ความคล้าคลึงของม้งและปเกอญอ

The Similarities Between

The Hmong and The Karen

As we have already had an idea the two ethics in their past, I now shall lead you and point out side by side the similarities between the two ethics in different areas as follow;

Population

The Hmong population is larger than the Karen population. The figure is shown that today there are at least 12 million Hmong people all over the world.

This is about 5 million Hmong living in Southern China , about 90,000 in Thailand, 200,000 in Vietnam, and a similar number in Laos , approximately 270,000 Hmong people reside in the United States American, 600 in Canada and Argentina, 15,000 in France, 2,000 in Australia, and 1,500 in French Guiana.

The total population of the Karen is about 3 million, spread throughout Burma, Laos and Thailand. There are about 7,000,000 Karen people live in Burma, 400,000 live in Thailand and there are also thousands of Karen people live outside of these two countries i.e. New Zealand, United State of America, Canada, Austria and Sweden.

It is common now that we can find both the ethics live both in the mountains and on the plains.

Occupation

Most of the Hmong and the Karen people are framers; they always grow rice, corn and wheat every year for themselves as well as for sale in the market.

Apart from this, they also plant vegetable and fruits for sale as well. Cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, bit root are some examples of the principal crops that they plant.. They grow fruits like strawberry, pear, peach, and litchi.

But since the education is provided for them, the two also have an opportunity to study and take various parts in the society such as politician, teacher, doctors, nurse, police, soldier, independent businessman and so on.

Religion

The Hmong now still believes in the spirit of nature, their ancestors, and everything that may have effect their lives. The Hmong has a number of practices related to nature and their Graet ancestors. They sacrifice animals to worship their Great ancestors and the sprit.

Later on , since the missionary had come to spread Christianity , there are a lot of Hmong people become Christians, and also many Hmong people in Thailand have become Buddhists too .

The Karen also worship every living thing contained a spirit (K’la) which present every place, river mountain or forest had its own Lord . This is a kind of “Animism” and have some ceremonies to do with the surrounding which they thing that may effect life. This practice not only exist in Karen belief , but also exists in Hmong belief too.

Moreover both of the ethics also practice “Shamanism “ which refers to a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. This concerns with illness. Apart from this, there are also ceremonies for birth, marriage and death too.

According to the figure of the Karen website in the internet, there are also about 80% of Karen are Buddhists. Others converted to Christianity and some still keep on the belief of the Animism.

Now a days we can see that although some of the Hmong and most of the Karen now become Buddhist and Christian, they still practice some traditional beliefs mixing up with Christianity and Buddhism.

Language

The Hmong language are complex and tonal. The Hmong and the Karen did not have a written language. The Hmong had been introduced to the Romanized Popular Alphabet(RPA) in Laos) and the foundation of the Pahawh Hmong alphabet.

The Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA) had been introduced in 1953 by the three men - Dr. Linwood Barney, Father Yves Bertrais and Dr. William Smalley.

The Hmong RPA is now officially taught at the Central Institute of the Chinese Nationalities in Beijing and in several American public schools and universities. We have not had any formal institution teaching Hmong language in Thailand yet, but still most of the people learn with their people, so most of them know how to read and write it.

The Pahawh Hmong alphabet was invented in 1959 by Shong Lue Yang (), an illiterate Hmong farmer living in northern Laos close to the border with Vietnam. Shong Lue Yang believed that the alphabet was revealed to him by God.He also created an alphabet for the Khmu language (a member of the Mon-Khmer family), but it never caught on and soon disappeared. Althoug these two wriiten ways are different but,the pronucuation is the same.

There are two dialects green and white dialects. These two dialects are not so different that two people come from a different region cannot understand each other, so I would say that it is just like the British English and the American English only.

Here are some samples of Hmong written language take from a Hmong website

( http://www.omniglot.com)

Sample text in the Pahawh Hmong alphabet

Sample text in Hmong (Miao) of northeastern Guizhou

Laix laix diangl dangt lol sob dab yangx ghax maix zit yef, niangb diot gid zenb nieef haib gid quaif lit gid nongd jus diel pinf denx. Nenx dol maix laib lix xent haib jox hvib vut, nenx dol nongt liek bed ut id xit deit dait.

