The Sinitic Word for "million" in Southeast Asian Mandarin, part 2
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[This is a guest post by Liam Kelley.]
Looking up "triệu" in this Nom dictionary brings up an example from a line in a work that appears to date from the early twentieth century that states: "The soul of the 4,000-year-old country has yet to awaken. The 25 million [triệu兆 ] people are still deep in slumber."
There was definitely modern Mandarin terminology that entered classical Chinese in Vietnam at that time (I haven't looked at many Nom texts from that period so I can't say about Mandarin terms in the spoken language, but it would make sense that some would be there too), and the topic here (soul of a country/nation, awakening from sleep) is the type of new nationalist concepts that spread from Japan/China to Vietnam at that time.
So, I don't know where exactly triệu comes from, but between what the author of this post wrote and this tidbit of information here, I would bet my money on it being a term that was in circulation in Mandarin/Southeast Asian circles in the nineteenth century.
Selected readings
- "The Sinitic Word for 'million' in Southeast Asian Mandarin" (8/10/24)
- "Unspecified large number" (8/7/09)
- "The cognitive technology of number" (7/11/08)
Victor Mair said,
August 13, 2024 @ 8:56 am
From Steve O'Harrow:
It looks pretty solid that "triệu" using the Chinese character 兆 (zhào "Mega?" in modern Mandarin) has been in the Vietnamese vernacular vocabulary for at least a century and probably more like 150+ years, if not before.
`I have personally never read any text from Việt Nam (in either Nôm or Hán) in which any single term for "million" appears, so how far back the use of 兆 can be dated is entirely up in the air as for as I can see.
Jonathan Dushoff said,
August 13, 2024 @ 11:22 am
I thought until today that 兆 was a standard-Mandarin term for a trillion, but I guess that's yet another Taiwan thing?
Chris Button said,
August 13, 2024 @ 2:01 pm
I had thought so too based on usage in Japanese. Since the numerical usage of
兆 goes back to the classics in Chinese, it seems that modern Mandarin has simply diverged rather than the usage just being "yet another Taiwan thing".
As for the billion/trillion distinction, that could just be a reflection of the ridiculous high number, or perhaps it reflects confusion in English-language translation. On another matter compare how the letter "m" can mean thousand (based on French) or million.
Jonathan Smith said,
August 13, 2024 @ 8:54 pm
"Standard" in the PRC AFAIK is simply 10^4 = wan4 万, 10^8 = yi4 亿, 10^12 = zhao4 兆 … and the sequence goes on to terms unknown to most (including me).
Kinda as with U.S. vs. U.K. (etc.), (largely) this same sequence of terms has been applied in different ways at different times/places… texts describe for example a system in which every new power has its term, thus 10^4 wan4 but 10^5 yi4, 10^6 zhao4, etc., which would seem to be where zhao4 = million is coming from. Don't know where in the Sinosphere this is standard tho…
~flow said,
August 14, 2024 @ 12:10 am
recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerals which features a nice overview of the different systems with usage notes