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'Hmong' (RPA: ''Hmoob'') or 'Mong' (RPA: ''Moob'') is the common name for a group of dialects of the West Hmongic (Chuanqiandian) branch of the Hmong-Mien/Miao-Yao language family spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos.^[1] The total number of speakers worldwide has been estimated to be more than 4 million, including over 200,000 Hmong Americans. Some dialects are mutually intelligible while others are so distinct as to be considered separate languages.

Contents

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Syllable structure

Tones

Orthography

Grammar

See also

References

External links

Phonology

The two dialects described here are known as White Hmong (also called Hmong Der or Hmong Daw) and Green Mong (also called Mong Leng or Mong Njua).^[2] These are the two major dialects spoken by Hmong Americans. While mutually intelligible, the dialects differ in both lexicon and certain aspects of phonology. For instance, Green Mong lacks the aspirated /m/ of Hmong Der and has a third nasalized vowel, /ã/. In English, "Hmong" is used to include both Hmong Der and Mong Leng, although some have suggested a compromise, such as: H'Mong, Mhong, or (H)Mong.

Vowels

The vowel systems of White Hmong and Green Mong are as shown in the following charts. Phonemes particular to each dialect are color coded respectively:

Monophthongs	Oral				Nasal
	Front	Central	Back		Front	Central	Back
'Close'
'Mid'
'Open'

Diphthongs	Closing	Centering
'Close component is front'
'Close component is central'
'Close component is back'

Consonants

Hmong uses a number of phonological features unfamiliar to English speakers, like aspiration, prenasalization, and lateral release, to make phonemic contrasts. The consonant inventory of Hmong is shown in the chart below. (Consonants particular to White Hmong and Green Mong color coded respectively.)

		Bilabial				Labio- dental		Dental				Retroflex		Palatal		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
		Plain		With dental lateral release				Central		Lateral
Plosives	'Voiceless'
	'Voiced'
	'Prenasalized'
Affricates	'Voiceless'
	'Prenasalized'
Nasals
Fricatives
Approximant

Syllable structure

Hmong syllables have a very simple structure: onsets are obligatory (except in a few particles), nuclei may consist of a monophthong or diphthong, and coda consonants are prohibited, except that a weak coda may accompany nasal vowels and a weak coda may accompany the low-falling creaky tone.

Tones

Hmong is a tone language and makes use of seven distinct tones:

Tone	Example[3]	Orthographic Spelling
High	"ball"	'pob'
Mid	"spleen"	'po'
Low	"thorn"	'pos'
High-falling	"female"	'poj'
Mid-rising	"to throw"	'pov'
Low-falling (creaky) tone	"to see"	'pom'
Mid-low (breathy) tone	"grandmother"	'pog'

Orthography

The Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA) is the most widely used script for writing White Hmong and Green Mong in the West. It was developed in Laos between 1951 and 1953 by three Western missionaries with the help of several Hmong assistants. Several other scripts have been developed, including other systems with Roman letters based on the Chinese pinyin or the Vietnamese alphabet. There is also Pahawh, a unique writing system developed by Shong Lue Yang, a Hmong spiritual leader from Laos who believed the script to be revealed by god.^[4]

Grammar

Hmong is an analytic SVO language in which adjectives and demonstratives follow the noun. Noun phrases can contain the following elements (parentheses indicate optional elements):^[5]
(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 personal pronouns of White Hmong (Hmoob Dawb):

White Hmong Pronouns

Person:	First	Second	Third
Singular	kuv	koj	nws
Dual	wb	neb	nkawd
Plural	peb	nej	lawv

See also

★ Hmong people

★ Pahawh Hmong script

★ Romanized Popular Alphabet

References

1. Meaningful Tone: A Study of Tonal Morphology in Compounds, Form Classes, and Expressive Phrases in White Hmong, , Martha, Ratliff, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, 1992,
2. White Hmong phonology: Proceedings of HILP 5, , Chris, Golston, University of Potsdam, 2001, ISBN 3-935024-27-4 [1] Green Mong phonology: Smalley, William et.al. Mother of Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. p. 48-51. See also: Mortensen, David. “Preliminaries to Mong Leng (Hmong Njua) Phonology” Unpublished, UC Berkeley. 2004.
3. Examples taken from: Heimbach, Ernest H. White Hmong-English Dictionary [White Meo-English Dictionary]. 2003 ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1969. Note that many of these words have multiple meanings.
4. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/hmong.htm
5. Hmong-Mien demonstratives and pattern persistence, , Martha, Ratliff, Mon-Khmer Studies Journal,

Robert Cooper, Editor. The Hmong: A Guide to Traditional Lifestyles. Singapore: Times Editions. 1998. pp. 35-41.
John Finck. "Clan Leadership in the Hmong Community of Providence, Rhode Island." In The Hmong in the West, Editors, Bruce T. Downing and Douglas P. Olney. Minneapolis, MN: Southeast Asian Refugee Studies Project, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota, 1982, pp. 22-25.
Paoze Thao, Mong Education at the Crossroads, New York: University Press of America, 1999, pp. 12-13.

External links

★ Entry for Hmong at Ethnologue

★ Online Hmong dictionary (including audio clips)

★ Saturn Hmong: White Hmong-English/English-White Hmong dictionaries, folktales, and more

★ The Hmong Language: An Oral Memory

★ Mong Literacy - consonants, vowels, tones for both Green Mong and White Hmong

★ Lomation - Free, online Hmong text to speech engine and dictionary - includes an RPA text reader with audio

★ Comparison of Hmong and English grammar from the University of Minnesota