Talk:giữ

Derivation

Does this word derive from 守, as vi:Wiktionary states? 71.66.97.228 05:25, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Sinitic Origin

Giữ is most definitely of sinitic origin, which becomes blatantly apparent when examining the Hán-Nôm characters. 

For further explanation, the phonetic parts of the "giữ"-characters are "守" "宁" "字" these are the same phonetic parts used when writing "chữ" (NSV of 字). So we can already conclude that "giữ" in the past sounded closer to "chữ" or "trữ" which is close to the Muong pronunciation. But the important part is the semantic parts, which are "守" and "宁". "Trữ" (to store, to keep, to preserve) is the SV-word of "宁/貯", "宁" is the original form of "佇" and "貯" (NSV= chứa (to store, to contain).  The pronunciation of the "giữ"-characters are the following:

"㑏/佇" (to stand (for a long time), to be located at —> to be stationed —> to guard, to protect),

"貯" (to keep, to preserve, to store —> to protect/ preserve the things that are being kept),

"𢬇"(會意 AND 形聲 character with 守 (to keep, to protect) being the semantic AND phonetic part of the character),

“拧“ (會意 AND 形聲 character with 宁 (to keep, to preserve) being the semantic AND phonetic part of the character (not to be confused with 擰)),

and “𡨹/𡨺“ (these are again 會意 AND 形聲 characters 守 (to keep, to protect) and 宁(to keep, to preserve)).

As one can see, "守" and "宁" are being always used as the phonetic AND semantic part of the characters meaning that "giữ" most definetly is a Non-Sino-Vietnamese-Reading. 

TL;DR: the words

"trữ = SV of 宁/貯 and 宁/佇/㑏",

"chứa = NSV of 貯",

"thủ = SV of 守",

and "giữ" are connected. This seems to be a 轉注 case.

"giữ" is either...

A: a Non-Sino-Vietnamese-Reading of 守 MC=/ɕɨu/.

B: a Non-Sino-Vietnamese-Reading of 宁佇㑏/ 貯 MC=/ɖɨʌ/, /ʈɨʌ/.

C: considering 守 and 宁 were being used interchangeably, both semantically and phonetically in Han-Nom, it is highly possible that 守 and 宁 are verbal borrowings from Middle Chinese/ post Middle Chinese. And since they have similar meanings and pronunciations, both of these words „melted“ into one, aka. Giữ is a fusion of 守 (to keep, to protect) and 宁 (to keep, to preserve) (fusion of MC ɕɨu and ɖɨʌ, ʈɨʌ).

As said before, the old Vietnamese pronunciation seems to be “chữ" or "trữ" which likely gave birth to the Muong cognate „chữ“.

The semantic connections are all good, but how would you explain the *k- presyllable (especially if you consider it to be a late loan)? There's no known *k- prefix with assignable function in Vietic (and it's the presyllable that triggered the simple lenition progress that turned *-c/ɟ- into modern ‹gi›, in both older loans and native words, cf. giết, giấy, giường). Also, you should not be overreliant on Nôm readings, they often give us useful clues on the historical pronunciation of words, but they're not the pinpoint for etymology (such as in cases like when 中 was used to write trong).PhanAnh123 (talk) 03:52, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

@PhanAnh1234. Thank you for bringing this to my attention... and for making me do more research about this... which showed me... that I was right.

We actually have evidence of „ʈ“ becoming „gi“ (Alexis Michaud, Michel Ferlus, Minh-Châu Nguyễn 2015) and I found the „official“ Middle-Vietnamese pronunciation of „giữ" which is „ʝɯ“ (which is the pronunciation I got from Han-Nom) and if we look at Phong Nha Vietnamese the word is „ʈɯ“ which confirms that in this case, Vietnamese „giữ“ derives from a „ʈ“-like consonant and not from a "k-" presyllable. (宁佇㑏/ 貯 MC=/ɖɨʌ/, /ʈɨʌ/).

Now, the example you used to "disproof" is "中“ (trong) and this is a very bad example you chose since Han-Nom actually proofs that "trong" comes from "*k-lɔːŋ". While 中 was sometimes used for trong, 中 wasn‘t the most popular and appeared later. The most frequent characters used 龍, 共, 工 as phonetics and the consonants were l- and k-, thus confirming PV= *k-lɔːŋ.

In the case of "giữ" the characters used both phonetically and semantically were always 守 and 宁/貯 (ch- tr- th- t-) and there is no k-like consonant to be found. We must remember that the ancient Vietnamese were not dumb, they knew what they were doing. Looking at the logographs is extremely important, like for example, Japanese etymology depends heavily on the characters they used. Han-Nom is even more special since it does not only show us the semantics but also the phonetics.

