Talk:Hmong language/Archive 1

Untitled

I've merged Hmong phonology here. See Talk:Hmong phonology for discussion of that page. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 19:43, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Should information about the Pahawh Hmong writing system go here, or on a page of its own? Evertype 17:14, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Dialects

The Hmong article states that all of the Miao Languages (which include Hmong) are mutually intelligible. This article says that even dialects within Hmong are mutually unintelligble. Which is accurate? One needs to be changed.

I've tried to update this article at least. There is significant disagreement between linguists about how the various Hmong dialect/languages are related. You'll find a brief description of the problem here: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~dmort/hmong_lang_faq.html.--Nposs 06:54, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Requesting more info

This article really could use more general information about the speakers, history, etc. of Hmong, though the linguistics seems solid. Twinxor t 03:45, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

This article is specifically about the Hmong language(s). If you want more info on the speakers, history, etc., follow the links within the article: Hmong People, Hmong-Mien_Languages. Repeating such information here would dilute the article and make it too long.--WilliamThweatt 22:34, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm at a loss... re Saola

I found an interesting assertion in Saola, added in this edit, stating that the saola is known as <whatever> in Hmong because <some random reason>... The problem is, the <whatever> given does not look Hmong to me at all... I suspect it's perhaps Lao or maybe even "made up". Anyone who knows, or knows anyone who knows, please look into it and fixerup. Thanks, Tomer^talk 06:33, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello, if you're referring to the words "saht-supahp", they are Lao/Thai words: "saht" meaning "animal" and "supahp" (also transcribed "suphab") meaning "polite, respectful, gentlemanly, etc". It is quite possible that the Hmong in that area do indeed use that word for the animal. Many Hmong are bilingual in Lao (using it as a lingua franca to trade with low-land Laos) and frequently adopt Lao terms for things that they don't have a word for in their own language. As far as fixin' 'er up, I don't believe it needs much in that regard. I will make note that the term is derived from Lao.--WilliamThweatt 17:55, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. My guess is that, if it's been borrowed from Lao, that it's called xa-xhubphas in Hmong...but that's sheer conjecture. saht-suphap is "impossible" in Hmong, phonologically. Anyways, thanks for looking into it. Tomer^talk 18:23, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmong vs dialects

It's very unclear whether this article is actually about Hmong as a group of several different languages (according to SIL) or one or several of the dialect-languages. The Ethnologue code and the external link at the bottom both point to Hmong Daw. Why the choice of Hmong Daw rather than any number of other Hmong variants? It seems rather arbitrary and without any clear motivation.

Peter ^Isotalo 12:15, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it's not unclear at all, Peter. The first paragraph, after giving general mention of the interralationship of the Hmong dialects within the Hmong-Mien family, states that information in the phonology section is that of White Hmong (Hmong Daw). As to the reasons why, I can only guess; but here are two fairly obvious possibilities. 1) White Hmong has been studied more and there are more resources available for White Hmong. 2) The majority of Hmong immigrants to the West were White Hmong from Laos so it is the dialect most often thought of by non-linguists as being representative of the Hmong dialects as a whole.

When I lived in Fresno, CA, I had access to resources on Green (or Blue) Hmong (Hmong Njua). Unfortunately, I no longer live there. It will take me a while to get the info again. However, the differences in the two dialects are so minimal that a simple section listing the points where the two diverge might suffice, although I would rather see an additional section describing Hmong Njua phonology and noting lexical differences (as I remember, grammar and syntax differences are negligible).

I am less familiar with the other Hmong dialects (Flowery Hmong, etc. or those spoken inside China). From what I understand, due to isolation and influence from Chinese, these dialects differ more widely in terms of tone realization, syntax, lexicon, and phonology. However they still basically form a dialect continuum from North-to-South with those at the extreme ends being mutually unintelligeable, but those more closer together being able to understand each other perfectly (similar to Dutch/German 100 years ago). If no one else gets to it first, I will add information as I am able, starting with the codes in the info box.--WilliamThweatt 16:13, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

That was only an explanation as to why there's more info on Hmong Daw phonology, not the infobox problem, which was my main point. I edited the article so that it doesn't have the slight Hmong Daw POV.

