The Mnong or M'nong are an ethnic group from 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 –...

 (92,451 in 1999). They can be subdivided into three groups:

• Central Mnong: around 88,000 people in the Dak Lak and Lam Dong provinces of the Central Highlands
  Tây Nguyên
  Tây Nguyên, translated as Western Highlands and sometimes also called Central Highlands, is one of the regions of Vietnam. It contains the provinces of Đắk Lắk, Đắk Nông, Gia Lai, Kon Tum, Lâm Đồng....
  
  , mostly of the Christian religion
  Christianity
  Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
  
  
• Eastern Mnong: around 76,000 people in the Dak Lak and Lam Dong provinces of the Central Highlands
  Tây Nguyên
  Tây Nguyên, translated as Western Highlands and sometimes also called Central Highlands, is one of the regions of Vietnam. It contains the provinces of Đắk Lắk, Đắk Nông, Gia Lai, Kon Tum, Lâm Đồng....
  
  
• Southern Mnong: around 55,000 people in the Binh Phuoc
  Binh Phuoc Province
  Bình Phước is a province of Vietnam. It is located in the southeastern region of the country, to the north of Ho Chi Minh City. It shares a border with Cambodia.-History:...
  
   province of southeastern
  Dong Nam Bo
  Đông Nam Bộ is a region in Vietnam. This region includes one municipality, Ho Chi Minh City; and five provinces: Dong Nai, Binh Duong, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province, Binh Phuoc and Tay Ninh. This region is the most economically developed region in Vietnam...
  
   Vietnam

A number of Mnong live in the eastern Cambodia

Cambodia

Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...

n province of Mondulkiri.

Language

Every group speaks a variant of the Mnong language

Mnong language

The Mnong language belongs to the Mon–Khmer language family. It is spoken by the different groups of Mnong in Vietnam and a Mnong group in Cambodia. Four major dialects exist: Central, Eastern and Southern Mnong , and Kraol . Within a dialect group, members do not understand other dialects...

, which is in the Bahnaric languages

Bahnaric languages

The Bahnaric languages are a group of about thirty Mon–Khmer languages spoken by about 700,000 people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Paul Sidwell notes that Austroasiatic/Mon–Khmer languages are lexically more similar to Bahnaric and Katuic the closer they are geographically, independently of...

 group of the Mon–Khmer language family.

Epic

Epics (Mnong language: Ot N'rong- Ot: telling by singing the poem, N'rong: old story) take an important part in Mnong people's life. Many of these epics, such as Ghu sok bon Tiăng, are quite long.

Notable people

• N'Thu K'Nul, a Lao-Mnong person, a chieftain who established Bon Don, in Dak Lak province- a famous elephant hunting and taming village. He caught a white elephant
  White elephant
  A white elephant is an idiom for a valuable but burdensome possession of which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost is out of proportion to its usefulness or worth...
  
   and gave it as a present to the Thai royal family in 1861, leading the king of Thailand to bestow upon him the name "Khunjunob" (literally "Elephant Hunting King").
• N'Trang Lơng, hero who led villagers against French colonizers.
• Điểu Klung, epic teller.

External links

• Mnong at www.peoplesoftheworld.org