Translating Peasant
From cwheeler@uci.edu Tue Jan 11 01:18:45 2005
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 17:17:40 +0800 (SGT)
From: Charles Wheeler <cwheeler@uci.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Translating peasant
Dear VSG-ers:
Have Europeans always translated the term “nông dân” as "peasant" or (as seems to be the case for China) did they started out calling them "farmers" and then switched when they wanted to fit them into a historical scheme that made modern "third world" people the equivalents of medieval Europeans? My experience reading early modern literature is that the latter is true, but I would like to know if this has been verified.
Also, I was wondering whether there is a kind of distinction with the Confucian-turned-Marxist “nông dân” and terms like “nguoi ta dien” or “nguoi nha que” or other such terms denoting farmer or villager but also translated as “peasant."
Best regards,
Charles Wheeler
Charles Wheeler
Visiting Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute (NUS)
Assistant Professor, History, UC-Irvine
cwheeler@uci.edu
From dtsang@lib.uci.edu Tue Jan 11 02:22:44 2005
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 02:21:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Dan Tsang <dtsang@lib.uci.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Translating peasant
Charles, from OED (online edition) the use of "peasant" by Europeans dates back further before Marx: (OED quotations section for "peasant" as noun).
1. a. One who lives in the country and works on the land, either as a small farmer or as a labourer; spec. one who relies for his subsistence mainly on the produce of his own labour and that of his household, and forms part of a larger culture and society in which he is subject to the political control of outside groups; also, loosely, a rural labourer. In early use, properly only of foreign countries; often connoting the lowest rank, antithetical to noble; also to prince. Although modern sociologists agree that a peasant works the land, the more wealthy peasants may also be land-owners, rentiers, hirers of labour, etc., and in these capacities share interests with completely different social groups. Hence in the analysis of many rural societies divisions within the class frequently have to be made.
[1341-2 Year-bks. 16 Edw. III, Hill. No. 13 (Rolls) 65 Vostre tenant..resceit la rente par mayne des paisanz [v.rr. paysayns, paysains]et villeyns.] 1475 Bk. Noblesse (Roxb.) 73 The pore comons, laborers, paissauntes of the saide duchie of Normandie. a1548 HALL Chron., Hen. V 46
The comen people and peysantz of the countree assembled in greate nombre. 1576 GASCOIGNE Steele Gl. (Arb.) 57 The Peasant he should labor for their ease. 1577-87 HOLINSHED Chron. III. 1199/1 The pezzants about gathered themselues togither, and set vpon him and his souldiers. 1598 DALLINGTON Meth. Trav. Kivb, There is also the Subiect, that is, the poore paisant that laboureth and tilleth the fiefs. 1642 ROGERS Naaman 275 Heaven lies no more open to a Noble mans performances and merits, then a pezants. 1664 H. MORE Myst. Iniq. I. xxii. 85 There being a like fear of it..in Princes and Peasants, in Gentle and simple. 1678 LOCKE in Ld. King Life 77 In Xantonge, and several other parts of France, the paisants are much more miserable. 1761 Chron. in Ann. Reg. 61/2 An address lately presented to the king of Sweden, by the speaker of the house of Peasants, assembled in diet. 1807 WORDSW. Wh. Doe VII. 313 Help did she give at need, and joined The Wharfdale peasants in their prayers. 1844 DISRAELI Coningsby III. iii, What can it signify..whether a man be called a labourer or a peasant? 1850 H. MACFARLANE tr. Marx & Engels's Manifesto of German Communist Party in Red Republican 16 Nov. 171/2 The small manufacturers, shopkeepers, proprietors, peasants, &c., all fight against the Bourgeoisie, in order to defend their position as small Capitalists. They are, therefore, not revolutionary but conservative. 1869 LECKY Europ. Mor. (1877) I. i. 146 Had the Irish peasants been less chaste, they would have been more prosperous. 1878 SEELEY Stein I. 433 Famished drudges..who, if they cannot be called serfs, can still less be called peasants, for a peasant properly so called must have a personal interest in the land. 1926 E. & C. PAUL tr. Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of L. Bonaparte vii. 137 The interests of the peasants no longer coincide, as during the reign of the first Napoleon, with the interests of the bourgeoisie, with the interests of capital. There is now a conflict of interests. The peasants, therefore, find their natural allies and leaders in the urban proletariat, whose mission it is to subvert the bourgeois order of society. 