The Morphology Of Hmong

Even though Hmong Dawb and Hmong Ntsuab may be different in some part of the vocabularies, the sentences structures and grammar for both remained the same. Starting off, the word order used in both dialects is SVO, subject verb object (Ratliff 251). An example is “ku tau nâo.mao” meaning I did eat rice (Lynman 26); the sentence is an example of Hmong Ntsuab and each of the words in is translated into English. Such as

1. Find all nouns, adjectives, and pronouns in the genitive case. N.B.: the genitive ending signifies the preposition “of” so that must be part of your translation.

In this documentary, The Split Horn Life of a Hmong Shaman in America focuses on the religious containment of the Hmong people. Their rich history goes back to the time in a village in North East Asia where they believed that the Shaman were the great healers for the sick. The Hmong were living a peaceful life until the Vietnam war broke out and destroyed their village. Many of the Hmong villagers fled their beloved homeland in order to seek refuge form the war. Many were fortunate enough to find shelter in Thailand where they stayed for the majority of the conflict. Some were even lucky enough to get a sponsorship to America. As they slowly came to America the Hmong were worried that they might lose their religious roots to the American customs.

“She had never said it was love. Neither had he. They were shy. They had been unsure. Now, there would be no time for love. It was in the moment of parting that she knew she loved him” (21).

At birth, the Hmong view their newborns as a gift and extremely special. At birth, it is called “Mus Thawj thiab, “go become again” or more simple, “reincarnation,” is a traditional Hmong belief (Bankston 2000). When a child is born, they are automatically seen as a gift and reborn as a reincarnated soul. Though, if a child dies after three days of living there are “no funeral ceremonies…since the child did not have a soul yet” (Bankston 2000). The Hmong believe if the child lives past three days, their soul is present though if they die, the infant never had a soul to begin with. If the child lives past day three, then a shaman is brought in and he “evokes a soul to be be reincarnated in the baby’s body” (Bankston 2000). This is considered

When using these cases in Latin, the nominative noun (or subject) would be left alone, whereas the accusative noun (or object) would have an ending with an ‘m.’ For example, the Latin word for dinner, can be in the nominative case, ‘cena,’ or in the accusative case, ‘cenam.’ When in the accusative case, the noun is receiving the action. ‘Whom,’ according to the prescriptive rule, should be used when ‘who’ is receiving an action. As the English language evolved, some people believed that English should sound more like Latin. This rule may have branched from this, and is taught as ‘grammatically correct’ by English

In Hawai’i, Native Hawaiians had to understand and have knowledge of the land and resources around them to live in a sustainable community. Early Hawaiians established an Ahupua’a system based on wisdom and centuries of experiences. This system was built to divide the land from the mountain to the sea to generate food through agriculture and manage freshwater resources. According to Mueller et. al (2005), the freshwater stream that flows down the mountain modifies certain plants that was brought by ancient Polynesians. These settlers also brought certain animals and practices for the agriculture to be balanced and established a sustainable community of healthy food production, shelter, fishing, and pure drinking water. Over time, this technology has been passed down from generation to generation to keep the tradition strong and rich.

Lia Lee born and raised in America, but brought up as a Hmong, faced health issues specifically epilepsy. Her parents who practice the Hmong culture had a different view on how to handle Lia critical condition. Hmong did not believe in traditional medicine but believed in Txiv neeb, person with a healing spirit. Not only do they believe in a person with healing spirit to help cure their illness but also consider epilepsy as power; “Their seizures are thought to be evidence that they have the power to perceive things other people cannot see, as well as facilitating their entry into trances, a prerequisite for their journeys into the realm of the unseen” (Fadiman, 1998, p.21). Right at this moment is where you can tell conflict is going to occur.

After 1975, she learned to speak, read, and write in Vietnamese. She is now comfortable with English but still uses Vietnamese. Her siblings learned Vietnamese first and then learned Mandarin or Hainanese. Now each child uses a different language with each other and their elders. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that even families can be separated by language.

Navajo is a Southern Athabaskan language of the Na-Dene family; it has similarities and is related to spoken languages across the western areas of North America. The Navajo refer to themselves as the Diné or “People” and their language is known as Diné bizaad or “People’s language”. The earliest recorded history appears to between the years 1581-1583 when the Spanish made their first contact with the Navajos. Nearly 200 years later the Navajo were able to drive the Spanish settles from the Eastern regions off their land. 30 years after that in 1805, Spanish soldiers returned with a vengeance and killed more than 100 Navajo women, children and elders hiding in a cave; this tragedy is known as the Massacre at Canyon de Chelly. Nowadays, the Navajo language is predominately spoken in the Southwestern United States and currently the majority of the language is being used in the Navajo Nation political area. Navajo is one of the most widely spoken Native American languages and according to an article titled, “Navajo (Diné bizaad)” in 2011 it was estimated that there were nearly 170,000 Americans speaking Navajo. Though the number of speakers may seem large, the language has had difficulties keeping a healthy speaker base. This was caused by an aggressive effort made on the part of the public and mission schools on the western reservations, which taught young Native American students English. As referenced in Language, Culture and Society school administrators used such

     The Hmong Culture of South Asia is a very interesting ethnic group. Between 300,000 to 600,000 Hmong live in Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. About 8 million more live in the southern provinces of China. Since the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Hmong refugees from Southeast Asia have settled in Australia, France, Canada, and the United States. The largest Hmong refugee community lives in the United States with a population of about 110,000. The U.S. Department of state has tried to spread Hmong refugees out across the country to reduce the impact on any one region. Because Hmong families tend to be large in numbers, the community grows rapidly.

People, numbers, and in some cases, gender of the subject and of the objects as well, are all shown by pronominal prefixes. "Except in cases where the subject and object are of the same person and number, the agreement rule serves to clarify the grammatical functions of nouns, as in the following sentences: takhe:hi atshuhtsa ki:hli, ‘The boy is chasing the dogs,' and anikhe:hi atshuhtsa ki:hli ‘The dogs are chasing the boy'" (Native Languages). In the first sentence ta-, the pronominal prefix of the verb, indicates that the subject of the verb is singular and the object of the verb is plural. Atshuhtsa, "boy," is a singular form, whereas ki:hli, which does not have a distinct

Key features of language include its words and their sub structures such as morphemes, graphemes and syllables at the writing level as well as reading or speaking, words, their meanings and contexts in which the words get spoken or read. Language has to be interpreted as a whole, and not just as the specific word. There must be an explicit pattern or structure. In order for language to be understood correctly, the meaning of words must be arranged in a given context. This is what constructs language; even though words are arbitrary themselves, in order to integrate as a language, they must be used in the appropriate context. This pre-established cultural context is what will enable effective communication. (Daniel Willingham, 2007, p. 1).

     The Chinese language is one of the oldest and complicated language in the world. Chinese language is single syllable which is the