Hmong language

 ( West Hmongic Languages ) 

1. 1st Row: IPA, Hmong RPA
2. 2nd Row: Nyiakeng Puachue
3. 3rd Row: Pahawh

⟨ai⟩ 


     

⟨ia⟩ 


     

⟨aw⟩ 


     

⟨au⟩ 


     

⟨ua⟩ 


     

The Dananshan standard of China is similar. Phonemic differences from Hmong Daw and Mong Leeg are color-coded and marked as absent or added.

1. 1st Row: IPA, Hmong RPA
2. 2nd Row: Nyiakeng Puachue
3. 3rd Row: Pahawh

The Dananshan standard of China is similar. (Phonemic differences from Hmong Daw and Mong Leeg are color-coded and marked as absent or added. Minor differences, such as the voicing of prenasalized stops, or whether is an affricate or is velar, may be a matter of transcription.) Aspirates, voiceless fricatives, voiceless nasals, and glottal stop only occur with yin tones (1, 3, 5, 7). Standard orthography is added in angled brackets. The glottal stop is not written; it is not distinct from a zero initial. There is also a , which occurs only in foreign words.

The status of the consonants described here as single phonemes with lateral release is controversial. A number of scholars instead analyze them as biphonemic clusters with  as the second element. The difference in analysis (e.g., between  and ) is not based on any disagreement in the sound or pronunciation of the consonants in question, but on differing theoretical grounds. Those in favor of a unit-phoneme analysis generally argue for this based on distributional evidence (i.e., if clusters, these would be the only clusters in the language, although see below) and dialect evidence (the laterally released dentals in Mong Leeg, e.g. , correspond to the voiced dentals of White Hmong), whereas those in favor of a cluster analysis tend to argue on the basis of general phonetic principles (other examples of labial phonemes with lateral release appear extremely rare or nonexistentEven the landmark book The Sounds of the World's Languages specifically describes lateral release as involving a [[homorganic]] consonant.).
     

Some linguists prefer to analyze the prenasalized consonants as clusters whose first element is . However, this cluster analysis is not as common as the above one involving .
     

Only used in [[Hmong RPA]] and not in [[Pahawh Hmong]], since Hmong RPA uses [[Latin script]] and Pahawh Hmong does not. For example, in Hmong RPA, to write keeb, the order Consonant + Vowel + Tone (CVT) must be followed, so it is ''k'' + ''ee'' + ''b'' = keeb, but in Pahawh Hmong, it is just Keeb "" (3rd-Stage Version).
     

Dananshan has a syllabic (written ) in Chinese loans, such as lf 'two' and lx 'child'.

The Dananshan tones are transcribed as pure tone. However, given how similar several of them are, it is likely that there are also phonational differences as in Hmong Daw and Mong Leeg. Tones 4 and 6, for example, are said to make tenuis consonant plosives breathy voiced (浊送气), suggesting they may be breathy/murmured like the Hmong g-tone. Tones 7 and 8 are used in early Chinese loans with entering tone, suggesting they may once have marked checked syllables.

Because voiceless consonants apart from tenuis plosives are restricted to appearing before certain tones (1, 3, 5, 7), those are placed first in the table:

So much information is conveyed by the tones that it is possible to speak intelligibly using musical tunes only; there is a tradition of young lovers communicating covertly playing a Jew's harp to convey vowel sounds.

Natalie Jill Smith, author of "Ethnicity, Reciprocity, Reputation and Punishment: An Ethnoexperimental Study of Cooperation among the Chaldeans and Hmong of Detroit (Michigan)", wrote that the Qing Dynasty had caused a previous Hmong writing system to die out when it stated that the death penalty would be imposed on those who wrote it down.Smith, Natalie Jill. "Ethnicity, Reciprocity, Reputation and Punishment: An Ethnoexperimental Study of Cooperation among the Chaldeans and Hmong of Detroit (Michigan)" (PhD dissertation). University of California, Los Angeles, 2001. p. 225. UMI Number: 3024065. Cites: Hamilton-Merritt, 1993 and Faderman, 1998

Since the end of the 19th century, linguists created over two dozen Hmong writing systems, including systems using Chinese characters, the Lao alphabet, the Cyrillic script, the Thai alphabet, and the Vietnamese alphabet. In addition, in 1959 Shong Lue Yang, a Hmong spiritual leader from Laos, created an 81 symbol writing system called Pahawh Hmong. Yang was not previously literate in any language. Chao Fa, an anti-Laotian government Hmong group, uses this writing system.