Peter ^Isotalo 17:14, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmong Njua is actually the Hmong Daw pronounciation for Mong Njua, which is also called Mong Leng. As I noted in my edits to the article, Mong Leng does not use the aspirated /m/, thus "Mong" instead of "Hmong." (You can find a more detailed description of differences between White and Green Hmong in: Smalley et al. Mother of Writing: the Origin and Development of a Hmong Messianic Script. The University of Chicago Press, 1990 [p. 40-52]). In my experience, Green/Blue Mong people have preferred to be called Mong Leng as opposed to Mong Njua. Some even find Mong Njua to be an offensive term. I've tried to raise some of these issues in my edit. The decision to prefer Hmong as opposed to Mong seems to be both arbitrary and a reflection of the fact (mentioned earlier) that more research has been done on White Hmong language and culture. This issues are perhaps better addressed in another article rather than in this one on Hmong language. Here's a link to a recent paper on Mong Leng phonology that others may want to incorporate into the article: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~dmort/mong_leng_phonology.pdf. This page also discusses the Hmong vs. Mong issue: http://www.culturalorientation.net/hmong/hpeop.html.--Nposs 07:07, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Confusion with Mon

I'm doubtful that enough people would confuse Hmong with Mon to put it in a redirect. Aren't redirects more for terms that are more homographic? AEuSoes1 16:48, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I think confusion between Mon and Hmong is pretty unlikely. Angr (talk) 18:18, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmong vs. Hmoob

Why do English speakers call the language Hmong while its own speakers call it Hmoob? 71.131.194.40 00:21, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Because of the orthography of the language. It's not pronounced "Hmoob". The "b" indicates a high tone. DHN 02:32, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Not only that, "Hmoob" is written as sponken in Hmong Der (aka White Hmong). And "Hmoob" is written in English as "Hmong" so English speakers could pronounce it. It's just the word Hmong Der use when referring to this group of people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Txh (talk • contribs) 20:04, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Moving RPA orthography to new RPA article

The Romanized_Popular_Alphabet isn't the only writing system for Hmong and it seems like the listing of the RPA system would be more appropriate in that article. It could also be expanded there with more detail. Then more information about alternative writing systems could be added here. Thoughts? Nposs 22:19, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Although if it's going to be expanded in the new article, something of it can still be in this article. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:25, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I've begun to migrate the orthography information specific to RPA over to the relevant article. It could be formatted more nicely, if anyone knows how to do that. Also, I will start to thin out the material about RPA in this article and hopefully add more information about other orthographies. I agree that some info about the RPA alphabet should remain on this page since it is the most common writing system. Nposs 16:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I might be able to format it more nicely. What did you have in mind? Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I think tables (as in the tables on the rest of the page) are easier to read. But that's just my opinion. Nposs 03:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I started making this:

Consonants		Bilabial		Bilabial with lateral release		Labio dental		Dental		Retroflex		Palatal		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
Plosive	Voiceless	p	ph	pl	plh			t	th	r	rh	c	ch	k	kh	q	qh	*
	Voiced							d	dh
	Prenasalized	np	nph	npl	nplh			nt	nth	nr	nrh	nc	nch	nk	nkh	nq	nqh
Affricate	Voiceless							tx	txh	ts	tsh
	Prenasalized							ntx	ntxh	nts	ntsh
Nasal		m	hm	ml	hml			n	hn			ny	hny
Fricative						v	f		x	s	z	y	xy					h
Lateral								l	lh

But then realized that the characters are very non-intuitive for non-hmong speakers. I'll have to think about a different kind of table. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Stops	Nasals			Plosives							L	Affricates
	NY	N	M	P	T	D	R	C	K	Q		TX	TS
Unmodified	/ɲ/	/n/	/m/	/p/	/t/	/d/	/ʈ/	/c/	/k/	/q/	/l/	/ts/	/ʈʂ/
Preceding <N>				/mb/	/nd/		/ɳɖ/	/ɲɟ/	/ŋg/	/ɴɢ/		/ndz/	/ɳɖʐ/
Preceding/Following <H>1	/ɳ̥/	/n̥/	/m̥/	/pʰ/	/tʰ/	/dʱ/	/ʈʰ/	/cʰ/	/kʰ/	/qʰ/	/ɬ/	/tsʰ/	/ʈʂʰ/
<N> and <H>				/mbʱ/	/ndʱ/		/ɳɖʱ/	/ɲɟʱ/	/ŋgʱ/	/ɴɢʱ/		/ndzʱ/	/ɳɖʐʱ/

1. <M> <N> and <NY> denote voiceless nasals when preceded by <H> and <L> denotes a voiceless lateral fricative when following an <H>. Otherwise, <H> is either a consonant in itself or marks the aspiration of the preceding consonant.

