I had a weird dream, I was in China and a guy was showing me how to speak in a Hmong language that I was not familiar with..... I remember the scripts look like the Hmu language, but I'm not sure.

how would (old Hmong) sounds like? i know hmong sounds more like the hmao language, but who knows?

the largest/populous miao group in china are the hmu, and the most diversified group ever are the hmong; however, the group that live closer to the ancient hmong homeland are the xong, and the group that sound like hmong and retain some original hmong traditions are the hmao. interestingly, the hmong are regarded as the oldest group of all branches.

samples of the three other main languages excluded the hmong languages from yunnan/guangxi/guizhou

the xong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwKhLaGOMIc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_g213JeeL0

the hmu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-Owm4BL1lc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMI2ulId2VU...feature=related

the hmao
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZq4yStbkHo


moon - xong (hlat), hmu (hlat), hmao (hli)
sun - xong (hnei), hmu (hnai), hmao (hnu)
love - xong (khu), hmu (hli), hmao (hlu)
one - xong (ad), hmu (i), hmao (i)
two - xong (oud), hmu (o), hmao (ao)
i - xong (wel), hmu (wil), hmao (gu)
you - xong (mou), hmu (mong), hmao (gao)
go - xong (mong), hmu (mong), hmao (mong)
paper/scripts - xong (dud), hmu (deud), hmao (deud)
flower - xong (bang), hmu (ba), hmao (ban)
have - xong (mai), hmu (mai), hmao (mua)



i pick the hmu language, just because i notice so many unique consonants/tones and it's the middle language of the miao language family as well as the largest group of all groups.

although, i personally believe the xong would be how the old hmong language sounds like just because it has both hmong and mien structures. but, it's quite sinicized? while western and central hmong are not. >.>

Old Hmong sounds like Vietnamese. You descended from us.

like Vietnamese? I don't think Hmong sounds like Vietnamese at all.

Hmong sounds the most like Vietnamese out of all the Asian languages. You should be grateful for borrowing our culture, language, and heritage.

should I be feeling insulted or offended?

Ignore the troll. He's been around other chats trying to inflame others and portray Viets as arrogant and ignorant.

you must have a terrible ear for language because hmong does not sound like vietnamese. mien might, but not hmong. lol, hmong borrowed your culture, language and heritage? first of all, vietnamese language is a mon-khmer language with sinitic influence cause the chinese ruled directly over you guys for over a thousand years. because of this, it's you vietnamese that borrowed your culture and heritage from the chinese. why would we borrow from a 2nd hand language, culture and heritage when we didn't even borrow 1st hand from the chinese? (except for language).

in case you're wondering, there are zero loanwords in hmong vocabulary from vietnamese. all the proven loanwords in hmong vocabulary are from ancient tibeto-burman, old chinese, middle chinese and modern chinese. the closest thing to vietnamese is lao which we just picked up recently.

http://wold.livingsources.org/vocabulary/25

please hmong people, get the word out about this lady, Martha S. Ratliff, who has done a tremendous academic job with our language, most of which has been oblivious to the hmong in america. as a society, we need to honor her somehow before she croaks: http://www.clas.wayne.edu/faculty/ratliff

because of her work and others before, the proto hmong-mien language has been reconstructed.

http://www.amazon.com/Hmong-Mien-Language-...8413&sr=8-1
"This book presents a new reconstruction of Proto Hmong-Mien, the ancestor language of the modern Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao) languages of southern China and northern Southeast Asia. It also contains discussion of selected topics in the history of Hmong-Mien: phonological change, tonogenesis and tone development, ancient morphology, numerals and pronouns, language contact, and the ancient Hmong-Mien world."

the next points for discussion are taken from this academic paper with numerous linguistic works quoted. its a fantastic read for those who are interested in the roots of our language: http://www.pitt.edu/~drm31/sinitic_loans_in_hmong.pdf

[The Yangzi river valley ceased to be the frontier of China and was transformed into its politically dominant heartland instead. Even as the Hmong moved steadily south and west, they still seem to have remained within the Chinese shadow up through the late Tang dynasty—at least a millennium and a half after their first contact with the Chinese. That the Hmong remained within the pall of Chinese political and economic influence is indicated by the existence of several loans relating to government and political economy, such as ‘tax’ and ‘emperor’, dating from this period.]
[Though the Hmong languages are not as heavily sinicized as Mien, they do show unmistakable signs of Sinitic (Chinese) influence in their lexicon and are similar to the Sinitic languages in certain areas of their syntax, morphology, and phonology.]

what can we take from this? qho xiong (like the mien languages), because of extended proximity to the hans and the yangtze, have evolved farther away from the proto-hmong language. because of proximity and social/economic interaction with the qho xiong, the hmu language has also evolved some distance away from proto-hmong.

[However, the advance guard of the Hmong migration, from whom the Mong Leng and Hmong Daw are descended, seem to have left the sphere of Chinese influence sometime after the Tang dynasty, 618 – 907 AD.]

the pattern fits with hmong migration from the yangtze. the more south and west you go, the more the language is intelligible to hmong daw/leng. the more east you go, the more it becomes unintelligible, in support of hmong daw/leng being the advance guard of the hmong migration; hence, the ones whose spoken language is also closest to proto-hmong.

