Iu Mien language
Encyclopedia
The Iu Mien language is one of the main languages spoken by the Yao people
in China
, Laos
, Vietnam
, Thailand
and more recently the United States
, in diaspora. There are about 2,172,000 speakers in total, according to census data in 2000 from China, Vietnam, Thai, Laos, United States of America, and France. Like Vietnamese
and Chinese
, it is tonal and monosyllabic
.
Linguists in China consider the dialect spoken in Changdong, Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County
, Guangxi
to be the standard. However, most Iu Mien people in the West are refugees from Laos
, so they primarily speak dialects common in Laos.
Iu Mien has 78% lexical similarity
with Kim Mun
(Lanten), 70% with Biao-Jiao Mien, and 61% with Dzao Min.
, 350,000 in Vietnam
, 25,000 in Laos
, 40,000 in Thailand
, 65,000 in the USA
and 2,000 in France
.
In China
, it is spoken in the Jinxiu County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Ruyuan County of Guangdong
province, Yunnan
, and Hunan
provinces, and in the Rongjian, Congjian and Libo counties of Guizhou
province.
, in Iu Mien there are final consonants, which are pronounced as consonants, which can go at the end of a syllable, but before the tone marking letters.
These consonants can be:
n, ng, m, p, t, or k.
If it is a stop, p, t, or k then it can only have the c or v tone after it.
A q is used after a vowel to make the vowel short. (This is equivalent to a glottal stop
.) Acting like other stops, it can only take the v or c tone after it.
There are several diphthongs:
a, aa, ae, ai, aai, au, aau, e, ei, er, eu, o, oi, ou, or, i, ie, iu, u, ui, uo.
Many of the above vowel sounds can also have i or u before them. If you put an i before them, it is pronounced like the English "y". If you put a u before them, it is pronounced like the English "w".
The word maiv (remember the v is silent and means very high tone) means "no" or "not". It should be placed before a verb to negate it. But it is often shortened to mv.
There are lots of contractions in Iu Mien. Sometimes words will begin with a contracted syllable followed by an apostrophe and then a normal second syllable. The first contracted syllable may just be "m".
has caused low rates of literacy
amongst the Iu Mien speakers. It has been written with Chinese characters in China, however this is extremely difficult for Iu Mien speakers from other countries such as Laos
and groups such as the Chao Clan.
In an effort to address this, in 1984 an Iu Mien Unified Script was created using the Latin script, based on an earlier orthography developed in China. Unlike the Vietnamese language
, this alphabet does not use any diacritics to distinguish tones or different vowel sounds, and only uses the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet. This orthography distinguishes 30 initials, 128 finals and eight tones. Hyphens are used to link adjectives with the nouns they modify.
The alphabet is similar to the RPA
used to write the Hmong language
and to the Hanyu Pinyin transcription scheme used for Chinese.
Yao people
The Yao nationality is a government classification for various minorities in China. They form one of the 55 ethnic minority groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China, where they reside in the mountainous terrain of the southwest and south...
in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
and more recently the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, in diaspora. There are about 2,172,000 speakers in total, according to census data in 2000 from China, Vietnam, Thai, Laos, United States of America, and France. Like Vietnamese
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
and Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, it is tonal and monosyllabic
Monosyllabic language
A monosyllabic language is a language in which most words predominantly consist of a single syllable. Monosyllabic languages are often tonal languages; due to the use of tones, the number of available monosyllables is significantly more than in non-tonal languages, making shorter words more...
.
Linguists in China consider the dialect spoken in Changdong, Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County
Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County
Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County is a county of Guangxi, China. It is under the administration of Laibin city....
, Guangxi
Guangxi
Guangxi, formerly romanized Kwangsi, is a province of southern China along its border with Vietnam. In 1958, it became the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, a region with special privileges created specifically for the Zhuang people.Guangxi's location, in...
to be the standard. However, most Iu Mien people in the West are refugees from Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
, so they primarily speak dialects common in Laos.
Iu Mien has 78% lexical similarity
Lexical similarity
In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words....
with Kim Mun
Kim Mun language
Kim Mun language , known as Lowland Yao , is a Hmong–Mien language spoken by the Pingdi Yao, one of the Yao peoples in the provinces of Guangxi and Hunan.Iu Mien and Kim Mun are very similar to each other, sharing 78% of words....
(Lanten), 70% with Biao-Jiao Mien, and 61% with Dzao Min.
Geographic distribution
There are approximately 1,699,750 speakers in ChinaChina
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, 350,000 in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, 25,000 in Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
, 40,000 in Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, 65,000 in the USA
Mien American
Iu Mien Americans are primarily Indochinese refugees that may have been born in or have become naturalized citizens of the United States of America. This group arrived in between the late 1970s to the early 1990s as the last wave of refugees post-Vietnam War....
and 2,000 in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
In China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, it is spoken in the Jinxiu County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Ruyuan County of Guangdong
Guangdong
Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
province, Yunnan
Yunnan
Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with...
, and Hunan
Hunan
' is a province of South-Central China, located to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting...
provinces, and in the Rongjian, Congjian and Libo counties of Guizhou
Guizhou
' is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the southwestern part of the country. Its provincial capital city is Guiyang.- History :...
province.