Maybe something like this? Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:34, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I've moved the discussion over Talk:Romanized_Popular_Alphabet#Proposed_formats_for_alphabet since (at least in my mind) that is where this table should go (rather than on this more general language page. I like the above suggestions (and they look nice), but I guess I was think more along the lines of organizing it alphabetically. At any rate, I've posted an example at the linked page. Thanks. Nposs 01:56, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Reverted edits by Special:Contributions/71.193.66.239

Usually I would just discuss reverts in the edit summaries, but this user made a number of problematic edits (too much to describe in the summary)

• Added unverified Hmong clan names to an already problematic (not supported with references) list
• Added unverified descriptions of Hmong tones - English is not a tonal language; it is impossible to compare the sounds of English words to Hmong tones
• Add nonsense POV (without references) about Hmong ancestry

Nposs 04:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

IPA table

I've seen that someone had replaced the IPA-symbol of the palatal fricative (ç) with the symbol normally used to indicate the retroflex sibilant. Since I haven't even heard of this language until now I don't know if he (she) had a good reason to do so (based on the characteristics of that particular sound) but this way the same symbol is used for two different phonemes without any modifying diactrics (whatsoever) which in my opinion is not a very good idea. Would anyone object if I reverted back to the previous symbol? --Adolar von Csobánka (Talk) 17:25, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I think you are right that it should beç. That's how Ratliff lists in "Meaningful Tone." Smalley (in "Mother of Writing") lists it as "cy", but the c has a small horizontal bar through it. Can't find that symbol anywhere else. Nposs 18:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, change it back. It is inaccurate to have the same symbol for two "different" phonemes. I believe (ç), while probably not exactly precise for this sound in Hmong is the closest IPA symbol to represent it, especially if it's going to be listed in that particular location on the table.--WilliamThweatt 19:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that was a bit of a typo. My bad. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:46, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmong Daw/Hmong Der and Mong Leng/Hmong Njua

Just realized that these different terms are used in different articles (Hmong people, Hmong-Mien languages). It seems the SIL preference is to call these languages Hmong Daw and Hmong Njua. Of course, 'Hm' is not present in the "Hmong Njua" dialect and many members of the group find this name to be offensive. "Der" comes closer to the pronunciation of RPA Hmoob Dawb and seems to be more widely used (via a Google search.) It would be great to find some consensus on this. Do we go with SIL even though the names are inaccurate and potentially offensive? Nposs 06:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

According to Romanized Popular Alphabet, dawb represents /daɨ/ with high tone, and neither "Daw" nor "Der" seems to me a particularly intuitive way to represent that diphthong. At any rate, we should be using whatever's most commonly used in English. If English-language resources (especially scholarly rather than popular ones) use "Hmong Der" and "Mong Leng", then we should go with that, while still mentioning the SIL versions as alternative names. —Angr 06:57, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Ethnologue actually uses "Mong Leng" several times on the entry for Hmong Daw, while on the Hmong Njua entry, the Leng only appears as "Hmong Leng." Nposs 07:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

It's very confusing. Their Hmong Daw entry suggests that "Mong Leng" is a dialect of Hmong Daw (that for sociolinguistic reasons requires a separate literature), rather than another name for Hmong Njua, while their Hmong Njua entry suggests that "Hmong Leng" is another name for Hmong Njua in Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The word "Der" doesn't appear on either page. —Angr 07:31, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Inclusion of Green Mong phonology

The differences are not extensive, so based on the templates recently developed for the Romanized Popular Alphabet, I've worked up new versions of the vowel and consonant templates currently on the page. Take a look and make any changes necessary (I'm not a linguist, so I could have gotten something wrong.) Thanks. Nposs 04:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Nice table of Hmong pronouns

The following was recently added to the new Grammar section.