In the 1980s, Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong script was created by a Hmong Minister, Reverend Chervang Kong Vang, to be able to capture Hmong vocabulary clearly and also to remedy redundancies in the language as well as address semantic confusions that was lacking in other scripts. Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong script was mainly used by United Christians Liberty Evangelical Church, a church also founded by Vang, although the script have been found to be in use in Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, France, and Australia. The script bears strong resemblance to the Lao alphabet in structure and form and characters inspired from the Hebrew alphabets, although the characters themselves are different.

Other experiments by Hmong and non-Hmong orthographers have been undertaken using invented letters.http://www.hmonglanguage.net Hmong Language online encyclopedia.

The Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA), the most widely used script for Hmong Daw and Mong Leeg, was developed in Laos between 1951 and 1953 by three Western missionaries. In the United States Hmong do not use RPA for spelling of proper nouns, because they want their names to be easily pronounced by people unfamiliar with RPA. For instance Hmong in the U.S. spell Hmoob as "Hmong," and Liab Lis is spelled as Lia Lee.

The Dananshan standard in China is written in a pinyin-based alphabet, with tone letters similar to those used in RPA.

There is no simple correspondence between the tone letters. The historical connection between the tones is as follows. The Chinese names reflect the tones given to early Chinese loan words with those tones in Chinese.

Example: lus Hmoob /̤ lṳ˧˩ m̥̥õ˦ / / (White Hmong) / lug Moob / / (Mong Leng) / lol Hmongb (Dananshan) / lus Hmôngz (Vietnamese) "Hmong language".

(possessive) + (quantifier) + (classifier) + noun + (adjective) + (demonstrative)

The Hmong pronominal system distinguishes between three grammatical persons and three numbers – singular, dual, and plural. They are not marked for case, that is, the same word is used to translate both "I" and "me", "she" and "her", and so forth. These are the of Hmong Daw and Mong Leeg:

1. 1st Row: IPA, Hmong RPA
2. 2nd Row: Vietnamese Hmong
3. 3rd Row: Pahawh Hmong
4. 4th Row: Nyiakeng Puachue

Also, classifiers may occur with a noun without any numerals for Definiteness and/or specific reference in Hmong. The following examples are again from Green Hmong:

Moreover, nominal possessive phrases are expressed with a classifier; however, it may be omitted when the referent of the possessed noun is inalienable from the possessor as shown in the following Hmong Daw (White Hmong) phrases:

Relative clause is also expressed with classifiers.

Although absent in Mandarin Chinese, definite reference by bare classifier constructions are found in Cantonese (Sinitic) and Zhuang language (Kra-dai), which is the case for possessive classifier constructions as well.

Here is an example from White Hmong:

Here is an example from White Hmong:

Progressive: (Mong Leeg) taab tom + verb, (White Hmong) tab tom + verb = situation in progress

Taab/tab tom + verb can also be used to indicate a situation that is about to start. That is clearest when taab/tab tom occurs in conjunction with the irrealis marker yuav. Note that the taab tom construction is not used if it is clear from the context that a situation is ongoing or about to begin.

Perfective: sentence/clause + lawm = completed situation

Lawm at the end of a sentence can also indicate that an action is underway:

Another common way to indicate the accomplishment of an action or attainment is by using tau, which, as a main verb, means 'to get/obtain.' It takes on different connotations when it is combined with other verbs. When it occurs before the main verb (i.e. tau + verb), it conveys the attainment or fulfillment of a situation. Whether the situation took place in the past, the present, or the future is indicated at the discourse level rather than the sentence level. If the event took place in the past, tau + verb translates to the past tense in English.

Tau is optional if an explicit past time marker is present (e.g. nag hmo, last night). Tau can also mark the fulfillment of a situation in the future:

When tau follows the main verb (i.e. verb + tau), it indicates the accomplishment of the purpose of an action.

Tau is also common in serial verb constructions that are made up of a verb, followed by an accomplishment: (White Hmong) nrhiav tau, to look for; caum tau, to chase; yug tau, to give birth.

Yuav can also be analyzed as a marker of irrealis mood, for situations that are unfulfilled or unrealized. That includes hypothetical or non-occurring situations with past, present, or future time references:

List of colors:

The following color terms are given as in Hmong Daw (HD; White Hmong) and Mong Leeg (ML; Green Hmong).

Several of the Hmong terms for colors are native roots that date back to at least the Proto-Hmongic period, such as dub 'black', dawb 'white', and liab 'red', while daj 'yellow' was a very early borrowing from Chinese. Several other terms are more recent innovations.

The Hmong language program in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota is one of the first programs in the United States to teach language-accredited Hmong classes.

Research in nursing shows that when translating from English to Hmong, the translator must take into account that Hmong comes from an oral tradition and equivalent concepts may not exist. For example, the word and concept for "prostate" does not exist.