âm vật

a word from Vocabulary Vietnamese

General Information
Word form
Word form

The lexical entries consist of common, modern, less technical vocabulary among a choice of synonymous forms. They are generally considered standard Vietnamese as represented by the northern Hanoi variety. Vietnamese is written using the romanized national orthography of Vietnam, Quốc Ngữ.

âm vật
LWT meaning(s):
Word meaning
Word meaning

Meanings are either the same as those in the LWT list or differ slightly with such differing meanings provided.

the vagina

Below are listed the criteria used to determine the analyzability of word forms. Vietnamese is here considered as having only unanalyzable forms or analyzable compounds.


Words in this category fall into the following categories.

A. Monomorphemic words (e.g., giếng “a well”).

B. Bisyllabic reduplicated: These are forms in which neither syllable occurs as a free morpheme but which fall in the category of reduplicated compound (e.g., khập khiễng “to limp”).

Analyzable compound

A. Bisyllabic compounds: Most compounds in Vietnamese are two-syllable compounds, many of which are Chinese in origin, some of which are recognizable by native speakers as separate morphs (e.g., Châu Âu (continent-Europe) “European Continent”), and some which are not readily recognizable to native speakers without training in recognizing Chinese morphs (e.g., chính phủ (political-prefecture) “government”). Other compounds include those which contain a mix of Chinese and native morphs (e.g., đàn ông (đàn is Vietnamese and ông is Chinese 翁) “man”) and those which consist of only native morphs (e.g., chó con (both syllables are Proto-Austroasiatic etyma) “puppy”).

B. Phrasal compounds: Such forms in the database typically are translations of borrowed concepts which are not part of daily usage (e.g., đàn ông có vợ (unit-gentleman-have-wife) “married man”).

C. Reduplicated forms: In some cases in reduplicated compounds, the base morpheme is recognizable as a free morph, while the reduplicated morph only appears in the reduplicated form (e.g., trồng trọt “to cultivate,” in which only the syllable trồng “to plant” is a free morph).

analyzable compound
Gloss: female object

In order to distinguish native Austroasiatic vocabulary and various sub-branches within that language family from loanwords, this category includes information about both native and non-native forms. As the time depth and potential complexity of language contact situations are substantial, such information helps to support the accuracy of the claims. The age of each entry depends in part on whether a word is native or borrowed vocabulary. Borrowed vocabulary is estimated within a period of centuries, while dates of native vocabulary are not given. Only the distance back into the sub-branches under Austroasiatic can be approximately determined. The degree of certainty of the timing depends on available records, as discussed below.

Eras of Borrowing

Pre-Han Dynasty: Before 200 BCE

Han Dynasty: 200s BCE to 200s CE

Tang Dynasty: 700s to 1000s

Post-Tang Dynasty: 1000s to 1800s

Modern Era: Late-1800s to the present

Native Vietnamese Vocabulary from Austroasiatic Languages

1. Vietnamese

2. Proto-Viet-Muong

3. Proto-Vietic

4. Proto-Eastern-Mon-Khmer

5. Proto-North-Eastern-Mon-Khmer

6. Proto-Mon-Khmer

7. Proto-Austroasiatic

Austroasiatic consists of over 150 languages (Gordon) in a territory which extends from Southern China to the tip of peninsular Malaysia to Northeastern India. There is a wide range of perspectives among researchers (Diffloth 1989, Pejros 1998, and Shorto 2006) regarding subgrouping within the Mon-Khmer language group within Austroasiatic. The tentative subgrouping within Austroasiatic considered in this database, which includes Proto-Northeastern and Proto-Eastern Mon-Khmer based on the depth of lexical preservation and innovation, is described in Alves 2005b, though some modifications for specific words were made based on data in Shorto 2006.

Vietnamese (1000–2007)
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