H is for Hmong

[muckefuck]

White Hmong-English dictionary Heimbach, Ernest E. (comp.) Rev. ed. Ithaca : Cornell University Southeast Asian Progam, 1979.

I actually blogged a bit about the acquisition and format of this work back in January, so perhaps in this entry I should delve a little deeper into the content.

I'll start with the standard Hmong orthography, which strikes most English speakers as insanely unintuitive. And it is--for them. It was designed by missionaries with ease of use for native speakers in mind, not for backwards compatibility with the idiosyncratically etymological spelling of English. Or, as Heimback explains in the introduction:

Still other peculiarities resulted from practical considerations in seeking for an orthography which could be easily typed, printed, and taught. The use of consonant symbols in syllable final position to represent tones is not as unconventional in the area as it is outside of the area, and works well with Hmong because of the syllable structure which has no phonemic final consonants.

Lets take the example of the Hmong self-designation, Hmoob. The doubling of the vowel indicates that it is nasalised. (To speakers of languages without phonemic nasalised vowels, they are often mistaken for vowel plus [ŋ], thus the English respelling Hmoong. Compare Swedish balkong for French balcon [balkɔ̃].) The final <b> a high level tone, such as that of Chinese 空 kōng. Given that White Hmong has eight distinctive tones, one should be thankful they didn't opt for the crazy diacritics of the Chữ Quốc Ngữ used for Vietnamese, which has two less.

I actually find these spellings ingenious, though I had a completely different reaction when I first encountred Gwoyeu Romatzyh, a system for transcribing Standard Chinese designed along similar principles. Looking back, I wonder if learning this wouldn't have saved me a lot of trouble down the line. After all, as English speakers, we are used to silent letters. If Hmong used, say, <h>, <gh>, <e>, and <w> for various tones rather than <b>, <j>, <v>, and <m>, we might not consider it remarkable in the least. And if I had learned to spell the Chinese words for "learn", "snow", and "blood" as shyue, sheue, and shiue rather than xué, xuě, and xuè, then I might not be having to look them up all the damn time when I forget which has which tone. Diacritics simply aren't part of my native alphabet, and they don't have the same salience in my memory as different sequences of basic letters.

So what is Hmong like? Typologically, like most of the languages spoken in the same area: Highly analytic and isolating. For example, take the simple phrase, Koj lub npe hu li cas? you CLASSIFIER name call as how "What is your name?" (Note also the use of classifiers, another areal feature.) However, personal pronouns are not analytical as in Chinese, e.g. koj "you", neb "you two", nej "y'all". The interrogative occurs before the verb rather than after, e.g. Koj puas txawj hais lus Hmoob? you INTERROGATIVE can speak speech Hmong "Can you speak Hmong?"

As the term lus Hmoob reveals, compounds are generally left-headed, as in Thai or Vietnamese, e.g. quav muag "eye boogers" (lit. "excrement [of] eye"). However--also as in those languages--there are exceptions in borrowed vocabulary, e.g. khoob xeeb "hollow heart" (from Chinese 空心 kōngxīn "idem."). And noun phrases follow suit (e.g. hnub no day this "today") except that classifiers precede head nouns (e.g. lub tsev no CLASSIFIER house this "this house") and pronouns precede those (e.g. kuv tus txiv I CLASSIFIER male "my husband"; cf. kuv txiv "my father").

If you know anything about the Hmong people, you know just how little their lives have been a bed of roses. This comes to the fore in Appendix 5 of the book, "Useful terse expressions". These include the following:

Kev quaj keb nyiav Sorrow, weeping, mourning
Kev tshaib kev nqhis Hunger and thirst
Kev txhaum ke txim Sin and guilt
Khub khub dub dub Dirty and mud encrusted
Ntuj dub nciab teb tsaus nti Sky and land all dark
Ntuj txias teb tsaus A place of cold and darkness
Ntuj yuav fav teb yuav lam Calamity is coming
Ntshai ntshai ib ce tsaug tas So afraid (he was) weak all over