- Source: 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.
Northern
Southern
Southwestern
Northwestern (Qianxi 黔西)
South-Central (Ziyun 紫云)
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