thoại

Vietnamese

Etymology

Sino-Vietnamese word from 話 (“speech, talk, language, dialect”).

It is unclear why Vietnamese has the aspirated stop ‹th› as reflex of the Middle Chinese initial in this particular morpheme. Other Sinitic morphemes with the same initial yielded Sino-Vietnamese ‹h›, cf. 畫 (MC hweaH|hweak) (SV: hoạ, hoạch), 橫 (MC hwaeng) (SV: hoành), 滑 (MC hweat) (SV: hoạt).

Pronunciation

(Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [tʰwaːj˧˨ʔ]
(Huế) IPA^(key): [tʰwaːj˨˩ʔ]
(Hồ Chí Minh City) IPA^(key): [tʰ⁽ʷ⁾aːj˨˩˨]

Noun

thoại

(only in compounds) speech, talk, language
(only in compounds) dialect

Verb

thoại

(only in compounds) talk

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.