Hmong Pronouns

Person:	First	Second	Third
Singular	kuv	koj	nws
Dual	wb	neb	nkawd
Plural	peb	nej	lawv

It's a very nice table, but I wonder if it is too specific for this article. McKibben's dictionary (where it appears to have come from) is White Hmong only (although, I believe Green Mong uses the same pronouns). I have no idea what pronouns are used in other dialects of Hmong. Does anyone have some more info? Nposs 02:10, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

• The rest of the article only discusses Hmoob Dawb (White Hmong) and Green Mong to any significant extent. I think the table should be put back, but with the clairification that it is the pronoun system of White Hmong. And yes, as far as I can tell, Green Mong uses the same pronominal system. If no one objects (or does it before me), I'm going to put the table back, with that modification. 66.81.36.73 17:58, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I think that is a good solution. Nposs 18:04, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

The comment above is mine, I forgot to log in. Bryce 18:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it should be there with the specification that it is White Hmong. For a while, the phonological system was just that of White Hmong and that was fine. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:35, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Not sure if this is totally reliable, but here is a chart contrasting Green and White H/Mong personal pronouns [1]. Nposs 16:55, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

If it is reliable, we can perhaps have a table like this.

Hmong Pronouns

Person:	First		Second		Third
Singular	kuv		koj		nws	nwg
Dual	wb	ib	neb	meb	nkawd	ob tug
Plural	peb		nej	mej	lawv	puab

Or maybe even this exact table. We could also have two tables side by side but this demonstrates which pronouns are used by both dialects. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Here's Lyman's take (complete pdf of his Green Mong dictionary - big download):

p. 391-392

Singular

• First person: kuv
• Second person: koj
• Third person: nwg

Dual

• First person: wb (notes alternate pronunciations: ib and eb)
• Second person: meb

Plural

• First person: peb
• Second person: mej

Pronomials:

• Thirddperson anaphoric: puab
• Third person obviative: luas
• Self, oneself: yug

There's no mention of "ob tug," which just basically translates as "those two people/things." My guess is that there is no definite dual third person in Green Mong. Nposs 19:28, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Ahh, very interesting. Nothing an asterisk and footnote can't fix. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:05, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I fully support the above revision to the table, having both White and Green Mong pronous. I recently got some more Hmong materials from UC Berkeley's library and I should be able to provide pronouns for some other dialects as well, I hope. Bryce 18:50, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

My Hmong Language page

I've started a page for my Hmong research at http://www.ferazelhosting.net/~bryce/hmong.html I'd appreciate any comments you have and detection of typos/mistakes. Also you have my permission to copy from it into Wikipedia if you like. Right now it has some Hmong-Mien language family trees, a list of names of Mong groups according to Lyman, and some descriptions of Hmong language resources. Bryce 18:50, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Copying from it to Wikipedia will be much less problematic for everyone if you put a tag on your page saying it's licensed under the GFDL. As you see at the bottom of every edit page, "Do not copy text from other websites without a GFDL-compatible license. It will be deleted." If your page clearly says it's GFDL, people won't keep either deleting the stuff that gets added or running to you for confirmation that it's okay. —Angr 19:05, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Language codes

The list is far from being complete.[2] Please at least add codes for the most spoken forms (like hea and mmr). 86.218.32.187 (talk) 02:46, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

New verb section

I want to thank the previous editor for starting the new section on verbs. I think it was a good start, but I really wanted it to be very specific about how Hmong/Mong grammar is constructed. I think describing the Hmong verb constructions as "tenses" can oversimplify the situation. What I have added is lacking in examples from Green Mong and is formatted in a rather unwieldy way, but I hope it opens the door for future improvements. My main source of information is a grammar book by David Strecker and Lopao Vang. Unfortunately, I don't believe it was every widely published. It has a level of detail that I have not found in other books on grammar, but if anyone can provide more references, it would be very helpful. I think we need to be careful in this section to avoid original research (WP:OR) and I encourage other editors to find new sources of published information to add to the new section.

Also, I removed the newly added material on "negation". I think it belongs somewhere on the article, but probably not in that section. Also, the only form of the negative I have found in dictionaries is "tsis" not "tsi". I'm not sure if "tsis" can be affected by tone sandhi, but I'd like to see some references on "tsi" being the basic form before it is included in the article. Thanks. Nposs (talk) 15:54, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmong language template

If you are a native speaker of Hmong then you can help translate this template into your own language:

hmnThis user is a native speaker of Miao.

