Pejorative Terms "Yuon" and "Mien": A scholarly discussion

Source: http://www.lib.washington.edu/southeastasia/vsg/elist_2009/Yuan%20and%20Mien.html
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From: Nicolas Lainez
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 11:15 AM


Dear list,

Khmer from Cambodia usually use the pejorative term "yuôn" to name Vietnamese. At the other side, Vietnamese from the miền tây use the pejorative term "miên" to name Cambodian. Does anybody know the etymology, the history and the real meaning of these two words? People’s explanation is usually unclear, and books do not bring clear answers.


Thanks in advance for any help.


Regards.


Nicolas

PhD Student, EHESS


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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 12:00 PM



The term "mien" is part of Cao Mien, which, I presume, is the Sino-Vietnamese rendition of Khmer.
I do not think that it carries pejorative connotations. I have heard it used as a straightforward reference to Cambodians.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai


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From: Charles Keyes
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 12:05 PM


A cognate term for "yuôn" is also used in Thailand, but it is not pejorative. The pejorative term is kaeo. Professor Nguyen Dinh Hoa, the late well known Vietnamese linguist who taught at the University of Washington in the 1960s told me that "yuôn" is cognate with yueh, an ancient Sino-Vietnamese term meaning Vietnamese.

Charles Keyes
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and International Studies
Department of Anthropology
Box 353100
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-3100


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From: Liam C. Kelley
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 12:38 PM



The "yuon" question is one which has been driving me crazy for years. The late Taiwanese scholar, Chen Jinghe, wrote an article in Chinese back in the 1940s in which he mentioned that a lot of the minority peoples in the mountains in the north referred to the Kinh as "kaeo/keo." So that seems to have been the basic term on the ground. As for where "yuon" came from (I think it is in Burmese as well - no wait, did the Burmese refer to the Chinese as yuon?), some people (can't remember who) have argued (based on little more than a guess as far as I can tell) that it comes from "yavana," an old Sanskrit term for "foreigner" (it has a complex etymology, but that is a meaning which eventually becomes associated with it). As for "yuon" being cognate with "yue," maybe. "Yue" was initially used by people in what is today northern China to refer to a wide array of peoples to their south, but by say 1,000 AD it had come to refer to just two peoples (the Viet and the Cantonese), as they had adopted these terms for self-reference. So if it is a cognate for "yue" and refers specfically to the Vietnamese, my guess would be that it would have emerged somehow around that point, but why then would it not be picked up by the people who actually lived right next to the yue/Viet, but instead came to enter the languages of people who were farther away? Maybe the yavana guess is more on target.

Liam Kelley
University of Hawaii


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From: Hsun-Hui Tseng
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 12:56 PM


Interesting discussion. I just want to point out one thing: the Chinese character of "yue" (越) referring to the Viet is different from the character of "yue" (粵) referring to the Cantonese. They are just pronounced the same.

Hsun-Hui Tseng
Ph. D Candidate
Department of Anthropology
U of Washington


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From: Liam C. Kelley
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 1:04 PM


yes, but in the past they were interchangeable. The Shiji used one, the Hanshu the other, then I think it switched back. In the Dai Viet Su Ky Toan Thu, Ngo Si Lien refers to the Bach Viet/Baiyue as the 百粵, whereas now the other character is always used, 百越. It is at some point after that (~1500) that the distinction became hardened.



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From: Oscar Salemink
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 2:27 PM


Many groups in the Vietnamese Central Highlands used to refer to Kinh/Việt as Yuân or Yuon in the past as well. I have never researched the etymology of the word but if it somehow has Sino-Vietnamese ancestry then that would offer a very interesting insight into the ways that words and labels traveled over great distances in the past.



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From: Hsun-Hui Tseng
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 4:20 PM


Thanks a lot for pointing it out! I learned a lesson from you. I just checked and learned that "yue" was referred to indigenous peoples living south of the Yangtze River in ancient times (bai means "hundred"). In different areas they were called differently, "nan yue" for Guangdong, "min yue" for Fujian and "luo yue" for North Vietnam, for example.

