Mường (Mường: '; Vietnamese: tiếng Mường) is a group of dialects spoken by the
Mường people of
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
. They are in the
Austroasiatic
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The te ...
language family and closely related to
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
. According to Phan (2012), the Mường dialects are not a single language, or even most closely related to each other, but rather are an ethnically defined and
paraphyletic
In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...
taxon.
Mường dialects are primarily spoken in mountainous regions of the northern Vietnamese provinces of
Hòa Bình,
Thanh Hóa
Thanh Hóa () is the capital of Thanh Hóa Province. The city is situated in the east of the province on the Ma River (Sông Mã), about 150 kilometers (93 miles) south of Hanoi and 1560 kilometers (969 miles) north of Ho Chi Minh City. Thanh ...
,
Vĩnh Phúc,
Yên Bái
Yên Bái () is a city in Vietnam. It is the capital of Yên Bái Province, in the north-east region of Vietnam. The city borders Yên Bình District and Trấn Yên District. The city is a settlement along the banks of the Red River, approxim ...
,
Sơn La
Sơn La (; Tai Dam: ) is a city in the north-west region of Vietnam. It is the capital of Sơn La Province. It is bordered by Thuận Châu District, Mường La District, and Mai Sơn District.
History
In the era of the Sip Song Chau Tai, S ...
, and
Ninh Bình
Ninh Bình () is a small city in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam. It is the capital of Ninh Bình Province.
Geography
Ninh Bình Province is located in northern Vietnam comprising 48 square kilometres; the 2007 city population was 130,517 ...
.
Mường has all
six tones of Vietnamese; however, the ''nặng'' (heavy) tone is present only in
Phú Thọ
Phú Thọ () is a district-level town in Phú Thọ Province, Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland ...
and Thanh Hóa provinces while in Hòa Bình Province, it is merged with the ''sắc'' (sharp) tone.
Writing system
Mường had no written form until Western academics in the 20th century developed a provisional alphabet based on a modified
Vietnamese alphabet
The Vietnamese alphabet ( vi, chữ Quốc ngữ, lit=script of the National language) is the modern Latin writing script or writing system for Vietnamese language, Vietnamese. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages originally develo ...
, including additional consonants like ''w'' and allowing different consonant pairs and final consonants than Vietnamese.
In September 2016, the People's Committee of
Hòa Bình Province adopted resolution 2295/QĐ-UBND, specifying a new Mường alphabet to be used in instruction within the province. The alphabet consists of 28 letters and four tone marks. The provincial
Communist Party of Vietnam
The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), also known as the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), is the founding and sole legal party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Founded in 1930 by Hồ Chí Minh, the CPV became the ruling party of North ...
newspaper, ''Hòa Bình điện tử'' ( mtq, Wa̒ Bi̒nh diê̠n tứ) began publishing its electronic edition in Mường in addition to Vietnamese and English, surprising some readers with the unusual orthography.
Phonology
Consonant inventory
The following table details the consonants of those dialects that show a full
voiced-voiceless distinction in the stops (being Mường Bi, Mường Thành, Mường Động, and Ba Trại).
The spelling is given in italics.
:
The Mường Vang dialect completely lacks the distinction between the voiced and unvoiced stop pairs , , , having only the voiceless one of each pair. The Mường Khói and Mường Ống dialects have the full voiceless series, but lack among the voiced stops. The Thạch Sơn dialect on the other hand lacks .
Furthermore, the Mường Khói dialect lacks the aspirated alveolar , but has a instead. This dialect is also described as having the labio-velars and .
All of these consonants can appear syllable-initially. At the end of syllables only the nasals , the voiceless stops , the lateral , and the glides occur. Of these phonemes, the palatals have been analysed as glide + velar . Furthermore, the distribution of syllable-final seems to be more restricted than the distribution of the other final consonants.
Vowel inventory
The vowel inventory is given in the following table. It appears to be quite uniform among the different dialects.
Two of the vowels ( and ) can be long or short.
:
Apart from these monophthongs, there are also three
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s .
Tone
All Mường dialects are tonal. The Kim Thương dialect (
Phú Thọ
Phú Thọ () is a district-level town in Phú Thọ Province, Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland ...
province) has been the object of an experimental phonetic study.
Vocabulary
* Note two different romanisation are used to show Khmer here. (UNGEGN and Wiktionary Transcription)
References
Further reading
*
More
*Nguyễn, Văn Khang, Bùi Chi, and Hoàng Văn Hành. (2002). Từ điển Mường-Việt (A Mường-Vietnamese dictionary). Hà Nội: Nhà Xuất Bản Văn Hoá Dân Tộc.
*
External links
online newspaper in Mường
{{Austro-Asiatic languages
Vietic languages
Languages of Vietnam