Edit

--Amazonien (talk) 03:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

clusters

The 'lateral releases' appear to be clusters, at least for Green Mong.[3] The prenasalized C's would also appear to be voiceless. — kwami (talk) 09:24, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Moob vs Hmoob

"Moob" is written as spoken by Mong Leng (aka Blue Mong). It's English translation/spelling thus becomes "Mong." And "Hmoob" is written as spoken in Hmong Der (aka White Hmong). That's why "Hmoob" becomes "Hmong." Therefore, if you are Mong Leng then you would refer to these two groups as "Moob" or "Mong." If you are Hmong Der then you would say "Hmoob" or "Hmong." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Txh (talk • contribs) 20:10, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Addition of header

This header was recently added: This article introduce the Hmong language used in the United States. For the Hmong language used in China, see Chinese version of Miao language; for Hmong language used in Southeast Asia, see corresponding version. This is problematic in a number of ways. 1) Green and White Hmong are not spoken just in the US, but also in SE Asia, and in the case of Green Hmong (Mong Leng), also spoken in China. 2) Directing people to read an article in Mandarin does not seem like the correct suggestion. I agree with the idea that this article probably focuses too much on the two dominant dialects of Hmong spoken in the West, but this bias is stated early in the article. I'm sure information from the Mandarin article could be incorporated here and that in the future the articles for the different dialects should be broken into other articles. For the moment, the header doesn't seem appropriate. Nposs (talk) 04:05, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

You are right: all overseas Hmong can find their ancestry in South China because China is the orginate place of all Miao peoples. But:

1. this article delibrately separate a small branch of Hmong people into different so-called “language”s. If we use the concept in this article, China will have more than 7,000 languages.
2. the RPA used in the US is not used in China, so even though all “language”s in this article are also spoken in China, the RPA ortho-- is not used. In China, we use a more unified ortho--.

––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 10:59, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

"lateral release" as a phoneme

Cf. the discussion in Ladefoged's "The Sounds of the World's Languages". The text used to describe lateral release as a rare feature. This is garbage -- it occurs in English, Spanish, French, German, and nearly every other European language. What's rare is analyzing a laterally-released consonant as a single phoneme -- in fact, it's sufficiently rare that I think we need good references before making this claim, esp. when the claim is made about "laterally-released bilabial stops" (rather than simple clusters of /pl/, /pʰl/, etc.). Just because the language allows no clusters other than those with /l/ as their second member is not sufficient reason to claim that these are unitary phonemes. As an example, Middle Vietnamese had initial clusters /bl/, /tl/, and /ml/, but no others, and I've never seen these analyzed as unitary phonemes. What's next -- claiming that Thai clusters /kl/, /kr/ and /kw/ are (respectively) "laterally released", "rhotically released" and "labialized" velars? Benwing (talk) 04:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and corrected this article so it reflects these "phonemes" as clusters, consistent to most analyses. It looks like the "laterally-released phonemes" were someone's misguided attempt to make the language have a purely CV structure, perhaps also with a desire to make the language seem more esoteric than it really is. Benwing (talk) 04:33, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this "misguided attempt" is based in sourcing, such as that done by Golston and Yang (2001). There seems to be some variation on this, but I don't want to write it off just yet. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 05:23, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Can you quote any other sources that make this claim? I've seen multiple sources analyzing Hmong onsets as clusters, while this is the only one making claims about "lateral release". Analysis as clusters follows the standard analysis of similar onsets in Middle Vietnamese (see my comments above); furthermore, I've seen no other languages where /bl/ or /ml/ are claimed to be unitary phonemes. IMO your comment "we shouldn't pick one analysis over another" rings false, because this is necessarily exactly what we're doing, whichever analysis we present. Picking the current analysis is contrary to WP:UNDUE; I also think it will be quite misleading to non-experts, who will naturally assume that "laterally-released phonemes" are some weird, exotic sound not found in any other language, rather than simply a different way of analyzing a quite common sound. I suggest we go with the more common and orthodox analysis, while noting the alternative analysis as unitary phonemes and the reasons for doing this.

BTW I'm not opposed in principle to the concept of laterally-released phonemes, but I really think you need better evidence than what exists in Hmong. (An example of such evidence would be a language with consistent CVC syllable structure but where /pl/ and similar sounds could occur in both onsets and finals.) Benwing (talk) 02:51, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, other than that article and the other one cited in the article (also by Golston), I'm not sure. There's Annie Rialland's Phonological and phonetic aspects of whistled languages (2005) in Phonology, which describes (p. 261) Hmong as having 28 nasal consonants, which comes short if we don't count the laterally released ones.