Sample text in Hmong (Miao) of southeastern Guizhou

Leb leb nis zib youl nangs, mex ad sheit nangd zend yanl nhangs njanl lib. Mix mex lix xinb gaot liangt send, leb leb lies nhangs ghob nab ghob geud nangd.

Sample text in Hmong (Miao) of Sichuan/Guizhou/Yunnan

Cuat lenx cuat dol bongb deul ndax dex douf muax zif youx, nyaob shout zunb yinx tab ndas dos id, dax zis ib suk. Nil buab daf lol jaox muax lid xinf hlub hout tab liangx xinb shab nzhuk, yinf gaib keuk suk gud dix mol lol nit jinb shenx lol shib daf shib hlad.

The translation of the above text

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Now let’s move on to Karen language. There are three main branches of the language which are Sgaw, Pwo, and Pa'o. The Karen languages are commonly divided into three groups corresponding to the region of Myanmar where they are spoken.

Earlier, the Karen have no written language, but later on, the Karen Pwo and Sgaw have formed the written language. They are only two Karen languages that possess written forms.

So the Karen people have carried their rich literature from generation to generation through their traditional practices, legends, songs and folks. Just like the Hmong that preserve their history and literature orally from generation to generation through songs, folks, and their cultural and religious activities.

According to the Karen inter website (http://www.geocities.com). An ancient written Karen language form has been found recently. They found that the ancient Karen language form of writing is similar to Chinese ideograms, so the language is related to Chinese.

I would like now to give some examples of Karen written languages from the Karen website (http://www.geocities.com)given by the Loyal Karen of Burma.

The Karen Standard Condensed

The Karen Standard Expanded

Karen Win Han

Karen Freehand

Karen Kee Lah

It should be noted here that Hmong language and Karen languages are written and spoken differently, but both are in the same language family of the world, that is Tibeto - Chinese family language.

In more specific detail, Karen languages are considered part of the Tibeto –Burman family of languages and Hmong language belongs to the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family, along with Chinese (according to many Chinese and Hmong scholars)

Yet, I shall give here few words that I found them related to Chinese language, words like “Vang” means “king or emperor” and “Mua-kua” means “papaya”.

Let’s now sum up the similarities of linguistic features between the two languages.

A) According to the information given by many linguistic scholars both languages are related to Chinese.

B) The languages are monosyllabic and tonal.

C) There are no final consonants

D) Some dialects do have a nasal syllable ending in some words

E) Compound words are formed by agglutination (adding two words together to form another new word)

F) The structure of sentence is Subject + verb + object + adverb

Or

Subject + Adjective

Food

The original Hmong food is quite plain. They do not use many items to prepare one menu. They always cook each item separately. Hmong meals usually include many fresh vegetables, mostly prepared by steaming or boiling.

Of cause, it can be spicy as well, but chili should be prepared separately from the main menu, so that the youngsters in the family can have together.

Unlike the Karen cuisines which are particularly spicy and many items such as peanut pickle ( “tua-nua” called in Thai language),chili, onion and garlic are put up together to prepare only one menu. This makes their food is quite unique from other Asian food.

But now we can find that not only the Karen that use different items to prepare a menu of food, but also the Hmong and other ethics do that too. This is just because they live in the same society and they have shared cultural heritage together.

Education

Both girls/women and boys/men of the two ethics now have the right to study, but still most of the children do not get the opportunity to afford for higher education. There are still a lot of children that do not have an opportunity for education.

Yet, there are many literates of the two are active and concern about their own people condition, so after finishing their higher studies and do come back to guide and support their villages and encourage their people for education. So it is education that changes their lives and brings progress to them to live with other communities in peace.

Family name

Actually, both of the Hmong and the Karen have their own language family names. The Hmong family names are Vang, Thao, Lee, Her, Xiong, Yang, Moua, Hang, Lo, and Lor, etc. But later these all names have been changed according to the wish of the each family.

