Pingtang Miao, named after
Pingtang County
Pingtang County () is a county in the Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou province, China, bordering Guangxi to the south. It is a high mountain valley and is inhabited mainly by members of the Buyei and Miao ethnic minoritie ...
(平塘 ''Píngtáng'') in which it is spoken, is a group of
Miao language varieties of China.
Classification
The four varieties of Pingtang were listed as unclassified branches of
Chuanqiandian Miao
Hmong or Mong ( ; RPA: , CHV: ''Hmôngz'', Nyiakeng Puachue: , Pahawh: , ) is a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmongic languages spoken by the Hmong people of Southwestern China, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. Th ...
(Western Hmongic) in Wang (1983). Li (2000) classified them together as one of eight branches of Western Hmongic, a position maintained in Wu and Yang (2010).
Varieties
According to Li, there are four varieties of Pingtang (2000):
*North (Strecker's Pingtang Miao), 11,000 speakers
*East (Strecker's Dushan Miao), 4,000 speakers
*South (Strecker's Luodian Pingyan Miao), 6,000 speakers
*West (Strecker's Wangmo–Luodian Miao ''Mhang''), 3,000 speakers
These are at approximately the distance of the varieties of the other branches of West Hmongic, which ''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...
'' assigned separate ISO codes.
Demographics
Below is a list of Miao dialects and their respective speaker populations and distributions from Li (2018),
along with representative datapoints from Wang (1985).
[Wang Fushi 王辅世. 1985. ''Miaoyu jianzhi'' 苗语简志. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe 民族出版社.]
References
{{Languages of China
West Hmongic languages
Languages of Guizhou