百越又称为百越族，是居于现今中国南方和古代越人有关之各个不同族群的总称。文献上也称之为百粤、诸越。古文中常泛指南方地区。《过秦论》“南取百越之地”，《采草药》“诸越则桃李冬实”。在先秦古籍中，对于东南地区的土著民族，常统称之为“越”。如吕思勉先生所指出，“自江以南则曰越”。在此广大区域内，实际上存在众多的部、族，各有种姓，故不同地区的土著又各有异名，或称“吴越”（苏南浙北一带）、或称“闽越”（福建一带）、或称“扬越”（江西湖南一带）、或称“南越”（广东一带）、或称“西瓯”（广西一带）、或称“骆越”（越南北部和广西南部一带），等等。因此，“越”又称被称为“百越”。百者，泛言其多。


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From: Philip Taylor
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 4:44 PM


Hi Nicolas,

These etymological speculations are interesting enough. But I wonder why, as an anthropologist, one should feel compelled to speculate on the origins of such terms, or search for their 'real' meanings, when a fascinating, doable, and I think essentially ethnographic task awaits, of documenting the existence of these (and related) vernacular concepts in mien tay society, and drawing upon one's own observations to elucidate their connotations, rules and contexts of usage, and implications? Like Hue-Tam, I think you are a bit hasty in describing these two terms as pejorative. I would say that as used in in many mien tay contexts, they are not uniquely pejorative.

Philip Taylor



Dr Philip Taylor
Department of Anthropology
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT, 0200


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From: David Brown
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 5:32 PM


In the RVN in the sixties, Cao Miên was the normal, Sino-Vietnamese-derived name for Cambodia (see Nguyen Dinh Hoa's dictionary) and 'người Miên' was not, as I recall, perjorative. David Brown, VietNamNet Bridge, Hanoi


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From: Shawn McHale
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 6:24 PM


Dear list,

I think Philip Taylor's points are well-taken (and I generally agree with him): we need a moree fine-grained understanding of the use of terms like "yuon." That being said, there is a very obvious reason why speculation on etymology of terms is important. Such speculation has become part of the current discourse over the meaning of these terms. I have seen debate on English language Khmer websites in which individuals of Khmer origins decry the views of foreigners over the use of the term "yuon," and then discuss the etymology of the term, argue that Khmer have been using the term for eons, and so forth. This may be folk etymology, but it is fascinating to read.

Cambodians often argue that "yuon" is not derogatory. Foreigners often insist that it is. Both cannot be right: at least not if they are going to make blanket statements about the word.
But I am sure that any sociolinguist (any on this site?) can explain that a word used by an in-group may be considered harmless, but the same word used by an out-group is not. It would be interesting for a linguist to chart the sociolinguistics of this term -- is yuon, for example, ever used in a positive manner to denote Vietnamese? Is it mostly used as a neutral descriptor or in disparagement? My hypothesis is that even when Khmer say the word is not an insult, it is never used in a positive and admiring contexts, just in neutral or negative ones.

I have long thought it interesting that some Khmer insist on their right to define the meaning of the term "yuon." By that logic, whites should have the monopoly on the definition of the N-word in the US. To get back to Philip Taylor's point, a fine-grained ethnographic study of the term's use would help unpack this issue.

My two cents' worth---

Shawn McHale
Director
Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA

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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 7:04 PM

Dear Shawn,

I completely agree with your points, and I may add that the reference to the N-word is particularly well-grounded. This is a rather typical case of an originally completely "neutral" word acquiring an absolutely derogatory meaning, for those familiar with Latin language will know that the word "niger" originally meant simply black in the most general sense, with applicability to any living creature or inanimate object. Still, it eventually became an extremely offensive word, reaching its xenophobic peak in the British empire when racist settlers applied it to any unfortunate Malay or Indian whose skin pigmentation happened to be slightly darker than that of the imperialist individual in question.:)

Best,
Balazs



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From: Liam C Kelley
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 9:14 PM