[The development of Hmong tones follows a similar trajectory to Sinitic tones (see section 3.1). The tone system of Proto–Hmong–Mien was a four category inventory with striking similarities to the Chinese system (Chang 1953). This system later underwent a tone–split, which was also very similar to that described for Chinese (Purnell 1970:191-192). With a few small irregularities, both Mong Leng and Hmong Daw preserve seven of the eight original Proto–Hmong–Mien tone categories. Both dialects have lost the tone B2 through mergers. In the case of Mong Leng, it merged with tone C2. In Hmong Daw, it became indistinguishable from tone D1.]

hmong daw/leng has preserved 7 of the 8 original proto-hmong tones. that's a pretty strong case for hmong daw/leng being closest to proto-hmong.

I can never understand the tones, but I do know that the Hmong daw/leng contain consonants that can be categorized as proto-Hmong or old Chinese.

Thank for sharing info about Martha. I will check it out. I have always knew that the Miao people came from many different origins all merge together.

Don't old hmong sound chinese? Not current mandarin, but other...

I heard Old Chinese sounds like Thai or Cambodian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIkQSuZbbt0


Ayouduo singing in her native dialect. Now, I would think old Hmong would sounds like this. You can hear the familiar Hmong consonants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-Owm4BL1lc


The usage of throat and palate. Common among all the Miao languages. Can any other Asian languages pronounce "QHIA" or "QHA" or "MLOOG" "NQUA" I think probably not, maybe some Tai or Tibeto speakers could pronounce some hard Hmong consonants like ML, DL, QH, BL, PL, QL, HL...

Now, "pigeon" in Hmong.. I don't think any other Asian languages could pronounce it. LOL

A keen ear is all one needs.=]

I believe China was Zhong guo for a reason, our Ancestors most likely may have adopted not just language but cultural believes from them. A lot of our Hmong Dawb dialect and even Hmong green to an extent are similarly Zhong wen. The way we speak, it's almost word for word. For example, the hmong word, "meng" is the same as "ming" in Han and a whole host of others too. However, I'd never seen or heard old Han. I can only guess our ancestors and great grand fathers may have used at one point too. Although you may have said that we did not borrow or learn from the Chinese. Hmong people were under their rule for dynasty over to another, force into slavery, and oppressed. It's undeniable that we were force to learn their lifestyles, art, culture, and language. Just like other civilizations in ancient times, they all are influence by Han culture and language.

i think you're not giving enough credit to our hmong ancestors. the more scholars learn about our ancestors, the more it becomes clear that they played a very big role in jump-starting chinese civilization to where it is today. the absolute biggest and most undeniable technology the chinese learned from our ancestors was rice cultivation. is it coincidence that after coming into contact with our ancestors the chinese exploded onto the scene?

two things stand out with hmong and chinese. chinese readily adopt anything that is progressive and beneficial. hmong people don't, especially when it comes to the chinese (much to our own downfall). culturally, its hard to find much that we adopted from them. as far as language goes, yes we adopted a lot of chinese words, but we did not adopt chinese language or syntax. there's a big difference.

hmong people have never really been 'under' chinese rule until the communists, that's why all through the ages they have always referred to us as 'barbarians'. hmong people were always on the periphery of chinese rule, trading and interacting, but never fully under it. a lot of words are the same for hmong and chinese because we borrowed a lot from them; but also because hmong language has made an impact on some of the chinese dialects. there are traces in dialects such as xiang, wu and even hakka (from the she people) that linguists attribute to a hmong substratum.

Wow, Xai... you basically sum up everything that I thought of, but can't seem to compile (organize) it. You present it in a very clear order.

It's correct that as more and more scholars learn about our ancestors, it is starting to be clear that our ancestors played a very huge significant role in the development of the Chinese civilization.

Our ancestors didn't adopt the Chinese culture because they already had an established culture. It's just like the Roman, whom adopted the Greek culture. The Greek were already established. The Roman came in and adopted much of the Greek gods, architecture, traditions and etc.

I have to say, linguistically (words are adopted from one to another). Look at many Hmong words associating with agriculture. The vast definitions of words in the Hmong language associating with farming, livestock, crops are complex and well developed than the Chinese.

There are also many ways to describe rice in the Hmong language, from cook, raw, grain and etc.... less vocabs associated with agriculture in the Chinese vocabulary. Heck, even rice are required to be used when making offerings to the dead and ancestors. The Hmao (Ab-Hmaob) called themselves Hmao because their ancestors called themselves by the term "mao" which means "rice" or people who grew rice.

LOL

even the Hmong people believe the COS (A mortar which Hmong used to crush rice and corn) and ZEB (the female and male slabs of stone which Hmong used to grind rice and corn) originated from the Hmong ancestors who were the first agricultural people. These two "primitive tools" are very important in the Hmong culture and among all the various ethnic groups of southwest China. The Hmong to this day, believe the COS and ZEB were created by the Hmong ancestors.