User talk:HuabThimXeeb

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Enjoy your stay at Wiktionary! Ultimateria (talk) 16:43, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Etymology

Are you sure you are actually capable of handling the etymologies for Hmong entries? Most of your edits just seem to be a bunch of false cognates or just vaguely similar words from neighboring languages, facilitated by Hmongic languages' simple syllable structure and lax semantics and sound correspondences.

I don't want to be pushy, especially since I don't know any White Hmong aside from what I got from reading a few linguistic books and papers, I'm sure you know more than me about how to speak the language itself, however, that does mean you can confidently matching similarly looking words with establishing any sound correspondences as well as looking for cognates among Hmong-Mien languages. I will only use this example, as Vietnamese is my native language, White Hmong zaub vs. Vietnamese rau: these are very obvious false cognates, especially because the White Hmong word actually has cognates in the Mienic branch and was also reconstructed by Ratliff (2010) with a very different diphthong. While reconstructions are never perfect, they and the comparative method are integral to comparative linguistics, and any serious works involving etymology would very likely utilize them. PhanAnh123 (talk) 18:11, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment.

Most of those words are not false cognates or vaguely similar words from neighboring languages, but rather a direct borrowing. Historically, the national boundaries weren't so clear cut as it is today, especially in the mountainous and rural areas of Southwestern China and its neighboring kingdoms. The various Hmong peoples who historically have rural lifestyle most likely interacted with those various powerful kingdoms and Chinese dynasties of the time and borrowed words from the people of those nations. This was and is still especially true when the words involved technology, government, food, entertainment, marketplace, and religion. Simply put, things that involve interactions with other various other ethnicities. For example, the White Hmong and Green Hmong for mountain is 'roob' which means mountain, which happens to also be the same sounding word and meaning used in Burmese "တောင်", and also just happens to be the name of a dynasty that rules Myanmar during the 16th and 17th century that extended well into modern day Yunnan China, a province that historically White Hmong and Green Hmong lived. Furthermore, the White Hmong has the word 'sab' and the Green Hmong has the word 'saab' for mountain, but with a more restricted meaning to mean just mountainside. Yet the Mandarin word for mountain is pronounce very similar, (山やま, shān). Remember Mandarin was the language of the ruling class of the Qing Dynasty to present day China. The White and Green Hmong in Southeast Asia nearest to the Myanmar border mostly used roob for mountain, and this group emigrated to Vietnam and then to the rest of Southeast Asia carrying that word with them. Yet those Hmong who live further north in the province of Sichuan, China, almost exclusively used saab. Two words for the same concept for closely related languages. Clearly, the closer they live to a powerful kingdom or state, the more similar the word sounds. It's too much of a coincidence to say both language just happens to have the same sounding words for the same thing. It's more believable to conclude that one language borrowed from the other. This is clearly not a false cognate.

I will used another example, in Southeast Asia, the White Hmong uses xiav and the Green Hmong uses xav for 'blue' which clearly sound similar to the 'xanh' used in Vietnamese. Yet the White Hmong and Green Hmong in China only both use 'leeg' for green or blue. They don't use xiav or xav. It's even in the name of the Green Hmong (Hmong Leeg / Moob Leeg). Clearly those who migrated to Vietnam, then further into the rest of Southeast Asia borrowed from the Vietnamese for that specific color while those Hmong that remain in China didn't adopt that word.

Lastly, the many Hmong languages didn't even have writing systems until the 1950s to accurately record their language. I understand that reconstructions of past language works most of time in predicting pronunciation of past words, but it works best for a language that was written down way more easily than one that is orally passed. When a language is passed down by my mouth of words, it changes way more quickly even within a few generation.

Try checking out the Mong Leng - English Dictionary revised (2021) by David Strecker (davidstrecker950@gmaill.com). His book is an excellent source for examining and finding Hmong words especially those of Chinese, Thai, and Lao origins. Then compare it with those words found in the earlier White Hmong - English Dictionary by Ernest E. Heimbach (1979). Many words have changed in such a short time between these two closely related languages. Furthermore, Chinese Hmong, Southeast Asian Hmong, and American Hmong have in the past few decades adopted completely different words for the same thing. New words have been adopted or borrowed, and old words have been abandoned. As with any language, a living language is constantly changing. The words spoken by today might not have been the same words spoken yesterday. HuabThimXeeb (talk) 22:17, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Headword templates

Whenever you create an entry, always place a headword template with the correct language code and the part of speech on the first line after the part of speech header (see our Entry layout page for all the requirements). For a White Hmong verb, that would be:

===Verb===
{{head|mww|verb}}

Aside from standardizing the format, this puts the entry in the right categories so people can find it from language categories such as Category:White Hmong language. For instance, White Hmong cais wasn't in Category:White Hmong verbs until I added the headword template just now.

Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 16:31, 20 October 2023 (UTC)