- Hmong–Mien languages
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Hmong–Mien Miao–Yao Geographic
distribution:China, Southeast Asia Linguistic classification: One of the world's primary language families; sometimes included in an "Austric" macrofamily[1] Proto-language: Proto-Hmong–Mien Subdivisions: (position of She (Ho Ne) obscure)ISO 639-5: hmx 
Hmongic languages in red, Mienic languages in purpleThe Hmong–Mien, or Miao–Yao, languages are a 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 its speakers have been relegated to being "hill people," while the Han Chinese have settled the more fertile river valleys. Within the last 300–400 years, the Hmong and some Mien people have migrated to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Burma. As a result of the Indochina Wars, many Hmong speakers left Southeast Asia for Australia, the United States, and other countries.
Contents
Relationships
Hmong (Miao) and Mien (Yao) are clearly distinct, but closely related. For internal classifications, see Hmongic languages and Mienic languages. The relationship of the poorly known Ho Ne (or Huo Nie) of the Shē is obscure; it may be closest to Mien, but it has also been strongly argued to be Hmongic.[2] Part of the difficulty is that it has been strongly influenced by neighboring languages.
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 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.[3]
Paul K. Benedict, an American scholar, extended the Austric theory to include the Tai–Kadai family of Southeast Asia and the Hmong–Mien languages, together forming an Austro-Tai superfamily. The Austro-Tai hypothesis never received wide acceptance for Hmong–Mien, however.[4]
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. It includes peoples speaking the Mien, Tai–Kadai, Yi, and Miao languages. For this reason the ethnonym Mien may be preferred as less ambiguous.
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: Longmo and Zongdi Hmong have as many as twelve distinct tones.[5] They are notable phonologically for the occurrence of voiceless sonorants and uvular consonants; otherwise their phonology is also quite typical of the region.
They are SVO in word order but are not as rigidly right-branching as the Tai–Kadai languages or most Mon–Khmer languages, since they have genitives and numerals before the noun like Chinese. They are extremely poor in adpositions: serial verb constructions replace most functions of adpositions in languages like English. For example, a construction translating as "be near" would be used where in English preopositions like "in" or "at" would be used.[6]
Besides their tonality and lack of adpositions, another striking feature is the abundance of numeral classifiers and their use where other languages use definite articles or demonstratives to modify nouns.
See also
- Proto-Hmong–Mien language
- Classification schemes for Southeast Asian languages
Further reading
- Paul K. Benedict (1942). "Thai, Kadai and Indonesian: a new alignment in south east Asia." American Anthropologist 44.576-601.
- Paul K. Benedict (1975). Austro-Thai language and culture, with a glossary of roots. New Haven: HRAF Press. ISBN 0875363237.
- Enwall, J. (1995). Hmong writing systems in Vietnam: a case study of Vietnam's minority language policy. Stockholm, Sweden: Center for Pacific Asian Studies.
- Enwall, J. (1994). A myth become reality: history and development of the Miao written language. Stockholm East Asian monographs, no. 5-6. [Stockholm?]: Institute of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University. ISBN 171532692
- Lombard, S. J., & Purnell, H. C. (1968). Yao-English dictionary.
- Lyman, T. A. (1979). Grammar of Mong Njua (Green Miao): a descriptive linguistic study. [S.l.]: The author.
- Lyman, T. A. (1974). Dictionary of Mong Njua: a Miao (Meo) language of Southeast Asia. Janua linguarum, 123. The Hague: Mouton.
- Lyman, T. A. (1970). English/Meo pocket dictionary. Bangkok, Thailand: German Cultural Institute, Goethe-Institute.
- Purnell, H. C. (1965). Phonology of a Yao dialect spoken in the province of Chiengrai, Thailand. Hartford studies in linguistics, no. 15.
- Smalley, W. A., Vang, C. K., & Yang, G. Y. (1990). Mother of writing: the origin and development of a Hmong messianic script. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226762866
- Smith, P. (1995). Mien–English everyday language dictionary = Mienh in-wuonh dimv nzangc sou. Visalia, CA: [s.n.].
External links
- The LINGUIST List MultiTree Project: Hmong–Mien Family Trees
- Basic vocabulary word lists of Hmong–Mien languages
References
- ^ Paul K. Benedict (1942)
- ^ Ratliff, Martha. 1998. Ho Ne (She) is Hmongic: one final argument, in Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 97–109.
- ^ *Blench, Roger. 2004. Stratification in the peopling of China: how far does the linguistic evidence match genetics and archaeology? Paper for the Symposium "Human migrations in continental East Asia and Taiwan: genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence". Geneva June 10–13, 2004. Université de Genève.
- ^ "On the Thai evidence for Austro-Tai" (PDF), in Selected Papers on Comparative Tai Studies, ed. R.J. Bickner et al., pp. 117–164. Center for South and Southeast Asian studies, the University of Michigan.
- ^ Goddard, Cliff; The Languages of East and Southeast Asia: An Introduction; p. 36. ISBN 0199248605
- ^ Goddard, The Languages of East and Southeast Asia; p. 121
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