Shawn (and list),

It's not an in-group/out-group matter. In Khmer, "yuon" is used in both neutral and derogatory contexts. The derogatory meaning can come from context or tone of voice, but it often is made clear because the speaker adds a derogatry prefix/term (don't know how linguists would classify it) - "a." When someone says "a-yuon," it is perfectly clear that this term is being used in a derogatory sense. In other contexts, people use it neutrally. That said, I think people, at least educated people, know that there is a (at least recent - I doubt it has been that way for eons) history of the term being used in negative ways, so in a formal context (or when say talking in Khmer with a foreigner) someone might first say youn, and then "correct" themselves and say "Vietnam." People must be told that they should be careful when they use that term (much like usage of the term for white people here in Hawaii - haole - which can also be neutral or derogatory, but everyone knows it has a history of derogatory usage). Under the Khmer Rouge the "a-yuon" were the bad guys, and then after that the "Vietnamese" came to help. Clearly the past few decades alone can go a long way toward explaining some of the complexity in this terms usage. As for what was going on before that. . . like you I am skeptical about the eons explanation. There is a history to it.
That said, there was a book of royal maps that was published in Thailand a few years back. There is a great Thai map in there of Cambodia from the 19th century, after a conflict with the Vietnamese (can't recall which one). The Thai have the names of various Khmer towns or settlements, and then under some of they they have in small writing "ay yuon phao" (ay being the Thai equivalent of the Khmer "a" and "phao" meaning to burn), which we could perhaps translate into English as "burnt by the bastard yuon!" So with that prefix it was at least being used by Thai in a derogatory sense then.


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From: NGUYEN THE ANH
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 9:37 PM



One should perhaps be reminded of the events following the operations of South Vietnamese troops in Cambodia in the early 1970s and the resulting massacres of Vietnamese immigrants by Cambodians called to "cap yuon".

Nguyen The Anh


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From: Dinh Lu Giang
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 10:09 PM


Dear list,

I completely agree with Professor Hue Tam about the Miên. For example, the famous author Lê Hương wrote some books about Khmer people and languge in Mekong Delta: Việt Nam-Cao Miên, Sử Cao Miên, Tự học chữ Miên, Người Việt gốc Miên. So he called Khmer people Miên neutrally. My field notes also show that Miên is still used to call Khmer people by Việt or they called themselves. If you want a pejorative word for Khmer, it should be Thổ (meaning "earth"). However, Miên is not the official name of Khmer people in Vietnam, but "Khmer" or "Khơ me". In all of statistics books of the provinces in the South that I collected, they call "Kinh" (not Việt) and Khmer or Khơ me.

My family in An Giang still say "đi qua Miên chơi" or người Miên without any negative meaning.

As for "youn" /yuən/ (យួន), it is right that it comes from yavana 'foreigner, barbarian.' More neautral is វៀតណាម /viət nạam/. I think the word becomes pejorative when it is found in the expression "cap youn" (to cut Kinh), the phenomenon that historians among us may know well. And I agree with Shawn McHale hypothesis about the neutral and negative use of youn, and off course, Kinh don't want to be called youn. :)

Thank Shawn McHale for the suggestion of a language ideology research on "youn".


Giang
--
Dinh Lu Giang,
PhD student on Viet - Khmer bilingualism and bilingual education
Dept. of Vietnamese Studies,
University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University - HCMC - Vietnam



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From: Nhu Miller
Date: Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 7:58 AM


In 1970 I was in Cambodia, right around the time when Vietnamese
were being massacred and expelled. When I identified myself as
Vietnamese, people would react with such derision that I decided to
use the term 'Yuon" from the start - which made people laugh with
surprise and defused the situation.

As it happens, Sophal Ear, a young Khmer PhD who teaches at the
Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey has just written a paper on
this very subject.

Yuon and Vietnamese: What’s in a Xenonym?

Here's an excerpt:

...It is rare in the Khmer language to have a racist word attributed to different ethnic groups. However, this does not mean that salty language does not exist. To the contrary, when wishing to disrespect someone, we add an adjective "A" in front of the word that we intend to use. If we say "A Yuon", then it is a sign of disrespect, but not necessarily a racist remark. To be racist requires that the following words be used: "A Katop" (equating a Vietnamese to a diaper), "A Gnieung" (a probable play on the common Vietnamese family name Nguyen), or "A Sakei Daung" (equating a Vietnamese to coconut husk). Some might compare the word "Yuon" to the word “Nigger”, but that is too strong and ahistorical a comparison. In any case, to have called someone in 1860 racist for using the word “Nigger” would be historically inaccurate. These were conventions then, and evolved out of fashion later.