1927 M. J. OLGIN tr. Engels's Peasant War in Germany 18 The small peasants (bigger peasants belong to the bourgeoisie) are not homogeneous. They are either in serfdom bound to their lords and masters,..or they are tenants, whose situation is almost equal to that of the Irish. 1933 E. & C. PAUL tr. Stalin's Leninism II.205 In the conditions prevailing in our country, the peasantry consists of various social groups,..the poor peasants, the middle peasants, and the kulaks. It is obvious that our attitude to these various groups cannot be identical. The poor peasant is the support of the working class, the middle peasant is the ally, the kulak is the class enemysuch is our attitude to these respective social groups. 1934 Encycl. Social Sci. XII. 48/2 The term peasantry has undergone many changes in meaning in the past and is still subject to various interpretations. Common to all the shifting meanings, however, is a view of the peasant as a tiller of the soil to whom the land which he and his family work offers both a home and a living. 1938 tr. Lenin's Sel. Wks. X. 223 The big peasants (Grossbauern)are the capitalist entrepreneurs in agriculture who..employ several wage workers and are connected with the peasantry only by their low cultural level, habits of life and the manual labour they themselves perform on their farms. These constitute the largest of the bourgeois strata, and they are the..enemies of the revolutionary proletariat. 1948 A. L. KROEBER Anthropol. (rev. ed.) vii. 284 Peasants are definitely ruralyet live in relation to market towns; they form a class segment of a larger population which usually contains also urban centers, sometimes metropolitan capitals. 1951 BONNER & BURNS tr. Marx's Theories of Surplus Value B. v. 192 In the capitalist mode of production the independent peasant or handicraftsman is sundered into two persons. As owner of the means of production he is capitalist, as worker he is his own wage worker. 1954 tr. Mao Tse-tung's Sel. Wks. I. 139 The rich peasant as a rule possesses land... The exploitation the rich peasant practises is chiefly that of hired labour. Ibid., In many cases the middle peasant possesses land. The middle peasant relies wholly or mainly on his own labour as the source of his income. Ibid. 140 As a rule the poor peasant has to rent land for cultivation and, exploited by others, has to pay land rent and interest on loans and hire out a small part of his labour. 1956 R. REDFIELD Peasant Society & Culture i. 27 Those peoples are to be included in the cluster I shall call peasants who have..this in common: their agriculture is a livelihood and a way of life, not a business for profit. 1966 E. WOLF Peasants 3 Peasants..are rural cultivators whose surpluses are transferred to a dominant group of rulers that uses the surpluses both to underwrite its own standard of living and to distribute the remainder to groups in society that do not farm but must be fed for their specific goods and services in turn. 1969 Internat. Social Sci. Jrnl. XXI. 286 A peasant may be at one and the same time owner, renter, share-cropper, labourer for his neighbours and seasonal hand on a near-by plantation. Each different involvement aligns him differently with his fellows and with the outside world. 1971 tr. E. Feder in T. Shanin Peasants & Peasant Societies vii. 90
But while the landed elite [in Latin America] has no interest in the peasants' aspirations and keeps aloof from their world, it is still keenly aware of its obligations to keep the peasants in check and subservient. 1975 J. A. HELLMAN tr. Stavenhagen's Social Classes in Agrarian Societies v. 65 A useful distinction is sometimes made between tribal peoples, peasants, and modern farmers... In contrast to tribal or primitive peoples, peasant societies do form part of wider economic, social, and political units.
.....................................................
Farmer meaning cultivator of land:
3. spec. One who rents land for the purpose of cultivaton; = tenant farmer. Now chiefly as a contextual application of 5.
1487 Act 4 Hen. VII, c. 16 The Occupier and Fermer of them..to be
discharged against his Lessor of the Rent. 1523 FITZHERB. Husb. 123 Though a man be but a farmer, and shall haue hys farme .xx. yeres. 1577 HARRISON England II. v. (1877) I. 133 The yeomen are for the most part farmers to gentlemen.
4. One who cultivates land for the owner; a bailiff, steward. Obs.
1382 WYCLIF Luke xvi. 1 Ther was sum riche man, that hadde a fermour, ethir a baily. 1526 Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 281 They shall haue ye kyngdome of heuen, not as baylyes or fermers, but as possessyoners. 1579 LYLY Euphues (Arb.) 145 Architas..sent for his farmour, vnto whome hee sayde, if I [etc.]. 1580 BARET Alv. F146 Fermer, or gouernour of a ferme, villicus.
