佤族 (Wǎzú) Va ethnic minority
kimiik
November 13, 2008, 11:10 AM posted in General DiscussionI wonder why the name of the Va etchnic minority uses the character 佤 (Wǎ). Is there some kind of relation with the tiles of their houses 瓦 (Wǎ) ?
bababardwan
November 13, 2008, 12:33 PMKimiik,
Great map.As far as I can see they are alternately called Va people or Wa [with v and w being very similar sounds in many languages].They speak the Wa language and across the border in Burma/Myanmar there is an unofficial Wa State.That character appears to be quite specific to the Wa/Va/Kawa ethnic minority,but I can't comment on it's etymology.Don't know if you can find the answer here or not.
goulnik
November 13, 2008, 03:05 PMThere doesn't seem to be any other meaning of the character, clearly cognate with 瓦 which acts as phonetic here.
it's quite possible that the Han or some other ethnic group would have called them the Wa, who among themselves may use different names. 佤 Would be a case of very appropriate character, unless 瓦 itself derives from their housing technique.
Will check tonight what the Grand Ricci character dictionary has to say about etymology for both characters.
kimiik
November 13, 2008, 03:31 PMIn fact, the answer was in the chinese version of wikipedia (lazy me I didn't bother to read this version before).
他们 (佤族) 自称“佤”、“巴饶克” 、“阿佤”等，都有“住在山上的人”的意思。
Then 佤 in 佤语 means "people who lives in the montains".
当地傣族称其为“卡佤”，“卡”在傣语中意为奴隶。
Locally, the Va minority 佤族 is called 卡佤 by the Dai minority 傣族 and in the dialect of the Dai minority (傣语) the name 卡佤 would mean "slave people from the mountain". That sounds quite bad !
...
Was cinzhang speaking about Congo in another thead here ?
(Va children)
bababardwan
November 13, 2008, 09:55 PMwonderful photo.
kimiik
November 13, 2008, 11:15 PMSpeaking of 卡佤, I wonder if the "slave" meaning of 卡 comes from the action of holding people by the neck : 卡人脖子 (or 卡脖子)
And here is another linguistic coincidence, 卡人 is pronunced like the name of the Karen people living in Burma at the border of thailand 300km south of the Va people.
The chinese name of the Karen ethnic group could be either 甲良族 , 克倫族 or 克倫尼族 but not 卡人 of course.
changye
November 13, 2008, 11:53 PMHi kmiik,
I also read the Wiki (Chinese) article last night. I think that all these “佤”,“巴饶克”,“阿佤”,“卡佤” names are only transliteralations (by Han people) based on their native pronunciations in 佤语, and we still don't know whether the sound is "va" or "wa" in 佤语.
changye
November 14, 2008, 02:46 AMP/S. Of course, "va" in English is merely an transcription of its native pronunciation, too. My take is that the native sound of "佤" is perhaps more similar to "va" in English than to "wa" in Chinese.
According to an article on the Internet, the first romanization of 佤语 was done by an English missionary in the early 20th century, although it is said that they were not so exact transcriptions.
So I guess that the "va people" in current English vocab is perhaps based on the sound romanized by the English missionary. If that is the case, it's possible that the "va" is close to its native counterpart in 佤语.
If it were close to "wa", not "va", I think that the missionary could have romanized it as "wa", since there is the sound "wa" in English. For the record, the second romanization of 佤语 was done by the PRC in 1957.
P/S. It is also possible that "佤"族 was the transliteration of the English word "Va" people.
P/S2. "巴(ba)饶克" might relatively precisely reflect the native sound。
kimiik
November 14, 2008, 08:06 AMChangye,
I looked of the list of the 55 chinese ethnic minorities and I noticed something that could be relevant.
Between the 55 ethnic minorities, 8 are using the radical 亻 in their names.
6 of them are from the more southern provinces (where most of the minorities are from) :
侗族 Guizhou
仡佬族 Guizhou
傣族 Yunnan
傈僳族 Yunnan
佤族 Yunnan
仫佬族 Guangxi
2 of them are from the north :
俄罗斯族 Russia
保安族 Gansu
kimiik
November 14, 2008, 09:44 AMBack on the 卡人脖子, can I use 卡 as a verb with 枷 (the cangue) ?
上枷 : put the cangue on the neck
锁枷 : lock the cangue
枷示 : show up the prisoner
卡枷 : clasp the cangue around the neck ???
Btw, don't ask me why but I recently encounter the word 口枷 in a conversation and it took me few minutes to guess what was this "jia" character. ;o)
There's also the 4 first tones : 珈嘉佳枷 ;o)
changye
November 13, 2008, 12:28 PMHi kimiik,
I wonder how you came across the name of the very minor ethnic group. I don't know the native pronunciation of the name, and all I can say is that the consonant "v" is often changed into "w" in Chinese pronunciation, for example, Vancouver (温哥华, wen1ge1hua2), Venice (威尼斯, wei1ni2si1), and Victoria (维多利亚, wei2duo1li4ya4), since there is no "v" sound in Chinese.