A comparative study of words beginning with "MU" in Japanese and Vietnamese languages : Focusing on words with special meanings

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In Japanese and Vietnamese, there are many words that begin with “MU”. They also share words that have special meanings. For example, in both languages, 無数 (innumerable) means “Plentiful”, 無限 (unlimited) means "Extreme", and 無礼 (rudeness) means "Little" and "Bad". This is the result of interaction with Middle Chinese. However, both languages have many unique words beginning with “MU”. In these words, there are similarity and difference about special meanings. The similarity is that in both Japanese and Vietnamese, “MU” is useful for naming technical terms (in the real world) and conveying negative nuances (in the mental world). The difference is that in Japanese, the original meaning is maintained, but in Vietnamese, “Plentiful'' and “Extreme'' are often used. The reason for this difference is that the two languages have different linguistic types. In Japanese, an agglutinative language, “MU'' is used as a prefix and can be combined with many base words. But in Vietnamese, an isolating language, there are restrictions on the phonetics and meanings in morpheme of what can be combined with. However, the most important reason is that in language contact, “MU” was borrowed into Japanese and Vietnamese, and shared the role of the expression of meaning with native words. As a result, “MU” is in charge of meanings that cannot be expressed by native words. In addition, Japanese people are more open towards foreign words, including Chinese, but Vietnamese people are not. Japanese has borrowed many words not only from Chinese but also from Western languages in present. Modern Vietnamese was influenced by the movement to abolish Chinese characters and Chinese writing at the beginning of the 20th century and the “Protecting the purity of the Vietnamese language” movement in the 1960s, so not only foreign words but even Sino-Vietnamese words also were purged. In this way, Japanese and Vietnamese share the special meanings of words that begin with “MU”, but because their linguistic type and cultural backgrounds are different, each language shows unique acceptance and development.