Similarly, this 1988/1989 paper has an analysis by Scott Jenkins that says Hmong has "60 basic consonant sounds" (again, omiting laterally released bilabials creates a problem of missing consonants). He does say, however, that "Hmong words almost always consist of a single consonant combined with a single vowel" but this hedging is unqualified, and I can't tell if he's talking about onsetless syllables just as I can't tell if he's talking about the velar nasal when he says that "almost no words end with a consonant sound."

In la langue hmong (Amerindia, 2001) Barbara Niederer presents a table (page 355) that seems to subscribe to the monophonemic analysis.

Looking in other books, Coulmas's Hmong writing entry in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems (1999) says of Hmong:

"Hmong has a simple CV syllable structure but a rich inventory of as many as 80 phonemes, 13Vs, 59Cs and eight tones." (p. 214)

This is in the context of the Pahwah Hmong writing system, a non-latin script designed specifically for Hmong that seems to treat such onsets as complex segments rather than clusters (or, at least, equivalent to monophonemic onsets).

Even sources that refer to these as clusters make it clear that the monophonemic analysis is common and reputable enough that mentioning it is not giving undue weight. For example, this 1994 review by William Poser of Smalley, Vang & Yang's Mother of Writing (1990) says that the authors treat initials as single consonants following Smalley (1976),^a though the reviewer presents a contrasting analyzis with lateral release and prenasalization as polyphonemic clusters, responding to Smalley (1976), he says:

"Some of the complex onsets, namely the affricates, prenasalised consonants and prenasalised affricates, are plausibly analysed as complex segments given the frequency with which such sequences appear to be monosegmental cross-linguistically, but the complex onsets include also the sequences /pl/, /plh/, /npl/, /nplh/, /ml/ and /hml/, which seem unlikely candidates for single segments. I know of no clear-cut case in which such sequences behave like single segments. Indeed, they violate the widely held though admittedly not universal claim that the components of complex segments are always homorganic. Nor does Smalley provide any clear evidence that these sequences should be regarded as monoconsonantal in Hmong."

This review of Mother of Writing by William Bright (1992) seems to accept this Smalley's analysis.

Strangely, this paper by David Mortenson (2004) includes velar+lateral clusters, which I was unaware of (maybe this is something not present in White Hmong), though note that he, too, says that the monophonemic analysis is credible, though this would "complicate" (i.e. increase the number of) the phoneme inventory, as if allowing clustered consonants is not itself a complication.

Keep in mind, of course, that I was seeking out the monophonemic analysis but it was not very difficult to do so. If you can provide the sources you were referring to above, I think we can do a fairly decent job at presenting a scholarly debate on the matter. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 05:25, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

^a Smalley, William A. (1976). The problems of consonants and tone: Hmong (Meo, Miao). In William A. Smalley (ed.) Phonemes and orthography: language planning in ten minority languages of Thailand. Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Australian National University. 85-123.

OK, sorry it's been awhile. My comment about undue weight was not suggesting that a monophonemic analysis shouldn't be mentioned at all, but that it appeared to be a minority position and should be presented as such, with the phoneme table presenting a cluster analysis plus text describing the monophonemic analysis as an alternative. Given your references, it's not so clear; see my comments below.

The mystery of the /kl/ cluster is made clear here:

[linguistics.berkeley.edu/~kjohnson/ling110/dwbruhn_mong_leng.pdf]

This is a class paper, but with an enormous amount of detail and a (questionably) native speaker. It describes /kl/ as an alternative analysis of /tl/; either there is free variation between the two, or some sort of palatal sound somewhere between the two. It references both Mortensen (2004) and Lyman (1974).

Another similarly-detailed class paper, also with a (native?) informant, from the same UCB class is here: [linguistics.berkeley.edu/~kjohnson/.../example_project_report.pdf]

It goes farther than the other one in claiming that prenasalized sounds are actually clusters as well. Apparently Lyman (1974 and 1979) thinks so too, based on the following statement from Bruhn's class paper: "Indeed, in his dictionary (1974) and grammar (1979) of Mong Leng, Thomas Lyman uses a similar system [i.e. writing /mp/ or similar]. Unfor- tunately, this method of transcription obscures the fact that each of these segments is one consonant, not a cluster of a nasal + stop/affricate."

