Hmong language codes/locales?

General discussion about learning languages
Doitsujin
Green Belt
Posts: 402
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 6:21 pm
Languages: German (N)
x 801

Hmong language codes/locales?

Postby Doitsujin » Tue Nov 23, 2021 5:26 am

This is a slightly off-topic question. For a software project, I need to specify the language codes/locales for Hmong written in Chinese and Latin characters. The Wikipedia entry about the language was slightly confusing.
If I got it right, the code for all varieties is hmn and for Green/White Daw is mww.
However, following that logic selecting hmn would default to Chinese characters, which apparently isn't true for Green/White Daw and Hmong varieties written using other writing systems.
Are there any universally accepted ISO 639 codes that better specify the different writing systems for software purposes.
0 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Hmong language codes/locales?

Postby vonPeterhof » Tue Nov 23, 2021 7:17 am

I don't know much about ISO codes, but as far as I can tell no Hmongic variety defaults to Chinese characters, at least not officially (and reports of informal usage have apparently been hard to confirm). It seems like the scripts used officially for the varieties spoken in China are Latin-based, with the Pollard script being the only non-Latin script with widespead usage in the country.

Also a bit off-topic, but I haven't been able to find a lot of definite information about the official use of written Hmong/Miao in the PRC. If we look at the English Wikipedia page for the Hmong language it uses examples from the Dananshan dialect as representative of and de facto "standard" for Hmong varieties in China, while also noting in a footnote that it's actually Hmu that was chosen as the standard variety for all of Miao (a fact that is only alluded to in the infobox of that language's article). Official pages for Miao autonomous regions seem to be exclusively in Chinese. Searching for 苗文 in Google images mainly produces results displaying the Pollard script, with occasional images of books in what looks like Hmu as well as a mysterious script that looks similar but not identical to Chinese characters. Guess I should improve my Chinese reading ability...
3 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests