with the Munda and the Khasi into a bigger AA/Austro-Asian group. Some other linguists group them with the Austronesian to make into a huge Austric group.
The main Mon Khmer language is Vietnamese with 83 million speakers. Since 1,775, 3 million Vietnamese refugees carried their language to all over the world.
The Mon Khmer languages were broken into pieces since the second millenium BC, but the various moving paths of this wandering group remain quite hypothetical and not thoroughly exposed.
Vong Hy Nguyen, M.D.
Lexicographer
About the Cognatic Dictionary of the Vietnamese Language
This dictionary has been designed and written for 27 years from 1981 to 2008. It aimed to provide the global public the true face of the Vietnamese language as such. It was treated as a whole by the method cognate, one of the methods of comparative linguistics with the specific purpose to make clear the parallel evolution of cognates in most of the languages of Southeast Asia. It does not neglect the substantial contribution of the Chinese to the language of our ancestors, although not genetic, the Chinese was and remains the modus vivendi and cultural conveyor of ideas for Japan, Korea, and of course, Vietnam.
The whole book reflects the strong logistics of lexicographical research conducted thoroughly, as it claims to draw about 27,400 Vietnamese words against their collegial cognatic of about 275,000, compared them to each other, syllable for syllable, letter for letter, tone to tone, so as to better appreciate the remarkable cognatic homogeneity among them through the seemingly disparate and disappointing aspects of their various writings, although syllabic per se.
May it be the touchstone of a new way to "see" the Vietnamese language and its linguistic cousins in both ways, similar or dissimilar, and yet so lifelike from their first babblings to their modern maturities.
Vong Hy Nguyen, M.D
Lexicographer
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