But the thing is that, 99% of all "professional“ AA/Vietnamese linguists do not use Han-Nom and that is a problem because we have seen how quite a lot Vietic words were actually of Chinese origin, and all these PV "reconstructions“ could have been avoided, if they would have just looked at Han-Nom (when I looked at some of these PV words, I actually found multiple words that are (again) of Chinese origin. I‘m going to add them to wiktionary later). We must also remember that, these reconstructions are just theories, they aren‘t definite. Linguistics are more than not just theories since there is no way to actually know how it sounded in the past (unless we time travel).

Languages are weird. And we should stop treating languages (especially Asian languages) as math formulas. Most think that a+b=c but the reality is, is that a+b=fish. Chinese for example borrowed the word 石 from AA, yet they put a random -k at the end.

We must also remember that Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic have the same Uhrheimat, so it is inevitable for them to have cognates.

(I also want to add that I couldn‘t find how these „reconstructions“ were made, so if you know where I can find how the „reconstructions“ were made, I would appreciate it).

TL;DR

„ʈ“ becoming „gi“ is nothing special.

Phong Nha Vietnamese shows us that it was ʈ- and not k-.

Han-Nom shows us how there is no k- present but ch- tr- th- t-.

Han-Nom is criminally and blatantly ignored by professional linguists.

The Proto-Vietic "reconstruction" is either wrong or is a false cognate.

Language is not math/linear.

The thing that ultimately proves giữ comes from Chinese is the phonemic reduplicative of giữ which is gìn. The Han-Nom forms are 吲 and 廛 (th- gi-, tr- ch- gi-) (廛MC= ɖˠiᴇn) (宁MC= ɖɨʌ). Again, no k-.

But to give you the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it comes from Old Chinese (守= *s-tuʔ) (Phong Nha= ʈɯ) rather than Middle Chinese

Lenition was the extremely productive progress in an older form of Vietnamese (although not all Vietnamese dialects have thoroughly undergone lenetion) that gave birth to the Middle Vietnamese form recorded by de Rhodes (this MV form was not the ancestor of all modern Vietnamese dialects). The exact pronunciation of the presyllable *k- was not important (and it was dropped anyway), but the presence of presyllable was. Each voiced-voiceless pair in the stop series of Proto-Vietic have two reflexes in Middle (and Modern) Vietnamese (with voicing reflected on tones), depending on the environment:

• PV *p/b- > Middle Vietnamese b (cf. ba, bán)
• PV -p/b- > MV ꞗ (cf. vải, vui, vá)

Middle Vietnamese ‹gi› /ʝ/ as a reflex of earlier *-c- (the reflex of *c- is ‹ch›) is entirely regular and expected. You can search for the Proto-Vietic reconstruction on Mon-Khmer Comparative Dictionary, where PV *k-cɨh is glossed as "to watch, look after", it also gives Malieng kacɘːʰ and Rục kɨcɨː⁴, which gives solid support for the existence of the presyllable. And the reconstruction of Proto-Vietic words with Sinitic origin should not be avoided, since Proto-Vietic indeed had loanwords from Chinese. The examples you cited from (Alexis Michaud, Michel Ferlus, Minh-Châu Nguyễn 2015) didn't prove that the ‹gi› in giữ came from earlier /ʈ/-like consonant but they're just separate development from the same source (in this case, from *-c-). Phong Nha dialect is one of the dialects that didn't thoroughly undergo lenition. In fact, the examples cited in table 5, pg. 10 is not even homogeneous: "amaranth" and "to pierce" simply didn't undergo lenition, the *k-r in "old" became *k-l then regularly became /ʈ/ (the same thing with "horn" and "back of the blade" in table 9 actually, the standard già is the one that is irregular), "middle" has no known cognate that I'm aware of, so I can't say anything.

I'm not against Chinese etymology of Vietnamese words and you can see me adding etymology for words of Chinese origin and remove faulty etymology whenever I find them, but I think this is simply not the case.PhanAnh123 (talk) 07:44, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

You‘re probably right. Thank you for your informative explanation and expanding my knowledge. But we have to keep in mind that the Han-Nom system is older than the dictionary by Rhodes, we can even find OC pronunciation in Han-Nom (like xúm = 森 (*srɯm)). It is honestly very interesting to see the overabundance of connections between PV and Chinese. （＾ν＾） 范俊華 (talk) 03:16, 16 September 2020 (UTC)