The Hmong Language Options

[dalawapo]

has anyone made a topic about this yet?

The Hmong Language

By Hmong Cultural Center

The Hmong language branches into two dialects: White Hmong and Blue (or Green) Hmong. The colors in these names represent the colors used in the traditional women's costumes of the different groups, reflecting somewhat different cultural heritages and residential distributions in distinct regions of China.

White and Green Hmong are mutually intelligible. The differences between White and Green Hmong are probably not much greater than those which distinguish British and American English. It is true, however, that some Hmong (especially White Hmong) claim to have occasional problems understanding the speakers of the other dialect.

Neither White nor Green Hmong has ever had any official status in Laos, Thailand, or China. Thus, there are no grounds for preferring one of the dialects over the other. In spite of this, White Hmong has been favored in many ways. The Hmong writing system most commonly used, the Romanized Practical Alphabet, generally is closest to the White Hmong pronunciation. Most dictionaries of Hmong only present the White Hmong dialect. In Laos, the majority of the Hmong population with an education, probably spoke the White Hmong dialect. The English name "Hmong" as opposed to "Mong" represents the White Hmong pronounciation.

The Hmong language is one of a group of closely related languages of Southeast Asia and Southern China often referred to as the Miao-Yao languages. Besides being spoken by Hmong people in Laos, Thailand, Burma, and Vietnam, the Hmong language is widely spoken by the Miao minority in Southern China. The Hmong language is also related to the Yao languages which include Iu Mien, spoken in Laos and Thailand as well as China, and five other languages spoken by minority groups in the larger region.

The Hmong language shares a number of basic structural characteristics with several other languages of Asia, including Chinese. These include the following:

A Preference for Monosyllabic Words - Hmong is a predominantly monosyllabic language like Vietnamese and Chinese and in contrast to the multi-syllable character of English. Most Hmong words only consist of one syllable.

Lexical Use of Tone: In Hmong, a particular tone is associated with each syllable and the syllable must be pronounced with this tone. For example, in Hmong the word Ma has different meanings depending upon whether a high, mid or low tone is used when saying the word. In Hmong there are eight different tones (compared to 5 in Vietnamese and 6 in Laotian). The 8 different tones include the following - a high tone, a high falling tone, a mid-rising tone, a mid tone, a breathy mid low tone, a low tone, and low falling tone.

Lack of Inflections. In Hmong, words do not have any inflected forms such as those utilized in English to indicate the plural and possessive forms of nouns (i.e. boy boys, boy's), the different genders and cases of pronouns (i.e. he, his, him), or the present, past, gerund and participle of verbs (i.e. take, takes, took, taking, taken). Hmong words possess only one form. Number, case, tense etc. of Hmong words are made clear by the order of the words and by the combination in which they are used.

Noun Classifiers: Nouns in Hmong are divided into a sizable number of different classes, similar to genders in some European languages, but based on categories other than sex. In most cases, a Hmong noun is preceded by a classifying word that makes clear its class membership. For example, "tsev" (house) goes with the classifier "lub" as in "lub tsev" to make "the house". Sometimes a Hmong noun has different meanings depending upon the classifier used.

Multiple Verb Construction: A characteristic that Hmong shares with Chinese is its utilization of multiple verbs in sentences. Hmong sentences often use two main verbs in one clause without any connection such as the English "and" between them. For example, in Hmong the speaker says the equivalent of "I go arrive his house" wheras an English speaker would state "I go to his house."

Source: Handbook for Teaching Hmong-Speaking Students. Developed by Bruce Thowpaou Bliatout, Bruce T. Downing, Judy Lewis and Dao Yang. Folsom Cordova Unified School District, Southeast Asia Community Resource Center, 1988. pp. 48-59.

http://www.hmongcenter.org/hmonglanguage2.html

[moryHX]

look what i pulled out!!! this is very old but still...it's very interesting how language explores discrimination...but of course i knew that already...but then the last four parts of this article was very interesting...now i'll know how to start with doing my audio clips to teach hmong to those who are interested (IMG:http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[dgs_vex]

we use english alphanumeric characters and yet we spell our names diffrently for the conversion from hmong to english? why is that? is it because we are cool like that?

[lilasiankid]

pronouciation

[herc]

^^ yea it's the pronounciation and because we are cool