Fw: Re: Hypothesis regarding Guangdongren

[sdc8874@juno.com]

I got this from PJ Herz, about the Hypothesis about Guangdongren...
Sherman Cheung



For what it's worth, I have some suggestions as to how you could go about
testing the hypothesis of Yue ancestry/connections in Lingnan culture.

**First of all, is Chun Fat certain the Tang dynasty slaughtered the Yue?
Or
did the Tang imperialists simply defeat them, intermarry with them, and
co-opt such of their elite as survived?  Remember, this is how the Romans
got the Iberians and Gauls to ultimately speak funny Latin and write with
the Roman alphabet.  It seems that the same sort of dynamic was at work
in
China's southwards expansion.

**Find out if the "Shl" sound is shared with other languages.  To me, it
sounded something like a cross between 'thl' and the Welsh 'll' initial
as
in 'Llangoffyn' or 'Llewellyn' (which Shakespeare turned into Flewellyn).
By the way, this is not to say anything against Taishan and other Si-yap
people, many of whose immigrant visas I signed, and many of whom I's be
pleased to have as neighbors, but I used to call that peculiar Si-Yap
initial the Taishan Fart when I worked at the Consulate in Guangzhou.

**In Cantonese, the words 'bin-do' and 'bin-go' for where and who are
borrowings from Zhuang, which is a Tai language.  The fact that Cantonese
sometimes puts the noun after the modifier also suggests a Tai substrata
in
the Yue ('Cantonese') dialects.  By the way, there are even now a couple
of
pockets of Zhuang speech in western Guangdong, including one not far from
Lian Xian and Liannan.

**What do we know about the ancient Yue?  The character is the same one
as
Viet, as in Viet Nam, although Viet Nam (Yue Nan) may mean only "south of
the Yue"--i.e., the real back of the beyond to a Tang dynasty northern
Chinese.

**By the way, there are two kinds of Nung in northern Viet Nam.  One is
Tai
speaking, and is lumped together with the Zhuang of Guangxi in China. 
The
other Nung group speaks Southwestern Mandarin, gets its name because they
described themselves as "farmers" (Nung), and seems to be Yunnan or W.
Guangxi Han who got left on the Viet side of the border when the French
and
the Chinese drew the line.  Note as well that the people the Vietnamese
call
Ngay are really Hakka-speaking Hanren (or Tangren, or Songren, take your
pick).  I dealt with a few of ex-1978 refugees immigrating to the US, and
found out that they could understand my imperfect Taiwanese Hoiliuk
Hakka,
and I could follow some of their conversation as well.

**Use Chinese minority classifications cautiously.  The Chinese call all
the
Tai-speaking folk of W. Guangxi 'Zhuang', although the linguists tell me
that the Zhuang dialects north of the Xi Jiang are closer to the Buyi
dialects of Guizhou, and with them constitute the Northern Tai languages,
while the Zhuang dialects south of the Xi Jiang are closer to the Tho and
Nung of northernmost Viet Nam, and with them constitute the Central Tai
languages (Black Thai, White Thai, Lao, Bangkok Thai, Lanna, Shan,
Hkamti,
Ahom and Sipsong Panna Tai languages are Southwestern Tai).  Another
example
is that the various peoples called Yi (Lolo) in Yunnan and Sichuan speak
five distinct languages which differ among themselves as much as
Beifanghua,
Wu, Yue,Gan, and Kejia differ between themselves.  I also understand
there
are several Yao and Hmong 'dialects' as well.

>
>Erstwhile, the surviving ethnic-She assuming they too are ethnic-Yue
>decendents of the pre-Tang Dynasty may have hybridized with the Hakka
>and Cantonese communities in GuangDong. And because of the Xi (West)
>River as the trading route into ethnic-Zhuang territory, the genes of
>the GuangZhouRen (as a result of being at the delta and commercial
>center of this trade route) could have been reshuffled and infused with
>the Yue decendents of those who fled to GuangXi Province during the
>pre-Tang Dynasty slaughter of the ethnic-Yue tribe. Also, I would not
>rule out the possibility that the ethnic-Zhuang are also direct
>descendents of the pre-Tang Dynasty Yue tribe.

**Does anyone know any good literature on the She?  I've heard about
them,
and their use of Hakka-related Sinitic dialects, but I've found nothing
on them.
>
>And since I don't have genetic data for comparative analysis to support
>my position, I hypothesize that perhaps the common genes that link
>Cantonese, West GuangDongRen, Hakka, Haklo, Hokkien, as part of a
>greater TangRen family is based on our Yue ancestry just as equally or
>with greater emphasis than our Han ancestry. Perhaps a different
>perspective on gene analysis of comparing Hakka and Cantonese can be
>made. We know that the Hakka took the east-southern route to GuangDong
>via JiangXi and the Cantonese took the southern route to GuangDong via
>JiangXi (both pre-Tang Dynasty Han groups originating from the river
>basin from the Central Plains of China). Originally, I had thought that
>the Western GuangDongRen (those with "schl-" in their active vernacular)
>reached Western GuangDong via the river basin of HuNan Province but it
>was very interesting when you told me that the grammar of SiYi-hua (i.e.
>TaiShan-hua) resembles the grammar (unfamiliar to a speaker of Standard
>Cantonese) of populations in JiangXi Province with the "schl-"
>pronunciation absent. This Han population in their southern migration
>must have reached Western GuangDong (by water via the Pearl River Delta
>to the coastline) where they had to have intermarried with Han migrants
>traveling south via the riverway of HuNan Province. Now if there is a
>trace of any "schl-" sound in any HuNan dialects along the path of
>southward migration, I will be convinced that "schl-" is an original
>sound of the ancient ethnic-Han language. However, no one has revealed
>any link linguistical link as of yet.
>
>Another approach to analyze our common heritage is by comparing gene
>sample of rural village population groups who neither identify as modern
>GuangDongRen nor TangRen and who live along the Tang-Sung Dynasty
>migration routes to GuangDong from JiangXi and HuNan. That may reveal
>the ratio of Han to Yue genetic relationship among us fellow TangRen.
>
>> Free migration between Hakka, Cantonese and Hoklo before 1600, or end
>> of Ming dynasty, did not cause the people to feel that they changed 
>their
>> identity before the label was gotten much later. 
>
>The ethnic-Yue identity should have been aborbed by all these groups by
>that period. The ethnic-Yue genetic identity could have intermarried
>into ethnic-Hoklo via the ethnic-Tonka as both of these groups depended
>on the sea for their livelihood and may have made business/marriage
>transactions at sea or on coastal islands including HaiNan. And let's
>not forget the possibility of intermarriage with the ethnic-Li minority
>who may also be ethnic-Yue descendents. The ethnic-Li live in both
>HaiNan and GuangDong provinces thus suggesting another genetic bridge
>between all of us TangRen.  
>
**Basing an ethnic-cultural identity on genetics is dubious, if you ask
me,
smacking of some of the worst features of Third Reich ideology. 
Language,
culture, beliefs, and shared senses of commonalities are far more
important.

**Regards:

Peter J. Herz
Peter J. Herz
pjherz@siu.edu



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