Hmong-Mien languages Totally Explained

Everything about The Hmong-mien totally explained

The Hmong-Mien or Miao-Yao languages are a small language family of southern China and Southeast Asia. They are spoken in mountainous areas of southern China, including Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi and Hubei provinces, where they've been relegated to being 'hill people', while the Han Chinese have settled the more fertile river valleys. Within the last 300–400 years, Hmong and some Mien people migrated to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar. As a result of the Indochina Wars, many Hmong speakers left Southeast Asia for Australia, the United States, and other countries.

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. 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 family has its origins in southern or perhaps even central China. The current region of greatest diversity is between the Yangtze and Mekong rivers, but there's reason to believe that they migrated there from further north with the expansion of the Han Chinese.
Some have conjectured that the Hmong-Mien languages may be part of an "Austric" superfamily, but evidence for this has been slow in coming.

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 isn't 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. It includes peoples speaking Mien, Kadai, Yi, and Miao languages. For this reason the ethnonym Mien may be preferred as less ambiguous.
The words Hmong and Mien, both meaning 'person', are cognate.

Characteristics

Like many languages in southern China, the Hmong-Mien languages tend to be monosyllabic and syntactically analytic. They are some of the most highly tonal languages in the world.

Proposed internal classification

Ethnologue lists 35 Hmong-Mien languages, some of which are mutually intelligible. The following classification follows Matisoff 2001.

Hmong (Miao) languages
- ? 'Gelo'
- Northern Hmong
  - Xiangxi Miao (Red Miao)
- Western Hmong
  - Libo Miao
  - Weining Miao
  - Yi Miao
  - Hmong proper (includes Hmong Njua (Blue/Green Miao), Hmong Daw (White Miao), and Magpie Miao)
- Central Hmong
  - Qiandong Miao (Black Miao)
  - Longli Miao
- East Guizhou
- Patengic
  - Pa-Hng
  - Yongcong

Mien (Yao) languages

Iu Mien
Kim Mun
Ba Pai

In addition, the position of Ho Nte is obscure.
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 Information

Get more info on 'Hmong-mien'.

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