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74-563: The British project was working against the background of the successful French Kunming-Haiphong railway that had been established on the nearby Hanoi to Kunming route from 1904–1910, some 30 years earlier. To secure the rights to construction, Britain referred to Article IV of the Anglo-French Siam Convention for 'mutual privileges'. Maria Bugrova 's article The British expeditions to China in XIX century discusses

148-437: A logographic script using Chinese characters ( chữ Hán ) to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, together with many locally invented characters representing other words. Early linguistic work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries ( Logan 1852, Forbes 1881, Müller 1888, Kuhn 1889, Schmidt 1905, Przyluski 1924, and Benedict 1942) classified Vietnamese as belonging to

222-636: A minor syllable occurred). These fricatives were not present in Proto-Viet–Muong, as indicated by their absence in Mường , but were evidently present in the later Proto-Vietnamese stage. Subsequent loss of the minor-syllable prefixes phonemicized the fricatives. Ferlus 1992 proposes that originally there were both voiced and voiceless fricatives, corresponding to original voiced or voiceless stops, but Ferlus 2009 appears to have abandoned that hypothesis, suggesting that stops were softened and voiced at approximately

296-579: A 2015 news report, over the seven preceding years, 63 meter gauge flatcars had been refurbished at the Kunming North Station's workshop, for use in transborder container shipping . In 2016, 100 mothballed freight railcars were selected to be refurbished at the Kaiyuan workshop and to be put into use again. Among important cargo types moved internationally on this line are chemical fertilizers . Since 2015, direct trains have been run from

370-671: A cost of 95 million francs (€362 million), the railway was among the most ambitious colonial projects undertaken by France, and was put into use on 1 April 1910. The 1,000 mm ( 3 ft  3 + 3 ⁄ 8  in ) metre gauge section was originally administered in more or less the same way as the Indochinese networks , and if not for a "missing link" through Cambodia (between Saigon and Phnom Penh ), it would have been physically possible for through trains to run from Kunming to Singapore , as 1,000 mm ( 3 ft  3 + 3 ⁄ 8  in ) metre gauge

444-578: A few kilometers from the old Hekou Station. A similar connection between the narrow-gauge and standard-gauge network exist in Mengzi , where the narrow-gauge Yuguopo railway station ( 雨过铺站 ) on the Caoba–Guanjiashan branch is adjacent to the standard-gauge Mengzi North railway station ( 蒙自北站 ) on the Kunming–Yuxi–Hekou line. The Yunnan Railway Museum, at Kunming North railway station , has

518-626: A large exhibit on the Kunming–Haiphong railway and its narrow-gauge branch lines within Yunnan, although it covers the history of the province's standard gauge railways as well. At Hekou, the square outside of the new Hekou North railway station (opened 2014) is decorated with reliefs depicting the history of the transportation and economy in the region, with a special focus on the Kunming–Haiphong railway. 3 Steam locomotives are preserved. Vietnamese language Vietnamese ( tiếng Việt )

592-447: A main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide /j/ or /w/ . There are restrictions on the high offglides: /j/ cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and /w/ cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus. The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide /j/ is usually written as i ; however, it may also be represented with y . In addition, in

666-448: A paper published in 1856. Later, in 1920, French-Polish linguist Jean Przyluski found that Mường is more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon–Khmer languages, and a Viet–Muong subgrouping was established, also including Thavung , Chut , Cuoi , etc. The term "Vietic" was proposed by Hayes (1992), who proposed to redefine Viet–Muong as referring to a subbranch of Vietic containing only Vietnamese and Mường . The term " Vietic "

740-546: A process of tonogenesis , in which distinctions formerly expressed by final consonants became phonemic tonal distinctions when those consonants disappeared. These characteristics have become part of many of the genetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian ), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature. After

814-642: A representative on the Government Council for Nationalities, an advisory body of the Czech Government for matters of policy towards national minorities and their members. It also grants the community the right to use Vietnamese with public authorities and in courts anywhere in the country. Vietnamese is taught in schools and institutions outside of Vietnam, a large part contributed by its diaspora . In countries with Vietnamese-speaking communities Vietnamese language education largely serves as