5. a. One who cultivates a farm, whether as tenant or owner; one who farms land, or makes agriculture his occupation.
1599 T. M[OUFET] Silkwormes Ded., Meaner Theams beseeme a Farmers quill. 1647 CLARENDON Hist. Reb. I. (1843) 40/2 Many gentlemen and farmers, had..good farms..of their own inheritance. 1666 WOOD Life (Oxf. Hist. Soc.) II. 86 Many fermers broke..corne being soe cheap. 1771 SMOLLETT Humph. Cl. II. 18 July, I eat like a farmer. 1813 SIR H. DAVY Agric. Chem. (1814) 15 The general experience of farmers had long before convinced the unprejudiced. 1849 COBDEN Speeches 2 We appear here as the farmers friends.
b. dial. The eldest son of the occupier of a farm.
a1825 FORBY Voc. E. Anglia s.v., One labourer would ask another, Did my master set out that job? And would be answered, No, my master didn't, but the farmer did.
dan
Daniel C. Tsang
Bibliographer for Asian American Studies, Economics, Political
Science and Asian Studies (interim).
Social Science Data Librarian
Fulbright Research Scholar in Vietnam, 2003-2004
380 Jack Langson Library, University of California
PO Box 19557, Irvine CA 92623-9557, USA
E-mail: dtsang@uci.edu; Tel: (949) 824-4978; fax: (949) 824-2700
UCI Social Science Data Archives: http://data.lib.uci.edu
Subject Guides: http://www.lib.uci.edu/online/subject/subject.html
Office Hours: Tuesday 3-4 pm and Thursday 1-2 pm and by appointment
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Tue Jan 11 02:43:12 2005
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 05:41:07 -0500
From: hhtai@fas.harvard.edu
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Translating peasant
Charles:
You might consider the use of the term "peasant" by Eugen Weber in "Peasants into Frenchmen" (1976).
The problem with translating "nongmin" or "nong dan" as peasants or even farmers is that the Chinese and Vietnamese terms encompass everybody who is rural and lives off the land, whether as landlord or landless peasant. That is far broader that the OED definition.
Hue-Tam
From bcampdvs@u.washington.edu Tue Jan 11 03:34:04 2005
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 03:32:48 -0800 (PST)
From: bcampdvs@u.washington.edu
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re:VSG Translating peasant
Charles and list:
Bui Phung lists ta ddien as "1.leaseholder, lessee, tenant;2. tenant farmer, small farmer." another rendering of nha que into English could be boorish, like when someone wants to point out a perceived lack of urbanity in another's behavior. Maybe even "hick," but that may a bit strong.
That's a very interesting observation about Nong Dan. Historians such as Duy Minh and Nguyen Phan Quang have used the terms "khoi nghia nong dan" and "phong trao nong dan," but i have never seen the term "khoi nghia ta dien" as a catagorical description. maybe for the sake of placing farmers and their greviances within a certain kind of historical time, nong dan is a good option.
The english word "peasant," for me and with a view toward 19th century Europe, always calls forth the idea of a "sack of potatoes," of conservativsm and apolitical self-interest. Thomas Jefferson was reputed to have an interest in Nguyen period agriculture, does anyone know how he referred to those who farmed in present-day Vietnam?
Bradley Davis
PhD Candidate
Department of History
University of Washington, Seattle
From cwheeler@uci.edu Tue Jan 11 16:41:22 2005
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 08:39:04 +0800 (SGT)
From: Charles Wheeler <cwheeler@uci.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re:VSG Translating peasant
Thanks everyone for the feedback. I'm specifically interested in when the term 'peasant' came into use in Western literature about Vietnam, and this helps.
Bradley, I've read Jefferson's discussion of 'Cochinchinese' [Dang Trong]farming, I think in his Notes on the State of Virginia in the late 18th century. Frustratingly, I don't have access to it here in Singapore, but have a copy of his discussion back at Irvine, but you may be able to find it on the web (I found some refs in his Cyclopedia, see http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/foleyx-browse?id=Rice).
