It is difficult to establish what exactly the term Hmong denotes, either as an ethnonym or as a language designation. Linguistically it is safer to say that there is a language continuum stretching through Southern China into Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, where neighboring groups are more or less mutually intelligible, but as the distance between them increases, intelligibility declines, sometimes so drastically as to form completely separate languages only to be reckoned as belonging to the same language family after comparing their cognates (see Map 4.3). And in this part of the world where mountains, gorges, rivers and forests predominate, distance in map could often be very tricky for travelers and for linguists who may find his language map is similarly full of discontinuous boundaries. Centuries of migration and isolation also help create numerous enclaves and exclaves, or ‘language islands’, sometimes as small as a village with a few hundred speakers.
Though 'Hmong' has often been used to designate a 'core' language group which has three 'dialects' and the speakers of which constitute the majority of the Hmong, certain languages, such as Bunu or Pa-Hng (Hmongic languages of Yao ethnic group), might not be more diverse from their neighboring Hmong dialect than one Hmong
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dialect is from another. Usually the whole continuum is termed ‘the Hmongic languages’. Together with the related Mien languages (another continuum distributed in roughly the same area), they form the so-called Hmong-Mien languages, with about eight to ten million users worldwide, including a substantial population living in the United States. But the relationship of the Hmong-Mien languages to the Sino-Tibetan language family is not altogether clear. Some, especially Chinese scholars, tend to confirm their genetic link, whereas other linguists categorize them as belonging to Austro-Asiatic, Tai-Kadai or forming a family of its own and insist that the similarities between Hmong-Mien and Sino-Tibetan are due to very early borrowing and long history of contact. The most powerful argument against a Sino-Tibetan membership is that the reconstructed Proto-Hmong-Mien does not show cognates with Sino-Tibetan languages in numerals under four and basic personal pronouns. There has not been a widely-accepted consensus yet (Benedict 1972; Ma 2003).
Ethnographically the Minzu (lit. ethnic group, 民 族 ) that the Chinese
government recognizes as Miao cannot be equated with the Hmongic speakers, and not even all those who call themselves Hmong, Hmu, Amo etc. cognate names speak a Hmongic language. Miao is certainly a Sinicised form of their self-designation deriving from the stem *hmo(n), cognate to the Mien autonym *mjen (Ma 2003). Some Miao people speak Chinese, Mien, Dai or mixed languages, and some Hmongic speakers, out of one reason or another, are labeled as the Yao (mostly Mien-speaking) or other ethnic groups in China, Vietnam and other countries. Even within those Hmongic speakers, traditional, tribal or territorial identity sometimes overrides the ethnic identity constructed on linguistic and cultural similarities, thus some of them may disagree on being regarded as the Miao or the Hmong.
The core Hmong language in China consists of three quite distinct dialects, so different from one another that four systems of Romanization have to be devised in order to spell them: (1) Chuanqiandian Dialect, or West Hmong, Hmoob, which contains further many divergent sub-dialects. It is spoken by about 2.6 million people, mainly from the White, Green and Flowery Miao as traditionally distinguished by their dress colors. These speakers live in Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces of
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China, and also form the majorities among American Hmong immigrants. (2) Xiangxi Dialect, or Eastern Hmong, Dut Xongb, spoken by about a million, mainly ‘Red Miao’ living in west Hunan. (3) Qiandong Dialect, or Central Hmong, Hveb Hmub, spoken by about 2 millions, who are mainly ‘Black Miao’ and live in eastern Guizhou. A fourth system is for the Diandongbei Dialect, now generally regarded as a sub-dialect of Chuanqiandian Dialect, but with its distinctive completes set of voiced stops (F. Wang 1985).
Map 4.3 Distribution of Hmong-Mien Language Family in China and Southeast Asia122
Despite the differences between dialects, the Hmong language does display common characteristics. In phonology, all dialects have affricates, uvular stops, unvoiced nasals and unvoiced laterals. Most dialects have prenasalized stops (mp, ndz etc.) and consonant clusters formed by a labial stop and [l] or [ʐ] ([pl], [mp‘ʐ] etc.). All dialects distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated stops ([p] and [p‘], some
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http://kids.britannica.com/elementary/art-95147/Distribution-of-Hmong-Mien-language-family-in-China-and-So utheast, last retrieved at April 18th 2013.
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dialects have voiced or even voiced aspirated stops), and allow only two allophones [n] and [ŋ] for consonantal Auslaut, similar to modern Mandarin. None of the dialect distinguishes vowel length and tight/loose vowels (the tight vowels are sometimes called ‘creaky sound’ in English, which is a feature in many Tibetan-Burmese languages). But all dialects employ tones to distinguish meanings, and their tonal systems are systematically corresponding to each other (F. Wang 1985).
The simple words in Hmong language are predominantly monosyllabic, and it could be called an isolating language in that it does not inflect or agglutinate words to express case, tense, mood, etc. It distinguishes singular, dual and plural, first, second and third persons in pronouns. The adjective and demonstrative usually follow the noun, and prepositions rather than postpositions are used to express temporal or spatial relationships. Verbs can complement other verbs and adjectives to make meanings more specific. Usage of measure words is pervasive. In fact, Hmong grammar is not dissimilar to those of most modern Sino-Tibetan languages and could be best described with their terminologies (Ma 2003).
In Hmong legends and songs there are accounts of an ancient writing system and literacy, but so far this is not confirmed. In Leigongshan, East Guizhou, fragments of a stele were found in the 1980s, on which there are some unidentified scripts, seemingly adapted from Chinese characters. Leigongshan has been Hmong homeland for centuries, and the inscription in folk memory has been said to be ancient Hmong scripts. Chengbu town ( in South-western Hunan) has recently discovered a quantity of stone inscriptions which are quite probably the writing system once used in neighbouring area during the Yongzheng Hmong Rebellion (Yongzheng miaomin qiyi雍正苗民起义, late 1730s) and banned by the Manchurian emperor after the riot had been suppressed. It is still hard to determine how old was the system and how widely it had been used, and knowledge of this writing system unfortunately has not survived at all.
We know no Hmong people who had committed their language to writing thereafter until the end of the 19th century, when several unsuccessful creations by native scholars and missionaries had been attempted. In 1905, British Methodist
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missionary Sam Pollard, with the help of local Hmong and Han Christians, invented an abugida spelling system for the Diandongbei sub-dialect spoken in his mission area. It is based on earlier Methodist creation of the Cree language in North America. The script has been used to translate the New Testament and other religious texts, and has soon gained popularity among not only the Hmong, but also Lisu ethnic group and other peoples in the region. A revised version of Pollard script is still in use today (Foggin and Carrier 2009). Chinese government has also created four sets of Latin alphabet scripts for different dialects in the 1950s, but its promotion and utilization have been intermittent due to political, financial and other situations.