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888-540: A role to link descendants of Vietnamese immigrants to their ancestral culture. In neighboring countries and vicinities near Vietnam such as Southern China, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, Vietnamese as a foreign language is largely due to trade, as well as recovery and growth of the Vietnamese economy. Since the 1980s, Vietnamese language schools ( trường Việt ngữ/ trường ngôn ngữ Tiếng Việt ) have been established for youth in many Vietnamese-speaking communities around

962-519: A stage commonly termed Middle Vietnamese ( tiếng Việt trung đại ). The pronunciation of the "rime" of the syllable, i.e. all parts other than the initial consonant (optional /w/ glide, vowel nucleus, tone and final consonant), appears nearly identical between Middle Vietnamese and modern Hanoi pronunciation. On the other hand, the Middle Vietnamese pronunciation of the initial consonant differs greatly from all modern dialects, and in fact

1036-552: A third of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms, and may account for as much as 60% of the vocabulary used in formal texts. Vietic languages were confined to the northern third of modern Vietnam until the "southward advance" ( Nam tiến ) from the late 15th century. The conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the conquest of the Mekong Delta led to an expansion of the Vietnamese people and language, with distinctive local variations emerging. After France invaded Vietnam in

1110-470: A very limited scale. As of 2012, two daily trains ran from Kunming North railway station on the meter-gauge tracks to Shizui (石咀) Station on the western outskirts of Kunming, and to Wangjiaying (王家营) east of the city. As of 2016, this service still continues, with 2 daily trains to Wangjiaying and one to Shizui. In December 2017, in order to leave room for the construction of the Kunming No.4 Metro line,

1184-527: Is also spoken by the Jing people traditionally residing on three islands (now joined to the mainland) off Dongxing in southern Guangxi Province , China . A large number of Vietnamese speakers also reside in neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos . In the United States, Vietnamese is the sixth most spoken language , with over 1.5 million speakers, who are concentrated in a handful of states. It

1258-523: Is an Austroasiatic language spoken primarily in Vietnam where it is the official language . Vietnamese is spoken natively by around 85 million people, several times as many as the rest of the Austroasiatic family combined. It is the native language of ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh), as well as the second or first language for other ethnicities of Vietnam , and used by Vietnamese diaspora in

1332-565: Is an 855 km (531 mi) railway built by France from 1904 to 1910, connecting Haiphong , Vietnam , with Kunming , Yunnan province, China. The section within China from Kunming to Hekou is known as the Kunming–Hekou railway ( Chinese : 昆河铁路 ; pinyin : Kun–He tielu ), and is 466 km (290 mi) long. The section within Vietnam is 389 km (242 mi) long, and

1406-455: Is known as the Hanoi–Lào Cai railway ( Vietnamese : Đường sắt Hà Nội – Lào Cai  / 塘鐵河内－老街 ). The railway was built with 1,000 mm ( 3 ft  3 + 3 ⁄ 8  in ) gauge due to the mountainous terrain along the route. Currently it is the only main line in China using 1,000 mm ( 3 ft  3 + 3 ⁄ 8  in ) metre gauge . In

1480-415: Is notated i or y (with the difference between the two often indicating differences in the quality or length of the preceding vowel), and after /ð/ and /β/ , where it is notated ĕ . This ĕ , and the /j/ it notated, have disappeared from the modern language. Note that b [ɓ] and p [p] never contrast in any position, suggesting that they are allophones. The language also has three clusters at

1554-479: Is often mistaken for a tilde in modern reproductions of early Vietnamese writing. As a result of emigration , Vietnamese speakers are also found in other parts of Southeast Asia , East Asia , North America , Europe , and Australia . Vietnamese has also been officially recognized as a minority language in the Czech Republic . As the national language, Vietnamese is the lingua franca in Vietnam. It