His interest in Vietnamese agriculture drew from Pierre Poivre's writings, which apparently were widely read in America as well as Europe (in addition to several French publications, much of Poivre's travelog was translated into English--I've seen one translation published out of Philadelphia in the late 18th century, though I'm sure Jefferson read Poivre's original). He no doubt encountered Poivre's work through the French Physiocrats (who deeply influenced his agrarian ideals), probably when he was living in France. Poivre's voyage was of deep interest to the Physiocrats, and they saw Cochinchina (as did Jefferson) as a model society. (In Jefferson's writing, I don't recall him ever using the term 'farmer,' only referring to agriculture or farming. But I could be wrong.)
Anyway, I've been interested in Poivre for some time, but learned of the Jefferson connection from Vu Pham, who refers to Jefferson in his dissertation about early Vietnamese connections with America.
Thanks everyone for the advice.
Chas.
From ProschanF@folklife.si.edu Wed Jan 12 09:47:48 2005
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 12:41:40 -0500
From: Frank Proschan <ProschanF@folklife.si.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re:VSG Translating peasant
Chas,
In the literature of the early French colonial period, "paysan" and "paysannerie" were used from the get go. Someone with better French will have to tell us whether those terms have the same scope of meanings as their corresponding English terms. I daresay this was rarely a translation from Vietnamese into French--rather, it was an implantation of French categories of experience onto the Vietnamese landscape/society. The question then is not whether "nong dan" was translated into "peasant/paysan," but whether "nong dan" or "nha que" or other terms were used in back-translation from French into Vietnamese, as for instance in censuses or administrative forms/documents.
In the French literature, "nha que" is one of those terms (others include "con gai," "choum choum," "bep") that are salted through texts of all sorts to provide local color (local flavor, to keep my metaphor consistent). There, it is used for "peasant" (read: stolid, dependable, hardworking, docile, ignorant, uncontaminated, primitive, etc.). But in the French literature it doesn't have the sense of "rube" or "hick" that is prevalent in contemporary parlance among urban residents in VN. And "nong dan" is probably invisible (untastable?) in the French literature--it certainly wasn't taken up like con gai or choum choum were and if it is used at all it would probably only be in technical documents.
Best,
Frank Proschan
Project Director
postal mail:
Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
Smithsonian Institution
PO Box 37012
Victor Building Suite 4100, MRC 0953
Washington, DC 20013-7012
office location and express services:
Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
750 9th Street N.W., Suite 4100
Washington DC 20560-0953
tel: 202-275-1607
fax: 202-275-1119
From dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au Wed Jan 12 14:57:29 2005
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 09:55:15 +1100
From: David Marr <dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re:VSG Translating peasant
Frank forgot the word "boi", for (male?) domestic servant, which both French and Vietnamese used routinely. This was denounced by revolutionaries, yet it crops up as a category of DRV government workers in 1946.
Re."nong dan", I'm pretty sure this goes back to the classical distinction between "si, nong, cong, thuong". If so, "nong" would cover all farmers, which makes "peasant" a bit restrictive. It's interesting that Vo Nguyen Giap and Truong Chinh chose an entirely different term, "dan cay", when writing "Van de dan cay" in the late 1930s.
I love the these exchanges over words. Maybe someone is collecting them to start compiling an etymological dictionary?
David Marr
From willpore@gwu.edu Wed Jan 12 15:29:34 2005
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 18:27:29 -0500
From: William Pore <willpore@gwu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re:VSG Translating peasant
Professor Marr and list,
I would like to add that I think in countries with an English heritage the term peasant has not been in use to designate the category of farm workers being referred to in these exchanges since the end of the feudal era (around the end ofthe 13th century). Use of "peasant" in English has been restricted almost exclusively to descriptions of the social position of a certainclass of rural workers in only foreign (non-English) countries.
Will Pore
From magic_rettig@hotmail.com Wed Jan 12 16:58:47 2005
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 00:56:21 +0000
From: Tobias Rettig <magic_rettig@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: VSG Translating peasant
Dear List,
I agree with Frank that the term 'nha que' in the French literature refers to hardworking, stolid, etc people living on the countryside.
I believe, however, that it was used in the 'rural hick' sense during a recent visit to Paris. I did not pay attention to it at the time so I am not entirely sure who made the comment and whether that person really made the comment, but I believe it was a French friend of mine, about 35 years old, Ph.D. holder, and academic, but with no professional or other connection to Vietnam at all.
