The Hmong/Miao Language of Qian Dong
Introduction
Chinese name: Han Mei Zhang
Hmong/Miao name: Mai Die Li
email: zhanghanmei@yahoo.com.cn
About me: I am a female Miao from China. I work for NanFeng
magazine, Guizhou Association of Literature and Arts of China. I have
published on Hmong/Miao culture through this organization. I am
interested in anthropological work that focuses on language and culture
in Hmong Society. I can speak two dialects of Hmong/Miao. One is the
Qiandong dialect, which is my native tongue. The other dialect, the one
from the Western area, I learned by studying with a speaker speaker.
Language: Hmong/Miao, central QianDong dialect. There are three
dialects of Hmong/Miao spoken in this part of China. However, they are
not mutually intelligible with one another.
Classification: Hmong/miao-Mien, Hmongic. There are a number of
different languages labeled as Hmong/Miao. However, Hmong/Miao is
actually a language family consisting of twenty or more separate
languages rather than one single language.
Location: The Eastern dialect of the language is spoken in Jin
Ping, Li Ping, Jie He in Guizhou province and Jun Xie, Hui Tong
counties of Hunai province. The northern variety is spoken in Kai Li,
Huang Ping, Tai Jian and Lei Shang in Guizhou province. Last, the
variety is spoken in Cong Jiang, Rong Jiang and Dai Zhai counties in
Gui Zhou province, as well as Yong Shui and San Jiang of Quang Xi
province. Other varieties of Hmong/Miao are spoken in Thailand, Laos,
Vietnam, and in the United states as well.
Population: There are more than 200,000 speakers of the Eastern
dialect. More than 900,000 people speak the northern variety. And there
are about 300,000 speakers of the southern variety. The total
population of the ethnic group is in the millions, however exact
estimates are difficult to come by.
Other languages spoken in the area include Chinese, Dong, Shui and Yao.
Language use: At school, the children in lower grades use
Hmong/Miao. Older stduents can speak both Chinese and Hmong/miao, but
all of the textbooks are in Chinese. Some schools started to try and
use Hmong textbooks as a new project.
Hmong/Miao Lexicon Hmong/Miao Tones Poem Butterfly Story Buttefly Story Lexicon