The only basis to this is when, during the Lon Nol period (Khmer Republic 1970-1975), "Yuon" was indeed used in a derogatory fashion during attacks on Vietnamese people. Thus, the word took on a negative connotation in the 1970s and was allegedly banned in the 1980s when Cambodia was occupied by Vietnam. Sour Vietnamese soup “samlar machou Yuon” became “samlar machou Vietnam,” but reverted to its original name in the 1990s. Of course, the Khmer Rouge also used the word "Yuon", as when they characterized the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) as Yuon-TAC, an agent of the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian People’s Party. But again, just because the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Republicans hijacked the word, does not mean it must now be abandoned in everyday language.

If we were to speak in Khmer and call the Vietnamese "A Katop", then one would consider it derogatory and racist in content. If we were to say, "Pourk Yuon" or simply "Yuon", meaning Vietnamese people or Vietnamese, respectively, then there is no reason to condemn us for saying so. If we were to say, "A Yuon", again it is not necessarily racist but is most definitely disrespectful language to attach to someone who is Vietnamese, but just as “A Khleung”, "A Phoumea", "A Barang", and “A Chen", would all be salty additives to normal descriptors.
The only basis to this is when, during the Lon Nol period (Khmer Republic 1970-1975), "Yuon" was indeed used in a derogatory fashion during attacks on Vietnamese people. Thus, the word took on a negative connotation in the 1970s and was allegedly banned in the 1980s when Cambodia was occupied by Vietnam. Sour Vietnamese soup “samlar machou Yuon” became “samlar machou Vietnam,” but reverted to its original name in the 1990s. Of course, the Khmer Rouge also used the word "Yuon", as when they characterized the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) as Yuon-TAC, an agent of the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian People’s Party. But again, just because the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Republicans hijacked the word, does not mean it must now be abandoned in everyday language.

T.T. Nhu
Berkeley, California



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From: Shawn McHale
Date: Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 9:52 AM


Dear list,

This has been an enlightening discussion.

One small point: the derogatory use of yuon dates from 1945 or earlier. The first use of the phrase "cap duon" ("beheading the yuon") that I know of occurred in that year and into 1946 and 1947. But of course, as others have noted, the meanings of terms can change over decades -- just as the meaning of the term "américain," a seemingly neutral term, seems to have shifted, in France, from the Time of George Bush to the Time of Obama . . . :)

Shawn



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From: Frank
Date: Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 12:05 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group


Is my memory failing, or didn't Serge Thion write the definitive study of "yuon" as a chapter in his "Watching Cambodia: ten paths to enter the Cambodian tangle"?

Best,

Frank Proschan




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From: Steve Heder [mailto:sh32@soas.ac.uk]
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 3:52 AM
To: David Elliott
Subject: Re: FW: [Vsg] Pejorative terms "yuon" and "mien"

Please post this if to the VSG, if you like.


One has to take into account three interrelated issues: past versus current usage; colloquial versus official usage, and non-pejorative versus pejorative usages, while also doing a comparative analysis of these usages that goes beyond the yuon-Vietnam couplet and looks at other ways of referring to Vietnamese.

To start with the comparative analysis, one could look at the following:

Kampuchea(n) versus Khmer
Vietnam(ese) versus Yuon
Thai(land) versus Siem
India(n) versus Khloeng.


