ABSTRACT
The genetic status of Vietnamese has been the subject of some controversy. For long, it was regarded as a m em ber of the Sino-Tibetan family, and, certainly, there is a very substantial Chinese elem ent in the language, which is hardly surprising, given the decisive influence of Chinese language and culture on Vietnam over some 2,000 years. Research in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, has gone to suggest that this Chinese element is super imposed on a non-Sino-Tibetan substratum. W hat is controversial is the exact nature of the substratum . According to H. M aspero (1912, 1916) M odern Vietnam ese represents the fusion of a M on-Khmer language with a Tai language; and, in view of the tonal structure of Vietnamese, the tonal Tai language was taken to be the decisive formant. Accordingly, Vietnamese was classified as a Tai language. In the 1950s, however, A .G . Haudricourt showed that V ietnam ese did not acquire its tonal system till comparatively late in its history (probably during the first millennium A D ) and that it was basically a M on-Khm er language, belonging to the Austro-Asiatic phylum. This is now the accepted classification. A bout 65 million people speak the language in Vietnam, and at least another million speakers are scattered abroad, with large colonies in the USA, in Hong-Kong, Paris, and several Pacific islands.