Note that Mortensen (2004) actually says

"The lat- eral combines with all of the common labial and velar obstruents (see Table 2). These /pl/ [pì] /phl/ [phì] /npl/ [mpì] /nphl/ [mphì] /ml/ /kl/ [kì ∼ tì] /khl/ [khì ∼ thì] /nkl/ [Nkì ∼ ntì] /nkhl/ [Nkhì ∼ nthì] Table 2: Consonant clusters. could be analyzed, alternatively, as obstruents with a secondary lateral release. How- ever, such an analysis complicates the inventory of consonant features unnecessarily."

Britannica is not easily accessible but does say "word structure is the same as syllable structure: CV(C)—i.e., an initial consonant or consonant cluster followed by a vowel, in some cases closed by a final consonant".

The book "The Languages of China" by S. Robert Ramsey describes the "Miao" language on the Chinese side of the border, which is substantially the same as Hmong but has an additional 16 or so rimes, which are identified as occurring only in Chinese borrowings. His analysis (probably based on Chinese sources) gives the onsets with /l/ as clusters, and also analyses the rimes as containing a velar nasal phoneme rather than nasalization.

Now, the thing is, many of these analyses are not actually independent of each other. For example, Rialland's paper (your first source) does not seem to have done her own analysis, but simply accepts Niederer's (your second source). Similarly, Niederer doesn't present any justification of her analysis in her paper, but does quote Smalley (1990), and does present her paper in the context of Smalley's writing system. As a result, she too may simply be passing on someone's analysis; on the other hand, her familiarity with the language suggests that she has done her own thinking on the subject. These encyclopedia articles may be more similar to Rialland; I'm not sure. In this respect, the class papers should probably be accorded more significance than they normally would, since they do do their own quite detailed phonological analyses. Mortensen's 2002 review of Niederer's "Les Languages Hmong-Mjen" suggests that this book is the definitive source for finding out what the scholarly opinion is.

I still think we should present the cluster analysis in table form and give the monophonemic analysis as an alternative, presented in the text, if for no other reason than it will be less misleading to the non-expert (see my comments above about needlessly and confusingly "exotic" phonological systems). However, we could also give both possibilities in table form, as differing analyses. Benwing (talk) 05:49, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure how the single-consonant analysis is a "minority view" when together we've found more authors endorsing it than the polyphonemic analyses. In fact, if we're attempting to make generalizations about scholarship, I'm not sure how two undergraduate student papers for a 100-level class are really notable. On top of what I've already given, there's also Heimbach's quite notable White Hmong-English dictionary, which seems to endorse the single-consonant analysis, though he also describes them as clusters (which may or may not amount to a sort of lie to lay readership. Nevertheless, listings are organized as though, for example, ‹npl› were a separate letter, making a word like nwb appear before nplaj.

While the single-consonant analysis does present a phonological system that's exotic to English readers (lay or not), it's going to be exotic either way and I don't see it as misleading or confusing, particularly if we present both views.

I don't think it's out of bounds to include the disputed phonemes. Looking at other instances where there are competing analyses on the number of phonemes, it seems like there's a tendency to include the disputed phonemes in the table and provide a footnote. Russian phonology, for example, has all the palatalized consonants (despite reductionist analyses) and /ʑʑ/, which is an arguable sound. Similarly, Catalan phonology lists the affricates, Finnish phonology and German phonology list the glottal stop, French phonology the semivowels, and Modern Greek phonology has the palatal series. It would be strange, though, if we had two consonant charts that differed in this one regard. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:44, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think your lie-to-children comment was really necessary here, and I don't think it's accurate in any case. Heimbach on p. xxiv says "Consonant clusters are treated as units, so that all entries beginning with 'txl' appear before any entries beginning with 'txh', etc". I think this is far too vague to make any inferences about his views. "consonant cluster" might refer to a phonemic cluster or simply to a visual cluster of consonant symbols; choosing an l-cluster to implement a "consonant cluster" might or might not be suggestive; grouping them as units might indicate a phonemic view, or might simply reflect the monophonemic bias built into the writing system; etc. Also, "100-level classes" at Berkeley are actually upper-division classes, and the sophistication and level of detail in both the course reports seems to indicate that the class is clearly targeted at training professional linguists.

