Hmong-Mien Languages
The Hmong-Mien (also known as Miao-Yao—a term now rarely used outside of China) languages, are one of the major independent language families of Southeast Asia. The two branches of the family, Hmong (Miao) and Mien (Yao), respectively, may be described as clusters of dialects, which are scattered over a wide area of southern China and some adjacent Southeast Asian countries. Hmong dialects are spoken by approximately 5.5 million speakers; Mien speakers number approximately 2 million.
The most important variants of Hmong are Western Hmong (2 million speakers in the Chinese provinces of Guizhou, Guangxi, Sichuan, and Yunnan, as well as in northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos), Eastern Hmong (1.4 million speakers in Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi), Northern Hmong (750,000 speakers in Hunan Province, China), Hmong Daw, or "White Hmong" (100,000 speakers in Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam), and Hmong Njua, or "Blue Hmong" (200,000 speakers in Laos and Thailand). Considerable numbers of White and Blue Hmong speakers live abroad, at least 70,000 of each group in the United States. The 500,000 speakers of Punu in Guangxi are officially included in the Mien (Yao) nationality but speak a Hmong language. Only a thousand persons of the approximately 350,000 that constitute the She nationality in Guangdong Province, China, speak another Hmong language, generally known as Ho-Nte.
The Mien language is more uniform. Its most important varieties are Mien proper (approximately 850,000 speakers in Guangxi, Guangdong, Yunnan, Hunan, and Guizhou; some 60,000 in Laos; and 30,000 in Thailand), Iu Mien (200,000 speakers in Guangdong), and Mun, spoken in southern China, Laos, and Vietnam.
Hmong-Mien languages are typical Southeast Asian languages, with monosyllabic words, rich systems of tones (up to eight—in some dialects of Mien, more than ten), subject-verb-object word order, etc. Typological differences within the family include the fact that words in Hmong may end only in nasal consonants or no consonant at all, whereas Mien languages mostly tolerate different consonants in this position. In Hmong, modifiers (adjectives, etc.) usually follow the noun they modify, whereas in Mien the opposite order prevails. The She language behaves, in terms of these and other typological features, like a language of the Mien group, but can nevertheless be shown to belong to the Hmong branch.
In terms of genetic relationship, the status of Hmong-Mien as a family of related languages is not in doubt, but external relationships have not been established in a satisfactory way. The formerly widespread inclusion of Hmong-Mien into the large Sino-Tibetan phylum has now generally been abandoned.
Further Reading
Harriehausen, Bettina. (1990) Hmjong Njua: Syntaktische Analyse einer gesprochenen Sprache mithilfe datenverar-beitungstechnischer Mittel und sprachvergleichende Beschreibung des südostasiatischen Sprachraumes. Tübingen, Germany: Niemeyer.
Mottin, Jean. (1978) Éléments de Grammaire Hmong Blanc. Bangkok, Thailand: Don Bosco.
Niederer, Barbara. (1998) Les langues Hmong-Mjen (Miao-Yao): Phonologie historique. Munich: Lincom-Europa.
Ramsey, S. Robert. (1987) The Languages of China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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