Hmong

Last Updated: 2019-07-24

Background

Language Family: Hmong-Mien / Hmongic / Chuanqiandian

• The Hmong language comprises a number of dialects with some phonological differences. Where they diverge, I will be prioritizing Hmong Daw (also known as White Hmong).
• Hmong Daw is predominantly spoken in Laos and the United States.

Phonology

Consonants

• The only consonant clusters to occur in Hmong are obstruent-lateral sequences (Mortensen 2004, 3). Some authors (e.g. Golston, Chris and Yang, Phong 2001) argue that, rather than being a cluster, these are just single consonants with lateral release; however, I follow Mortensen in analyzing these as clusters.
• In prenasalized stops, the prenasalization fully assimilates to the place of the consonant (Golston, Chris and Yang, Phong 2001, 4).
• Although the series that I have described as retroflex fricatives and affricates are widely described as postalveolar, I have found that the retroflex place of articulation is more in keeping with the actual sounds described by the authors. Similarly, although the sound I have described as /lʰ/ is frequently transcribed as /ɬ/, I have found /lʰ/ to be more in keeping with the characteristics of the sound.

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops (unaspirated)	p ᵐb	t d ⁿd	ʈ ᶯɖ	c ᶮɟ	k ᵑɡ	q ᶰɢ
Stops (aspirated)	pʰ ᵐbʱ	tʰ dʱ ⁿdʱ	ʈʰ ᶯɖʱ	cʰ ᶮɟʱ	kʰ ᵑɡʱ	qʰ ᶰɢʱ
Affricates (unaspirated)		ts ⁿdz	tʂ ⁿdʐ
Affricates (aspirated)		tsʰ ⁿdzʱ	tʂʰ ⁿdʐʱ
Fricatives	f v	s	ʂ ʐ	ç ʝ			h
Nasals	m̥ m	n̥ n		ɲ̥ ɲ
Approximants		l lʰ
Note: Phonemes to the left of each cell are voiceless and phonemes to the right of each cell are voiced. The alveolar stops (unaspirated and aspirated) are ordered voiceless, voiced, pre-nasalized.

Vowels

• Burt (2010) argues for /ɔ/ rather than /o/ (p. 245).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e ẽ		o õ
Low		a ã
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are oral and those on the right are nasal.

Diphthongs
/ai/, /aɨ/, /au/, /ia/, /ua/

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
c	/c/
d	/d/
e	/e/
f	/f/
h	/h/
i	/i/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/p/
q	/q/
r	/ʈ/
s	/ʂ/
t	/t/
u	/u/
v	/v/
w	/ɨ/
x	/s/
y	/ʝ/
z	/ʐ/
Multigraph
aa	/ã/
ch	/cʰ/
dh	/dʱ/
nc	/ᶮɟ/
nch	/ᶮɟʱ/
ee	/ẽ/
kh	/kʰ/
nk	/ᵑɡ/
nkh	/ᵑɡʱ/
hl	/lʰ/
hm	/m̥/
hn	/n̥/
ny	/ɲ/
hny	/ɲ̥/
oo	/õ/
ph	/pʰ/
np	/ᵐb/
nph	/ᵐbʱ/
qh	/qʰ/
nq	/ᶰɢ/
nqh	/ᶰɢʱ/
rh	/ʈʰ/
nr	/ᶯɖ/
nrh	/ᶯɖʱ/
th	/tʰ/
nt	/ⁿd/
nth	/ⁿdʱ/
ts	/tʂ/
tsh	/tʂʰ/
nts	/ⁿdʐ/
ntsh	/ⁿdʐʱ/
tx	/ts/
txh	/tsʰ/
ntx	/ⁿdz/
ntxh	/ⁿdzʱ/
xy	/ç/

Tone

• Hmong has seven contrastive tones: high, high falling, high rising, mid, low, falling breathy, and falling creaky. There also exists an eighth tone, low rising, that is morphologically formed in some scenarios (Mortensen 2004, 4).
• All tone-marking characters appear after the vowel they modify. Because consonants cannot occur in Hmong syllable codas, consonants that precede other consonants can thus be identified as tone-markers; this allows us to distinguish whether a given ⟨v⟩, ⟨s⟩, or ⟨m⟩ represents a consonant or a tone.
• Some analyses describe the creaky falling tone as terminating in a glottal stop (Huffman 1987, 496; Mortensen 2004, 4).

Grapheme	Tone	Comment
b	/˦/	high tone
j	/˥˨/	high falling tone
v	/˨˦/	high rising tone
s	/˨/	low tone
g	/˦˨/	breathy falling tone
m	/˨˩/	creaky falling tone
d	/˨˩/	low rising tone (allophone of creaky falling)
	/˧/	mid tone (unmarked) (Burt 2010, 246)

Misc. Rules

• Epenthesis of [ŋ] occurs after word-final nasal vowels (Whitelock 1982, 24).
• Epenthetic glottal stops occur word-initially preceding vowels in borrowed words (Golston, Chris and Yang, Phong 2001, 5).

References

Burt, Susan Meredith. 2010. The Hmong Language in Wisconsin: Language Shift and Pragmatic Change. Edwin Mellen Press.

Golston, Chris, and Yang, Phong. 2001. “White Hmong Loanword Phonology.” Proceedings of HILP 5.

Huffman, Marie K. 1987. “Measures of Phonation Type in Hmong.” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 81: 495–504.

Mortensen, David. 2004. “Preliminaries to Mong Leng (Hmong Njua) Phonology.” https://web.archive.org/web/20121029161008/http://www.pitt.edu/~drm31/mong_leng_phonology.pdf.

Whitelock, Doris. 1982. White Hmong Language Lessons. Southeast Asian Refugee Studies, Occasional Papers.