Hmong daw

Introduction

The white hmong daw or hmong is a language hmong spoken by more 500 000 people in China (provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan), with the Laos, in Thailand and with the Vietnam, like among the diaspora hmong, in particular with the the United States and in France.

It is close to the green Hmong njua or hmong , although mutual comprehension is sometimes delicate, in particular because of differences in pronunciation; for example the D of the white hmong is marked green Tl in hmong

Phonology

Vowels

The hmong daw has 13 vowels, represented by one or two Latin characters: has, E, I, O, U, W, have, with, aw, ee, ia, oo, ua (see Orthographe for the correspondence with the phonemes).

Consonants

The hmong daw has 56 consonants, represented by one to four Latin characters: C, D, F, H, K, lo, m, N, p, Q, R, S, T, v, X, there, Z, CH, dh, hl, hm, hn, KH, ml, nc, nk, Np, nq, NR, NT, ny, pH, pl, qh, Rh, HT, ts, tx, xy, hml, hny, nch, nkh, nph, npl, nqh, nrh, nth, nts, ntx, plh, tsh, txh, nplh, ntsh, ntxh (see Orthography for the correspondence with phonemes).

Tons

The hmong daw is a tonal Langue, comprising 8 let us tons distinct (either more than the 5 or 6 let us tons Vietnamese and the 6 of the Laotian ).

Let us tons are not represented, as it is the case in many languages, by Diacritique S, but, for seven of them, by the consonant of end of syllable: B, G, S, J, v, m, D , and for the eighth (the average tone), by a doubling (sometimes omitted) of the final vowel.

Orthography

The Occlusive consonant glottale is not indicated in the orthography. In the few words begin with a vowel, the initial glottale is indicated by a Apostrophe.

The average tone is not indicated in the orthography. The others let us tons are indicated by the consonant of end of syllable.

- B - your top
- S - your bottom
- J - your top descending
- v - your average amount
- m - your bottom descending (cracked Voice)
- G - your average inferior (puffed up Voice)
- D - your bottom going down, alternative of - m at the end of the sentence

Grammar

Just like in Chinese and Vietnamese, the majority of the words hmong are composed of only one syllable. In addition, no inflection is brought to the words to indicate the person, the number, time, etc, contrary to the Western languages like French or English. In hmong, the words are invariable, information involving a French inflection being represented by the addition of additional words, like by the word order.

The grammatical rules hmong thus do not play on the morphology of the words.

The words hmong are organized in various classes, a little like the distinction between the male words and female French . However, the classes hmong do not distinguish male and female, but are based on other criteria much more various. In the majority of the cases, the definition of the class of a word is carried out by an additional word which precedes it: the classifying .

For example, one uses in French the article the or the article the according to whether the word which follows is male or female. In a similar way, the hmong will say lub tsev for " the maison" and keep silent tub for " the garçon" , them classifying lub and keep silent preceding by the words of different classes.

One should not confuse them classifying with articles, as could give rise it to think the preceding example. Another example will help to make the distinction, starting from the word ntawv (" papier"):

deer ntawv (" break into leaf of papier") use the classifier deer flat objects
tsab ntawv (" lettre") use the classifier tsab written things.

The word order in the sentences is, as in French, of the type (Subject-Verb-Object).

Sources

Golston, Chris, and Phong Yang. 2001. " Hmong loanword phonology". In Proceedings off HILP 5 , ED. C. Féry, A.D. Green, and R. van of Vijver, 40-57. Linguistics in Potsdam 12. Potsdam: University off Potsdam.

See too

External bonds

Dictionary hmong (including audio clips)
The Hmong Language: Oral year Memory
Pronunciation hmong
The Hmong Language - Hmong Farming Center
Handbook for Teaching Hmong-Speaking Students (document pdf))
Hmong daw (Languages off the World)
DicoHmong is a dictionary Hmong-French and Hmong-English in line

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