Category talk:Vietnamese language

RFM discussion: January–April 2014

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

Non-idiomatic Vietnamese words

The following pages should be moved to titles that do not include classifiers:

• cây bạch dương → bạch dương
• con gián → gián
• con ngoé → ngóe (with an alternative spelling at ngoé)
• con quạ → quạ
• con thằn lằn → thằn lằn
• đàn viôlôngxen → viôlôngxen
• trái trứng gà → trứng gà

Though more descriptive than English articles, Vietnamese classifiers serve the same grammatical function. Therefore, Wiktionary should not have entries like "con gián" ("a cockroach").

See also Wiktionary:Requests for deletion#Non-idiomatic Vietnamese words.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 10:29, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I've used Wyang (talk • contribs),s template {{vi new}} to create "bạch dương". It seems to work well and adds IPA. I've also added a desired parameter (cls=) - a classifier (also measure word, counter) "cây". Since this problem (as it turns out) with Vietnamese dictionaries is quite common, when new entries are created, old entries should probably be turned to hard redirects rather than deleted. See [1], which translate "poplar" as "cây bạch dương" rather than simply "bạch dương" or "(cây) bạch dương", making users believe that classifier "cây" is part of the word. My Berlitz dictionary has the same erroneous feature (inconsistent, like vdict.com). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:31, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

In the event that someone learning Vietnamese actually confuses a classifier as part of the actual word, I'd support hard redirecting them to the actual word entry. There are some words that are taken from Sino-Vietnamese readings of Han characters, so it'd not be unusual for people to conflate the two in terms of grammar. By the way, is your name Anatoli or Atitarev? TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 04:56, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, then. Not sure what you mean by confusion with Chinese. The Sino-Vietnamese terms are borrowed without the classifier and Chinese classifiers are never added in translations in any dictionaries the way Vietnamese are sometimes. See 拖拉机 (tuōlājī) to see how the measure word (classifier) 台 is displayed. I haven never seen 台拖拉机 or similar as a mistranslation. My name is Anatoli Titarev, Atitarev is my nickname @Wiktionary. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:18, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Re: "Sino-Vietnamese terms are borrowed without the classifier and Chinese classifiers" Yes but, how would English learners of Vietnamese distinguish between the two, between words that need classifiers and words like khách sạn (Han-derived was what I meant) which don't need them? Unless they actually looked at some of the usage notes at con, or a general Vietnamese tutorial on grammar. Too often, dictionaries translate these things inaccurately enough people will just assume con is part of the actual word. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 06:01, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

On further thought, I don't think English speakers would be likely to confuse particles like the, el, las, le, les as part of the word they're modifying, so maybe my argument doesn't hold as much weight, but there really ought to be a proper introduction to Vietnamese grammar that would dispel some of the confusion translation programs introduce, especially when they include con as part of the word. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 06:08, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Vdict.com is largely a mirror of the Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project, which the Vietnamese and French Wiktionaries have also imported. (FVDP's Vietnamese-English dictionary is riddled with errors, so it shouldn't be imported here.) I believe FVDP's English-Vietnamese dictionary was intended for Vietnamese speakers who need to look up English words, so a bit of inconsistency in classifier usage wouldn't have been viewed as a significant problem. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 07:04, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I think "cls=" parameter could be more descriptive than just showing classifier in brackets, like Mandarin "mw=", see 拖拉机 entry.

Re: errors in dictionaries. It seems for Vietnamese people is natural to translate English words with classifiers, like "dog" is "con chó". It's different from other languages with classifiers. E.g. in Mandarin "a dog" is 一条狗 (yī tiáo gǒu), in Japanese 一匹の犬 (ippiki no inu) you need a number before a classifier. Since this "riddled with errors" dictionaries are common, we need redirects, rather than deletions. You can move entries to entries leaving a redirect behind. Do you guys have the authority to move entries? You can request the right, I think.

See also Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2013/November#Measure word regarding formatting of classifier (measure word, counter) entries. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:17, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

One of the more interesting things I found reading Minh's links to the various scientific publications attempting to analyze Vietnamese was the use of this construction of con in dialogue:

"Tôi muốn mua con heo."

"Mấy/Bao nhiêu con?"

"Hai con." (instead of "hai heo")

I'm not sure how classifiers function in the other languages ("re: you need a number before a classifier") but it is pretty unique in Vietnamese. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 23:22, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

In other languages you can also use "number + classifier" only or "determiner + classifier", like English "this one", "3 of those", etc. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:37, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

In your example above "Tôi muốn mua con heo." do you need a classifier? Doesn't it mean "a pig" (one pig)? Is "con" without a number imply "one (of)"? Mandarin equivalent:

我要买猪。 Wǒ yāo mǎi zhū. (no classifier, just I want to buy a pig/pigs (ambiguous), "one pig" would be 一头/只猪 (yī tóu/zhǐ zhū)

要买几头/只？ Yāo mǎi jǐ tóu/zhǐ?

两头/只。 Liǎng tóu/zhǐ. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:54, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

My analogy regarding the English article "a" works in isolation, but the two languages are different enough that you can surely find situations where the analogy falls apart. As I tried to explain to Dan Polansky in the RfD, my point was that both English and Vietnamese tend to introduce nouns with an auxiliary word.

Anyhow, "Tôi muốn mua con heo" could be understood as either "I want to buy [this/that] pig" ("Tôi muốn mua con heo [này/đó]"), or as "I want to buy a pig" ("Tôi muốn mua [một] con heo"). As in Mandarin, you'd typically say, "Tôi muốn mua heo," without the classifier, to ambiguously mean "I want to buy pig." More examples:

• In response to "Mấy con?", "Mỗi một con" means "Every single one" (literally, "Each one [CLS]"). But note that some linguists take this to be evidence that classifiers are just nouns that can be used a certain way, not a distinct part of speech. It is simpler to think of "con heo" as a noun phrase.
• "Tôi trồng chuối" means "I plant banana trees," even though the sentence leaves open the possibility of literally stuffing bananas into the ground. "Tôi trồng cây chuối" would be the stilted machine translation.
• w:vi:Mít ("Jackfruit") starts out: "Mít là loài thực vật ăn quả... Quả mít là loại quả quốc gia của Bangladesh." ("Jackfruit is a fruit-bearing plant species... The jackfruit is the national fruit of Bangladesh.")

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:16, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

In Mandarin you can also say 我想買一隻豬 ("I want to buy a pig"), 我想買隻豬 ("I want to buy a pig") or 我想買豬 ("I want to buy pig"), exactly the same as Vietnamese. Wyang (talk) 08:25, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

While I don't think we should have classifiers in lemmas, it's too strong to call their use in translations "errors". This is the convention, especially for translationaries aimed at Vietnamese speakers. Besides, many dictionaries are perfectly upfront about their usage, even if they don't have the space to remind readers in every entry. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:16, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

The move is complete of all terms listed (if I haven't missed any). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:28, 23 April 2014 (UTC)