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1628-410: Is significantly closer to the modern Saigon dialect than the modern Hanoi dialect. The following diagram shows the orthography and pronunciation of Middle Vietnamese: ^1 [p] occurs only at the end of a syllable. ^2 This letter, ⟨ ꞗ ⟩ , is no longer used. ^3 [j] does not occur at the beginning of a syllable, but can occur at the end of a syllable, where it

1702-466: Is the first language of the majority of the Vietnamese population, as well as a first or second language for the country's ethnic minority groups . In the Czech Republic , Vietnamese has been recognized as one of 14 minority languages, on the basis of communities that have resided in the country either traditionally or on a long-term basis. This status grants the Vietnamese community in the country

1776-653: Is the third-most spoken language in Texas and Washington; fourth-most in Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia; and fifth-most in Arkansas and California. Vietnamese is the third most spoken language in Australia other than English, after Mandarin and Arabic. In France, it is the most spoken Asian language and the eighth most spoken immigrant language at home. Vietnamese is the sole official and national language of Vietnam. It

1850-413: Is used, among others, by Gérard Diffloth , with a slightly different proposal on subclassification, within which the term "Viet–Muong" refers to a lower subgrouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, Mường dialects, and Nguồn (of Quảng Bình Province ). Austroasiatic is believed to have dispersed around 2000 BC. The arrival of the agricultural Phùng Nguyên culture in

1924-446: Is written with two Chinese characters or in a composite character made of two different characters. This conveys the transformation of the Vietnamese lexicon from sesquisyllabic to fully monosyllabic under the pressure of Chinese linguistic influence, characterized by linguistic phenomena such as the reduction of minor syllables; loss of affixal morphology drifting towards analytical grammar; simplification of major syllable segments, and

1998-988: The Mon–Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (which also includes the Khmer language spoken in Cambodia , as well as various smaller and/or regional languages , such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in Laos , southern China and parts of Thailand). In 1850, British lawyer James Richardson Logan detected striking similarities between the Korku language in Central India and Vietnamese. He suggested that Korku , Mon , and Vietnamese were part of what he termed "Mon–Annam languages" in

2072-542: The Red River Delta at that time may correspond to the Vietic branch. This ancestral Vietic was typologically very different from later Vietnamese. It was polysyllabic, or rather sesquisyllabic , with roots consisting of a reduced syllable followed by a full syllable, and featured many consonant clusters. Both of these features are found elsewhere in Austroasiatic and in modern conservative Vietic languages south of

2146-597: The Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right. Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q"). In some cases, they are based on their Middle Vietnamese pronunciation; since that period, ph and kh (but not th ) have evolved from aspirated stops into fricatives (like Greek phi and chi ), while d and gi have collapsed and converged together (into /z/ in

2220-558: The phosphate fertilizer manufacturers in Kaiyuan to consumers in Vietnam. In the opposite direction, sulphur and zinc ore concentrate are imported to China from Vietnam. The overall role of the Kunming–Hekou meter-gauge line in the Sino-Vietnamese trade significantly declined in the 21st century, as compared to the railway's heyday in the first half of the 20th century. According to one article dated 2015 and describing

2294-539: The 1990s and the 2010s. Its first section, a railway branch from Kunming to Yuxi , was opened in 1993. The new Yuxi–Mengzi section opened for freight service in February 2013; in April 2013, passenger trains started running daily as far as Mengzi North , 258 km (160 mi) south of Kunming and approximately 150 km (93 mi) north of Hekou. A second daily train was added by July. The Mengzi–Hekou section

Yunnan–Burma railway - Misplaced Pages Continue

2368-586: The 19th century, the French colonial administration worked to develop regular trading networks and an efficient transport infrastructure between Indochina and south-west China. The primary motivation for such an effort was to facilitate export of European goods to China. A railway would also give France access to Yunnan's natural resources, mineral resources and opium, and open up the Chinese market for Indochinese products such as rice, dry fish, wood and coal. Before

2442-561: The British appeared to have shelved the project for lack of financial viability. In 1938, Edward Michael Law-Yone travelled to Yunnan from his native Burma to see the proposed route. By 1938 construction had begun. In 1941 25 1,000 mm ( 3 ft  3 + 3 ⁄ 8  in ) meter gauge 2-8-8-2 mallet-type articulated engines were ordered from the American ALCO company, and American promised to supply steel for