Regarding to this, the Karen too that has changed their surname into other language. It should be stated here that due to the kindness of a Royal Thai King that had named many family names to both the Hmong and the Karen. These family names were given when the Thai King went to meet His people in the Northern part of Thailand, such as Pitakkirikeat, Panakirirath in a Karen family name, and Pitakkeat in a Hmong family name.( I am not sure which Thai king, but I know this because my relatives and my friends who have such surnames told me about this.)

Although their surnames have been changed into other languages, they still keep the original family names in their mind. So now we hardly to make out which family does he/she belongs too, or she is Hmong/ Karen or not

Tradition

Tradition is the main part of the two ethics life. They still keep practice on protecting their tradition very strongly as we can see many activities taken place even today. The main tradition that I would like to mention here is the New year of theirs.

The Hmong new year is always held on in November to January regarding to the moon. New Year is a great time for each other to meet and to visit their dear relatives.

On the new year day, each household sacrifices domestic animals and holds feasts. They offer pigs and chickens to their ancestors and the spirit controllers of the house as well as the village. Particular rituals must be performed by him in honor of these spirits, most during the New Year celebrations. The young people also have a important function of paying respect to the elders. Moreover it is a time for enjoying, so they dress new cloths and play various interesting activities such as dancing, singing and throwing ball , all these can be found on the New year days.

The Karen Lular New Year is traditionally held on the first day of the month of Thalay (Pyatho) or the fourth month of the thirteen-month Burma calendar. With a Western approximation this makes this year is Karen year 2748. In the Karen new year too they dress new cloths and have many activities take place especially dancing and singing which have been a part of the celebration.

Dress

Both the Hmong dress and the Karen dress are colorful and beautiful. These customs are not only fashionable but also meaningful too.

Let’s turn to the Hmong dress and respectively.

It is said by many Hmong scholars that the embroidery in Hmong dress is Hmong way of writing in the ancient time. At that time, hmong had lost the war, their scripts and books were burn, so our Hmong ancestors used the method of embroidery to record event and information such as the lines in the Hong girl skirt indicate the Yellow River in China when Hmong had a war with the Hun Xia Dynasty fighting for the plain of the Yellow river.

There are a lot of designs are left not been understood by us because those who know how to read had passed away, but still some of the original embroidery designs still have their names for themselves, but these names do not give us any meaning which related to our own past.

So there is only the colors of the dress that give the idea of which group of Hmong to us i.e. the White Hmong or the Green Hmong. If we a girl wears a white skirt, then obviously that she belongs to the White Hmong group. Or on another hand, if a girl wears a blue skirt ,then she is a Blue or green Hmong .

The Karen that have different costumes. All these costumes have different meanings in term of group like the Hmong too , but the Karen dress has different meanings for the status of the dresser, for example;

A) White dress (Say Moe Wah) is usually wore by women who live in eastern mountain Karen. This also indicates that she is single or unmarried, If people get married they do not wear it anymore.

B) If people wear flowers Sewn dress (Say Sa Paw) dress indicates that they live in plains areas and believe in animist traditions.

C) If we see people were Black dress (Say Moe Thu) which mean that there is a wedding ceremony, and Karen New Year going on. Some people just were it to recall spirit.

D) Green dress (Say La) dress is mostly worn in Western Mountain areas. People often wear this dress from childhood until they become old.

E) Say P'lo dress is wore mostly by Eastern mountain Karen men found in the Delta and the plains .

We now shall come to the conclusion that the colors of the dresses of the two have different meanings. The Hmong dresses tell us which group he/she belongs to (white or green group), whereas the Karen dress tell us the status of the dresser and the region where the dresser comes from.

This is the last part of my presentation on this topic, I would like to conclude that although we are different in name, but we are same in nature. I hope report could bring something to whom interested in the two ethics.

Reference

1.Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2.Mission Statement;The Democratic Voice of Burma is a non-profit Burmese media organization committed to responsible journalism., http://english.dvb.no/ about.php

3.http://www.aapress.com

4. http://www.omniglot.com

5. http://www.hilltribe.org/karen/

6. Hmong Religion and Expressive Culture,

http://www.everyculture.com/East-Southeast-Asia/Hmong-Religion