chẳng

See also: chang, Chang, cháng, chàng, chāng, and chǎng

Vietnamese

Etymology

Fusion between chăng and có.^[1]

Originally the chief negator in earlier stages of Vietnamese beginning from late 14th century to late seventeenth century; this usage as the neutral negator was replaced by không, but chẳng and other negators are still widely used in many situations. Cognate with Muong chăng, Nguôn chẳng. Compare Thai ช่าง (châang), Lao ຊ່າງ (sāng, “to not care”). See also chăng and chả.

Pronunciation

(Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [t͡ɕaŋ˧˩]
(Huế) IPA^(key): [t͡ɕaŋ˧˨]
(Saigon) IPA^(key): [caŋ˨˩˦]
Audio (Hà Nội): (file)

Adverb

chẳng • (庄, 拯, 庒, 𫽄)

not at all
Chẳng biết. ― No idea.
even if not
Chẳng chua, nhưng vẫn có thể là chanh.
Even if it isn’t sour, it could still be a lemon.
if not
there is not

Synonyms

(not at all): đâu, nào, không, chả, đếch (informal), đách (informal), đéo (vulgar), cóc, ứ

Derived terms

References

^
2024, Trang Phan, Tuan-Cuong Nguyen, Masaaki Shimizu, “The Rise of Negative Markers in Vietnamese: Evidence from Primary Nôm Texts”, in Studies in Vietnamese Historical Linguistics, →DOI:
It is worth mentioning here that Trinh et al. (2024) put forward a speculation that chẳng is the result of the fusion between chăng and có. The textual data we have examined seems to be in favor of this hypothesis.

[1] 
2024, Trang Phan, Tuan-Cuong Nguyen, Masaaki Shimizu, “The Rise of Negative Markers in Vietnamese: Evidence from Primary Nôm Texts”, in Studies in Vietnamese Historical Linguistics, →DOI:
It is worth mentioning here that Trinh et al. (2024) put forward a speculation that chẳng is the result of the fusion between chăng and có. The textual data we have examined seems to be in favor of this hypothesis.

[1]