Mường language

Mường had no written form until Western academics in the 20th century developed a provisional alphabet based on a modified Vietnamese alphabet, including the additional consonant w and allowing different consonant pairs and final consonants than Vietnamese. In September 2016, the People's Committee of Hòa Bình Province adopted resolution 2295/QĐ-UBND, specifying a new Mường alphabet to be used in instruction within the province. The alphabet consists of 28 letters and four tone marks. The provincial Communist Party of Vietnam newspaper, Hòa Bình điện tử () began publishing its electronic edition in Mường in addition to Vietnamese and English, surprising some readers with the unusual orthography. The alphabet is as follows: A, Ă, Â, B, C, D, Đ, E, Ê, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, Ô, Ơ, P, Q, R, T, U, Ư, V, W, X, Y The letters F, J, S, and Z are only used in loanwords. ==Phonology==

Consonant inventory The following table details the consonants of those dialects that show a full voiced-voiceless distinction in the stops (being Mường Bi, Mường Thành, Mường Động, and Ba Trại). Of these phonemes, the palatals have been analysed as glide + velar . Furthermore, the distribution of syllable-final seems to be more restricted than the distribution of the other final consonants. Vowel inventory The vowel inventory is given in the following table. It appears to be quite uniform among the different dialects. Two of the vowels ( and ) can be long or short. : Apart from these monophthongs, there are also three diphthongs . Tone All Mường dialects are tonal. The Kim Thương dialect (Phú Thọ province) has been the object of an experimental phonetic study. == Vocabulary ==

• Note two different romanisations are used to show Khmer here. (UNGEGN and Wiktionary Transcription) Comparison of Mường and Vietnamese sentences • "Cải tlỗng chăng bong, lòng chăng yểng." - Mường uses chăng for 'no', it is cognate with Vietnamese chăng and chẳng (extant and widely understood as a negation word in Vietnamese, but rarely used except in poetic contexts). • "Nả tang chái tlốc." - Mường uses tlốc for 'head', it is cognate with Vietnamese trốc, it was formerly the primary word for head, but has been displaced with đầu (頭). • "Tlước ăn chay khau ăn nhúc." - Mường uses nhúc (肉) for 'meat', Vietnamese uses a native word for 'meat', thịt. It is cognate with Mường thit 'uncommon word for meat'. • "Ho là thôn mễ Tử." - Mường uses thôn (孫) for 'grandchild', Vietnamese uses a native word for 'grandchild', cháu. It is cognate with Mường chảu 'son-in-law'. ==References==