Guiyang Miao language
Guiyang Miao, also known as Guiyang Hmong, is a Miao language of China. It is named after Guiyang, Guizhou, though not all varieties are spoken there. The endonym is Hmong, a name it shares with the Hmong language.
Classification
Guiyang was given as a subgroup of Western Hmongic in Wang (1985). Matisoff (2001) separated the three varieties as distinct Miao languages, not forming a group. Wang (1994) adds another two minor, previously unclassified varieties.
Mo Piu, spoken in northern Vietnam, may be a divergent variety of Guiyang Miao.
Representative dialects of Guiyang Miao include:
- Baituo 摆托, Huaxi District, Guiyang
- Tieshi 铁石, Qianxi County
- Zhongba 中坝, Changshun County
Demographics
Below is a list of Miao dialects and their respective speaker populations and distributions from Li (2018), along with representative datapoints from Wang (1985).
According to Sun (2017), the northern dialect of Guiyang Miao is spoken in the following locations by a total of approximately 60,000 speakers.
- Pingba County: Linka 林卡
- Qianxi County: Chongxin 重新, Shiping 石平
- Jinsha County: Musha 木沙, Bijia 笔架, Zongping 宗平, Dayuan 大员, Xinxi 新西, Anmin 安民, Taoyuan 桃园
- Zhenning County: Xinchang 新场
- Kaiyang, Xifeng, Xiuwen, Guiding, and other counties