I tried to check / reconfirm this meaning via a (very) brief google and online dictionary search but could not find it. Perhaps one of the French or more Francophone members of the VSG could confirm this use? If accurate, the term might have made its way into French argot via the Vietnamese community in France, though this is just a speculation.
Best wishes,
Tobias
From johnev@netspace.net.au Wed Jan 12 17:11:07 2005
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:09:44 +1100
From: Peter Hansen <johnev@netspace.net.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: VSG Translating peasant
I once called an old gent named "Ong Que^'" who I met in Qui Nhon, 'Ong Que^". This caused much merriment amongst all present because, it was explained, Ong Que^ did indeed mean a country bumpkin (the gent concerned being a prosperous urban businessman).
Peter Hansen
From mchale@gwu.edu Wed Jan 12 17:13:58 2005
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 23:12:48 -0200
From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Translating Peasant
Dear list,
We are talking here about two concepts -- peasant and farmer – that have, over time, come to have similar meanings in some minds.
In French, "paysan" originally, I believe, referred to someone from a "pays." "Pays" means "country" today, but it also has a slightly different meaning akin to "region." One can have a "petit pays" -- e.g. be from Brittany, or even a smaller area like Morbihan - - as well as the "pays" of France. In short, this is a concept derived from *location.* It would seem to me that "paysan" and "nha que" are similar in this locational aspect, but that "nha que" might have gained more of a pejorative edge.
"Nong dan," which never appears in Vietnamese, to my knowledge, before the 1920s, refers to what one *does*: farming. But, given that most rural inhabitants do more than farm, it is not the best term.
Shawn McHale
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
Associate Director, Sigur Center for Asian Studies
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
From DNguyen@KQED.org Wed Jan 12 17:23:51 2005
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 17:22:42 -0800
From: Nguyen Qui Duc <DNguyen@KQED.org>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: VSG Translating peasant
In a French high school in central VN, Nha` Que^ or "Espece de Nha Que" was often used by French teachers to tell Vietnamese students off. These were city kids who would indeed be offended by being call country hicks.
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Jan 12 21:49:30 2005
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 22:48:32 -0700
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: FW: VSG Translating peasant
I would like to share with you a few random thoughts:
I) On ngu+o+`i ca`y, no^ng da^n, etc. : That Vo Nguyen Giap and Truong Chinh during the late 1930s used the term "da^n ca`y" is highly interesting. My guess is that the term was a Vietnamese translation of the Chinese gengzuo (canh ta'c; cultivate/cultivation). The Vietnamese slogan "Ngu+o+`i ca`y co' ruo^.ng" also came from the Chinese expression "gengzhe you qi tian" (Sino-Vietnamese: Canh gia? hu+~u ky` ddie^`n).
There were also numerous Chinese political and military terms which were adopted and adapted into the Vietnamese language around that time.
I agree with Shawn that the term "no^ng da^n" appeared in the Vietnamese literature rather late. Let's me try to make the point a bit more concretely.
In Hui`nh [sic] Ti.nh Cua?'s dictionary (1895), there was only "no^ng
phu".
In Vie^.t Nam tu+. ddie^?n edited by the Ho^.i Khai tri' Tie^'n ddu+'c (1931), we also found only "no^ng gia" and "no^ng phu". "No^ng gia" is defined as "nha` chuye^n ve^` la`m ruo^.ng, e.g. DDie^`n vie^n vui thu' no^ng gia (Nhi. ddo^. mai) ", and "no^ng phu" being "ngu+o+`i la`m
ruo^.ng, e.g. "Ke? no^ng phu cha^n la^'m tay bu`n". From these definitions, one can infer that the term "no^ng gia" is more respectable than "no^ng phu".
BTW, also in 1931, in the Ha'n Vie^.t tu+` ddie^?n compiled by DDa`o Duy Anh, apart from the entries for "no^ng gia" and "no^ng phu", the term "no^ng da^n" appeared for the first time, not by itself, but in compound terms : "no^ng da^n hie^.p ho^.i (syndicat agricole)" and "no^ng da^n va^.n ddo^.ng (mouvement agraire)".