2516-480: The Chinese army implemented a Scorched Earth policy and dynamited rail and bridges to prevent enemy advances. In 1943 fighting occurred between Japanese and Chinese forces aided by US Air Support along the Yunnan-Burma railway: Construction was never resumed. Burma's limited trading value to China and its internal political and military instability have probably been two major contributing factors. In 1959,

2590-512: The French colonial era. The following diagram shows the phonology of Proto–Viet–Muong (the nearest ancestor of Vietnamese and the closely related Mường language ), along with the outcomes in the modern language: ^1 According to Ferlus, * /tʃ/ and * /ʄ/ are not accepted by all researchers. Ferlus 1992 also had additional phonemes * /dʒ/ and * /ɕ/ . ^2 The fricatives indicated above in parentheses developed as allophones of stop consonants occurring between vowels (i.e. when

2664-707: The Indian 1,000 mm ( 3 ft  3 + 3 ⁄ 8  in ) metre gauge network. This is now not possible, as sections of the railway were destroyed during the conflicts since World War II. During the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979, the railway bridge across the Nanxi River at the two countries' border was destroyed, and the trade between China and Vietnam came to a halt for several years. The 600 mm ( 1 ft  11 + 5 ⁄ 8  in ) narrow-gauge Gebishi branch line

2738-530: The Kunming-Yipinglang line ( 昆一铁路 , meter gauge railway ) was opened using the remains of the Yunnan-Burma railway; since the opening of the parallel Chengdu-Kunming railway in 1970, this line has been progressively shortened. Today the Yunnan side of the line lies in ruin. Though signs here and there attest to its presence, there is little actual rail left, and the line has all but vanished from local history and barely graces itineraries of all but

2812-727: The Red River Delta and into the adjacent uplands, possibly to escape Chinese encroachment. The oldest layer of loans from Chinese into northern Vietic (which would become the Viet–Muong subbranch) date from this period. The northern Vietic varieties thus became part of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area , in which languages from genetically unrelated families converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and similar syllable structure. Many languages in this area, including Viet–Muong, underwent

2886-527: The Red River area. The language was non-tonal, but featured glottal stop and voiceless fricative codas. Borrowed vocabulary indicates early contact with speakers of Tai languages in the last millennium BC, which is consistent with genetic evidence from Dong Son culture sites. Extensive contact with Chinese began from the Han dynasty (2nd century BC). At this time, Vietic groups began to expand south from

2960-599: The Vietnamese side, the Hanoi–Haiphong and Hanoi–Lào Cai railways continue to be important for domestic and transborder cargo transportation. Passenger trains continue to run both from Hanoi to Haiphong and from Hanoi to the border town of Lào Cai . A new 1,435 mm ( 4 ft  8 + 1 ⁄ 2  in ) standard gauge railway line from Kunming toward the Vietnamese border (the Kunming–Yuxi–Hekou railway ) has been constructed in several stages between

3034-475: The beginning of syllables, which have since disappeared: Most of the unusual correspondences between spelling and modern pronunciation are explained by Middle Vietnamese. Note in particular: De Rhodes's orthography also made use of an apex diacritic, as in o᷄ and u᷄ , to indicate a final labial-velar nasal /ŋ͡m/ , an allophone of /ŋ/ that is peculiar to the Hanoi dialect to the present day. This diacritic

Yunnan–Burma railway - Misplaced Pages Continue

3108-498: The change of suprasegment instruments. For example, the modern Vietnamese word "trời" (heaven) was read as *plời in Old/Ancient Vietnamese and as blời in Middle Vietnamese. The writing system used for Vietnamese is based closely on the system developed by Alexandre de Rhodes for his 1651 Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum . It reflects the pronunciation of the Vietnamese of Hanoi at that time,

