There are Eight Tones (pitch) in the Hmong Language.
The Hmong language is considered a tone-based language, in linguistics tonemes. Therefore, the words you hear might sound similar, but due to its slight different pitch, their meanings are different. For examples, the words "zoo and zoov" may sound very close, but the first word means "good", and the second word means "forest." To hear and understand what I am talking about, click these two vowels + the different tones:
oo and
oov The tone markers is similar to the English ending enunciation of the last character. For examples, in English, the word "dad" is different than the word "dat", and the word "dat" is different than the word "dap" etc... For some foreigners, this ending sound is very difficult as well as awkard to them. Therefore, the tone logic is as strange and awkard to most people who are not familiar with the tonemes, too :)
For ease of rememberring, I have put these eight tones into a friendly sentence as you can see below. I suggest you remember this sentence so whenever you see the same ending tone marker, you can pronounce it by referencing these words.
The meaning of the sentence is as follows:
| Koj | Mus | Kuv | Niam | Neeg | Siab | Zoo | Tod |
| You | Go | My | Mom | Human | Heart | Good | There |
Click on each of the tone at the bottom to hear its pitch.
If you want to see a
Tone Chart, click here.Please note that the last tone, "D" is not really being used by most people and it is quite difficult to differentiate between the tone "M" and this "D" tone. Some Hmong people believe that the "D" tone is mostly being used for referencing a location and/or place, i.e., Ped, nrad, tid, tod etc...Again, this "D" tones is a longer tone that starts with the "M - cim Niam, the lowest pitch" and then gradually rise to the tone "V - cim Kuv." For examples: Pem + V = ped, Tom + D = tod.