Ethnic origin of Seiyap Part 2

Introduction

After the publication of the 'Ethnic origin of Seiyap' on 1st Jan 2018 in this blog which stated that Sei-Yap might not be a Yue Chinese language after all, there were many disbelievers even after all the evidence was shown. 

This article provides an update to the controversy that was kicked up by this EastAsiaOrigin blog. 

Shared innovation

Shared innovation is the principal criterion for linguistic subgrouping in western linguistics.

After looking at the origin and general linguistic features of the four branches (Guangfu, Goulou/Ngau-Lau, Gaoyang, Qinlian) of the Yue Chinese family, the most convincing shared innovation among these branches is that all of them have pairs of short and long vowel pairs besides sharing a lot of cognates.

This short and long vowel pairs are absent in all other Chinese languages such as Mandarin, Min, Wu, Xiang, Gan, Hakka. However, the Sei-Yap/Ng-Yap language also does not have this shared innovation of the Yue Chinese languages. 

International Conference on Yue dialects

The 23rd International Conference on Yue dialects was held on 15th and 16th December 2018 at Jinan University in Guangzhou which discussed the classification of the Yue Chinese languages.

Some of the points written in the 2019 paper by Georgio Orlandi (which can be downloaded in the References section below) was presented at the conference. His paper obviously took quite a lot of points from my original research article 'Ethnic origin of Seiyap' on 1st Jan 2018. 

Note that Ng-Yap is the newer name for Sei-Yap. 

Quote from his paper on page 141: Given that the Yue family has never been classified by means of the standard methodologies and procedures recommended by historical linguistics, one cannot but wonder why the Ng Yap dialects have always been implicitly considered a branch of Yue, in spite of the wide range of distinctions they show.

Since proto-Yue has never been reconstructed, and since no scholar, not even McCoy, has ever demonstrated how Ng Yap forms are effectively later, changed versions of earlier proto-Yue forms, we cannot just claim that Ng Yap is a branch which has simply undergone more radical changes than the other varieties of Yue.

During the 23rd International Conference on Yue dialects, many specialists agreed that Ng-Yap may not be a variety of Yue Chinese. Others disagreed without giving any convincing linguistic arguments on why it should be a Yue Chinese language given the huge divergence.

The latest 24th International Conference on Yue Dialects was held at the University of Macau in Macau on 13th November 2020 but it is unknown whether the classification of Sei-Yap/Ng-Yap language was discussed further.

Similarities with Gan language

Here we provide more similarities of Sei-Yap language with Southern Gan language in addition to the ones in part one.

1. The Yue Chinese languages have the 'a' vowel for both words whereas Hakka & Southern Gan and Sei-Yap languages have both 'i' vowels instead.

English	Seiyap	Hakka	Southern Gan	Cantonese	Gaozhou Yue
Today	Kim Ngit	Kim Ngit	?	Kam Yat	Kam Nyat

We don't have the exact pronunciation for Southern Gan but since Southern Gan is very close to Hakka i.e they have the same ancestral language, we can see that Seiyap pronunciation is closer to Hakka-Southern Gan pronunciation.  Note that Northern Gan language is quite different from Southern Gan language.

2. Another similarity is the basic word for dog 

English	Seiyap	Southern Gan	Cantonese	Ngau-Lau
Dog	Kɛu	Kɛu	Kau	Kau

So you can observe that Ngau-Lau being the oldest Yue Chinese language also have the 'a' vowel instead of the 'ɛ' vowel showing Cantonese to be closer to Ngau-Lau, whereas Seiyap is closer to Southern Gan.

Influence from Yue Chinese language

Seiyap people are hemmed in between the Yue Chinese languages such as Guangfu, Gaoyang and Goulou/Ngau-Lau so it is highly possible that some Yue Chinese loanwords replaced the original Southern Gan words making it superficially like Yue. 

A similar analogy is that the Teochew language also absorbed some Yue Chinese loanwords which replaced the original Southern Min words. Eg. 'To see' - Toi (睇) in Teochew is a borrowed Cantonese loanword from 'Tai' (睇).

Conclusion

Looking at the origin of Seiyap and its linguistic features, it shares more linguistic features with Southern Gan language than the Yue Chinese languages. 

Latest: After looking at the origin of Hakka people in more detail, Seiyap might be a Northern Hakka language instead which is phonetically close to Southern Gan since both these languages descended from the same ancestral language. Unfortunately, we don't have much information on the Northern Hakka i.e. Ganzhou language to verify. (Note that Meizhou Hakka is considered Southern Hakka language)

Therefore, Sei-Yap/Ng-Yap might actually be a Southern Gan or Northern Hakka language which was influenced by the Yue Chinese languages as the Yue Chinese languages are dominant in Guangdong province. 

In other words, this means that Seiyap people are Southern Gan or Northern Hakka people who originally came from Jiangxi province in the adjacent north.

Readers might argue that how is this possible when the 'official' publication classified Seiyap as a Yue Chinese language but Pinghua Chinese was also classified as a Yue Chinese language in the past before being reclassified as a separate language from Yue Chinese languages.

So there is a high possibility that it might be reclassified in the future as more data and research comes in. If readers know of any more recent publications that address this issue, please leave a comment here.

Related links

Ethnic origin of Seiyap Part 1
http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2018/01/ethnic-origin-of-seiyap.html

Origin of Gan language

http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2017/11/origin-of-gan-language.html

Origin of Gaozhou Yue language

http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2021/06/origin-of-gaozhou-yue-language.html

Origin of Nanyue/Ngau-Lau language

http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2017/10/origin-of-nanyue-language.html

Origin of Cantonese language

http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2017/10/origin-of-cantonese-language.html

References

• On the classification of the Ng-Yap dialects: some thoughts on the subgrouping of Sinitic languages. by Giorgio ORLANDI. Year 2019.

https://www.academia.edu/40210692/On_the_classification_of_the_Ng_Yap_dialects_some_thoughts_on_the_subgrouping_of_Sinitic_languages

Last updated: 20 Nov 2021
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