A contrastive analysis of compounds in english and vietnamese

Compounds in Vietnamese

There are three types of compounds in Vietnamese: coordinate compounds (từ ghép đẳng lập) and subordinate compounds (từ ghép chính phụ) and isolated compounds (từ ghép độc lập).

• 
  Coordinate compounds are formed by two morphemes, none of them modifies each other or independent of each other such as quần áo (cloths), mua bán (buy and sell), phải trái (right and wrong)… Coordinate compounds express general, synthetic meaning or we can say both words in the coordinate compound have their own meaning when they stand alone. For example, the compound “mua bán” has two components, that is mua (buy) and bán (sell); both mua and bán have their meanings and they have the same level of meaning when they stand by each other to create a compound.
  
• 
  Subordinate compounds are formed by two morphemes, one of them modifies the other like xe đạp (bicycle), xe máy (motorcycle), xe hơi (car), xe lửa (train)... Subordinate compounds have two components, that is accessory component and the other is the principal component. The accessory component acts as the modifier for the principal component. For example, the compound xe đạp has the accessory component đạp which modifies the principal component xe and which tells us how to operate xe. Lets take another example, in the word “cà chua”, “chua” is the accessory element that modifies “cà”. So “cà chua” is a kind of “cà” and its feature is “chua”.
  
• 
  Isolated compounds do not form systems. Such compounds as mè nheo (bother with requests), thiêu thân (May fly), tai hồng (a part of bicycle)…belong to this type of compounds. This type of compound is not very popular in Vietnamese language nowadays.
  

1. Compound nouns

For example:

Compound: Hoa hồng thì đẹp
( A rose is beautiful)

Phrase: Hoa hồng thì đẹp.

Vietnamese vocabulary includes a large range of borrowed words from other languages, especially Chinese. Compound nouns in Vietnamese are mostly created base on Chinese words. Compound nouns can be two Han Viet words in which their meaning is independent of each other such as sơn hà, giang san…or two or more Han Viet words in which one word has the main meaning, the other modifies principal meaning like thiên thư, thạch mã, ái quốc, hàng không mẫu hạm, Nam quốc sơn hà…

Besides, Nôm words can be used in this situation. We have compounds consisting two Nôm words with general meaning like bát đĩa, nhà cửa, ruộng vườn…Another way of forming compound nouns is to combine one word and one idiomatic phrase like “kẻ rày đây mai đó”, “bọn mãi quốc cầu vinh”…(Văn Phạm Việt Nam 1992).

Vietnamese belongs to the group of isolating languages where there are no inflectional endings (- s/es; - ed, - ing …) and all the words are invariable. Grammatical relationships are expressed not by changing the internal structure of the words but by the use of auxiliary words (những, các, nhiều, một, hai, ít; đã, đang, sẽ…) and word order.

In English, when you want to change a compound noun into plural, the main noun will take the “s”. For example, when you want to change “mother-in-law” into plural, the main noun mother will take the plural “s”, so we have mothers-in-law. Another example is passer-by, we make it plural by add “s” to passer, we have plural passers-by. However, in Vietnamese, when you want to change a compound noun into plural form, what you need to do is just to add the words like những, các, nhiều in front of that compound such as bạn and các bạn.

In addition, while Vietnamese is a syllable-timed language in which the rhythm appears to be fairly even, with each syllable has the same duration and force as others, English is stress-timed language in which stressed syllables recur at intervals. Consequently, compound nouns in English usually tend to have more stress on the first part of the compound like GREENhouse or MOTHER-in-law whereas Vietnamese compounds have equal stress for individual words in a compound. Besides, the way we divide the sentence in Vietnamese also makes the meaning of that sentence different while that’s not the case with English.

For example:

• 
  Thức đêm / nhiều người gầy đi thấy rõ. ( Staying up at night makes many people become thin)
  
• 
  Thức đêm nhiều / người gầy đi thấy rõ. (Staying up at night a lot make our body become thin).
  

2. Compound adjectives

• 
  Adj + adj: xinh đẹp, cao lớn, to béo, đắng cay, ngay thẳng, mau chóng, khôn ngoan, ngu đần
  
• 
  Adj + noun: méo miệng, to gan, cứng đầu, cứng cổ, ngắn ngày, vàng chanh
  
• 
  Adj + verb: khó hiểu, dễ hiểu, chậm hiểu, dễ coi, khó nói
  
• 
  Partial reduplication: sạch sẽ, may mắn, chậm chạp, nhanh nhẹn, đắt đỏ
  

Let’s take some examples:

“Cốm không phải là thức quà của người vội; ăn cốm phải ăn từng chút ít, thong thả và ngẫm nghĩ. Lúc bấy giờ ta mới thấy thu lại cả trong hương vị ấy, cái mùi thơm phức của lúa mới, của hoa cỏ dại ven bờ…”

( Thạch Lam )

(Trần Đăng Khoa)

Although this kind of compound has more limited meaning than the original meaning of the original color, it’s extremely difficult to translate it into English because in English, we have color adjective compounds like in Vietnamese, but it’s different. In English, we can combine dark – blue and reddish – orange to create compounds with different layer of meanings. In Vietnamese, although biếc is not a kind of color, it creates effects when we combine it with the color blue, it creates physical image meaning of the compound. This is a very special and unique feature of Vietnamese.