Generally speaking, Khmer, Yuon, Siem and Khloeng were used in precolonial times colloquially, non-pejoratively and non-racially. With the colonial-era invention of Vietnam, Thailand and India, these words were used in official parlance, but very rarely in common speech, and without pejorative connotations, as remained the case for the most part with Yuon, Siem and Khloeng, although as elsewhere in SEA, these terms became increasingly racialised in colonial and proto-national/natiionalist discourse. The use of Vietnam, Thailand and India in official parlance had a pretentiousness about them. With regard to Vietnam, there was also significant usage of the term Annam in Franco-Khmer circles, often with pejorative implications, which remained less attached to Yuon, I think. As for Kampuchea versus Khmer, both precolonially and colonially, common usage among Khmer speakers was to refer to themselves as Khmer, with hardly anyone using the also pretentious- and official-sounding Kampuchean (chun-kampuchea). In immediate post-colonial times, usage remained much as it was in the colonial era, but the racialisation on pejorativization of Yuon in Khmer became increasingly pronounced in Sihanoukist and Republicanist discourse, while not be so attached to the rarified term Vietnam, still largely reserved for officialese. Annam gradually disappeared from Franco-Khmer speech, although never entirely. Ironically, the only Cambodian circles in which there was some insistence general use of Vietnam as opposed to Khmer was among the so-called Khmer-Viet Minh and Khmer Rouge Communists, who did so out of deference to Vietnamese Communist political, not racial sensibilities. Significant changes occurred from 1970, with the Khmer Republic openly promoting a radical further racialization and pejorarivization of Yuon, who were officially defined as racial and national enemies. This was officially resisted among the Khmer Rouge at the formal level, but with the increasing conflict between the two Parties, even during the 1970-75 war, there was widespread gravitation to adoption of Yuon as a word of political and ethnic or racial abuse, with Vietnam as ever reserved for official, diplomatically correct contexts. This practice was greatly intensified after 1975, particually from 1977, first by the Khmer Rouge, then by its Sihanoukist and other coalitiion partners in the war to drive out the Vietnamese from 1979. The Vietnamese-crafted People's Republic of Kampuchea, having no choice but to curry favour with its mentors and protectors, went along with Vietnamese insistance at accepting the pejorativization of Yuon as an accomplished and irreversible fact, and so tried to propagate use of Vietnam beyond official circles, but with limited effect, and also rendering refusal to accept this top-down, foreign-state-dominated-and-impose way of talking an act of nationalist definace. The PRK and the Vietnamese also tried to popularize "Kampuchean," but to even less effect. As for Siem/Thai(land), they were defined by the PRK/Vietnamese as the enemy, there was propaganda against them using both terms, but with limited impact, leaving Siem as the colloquialism and Thai as officialese.

The current situation is largely an extension of the PRK/anti-PRK period, but given the political hegemony of the PRK successors as translated into domination of education and media, there is a more widespread use of Vietnam in approved parlance, but Yuon common colloquially, but much more loaded with a pejorative feel than before 1970, less much 1860. However, I have occasionally heard echoes of the historical usage, with interesting twists. I once had a Cambodian say to me that that some of his countryment got along with the Yuon but not the Vietnam, whereas others were happy with the Vietnam but hated the Yuon. he explained that he meant some Cambodians had no problems in their relations with ordinary Vietnamese people, but were in conflict with Vietnamese officials and the Vietnamese state, whereas other Cambodians were very close politically and otherwise with Vietnamese officials, but had nothing but racial contempt for Vietnamese in general. I would finally point out that beyond Yuon there are a number strictly prejudicial terms for Vietnamse, eg, nheung, skeidaung, in contrast to which Yuon remains relatively tame.

One last curiousity is of course "China/Chinese," for which there is essentially only one word in Khmer: Chen, without a colloquial or pejorative twin, although borrowed Techieu Chinese kinship terms are sometimes used in Khmer with alternatively intimate or negative connotations (eg, chong or chek for uncle, moi for big sister, che for little sister, hia for big brother, etc).



--
Steve Heder
Department of Politics and International Studies
School of Oriental and African Studies
Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom


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From: therese guyot
Date: Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 1:48 AM



Hi Nicolas,

In my current study of legal Cham archives, (dated from the 18th-19th centuries), the term yuon designates kinh people, with no pejorative meaning at all, as the Annam people (Cham people use "yuon klap" when they talk about Tonkin people).
As Liam said, yuon come from sanskrit term yavana, and Cambodian, but also Bahnar, Stien, Jorai and Radé people as well, use the same word, or a derive form of it (juon), when they speak about kinh people.
So, if there's a negative meaning of yuon, it comes from the context and the people who use it. There is no generality, but many many micro-contexts and micro-histories that you have to understand in their globality before making any possible judgement.
Hoping this would help you!
T.

Thérèse Guyot
Ph'D Candidate EPHE