Hmong-Mien languages

The Hmong-Mien or Miao-Yao languages are a small 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 they have been relegated to being 'hill people', while the Han Chinese have settled the more fertile river valleys. Within the last 300–400 years, Hmong and some Mien people migrated to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar. As a result of the Indochina Wars, many Hmong speakers left Southeast Asia for Australia, the United States, and other countries.

Relationships

Hmong (Miao) and Mien (Yao) are clearly distinct, but closely related. The relationship of the poorly known Ho Nte language (Mandarin Shē) is obscure, though it may be closest to Mien. Part of the difficulty is that it has been strongly influenced by neighboring tongues. One proposed internal classification is listed below.

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 region of greatest diversity is between the Yangtze and Mekong rivers, but there is reason to believe that they migrated there from further north with the expansion of the Han Chinese.

Some have conjectured that the Hmong-Mien languages may be part of an "Austric" superfamily, but evidence for this has been slow in coming.

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, 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 Mien, Kadai, Yi, and Miao languages. For this reason the ethnonym Mien may be preferred as less ambiguous.

The words Hmong and Mien, both meaning 'person', are cognate.

Characteristics

Like many languages in southern China, the Hmong-Mien languages tend to be monosyllabic. They are some of the most highly tonal languages in the world. It has been suggested that they may even be the primary source of tone in East Asia, with Chinese, other Tibeto-Burman languages such as Yi, and the Tai languages developing tone under Hmong-Mien influence, and Vietnamese later developing tone under Tai influence.

History

The Han Chinese seem to have been restricted to the upper Yellow River valley during the Zhou dynasty. They may have been recent immigrants there; if so, it is debated who the millet-farming people of the Shang dynasty were. One possibility is Hmong-Mien; there is some circumstantial evidence that Hmong-Mien may have been the originators of rice agriculture^*, although of course the Shang may not have left any linguistic descendants. Indeed, Chinese legend portrays Hmong-Mien people as being one of the founders of China. Japanese excavations of early "Chinese" cities such as Pengtoushan have found evidence that these may have been ethnically Hmong-Mien; one line of argument is palynologic evidence of Liquidambar, which is used for 'spirit posts' in Hmong-Mien villages.

If Hmong-Mien was once this widespread, most of the diversity has been lost. The current languages would be the only branch of that family to have survived, as if the Indoeuropean languages were represented today only by Celtic.

Proposed internal classification

Ethnologue lists 35 Hmong-Mien languages, but many of these are mutually intelligible. The following classification follows Matisoff 2001.

Hmong (Miao) languages
- ? 'Gelo'
- Northern Hmong
  - Xiangxi Miao (Red Miao)
- Western Hmong
  - Libo Miao
  - Weining Miao
  - Yi Miao
  - Hmong proper (includes Hmong Njua (Blue/Green Miao), Hmong Daw (White Miao), and Magpie Miao)
- Central Hmong
  - Qiandong Miao (Black Miao)
  - Longli Miao
- East Guizhou
- Patengic
  - Pa-Hng
  - Yongcong

Mien (Yao) languages
- Iu Mien
- Kim Mun
- Ba Pai

In addition, the position of Ho Nte is obscure.

Reference

Blench on the languages of China