Owing to the proximity between Chinese language and Vietnamese Language in this case, you might be interested in the following definitions of "farmer" and "peasant" in the Oxford Advanced Learner's ENGLISH-CHINESE DICTIONARY (1999):
a) "farmer: person who owns or manages a farm (nongchang zhuren [no^ng tru+o+`ng chu? nha^n], nongren [no^ng nha^n]"
b) "peasant: 1) (in the rural areas of some countries) farmer owing or renting a (usually small) piece of land which he cultivates himself nongren [no^ng da^n]); 2) (formerly) poor agricultural worker [pinnong, i.e. ba^`n no^ng]; 3) (informally derog) person with rough unrefined manners" [and the Chinese equivalent for this case is culu, i.e. tho^
lo^~].
II) Nha` que^ : I have also come across the term "le nha que" (along with other terms such as congai, i.e. con ga'i, etc.) in French Literature published during the colonial time.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, if there were those who appreciated things which are elegant, graceful, urbane, refined, etc., the poet Nguye^~n Bi'nh was among the articulate few who spoke for the beauty of "que^", especially in his poem "Cha^n que^" (lit. "Truly/genuinely unrefined) written circa 1940. The poem contains concludes with these lines:
"Ho^m qua em ddi ti?nh ve^`,
Hu+o+ng ddo^`ng gio' no^.i bay ddi i't nhie^`u".
This poem later became the lyric for a song which still finds popularity in the present-day Vietnam. Que^, after all, in the minds and memories of so many people, implies not only their home village or their home town but also their past and their spiritual roots.
You might be interested in knowing that in the last few years there is a new term for nha` que^, i.e. Hai Lua'(could be spelled as hai lua'). Originally a proper name (Hai is a popular name in the South, and lua' is of course rice/or rice plant). One could say : "Anh ddo' tro^ng hai lua' qua' chu+`ng !" (he really looks like a country bumpkin!", or "Ca'I na`y thi` to^i hai lua' !" ===> I don't know anything [I'm totally ignorant of] about this.
VS
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Wed Jan 12 23:08:35 2005
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 02:06:46 -0500
From: hhtai@fas.harvard.edu
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: FW: VSG Translating peasant
Thank you very much, Vinh Sinh. I'm sitting in Hanoi without access to my various dictionaries, so I appreciate your investigations. Ben Wilkinson (who is now in SG) began a senior thesis on Dao Duy Anh's dictionary-writing as a political act. It is clear that one aim of DDA was to introduce new terminology, some of it Marxist, into Vietnamese. Sometimes, he needed to resort to French to explain new terms such as cong hoa (republic). Phan Boi Chau's own contributions to modern Vietnamese has not been sufficiently explored. I believe that he did introduce some new terms into Vietnamese, terms he encountered while living in Japan and later in China. Li Shining wrote a booklet, The Introduction of Socialism into China, which traces the neologisms introduced from Japan to China in conjunction with Darwinism and Socialism.
Older versions of the Larousse include nhaque (one word), congai, s'encongayer (to become involved with a Vietnamese woman, to take up a Vietnamese concubine), thiba (servant girl, after thi ba or chi ba), cainha (for a hut or nha tranh) and a few others. In my lycee (Marie Curie), even French girls might say "ca fait nhaque" when they wanted to criticize something for its lack of urban polish.
Hue-Tam
From m_vorpahl@web.de Fri Jan 14 23:04:03 2005
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:03:33 +0700
From: Markus Vorpahl <m_vorpahl@web.de>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: VSG Translating peasant
Tobias, list,
'Niaquoue', 'niakweÿÿ' or 'niak' are nowadays in use as racist terms on the same level as 'chinetoque' referring to people with, physiologically, Asian features. It happens that French persons of Asiatic background use the term to talk despicatively about other people of Asian background, or appropriate it to speak of the own community. Used by non-asian French, its definitely racist and has nothing to do with rural, peasant or any other of the original meanings. As far as I know, it came into use through military slang, perhaps also colons returning from Indochina, definitely not via the Vietnamese community.
Regards, Markus
From magic_rettig@hotmail.com Sat Jan 15 01:41:23 2005
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 09:39:30 +0000
From: Tobias Rettig <magic_rettig@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: VSG Translating peasant
Hi Markus,
I was waiting for a more insightful comment than mine on the contemporary French use of the term 'nha que'.
I would nevertheless maintain that the example I heard (or believe I heard) was used in the social rather than racist term, as it was a Frenchman making a derogatory comment on another Frenchman, perhaps a lame or backward politician.
So there would be at least two ways of using it: belief in social / political / etc superiority; belief in racial superiority.
Do you know when the racist use came into being, and in which parts of
France?
Best,
Tobias