Here are some of the patterns concerning borrowed words:

Patterns	Examples
Hán Việt + Hán Việt	anh hùng, thanh nhã, chính trực
Hán Việt (major) + Hán Việt (minor)	ái quốc, hiếu hòa
Hán Việt (minor) + Hán Việt (major)	vô lễ, phi nghĩa, bất hiếu
Nôm + Nôm (equal meaning)	tươi tốt, êm dịu, khỏe mạnh
Hán Viet idiomatic phrases	(thái độ) mục hạ vô nhân
Nôm idiomatic phrases	(câu nói) hàng tôm hàng cá
nouns	(tư tưởng) quốc gia, (hoạt động) văn hóa
verbs	( (Bùi Đức Thịnh 1992: 87 - 89 tư tưởng) tiến bộ, (hành động) phản bội

3. Compound verbs

Patterns	Examples
Hán Việt + Hán Việt	khích lệ, quan sát
Hán Việt adjective/ noun + hóa	công nghiệp hóa, giản dị hóa
Nôm verb + Nôm verb	buôn bán, thương yêu, ăn ở
Nôm verb (major) + Nôm verb (minor)	đánh lừa, nói thách, ăn xin
verb + noun	đánh bạc, hành tội, biết ơn
verb + adjective	làm giàu, làm kiêu
verb + adverb	vào trong, đi ra, ăn ngoài
verb phrase	nói đi nói lại, dặn đi dặn lại
nouns	cờ bạc, rượu chè
adjectives	lớn, ngược
idiomatic phrases	giương đông kích tây, rày đây mai đó

In English, compound verbs is very similar to phrasal verbs which makes it difficult for us to distinguish them. In Vietnamese, we face the same problem with compounds (từ ghép) and “cụm từ cố định” (collocations in English). “Cụm từ cố định” is an expression consisting of two or more words that correspond to some conventional way of saying things. “Cụm từ cố định” is fixed and has connotative meaning.

Some example of “Cụm từ cố định are: sinh viên, học tập, đỏ rực, ngon lành, hoa hồng…ăn ốc nói mò, mặt trái xoan, vênh váo như bố vợ phải đấm…

How to distinguish “từ ghép” and “cụm từ cố định”?

Firstly, while compounds are formed by combining morphemes together like: ễnh + ương = ễnh ương, collocations are formed by combining words together like: bán + bò + tậu + ễnh + ương = bán bò tậu ễnh ương.

Secondly, about meaning, “cụm từ cố định” has meanings which reveal the physical image in reader’s mind ( từ mang tính hình tượng). That way, readers can’t fully understand the meaning of “cụm từ cố định” through the meanings of each word. For example, we have many words like: anh hùng rơm, đồng không mông quạnh, tiếng bấc tiếng chì”… Readers can understand compounds’ meaning through its components because they just have denotative meanings.

Teaching implication

• 
  Firstly, it is common that most students tend to transfer their mother tongue into the target language. This can lead to misunderstanding due to differences in many aspects between two languages. By analyzing the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese compounds, we can help students to have a clear distinction between them about word order, formation and meaning so that they can avoid making mistakes.
  
• 
  Secondly, teachers should keep in mind that compounding is an interesting linguistic phenomenon in both meaning and phonology. As a result, students tend to learn these words quickly and easily with high motivation. Compounding can be used to design some language games as a warm-up or review activities.
  
• 
  Finally, the knowledge of Vietnamese and English compounds also helps students to develop linguistic skills in both languages. Contrastive knowledge in students’ mother tongue and the target language somehow also gives them a clear distinction in order not to make misunderstanding transference.
  

Conclusion

Compound is an interesting feature of both English and Vietnamese language. Although there are some similarities between English and Vietnamese compounds, the differences are much more. Hope that this review will make it easier for you to remember and avoid making mistakes when dealing with compounds. Finally, learning English requires time and patience. I believe if you try your best, you can become anyone you want to become, especially an excellent English user and the same for Vietnamese. Don’t forget your mother tongue. One thing you need to remember as a teacher-to-be is “When you plan a journey from your mind into mine, remember to allow for the time difference” (Ashleigh Brilliant).

References

Plag, Ingo. Morphological Productivity . United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2003

Tu trong tieng Viet. Retrieve December, 20, 2009, from:
http://ngonngu.net/index.php?p=207

Ho, Le.(2003)Vấn đề cấu tạo từ của tiếng Việt hiện đại. Khoa học xã hôi Press, Nguyen Hoa Lac. An outline of morphology. University of Education Press

Nguyen, Thien Giap.(1978) Từ vựng học tiếng Việt. DHTH Ha Noi Press

Vietnamese compounds retrieved from:

http://ngonngu.net/index.php?p=207

English compounds retrieved from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound

Compounds in poetry retrieved from:

http://diendankienthuc.net/diendan/phuong-ngu/29999-tinh-tu-chi-mau-sac-trong-tho-tran-dang-khoa.html

Binh Nhu Ngo, PhD. Elementary Vietnamese. East Asian languages and Civilizations Department, Harvard University.

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