3182-513: The commuter train service between Shizui and Wangjiaying was terminated again, and parts of the meter gauge railway in the urban area was demolished. In 2022, the meter-gauge railway within the Kunming urban area was rebuilt, but no train services were operating on the line as of September 2023. Freight service continues to operate throughout the Kunming–Hekou railway. Some rolling stock continues to be maintained in working condition. According to

3256-580: The construction effort. In 1939 it was proposed to construct the western section of the Yunnan–Burma railway using a gauge of 15 + 1 ⁄ 4  in ( 387 mm ), since such minimum gauge facilitates the tightest of curves in difficult terrain. An article by Royal Arch Gunnison published in the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, November 27, 1941 stated that American Engineers still expected "12 to 15 months to complete"

3330-466: The daughter languages from distinctions in the initial and final consonants. Vietnamese tones developed as follows: Glottal-ending syllables ended with a glottal stop /ʔ/ , while fricative-ending syllables ended with /s/ or /h/ . Both types of syllables could co-occur with a resonant (e.g. /m/ or /n/ ). At some point, a tone split occurred, as in many other mainland Southeast Asian languages . Essentially, an allophonic distinction developed in

3404-442: The diphthongs [āj] and [āːj] the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = ă + /j/ , ai = a + /j/ . Thus, tay "hand" is [tāj] while tai "ear" is [tāːj] . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = ă + /w/ , ao = a + /w/ . Thus, thau "brass" is [tʰāw] while thao "raw silk" is [tʰāːw] . The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in

3478-494: The dual-gauge (meter and standard) line that runs from Hanoi's Gia Lâm railway station to the Chinese ( Guangxi ) border at Đồng Đăng ; this is the line that enables direct standard-gauge connection between Hanoi and China. At the narrow-gauge railway's northern end, Kunming, is served both by the meter-gauge railway and by standard-gauge railways. There is even a level-crossing between the tracks of different gauges. A short meter-gauge connector line has been constructed between

3552-409: The increase again. According to a 2017 report, the first quarter of 2017 saw 166,200 tons of freight shipped by rail on the transborder line, which represented a 66.2% increase from the same period of the previous year, and 12-year record. This consisted of 74,100 tons of fertilizers exported from China to Vietnam and 92,100 tons of sulphur and zinc ore concentrate imported to China from Vietnam. On

3626-446: The late 19th century, French gradually replaced Literary Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as đầm ('dame', from madame ), ga ('train station', from gare ), sơ mi ('shirt', from chemise ), and búp bê ('doll', from poupée ), resulting in a language that was Austroasiatic but with major Sino-influences and some minor French influences from

3700-427: The main syllable). When a minor syllable occurred, the main syllable's initial consonant was intervocalic and as a result suffered lenition , becoming a voiced fricative. The minor syllables were eventually lost, but not until the tone split had occurred. As a result, words in modern Vietnamese with voiced fricatives occur in all six tones, and the tonal register reflects the voicing of the minor-syllable prefix and not

3774-465: The majority of Vietnamese vocabulary are disyllabic and trisyllabic words. Vietnamese is written using the Vietnamese alphabet ( chữ Quốc ngữ ). The alphabet is based on the Latin script and was officially adopted in the early 20th century during French rule of Vietnam . It uses digraphs and diacritics to mark tones and some phonemes . Vietnamese was historically written using chữ Nôm ,

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3848-639: The most determined travellers. One such sign can be glimpsed opposite the ferry to Baodian , slightly south of Manwan in the far north-eastern section of Lincang prefecture. The sign records a tunnel from the construction, but the entry has long been covered over and there is no visual hint to the line's presence whatsoever. Kunming-Haiphong railway The Yunnan–Haiphong railway (Chinese: 滇越铁路 ; pinyin: Diānyuè Tiělù ; Vietnamese : tuyến đường sắt Hải Phòng – Vân Nam  / 綫塘鐵海防－雲南 ; French: Chemins de Fer de L'Indo-Chine et du Yunnan , "Indo-China–Yunnan Railroad")

