Talk:dằn

dữ dằn

I've found these Vietnamese-language articles (one by Phạm Tuấn Vũ MA (field of expertise not indicated), two by ST), which mentioned the opinion of An Chi, a well-known & conscientious Vietnamese scholar, that dằn in dữ dằn is not merely a meaningless reduplicative of dữ "fierce, ferocious" but is actually a fossilized loanword, from a non-SV reading of 寅 Dần "3rd Earthly Branch; tiger in Chinese zodiac" & that dữ dằn used to be a compound word, meaning "as ferocious as a tiger", analogous to other compouds which contain fossilized non-SV readings of Chinese loans into Vietnamese like đỏ hoét (cf. SV huyết 血) "blood-red" > now "intensely red" & trắng toát (cf. SV tuyết 雪) "snow-white" > "intensely white".

Phạm & ST also cited other word-pairs which exemplify the correspondence between non-SV ăn /ɐn/ vs. SV ân /ən/ like (thù) hằn vs. (thù) hận "resentment, rancor, animosity, grudge" (讎)恨 , khăn vs cân 巾 "scarf", thăn vs. thân 胂 "flesh of the lower back", chắn "to shield, to block" & chặn "to block, to stop, to intercept" vs. SV trấn 鎮, etc. While I personally think this proposal is plausible. I'm still apprehensive about creating an etymology 2 "Non-Sino-Vietnamese reading of Chinese 寅 (SV: Dần)" for dằn in dữ dằn. This matter needs the attention of folks like PhanAnh123.Erminwin (talk) 05:04, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

I am more often than not skeptical of this kind of proposals, where the writers obviously are not really familiar with the concept of sound change or the comparative method and only take alternations in the modern language as at its face value (An Chi, for example, replies solely on Sinology, without any augment whatsoever from comparative linguistics when it comes to etymology), but I think that this is not implausible and probably worth at least a mention. This kind of "synonymous augmentative compounding" is indeed extensively attested, not just with Sintic but also Tai and native elements as well (cf. trắng bệch, sắc lẻm, đường sá) and I don't really see any phonological problem in relating dằn to dần (although the stuff about chằn by ST doesn't really come off as convincing to me).PhanAnh123 (talk) 05:50, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, PhanAnh123.Erminwin (talk) 19:50, 23 May 2021 (UTC)