Citizendia

Hmong-Mien
Miao-Yao
Geographic
distribution:		China, Southeast Asia
Genetic
classification:		One of the world's primary language families
Subdivisions:


The Hmong-Mien or Miao-Yao languages are a small language family of southern China and Southeast Asia. China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family Hmong ( RPA: Hmoob) or Mong ( RPA: Moob) is the common name for a group of dialects of the West Hmongic (Chuanqiandian branch The Yao nationality ( Traditional Chinese: 瑤族 Simplified Chinese: 瑶族 Pinyin: Yáo zú; Vietnamese: người Dao List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National They are spoken in mountainous areas of southern China, including Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, and Hubei provinces, where its speakers have been relegated to being "hill people," while the Han Chinese have settled the more fertile river valleys. ( also spelled Kweichow) is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the southwestern part of the country ( is a province of China, located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting (hence the name Hunan, meaning ( Postal map spelling: Szechwan and Szechuan) is a province in western China with its capital in Chengdu. Guangxi (or Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region;) is a Zhuang autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. ( Postal map spelling: Hupeh) is a central province of the People's Republic of China. Han Chinese ( are an Ethnic group native to China and by most modern definitions the largest single Ethnic group in the world. Within the last 300–400 years, the Hmong and some Mien people have migrated to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar. The Kingdom of Thailand (ˈtaɪlænd ราชอาณาจักรไทย, râːtɕʰa-ʔaːnaːtɕɑ̀k-tʰɑj Laos (ˈlɑːoʊs or /ˈlaʊs/ officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a Landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma Vietnam (ˌviːɛtˈnɑːm Việt Nam) officially Burma, officially the Union of Myanmar ( pjìdàunzṵ mjàmmà nàinŋàndɔ̀ is the largest country by geographical area in mainland Southeast Asia. As a result of the Indochina Wars, many Hmong speakers left Southeast Asia for Australia, the United States, and other countries. The Indochina Wars ( Vietnamese: Chiến tranh Đông Dương) refers to Wars of national liberation and attempts of the Vietnamese communists to assert regional For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the

Contents

Relationships

Hmong (Miao) and Mien (Yao) are clearly distinct, but closely related. The relationship of the poorly known Ho Nte language (Mandarin Shē) is obscure, though it may be closest to Mien. The She language, spoken by the She people, is a Hmong-Mien language Part of the difficulty is that it has been strongly influenced by neighboring tongues. One proposed internal classification is listed below.

Earlier linguistic classifications placed the Hmong-Mien languages into the Sino-Tibetan language family, where they remain in many Chinese classifications, but the current consensus among Western linguists is that they constitute a family of their own. The Sino-Tibetan languages form a Language family composed of at least the Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields The family has its origins in southern or perhaps even central China. The current area of greatest agreement is that the languages appeared in the region between the Yangtze and Mekong rivers, but there is reason to believe that speakers migrated there from further north with the expansion of the Han Chinese. The Mekong is one of the world’s major Rivers It is the 11th-longest river in the world and 7th longest in Asia Han Chinese ( are an Ethnic group native to China and by most modern definitions the largest single Ethnic group in the world.

Some have conjectured that the Hmong-Mien languages may be part of an "Austric" superfamily, but evidence for this has been slow to develop. The Austric language superfamily is a large theoretical grouping of languages primarily spoken in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and the eastern Indian subcontinent

Names

The Mandarin names for these languages are Miáo and Yáo.

Meo, Hmu, Mong, and Hmong are local names for Miao, but since most Laotian refugees in the United States call themselves Hmong/Mong, this name has become better known in English than the others in recent decades. However, the name Hmong is not used in China, where the majority of the Miao live.

The Chinese name Yao, on the other hand, is for the Yao nationality, which is a cultural rather than ethno-linguistic group. The Yao nationality ( Traditional Chinese: 瑤族 Simplified Chinese: 瑶族 Pinyin: Yáo zú; Vietnamese: người Dao It includes peoples speaking the Mien, Kadai, Yi, and Miao languages. The Tai-Kadai languages, also known as Kadai, Kradai, or Kra-Dai languages and in China as Zhuang-Dong languages are a tonal Yi (also Moso Lolo Noso etc) is a family of closely related tonal Tibeto-Burman languages spoken by the Yi people. For this reason the ethnonym Mien may be preferred as less ambiguous. An ethnonym ( Gk έθνος ethnos, 'tribe' + όνομα onoma, 'name' is the name applied to a given Ethnic group.

The words Hmong and Mien, both meaning "person," are cognate. Cognates in Linguistics are words that have a common origin They may occur within a language such as shirt and skirt as two English words descended from

Characteristics

Like many languages in southern China, the Hmong-Mien languages tend to be monosyllabic and syntactically analytic. A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds In morphological typology (in linguistics an isolating language (also analytic language) is any Language in which words are composed of They are some of the most highly tonal languages in the world. Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words

Proposed internal classification

Ethnologue lists 35 Hmong-Mien languages, some of which are mutually intelligible. Ethnologue Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics a Christian [1] The following classification follows Matisoff 2001. James A Matisoff (born July 14, 1937) is a professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California Berkeley and noted

In addition, the position of Ho Nte is obscure. Hmong ( RPA: Hmoob) or Mong ( RPA: Moob) is the common name for a group of dialects of the West Hmongic (Chuanqiandian branch Hmong ( RPA: Hmoob) or Mong ( RPA: Moob) is the common name for a group of dialects of the West Hmongic (Chuanqiandian branch ( also spelled Kweichow) is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the southwestern part of the country The Yao nationality ( Traditional Chinese: 瑤族 Simplified Chinese: 瑶族 Pinyin: Yáo zú; Vietnamese: người Dao The Iu Mien language is one of the main languages spoken by the Yao people in China, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and more recently The She language, spoken by the She people, is a Hmong-Mien language

For an examination of alternate schmes such as the one by Strecker and one prepared for Miao by Chinese linguists, see Bryce Schroeder's Hmong page.

Further reading

References

  1. ^ Hmong-Mien Language Family Tree on Ethnologue
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