3922-451: The new Hekou North railway station (the southern terminal of the new standard-gauge line) and the old meter-gauge railway, thus allowing to bring cargo from Vietnam on meter-gauge railcar for reloading to standard-gauge rolling stock, and vice versa. The short connecting line joins the Kunming–Haiphong narrow-gauge mainline at 22°30′53″N 103°59′10″E  /  22.514674°N 103.986049°E  / 22.514674; 103.986049 ,

3996-497: The north and /j/ in the south). Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration. Syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch , nh as being phonemes /c/, /ɲ/ contrasting with syllable-final t , c /t/, /k/ and n , ng /n/, /ŋ/ and identifies final ch with

4070-404: The old 1,000 mm ( 3 ft  3 + 3 ⁄ 8  in ) metre gauge railway (which runs via Yiliang and Kaiyuan ). There are a few points where the Kunming–Haiphong railway comes into contact with the standard-gauge network, enabling transfer of freight between the narrow-gauge and standard-gauge trains. In Vietnam, the Hanoi metropolitan area has standard-gauge access via

4144-405: The plain-voiced stops became voiceless and the allotones became new phonemic tones. The implosive stops were unaffected, and in fact developed tonally as if they were unvoiced. (This behavior is common to all East Asian languages with implosive stops.) As noted above, Proto-Viet–Muong had sesquisyllabic words with an initial minor syllable (in addition to, and independent of, initial clusters in

4218-523: The question of a railway to Yunnan from Burma. There are references in the 1898 British Hansard regarding possible construction of the line. Archibald John Little 's 1905 book The Far East mentioned the proposed route on page 124: In 1911, Leo Borgholz , the US Consul General in Canton , published a trade report entitled 'Yunnan Trade Districts and Routes', in which he mentions that

4292-629: The railway and described a Dr. Victor Haas of the United States Public Health Service as in charge of sanitation and malaria prevention. Additional American personnel such as Paul Stevenson and Victor H. Haas accepted commissions with the United States Public Health Service and were sent to assist with malaria control during the construction effort. Construction of the line was abandoned due to Japanese advances to Lashio in May 1942. As Japanese advanced towards Yunnan

4366-625: The railway was built, the standard travel time from Haiphong (the closest sea port to most of Yunnan) to Kunming was reckoned by the Western authorities to be 28 days: 16 days by steamer and then a small boat up the Red River to Manhao (425 miles (684 km)), and then 12 days overland (194 miles (312 km)). The right to build the railway was obtained following China's defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95). At

4440-546: The same except that ơ [əː] is of normal length while â [ə] is short – the same applies to the vowels long a [aː] and short ă [a] . The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u). They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs ) and centering diphthongs, Vietnamese has closing diphthongs and triphthongs . The closing diphthongs and triphthongs consist of

4514-473: The same time, according to the following pattern: ^3 In Middle Vietnamese , the outcome of these sounds was written with a hooked b (ꞗ), representing a /β/ that was still distinct from v (then pronounced /w/ ). See below. ^4 It is unclear what this sound was. According to Ferlus 1992, in the Archaic Vietnamese period (c. 10th century AD, when Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary

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4588-487: The split from Muong around the end of the first millennium AD, the following stages of Vietnamese are commonly identified: After expelling the Chinese at the beginning of the 10th century, the Ngô dynasty adopted Classical Chinese as the formal medium of government, scholarship and literature. With the dominance of Chinese came wholesale importation of Chinese vocabulary. The resulting Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary makes up about

4662-505: The syllable-initial ch /c/ . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes /k/ and /ŋ/ that occur after the upper front vowels i /i/ and ê /e/ ; although they also occur after a , but in such cases are believed to have resulted from an earlier e /ɛ/ which diphthongized to ai (cf. ach from aic , anh from aing ). (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch , nh for further details.) Each Vietnamese syllable

4736-579: The tones, whereby the tones in syllables with voiced initials were pronounced differently from those with voiceless initials. (Approximately speaking, the voiced allotones were pronounced with additional breathy voice or creaky voice and with lowered pitch. The quality difference predominates in today's northern varieties, e.g. in Hanoi , while in the southern varieties the pitch difference predominates, as in Ho Chi Minh City .) Subsequent to this,

