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 in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...
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 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,
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.
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. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages originally developed by Portuguese m ...
, 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 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
diphthongs .
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