Iu Mien language
| Iu Mien | |
|---|---|
| Iu Mienh | |
| Pronunciation | [ju mjɛn][need tone] |
| Native to | China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, USA, and France. |
| Region | South East Asia |
Native speakers | 900,000 |
| Official status | |
Official language in | China (in Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | mis |
| ISO 639-3 | ium |
The Iu Mien language (Thai: ภาษาอิวเมี่ยน) 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 900,000 speakers in total.
It is very distantly related to the Hmong language, and together they form the Hmong-Mien languages family. Like Hmong as well as 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 people in the west focus on their dialect.[1]
Iu Mien has 78% lexical similarity with Kim Mun (also known as Lanten), 70% with Biao-Jiao Mien, and 61% with Dzao Min.[1]
Where it is spoken
There are about 400,000 speakers in China, 350,000 in Vietnam, 60,000 in Laos, 40,000 in Thailand, 25,000 in the USA and 2,000 in France.[2]
In China it is spoken in the Dayao Mountains, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Ruyuan county of Guangdong province, Yunnan, and Hunan provinces, and in the Rongjian, Congjian and Libo counties of Guizhou province.[3]
Alphabet
In the past, lack of an alphabet 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 alphabet, based on an earlier orthography developed in China.[2] 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.
Tones
Tones are marked with an extra consonant placed at the end of each word. This consonant should never be pronounced. Instead you need to say the whole word with the appropriate tone.
The tones are:
v: Very high pitched tone.
c: Very low pitched tone.
h: Mid falling ("Emphasis" or "demanding") tone.
x: Rising tone.
z: Lower, longer, rise-fall tone.
No final consonant: Ordinary flat tone.
maiv means no, not, disagreement
maaic means to sell
maaih means to have
maaix means tail
maaiz means to buy
mai_ means lopsided
Initial consonants
In Iu Mien, a syllable can start with any of the following sounds:[3][4]
| Mien | IPA | Mien | IPA | Mien | IPA | Mien | IPA | Mien | IPA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless stop / affricate | b | /p/ | d | /t/ | z | /ts/ | j | /tɕ/ | g | /k/ |
| Aspirated stop / affricate | p | /pʰ/ | t | /tʰ/ | c | /tsʰ/ | q | /tɕʰ/ | k | /kʰ/ |
| Voiced stop / affricate | mb | /b/ | nd | /d/ | nz | /dz/ | nj | /dʑ/ | nq | /ɡ/ |
| Voiced nasal / lateral | m | /m/ | n | /n/ | l | /l/ | ny | /ɲ/ | ng | /ŋ/ |
| Voiceless nasal / lateral | hm | /m̥/ | hn | /n̥/ | hl | /l̥/ | hny | /ɲ̥/ | hng | /ŋ̊/ |
| Fricative | f | /f/ | s | /s/ | h | /h/ | ||||
| Semivowel | w | /w/ | y | /j/ |
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".
Final Consonants (before the tone)
Unlike the Hmong language, 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.
Grammar
Iu Mien grammar is similar to English, except that adjectives usually come after nouns. There are no cases, tenses or plurals, and words never change their endings. It is also similar to Vietnamese grammar.
It uses Subject Verb Object 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".
Notes
- ^ a b Ethnologue report for language code:ium
- ^ [1]
- ^ mienh.net online lesson - Initial Consonants
- ^ Zhou 2003:259
References
- Panh Smith [Koueifo Saephanh]: Modern English-Mienh and Mienh-English Dictionary (Trafford 2002), ISBN 1-55369-711-1.
- Tony Waters. "Adaptation and Migration among the Mien People of Southeast Asia." Ethnic Groups vol. 8, pages 127-141 (1990).
- Máo Zōngwǔ 毛宗武，Méng Cháojí 蒙朝吉，Zhèng Zōngzé 郑宗泽 etc. (eds.): Yáoyǔ jiǎnzhì 瑶语简志 (Overview of the Yao language; Běijīng 北京, Mínzú chūbǎnshè 民族出版社 1982)
- Máo Zōngwǔ 毛宗武: Yáozú Miǎnyǔ fāngyán yánjiū 瑶族勉语方言研究 (Studies in Mien dialects of the Yao nationality; Běijīng 北京, Mínzú chūbǎnshè 民族出版社 2004).
- Minglang Zhou: Multilingualism in China. The Politics of Writing Reforms for Minority Languages, 1949-2002 (Berlin, Walter de Gruyter 2003); ISBN 3-11-017896-6.
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.