4810-470: The trade as it operated prior to the opening of the standard-gauge railway to Hekou in 2014 (see below), the most common route for cargo shipped from Kunming to Vietnam would be the rather circuitous one: via the Nanning–Kunming railway (opened 1997), the sea port of Fangchenggang , and then by ship to Haiphong . However, since 2015, the amount of transborder shipments on the meter-gauge line has been on

4884-422: The voicing of the main-syllable stop in Proto-Viet–Muong that produced the fricative. For similar reasons, words beginning with /l/ and /ŋ/ occur in both registers. (Thompson 1976 reconstructed voiceless resonants to account for outcomes where resonants occur with a first-register tone, but this is no longer considered necessary, at least by Ferlus.) Old Vietnamese/Ancient Vietnamese was a Vietic language which

4958-452: The world such as in the United States , Germany and France . Vietnamese has a large number of vowels . Below is a vowel diagram of Vietnamese from Hanoi (including centering diphthongs ): Front and central vowels (i, ê, e, ư, â, ơ, ă, a) are unrounded , whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â [ə] and ă [a] are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, ơ and â are basically pronounced

5032-604: The world. Like many languages in Southeast Asia and East Asia , Vietnamese is highly analytic and is tonal . It has head-initial directionality, with subject–verb–object order and modifiers following the words they modify. It also uses noun classifiers . Its vocabulary has had significant influence from Middle Chinese and loanwords from French . Although it is often mistakenly thought as being an monosyllabic language, Vietnamese words typically consist of from one to many as eight individual morphemes or syllables;

5106-494: Was borrowed) it was * r̝ , distinct at that time from * r . The following initial clusters occurred, with outcomes indicated: A large number of words were borrowed from Middle Chinese , forming part of the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary . These caused the original introduction of the retroflex sounds /ʂ/ and /ʈ/ (modern s , tr ) into the language. Proto-Viet–Muong did not have tones. Tones developed later in some of

5180-430: Was built from Bisezhai towards Shiping and was 176 kilometres (109 mi) long. It was constructed in 1915 and the last 72 kilometres (45 mi) part was closed in 1990. Twice-a-week cross-border passenger service operated as late as 2000; the second-class passengers had to transfer from a Chinese train to a Vietnamese train at the border station, while the first-class car passengers could remain on board as their car

5254-480: Was opened in December 2014, and regular passenger service started between Hekou North railway station and Kunming, with some trains continuing to Dali. Although the new Kunming–Yuxi–Mengzi–Hekou rail line roughly parallels the old Kunming–Haiphong railway, the routes of the two railways are significantly different: the new rail line, passing through Tonghai and Jianshui , is about 30 km (19 mi) west of

5328-837: Was separated from Viet–Muong around the 9th century, and evolved into Middle Vietnamese by 16th century. The sources for the reconstruction of Old Vietnamese are Nom texts, such as the 12th-century/1486 Buddhist scripture Phật thuyết Đại báo phụ mẫu ân trọng kinh ("Sūtra explained by the Buddha on the Great Repayment of the Heavy Debt to Parents"), old inscriptions, and a late 13th-century (possibly 1293) Annan Jishi glossary by Chinese diplomat Chen Fu (c. 1259 – 1309). Old Vietnamese used Chinese characters phonetically where each word, monosyllabic in Modern Vietnamese,

5402-417: Was transferred to the train across the border. However, landslides caused frequent delays. Eventually, in 2005 the passenger service on the Chinese section of the railway (the Kunming–Hekou railway) was terminated, and most of the passenger coaches were donated to Myanmar . In 2008, passenger service on a small part (37 km (23 mi) long) of the Chinese section of the railway was resumed, but on

5476-595: Was used in Malaya as well. Under pressure from Japan, France closed the line on 16 July 1940 to cut supplies to China during the Second Sino-Japanese War . During the Japanese occupation Japanese National Railways Class 9600 2-8-0 locomotives were shipped to aid their invasion, and after the completion of the " death railway " it was possible for a time to send through traffic to Burma and hence to

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