As publishers, we understand the treasures of language—especially an endangered language like Hmong

Scholars help to preserve the ‘advanced’ and ‘highly extensive’ Hmong language

When Hmong people were urgently airlifted to the United States starting almost 50 years ago, their culture, beliefs and social structures were disrupted. Today, Hmong people are working to preserve that culture in Minnesota, Wisconsin and California, the three states where they are most numerous.

Today, there is progress in the United States to save what is perhaps the most endangered element of their heritage: the Hmong language.

Linguists say this matters to global understanding of cultures because Hmong-Mien languages are the world’s best example of tonal languages. Without these languages, we would not know that a language could have a dozen tones. Rising, falling or flat tones can give the same word several different meanings, depending on how it is said.

According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, Hmong is spoken in the United States, France, Australia, Canada, Laos, Thailand, Burma and Vietnam and Southern China.

The United States evacuated Hmong people from southeast Asia when it pulled out of the Vietnam War. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had recruited Hmong fighters to wage a secret war against North Vietnamese communists. The U.S. pullout endangered them and their families. The resettled refugees were scattered across the United States and other countries.

Their language—and attacks on it—have long been part of the nomadic people’s history. This makes their desire to save it especially keen. Persecution and the banning of their language in China led them to flee to Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.

Hmong people drove their languages underground, stitching their stories as colorfully embroidered flower cloths and story cloths. In the United States, the language is threatened by disuse and assimilation.

According to the University of Washington’s EthnoMed project, Hmong is “an advanced oral language and highly expressive; it includes proverbs, poem-songs, plain language of morality tales and ancestral stories, flowery speech of elders, code speech of sweethearts, and antique language of wedding and funeral rituals.”

This year, Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, has graduated 15 teachers licensed to teach Hmong as a heritage language. They are a different kind of army. Licensure to teach Hmong is not happening anywhere else in the world, according to Minnesota Public Radio.

In neighboring Wisconsin, Hmong is the third most popular language, after English and Spanish, but is spoken by less than 1% of residents. A bipartisan law signed in April will require schools to teach Asian and Hmong American history.

In Appleton, Wisconsin, a charter Hmong elementary school is planned, and language and culture camps are held.

In California, dual immersion programs are expanding after the repeal of a law that limited bilingual education. Vang Pao Elementary School in Fresno has a Hmong-English dual language program.

All these efforts are intended to counter a UNESCO prediction that the Hmong language will die out by the end of the century.

Learn more about the Hmong language, its banishment and story cloths in 100 Questions and Answers About Hmong Americans: Secret No More. This cultural competence guide is one of more than 20 published by the Michigan State University of School of Journalism.

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