Hmong

Hmong is the largest group within the Hmongic or Miao languages, which together with the Mienic languages form the Hmong–Mien family. Its largely mutually intelligible, tonal and monosyllabic dialects were spoken across the mountains of southern China and carried by migrants into northern Vietnam, Laos and Thailand from the eighteenth century onward.

Chinese records call these peoples Miao: before the Qin unification of 221 BCE the word was a loose label for southern tribes, but from the Tang dynasty of 618 to 907 it referred more clearly to the ancestors of the Hmong.

Linguistic evidence suggests Hmong–Mien speakers have lived in southern China for some 8,000 years. The language took in many Chinese loanwords but had no traditional script; romanized writing systems were devised by missionaries only in the twentieth century.