Dialects
There are several known dialects of Iu Mien. Dialects vary by clan and geographic location. Dialects include, but are not limited to, Cham, Deo Tien, Man Do, Quan Chet, and Quan Trang.Initial consonants
In Iu Mien, a syllable can start with any of the following sounds:| Mien | IPA | Mien | IPA | Mien | IPA | Mien | IPA | Mien | IPA | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... and affricates Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
Aspirated | p | /pʰ/ | t | /tʰ/ | c | /tsʰ/ | q | /tɕʰ/ | k | /kʰ/ |
| Voiceless | b | /p/ | d | /t/ | z | /ts/ | j | /tɕ/ | g | /k/ | |
| Voiced | mb | /b/ | nd | /d/ | nz | /dz/ | nj | /dʑ/ | nq | /ɡ/ | |
| Nasals Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... and lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
Voiceless | hm | /m̥/ | hn | /n̥/ | hl | /l̥/ | hny | /ɲ̥/ | hng | /ŋ̊/ |
| Voiced | m | /m/ | n | /n/ | l | /l/ | ny | /ɲ/ | ng | /ŋ/ | |
| Fricatives Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
f | /f/ | s | /s/ | h | /h/ | |||||
| Semivowel Semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:... s |
w | /w/ | y | /j/ | |||||||
Final consonants (before the tone)
Unlike the Hmong languageHmong language
Hmong or Mong is the common name for a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmong–Mien/Miao–Yao language family spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos...
, in Iu Mien there are final consonants, which are pronounced as consonants, which can go at the end of a syllable, but before the tone marking letters.
These consonants can be:
n, ng, m, p, t, or k.
If it is a stop, p, t, or k then it can only have the c or v tone after it.
A q is used after a vowel to make the vowel short. (This is equivalent to a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
.) Acting like other stops, it can only take the v or c tone after it.
Vowels
Iu Mien vowels are represented using only combinations of the 5 letters a, e, i, o, and u, except for the combination or which is also considered a vowel.There are several diphthongs:
a, aa, ae, ai, aai, au, aau, e, ei, er, eu, o, oi, ou, or, i, ie, iu, u, ui, uo.
Many of the above vowel sounds can also have i or u before them. If you put an i before them, it is pronounced like the English "y". If you put a u before them, it is pronounced like the English "w".
Tones
Iu Mien is a tonal language. Tones are not marked with diacritics; rather, a word's tone is indicated by a special marker placed at the end of the word. This letter is not pronounced but rather indicates how the word is to be pronounced. If a word lacks a marker, then it is to be pronounced with a middle tone.| Description | Alphabetic representation | Example | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| Very high-pitched | v | maaiv | no, not, disagreement |
| Mid, falling | h | maaih | to have |
| Mid | |||
| Very low-pitched | c | maaic | to sell |
| Low, rising | x | maaix | to buy |
| Lower, longer, rise-fall | z | maaiz | lopsided |
Grammar
There are no cases, tenses, or plural marking, and words never change their endings. Adjectives usually come after nouns. The language follows a SVO word order. Question words like where come at the end of the sentence.The word maiv (remember the v is silent and means very high tone) means "no" or "not". It should be placed before a verb to negate it. But it is often shortened to mv.
There are lots of contractions in Iu Mien. Sometimes words will begin with a contracted syllable followed by an apostrophe and then a normal second syllable. The first contracted syllable may just be "m".
Writing system
In the past, lack of an alphabetAlphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
has caused low rates of literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
amongst the Iu Mien speakers. It has been written with Chinese characters in China, however this is extremely difficult for Iu Mien speakers from other countries such as Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
and groups such as the Chao Clan.
In an effort to address this, in 1984 an Iu Mien Unified Script was created using the Latin script, based on an earlier orthography developed in China. Unlike the Vietnamese language
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
, this alphabet does not use any diacritics to distinguish tones or different vowel sounds, and only uses the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet. This orthography distinguishes 30 initials, 128 finals and eight tones. Hyphens are used to link adjectives with the nouns they modify.
The alphabet is similar to the RPA
Romanized Popular Alphabet
The Romanized Popular Alphabet or Hmong RPA , is a system of romanization for the various dialects of the Hmong language. Created in Laos between 1951 and 1953 by a group of missionaries and Hmong advisers, it has gone on to become the most widespread system for writing the Hmong language in the...
used to write the Hmong language
Hmong language
Hmong or Mong is the common name for a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmong–Mien/Miao–Yao language family spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos...
and to the Hanyu Pinyin transcription scheme used for Chinese.
Further reading
- Kim, Katherine Cowy. Quietly Torn: A Literary Journal by Young Lu Mien American Women Living in Richmond, California. San Francisco, CA: Pacific News Service, 1999.
Films
- 2003 - Death of a Shaman. Directed by Richard Hall; produced by Fahm Fong Saeyang.
- 2010 - "Siang-Caaux Mienh". A story of a very irresponsible family man, alcoholic, and drug addict. He likes his bad friends but he doesn’t love his family. But as he starts paying his mistakes, has become a turning point in his life. A short movie directed by Alejandro Cardeinte
- 2011 - "Mborqv Jaax Ciangv". A Short movie directed by Alejandro Cardeinte