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Pré-Publication, Document De Travail Année : 2017

The two b’s in the Vietnamese dictionary of Alexandre de Rhodes

Les deux b du Dictionarium d’A. de Rhodes

Résumé

This article, intended for non-specialist Vietnamese readers, begins with a typographical curiosity in the romanized spelling of the famous Dictionarium of Alexandre de Rhodes (1651): the modified ʗb, indicating the bilabial spirant transcribed [β] by linguists. In the 17th century, this phoneme was distinct from both b [ɓ] and v [v], but neither the modified ʗb nor its pronunciation survives in modern standard Vietnamese: words written with ʗb in the Dictionarium are currently written and pronounced with v.The spelling of vernacular plant-names in post-Dictionarium botanical works is examined for clues to the date of the merger between β and v. Although examples of the erroneous use of ʗb for v in de Loureiro 1790 may be an indication of merger, the replacement of ʗb by b in later works by French botanists is a strictly typographical error with no basis in phonology, because the phoneme β merged only with v, never with b [ɓ]. [This is a translation of Haudricourt’s original French typescript, prepared by Nguyen Phu Phong and published in 2005 as: Les deux b du Dictionarium d’A. de Rhodes, Cahiers d’Etudes Vietnamiennes 18, 65–68.]

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Linguistique
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Dates et versions

halshs-01631486 , version 1 (09-11-2017)
halshs-01631486 , version 2 (16-05-2018)

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  • HAL Id : halshs-01631486 , version 1

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André-Georges Haudricourt. The two b’s in the Vietnamese dictionary of Alexandre de Rhodes. 2017. ⟨halshs-01631486v1⟩
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