You're right that it's not obvious which view represents the majority opinion among the small number of Hmong specialists (if there is such a view at all), although I still believe that if you were to consult phonologists, rather than Hmong specialists, you will find that few of them would agree with a monophonemic analysis here. That is certainly the sense I get based on comments scattered throughout Ladefoged and Maddieson's book "The Sounds of the World's Languages" in addition to the various comments made by the people subscribing to a Hmong cluster analysis about the implausibility of these "laterally-released" phonemes vis-a-vis the wider views of phonologists. Although Ladefoged and Maddieson don't say this explicitly, I get the strong sense from the amount of pages they spend debunking various sorts of claims of unusual segments in various languages, and the tone of their comments they make in connection with this, that there is pressure on documentary linguists to come up with exotic analyses in order to increase the apparent uniqueness of their languages (laterally-released phonemes, prenasal stops, post-nasal stops, pre-aspirated stops, three- or four-way length contrasts, etc. etc.).

I also think that laterally-released phonemes are hardly comparable to Russian or Greek palatal(ized) consonants, etc. in that they have nowhere near the theoretical support among phonologists. But if you insist on putting these sounds in the table, then I would be OK with listing them as disputed. Benwing (talk) 03:17, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I should add, both the authors of those class projects are current PhD linguistics students at Berkeley (and in fact appear to have been grad students when they wrote the papers, which is not surprising given the sophistication of the papers), and both have focuses related to phonology and East Asian languages. (One specifically claims Hmong-Mien as a specialty: [4]) Benwing (talk) 04:07, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, Heimbach is a bit ambiguous, though the listing of consonants and the grouping of letter sequences together like that (which is not at all necessary in RPA) makes it less vague for me.

Ladefoged & Maddieson may be right about documentary linguists, but I don't think it would be appropriate to use that as a lens in which we analyze scholarship (that would be original synthesis) and it's unlikely that that would be the motivation here, since Hmong is quite "exotic" in other regards (e.g. seven tones in White Hmong, 12 tones in other dialects, prenasalized stops). Keep in mind, also, that the scholarship we've discussed is a mix of Hmong specialists and general phonologists. Chris Golston (of Golston & Yang) for example, has written more about Ancient Greek than Hmong. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 05:16, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

(outdent) Hi, I've rewritten the section to try and reflect the controversies more clearly. When I reread Ladefoged and Maddieson I noticed that their description of lateral release specifically describes it as involving a "homorganic" consonant, which is obviously not the case here for the putative labial laterals. I was also recently looking through Anatole V. Lyovin's "An Introduction to the Languages of the World" and I noticed his description of Hmong as consisting of both /Cl/ and /nC/ clusters. Basically, I put the laterally-released phonemes in parens to indicate the dispute and rewrote the footnote to indicate the reasons for the dispute, and added a note about the possible cluster analysis of the prenasals as well.

NB Another potential argument in favor of a cluster analysis is that diachronically, the lateral phonemes undoubtedly come from historic clusters; but it's not obvious to me that a diachronic analysis of the synchronic status of a language is valid, nor do I remember whether I've seen anyone actually make this argument. I don't actually think the dialect argument in favor of unitary phonemes is valid, either -- sound change can easily turn a phoneme into a cluster or vice-versa, and many dialects differ in their phoneme content -- but I kept it for the moment since you previously inserted a statement about Green lateral dentals corresponding to White plain dentals, which I take to be an argument in favor of lateral phonemes. If I'm mistaken here, please delete. From what I recall, the arguments against lateral phonemes mostly boil down to phonetic universals, and the arguments for lateral phonemes (which aren't always given in the papers presenting this analysis) are distributional in nature, or possibly based on supposed native-speaker intuition as expressed in the Pahawh script (another invalid argument IMO). Benwing (talk) 02:08, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Tone marker "-d"

As I learned it as a child, "-d" is a tone marker for an elongated rising tone. It was used only rarely, and I can't think of any examples off-hand, but I see no mention of it in this article. 71.87.23.22 (talk) 21:21, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

It's in the article on Romanized Popular Alphabet. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 00:48, 1 June 2011 (UTC)