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Hmong anyone?

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
DaisyMaisy
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5378 days ago

115 posts - 178 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish
Studies: Swedish, Finnish

 
 Message 1 of 8
07 February 2015 at 7:34am | IP Logged 
Hello, I now sit next to two Hmong women at work. (thank you cubicle gods! my other "neighbor" is a native Spanish speaker so this is working out well). Even better, they were delighted by my tentative interest in the Hmong language and seem to really enjoy teaching me words. Isn't it great when you hear a language you've never heard before? :) and its speakers are excited that you are interested?

In any case, I have no real plan that I would ever learn Hmong to fluency or even basic proficiency, but I can't resist dabbling. I have discovered that Hmong has 7 tones, most of which sound completely identical to me. Even on the words where I can hear a difference, I can't seem to replicate the sound correctly.

Does anyone have any experience with this interesting language? It looks as though the different tones are indicated by a different spelling of the word but I haven't been able to find much in the way of resources. It would just be fun to learn some vocabulary.

Would one approach the tones the same way Mandarin and other tonal language learners do? (Wikipedia describes one tone as "creaky" which my coworkers found very funny)

Any advice? Thanks!
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Kc2012
Diglot
Groupie
South Africa
Joined 4471 days ago

44 posts - 65 votes 
Speaks: English*, Afrikaans
Studies: Dutch, Mandarin, Russian

 
 Message 2 of 8
07 February 2015 at 5:33pm | IP Logged 
Check out Moses Mcormick's youtube channel (laoshu505000), he's learned Hmong, and has quite a
few videos about it :) Have fun!
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Stolan
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4030 days ago

274 posts - 368 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots
Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese

 
 Message 3 of 8
07 February 2015 at 9:36pm | IP Logged 
All I can say is that I absolutely think this is a great idea, its not just the tones I would be careful with though, all the
onset consonants are complex too.
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lichtrausch
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5958 days ago

525 posts - 1072 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 4 of 8
07 February 2015 at 9:54pm | IP Logged 
Reminds me of my experience with Vietnamese. The tones ended up driving me crazy and I
decided I was much happier without that language in my life.
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DaisyMaisy
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5378 days ago

115 posts - 178 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish
Studies: Swedish, Finnish

 
 Message 5 of 8
08 February 2015 at 9:04pm | IP Logged 
Thanks for the responses! I will check out that youtube channel. Consonants difficult as well...now I'm getting excited! Although I may end up agreeing with you, Lichtrausch :) It will be fun to study in any case.

My coworker told me that one of her sisters married a non-Hmong, but told him he would need to learn Hmong to fluency so that he could talk to her parents and grandparents. And he did! I'm sure having native speakers around helped considerably, but he must have really liked this girl to be that motivated! Now they have kids and they all speak Hmong at home.
1 person has voted this message useful



Stolan
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4030 days ago

274 posts - 368 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots
Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese

 
 Message 6 of 8
09 February 2015 at 3:28pm | IP Logged 
lichtrausch wrote:
Reminds me of my experience with Vietnamese. The tones ended up driving me crazy and I
decided I was much happier without that language in my life.


No discouraging please. Too much tonophobia hither and thither.
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Itikar
Groupie
Italy
Joined 4667 days ago

94 posts - 158 votes 
Speaks: Italian*

 
 Message 7 of 8
09 February 2015 at 5:35pm | IP Logged 
https://www.youtube.com/user/learnhmonglessons/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/ZQHmongLessons/videos

http://ferazelhosting.net/~bryce/hmong-lessons.pdf
http://www.hmongdictionary.com/learntospeakhmong.php
https://sites.google.com/site/soyouwanttolearnalanguage/hmon g

Have a nice learning Daisy. :)

1 person has voted this message useful



DaisyMaisy
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5378 days ago

115 posts - 178 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish
Studies: Swedish, Finnish

 
 Message 8 of 8
10 February 2015 at 12:10am | IP Logged 
Thank you Itikar! I really appreciate the links. I may surprise my coworkers with a few words tomorrow. More than likely I will say something nonsensical but that's half the fun :)


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