Here’s Đức Lưu playing Thị Nở (the ugliest woman in Vietnamese literature) from the film adaptation.

Let's see if I can get any engagement on this platform (would be a first). Are there any cognitive #linguists out there who can explain the prevalence/persistence of reduplicatives? I have theories... #linguistics

Which reminds me, Japanese gitaigo 擬態語 (mimetic words) are almost always reduplicative and usually unforgettable after hearing even once:

kira kira = twinkle, twinkle (キラキラ)
doki doki = heartbeat (ドキドキ)

I can still easily recall these two and I haven't studied Japanese in more than 10 years.

I just love finding these amazing, delightful, improbable overlaps between two disparate languages and seeing how they came to be. From Indian Sanskrit to the Cham people via Angkor Wat and Old Khmer, and then on to the Vietnamese, we get “nàng” 🧚

Be careful though! Not all similar sounding words share a root, as tantalizing as it sometimes is to imagine.

Today I also came across งา (nga) in Thai, which sounds conspicuously like ngà in Viet, and both happen to mean ivory.

However after much research I can say there is NO connection! ❌

So, through Cham interaction with Vietnamese, you get “nàng.”

Thus two totally unrelated languages, Thai and Viet, end up with the SAME Sanskrit-derived word for lady. Dayum.

And… like in Viet, both fairy and mermaid start with “naang” in Thai:

🧚 นางฟ้า (naang faa)
🧜‍♀️ นางเงือก (naang ngeuak)

Enter the Cham people of central Vietnam. Their towers in places like Quy Nhơn (below) look a lot like what you see at Angkor Wat.

That’s because the Cham had a lot of contact with Angkor (Khmer-speaking) civilization, and guess what Old Khmer has?

Yes! It’s another “neang” (នាង)

Both nàng and นาง (naang) share a common Sanskrit ancestor: nāyikā (नायिका) which means heroine.

This is normal for Thai. Thai, Lao, Burmese and Khmer have TONS of Sanskrit words.

But Vietnamese? Not so much. 50-70% of Viet vocab is Sino-Vietnamese (from China). NOT Sanskrit…

So, whence nàng?

He STILL doesn’t get enough love.

And for good measure we may as well note that in English we use “bananas” in the plural to describe something that’s crazy ridiculous.

youtu.be/Kgjkth6BRRY?...

Interestingly, “banana” in Vietnamese (chuối) is used the way we use the English word “cheesy” — to describe something that’s cliched and embarrassing.

I thought this was like the coolest thing when I first learned it. Even though it's so simple.