Background

Hmong people originally are from Southeast Asia. Hmong people first began to immigrate to the U.S in 1975 following the end of the Vietnam War (McDermid, 1999). The Hmong population forms one of the fastest growing Asian-origin groups in the U.S., increasing by 88% over the past decade to an estimated 300,000 (U.S. Census, 2000). The largest concentrations of Hmong immigrants in the U.S. are in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. 

Hmong language is the common name for a group of dialects of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmong-Mien/Miao-Yao language family. It has been estimated that the total number of Hmong speakers is over 4 million (Lemoine, 2005). The dialects spoken by the majority of Hmong people in the U.S. are White Hmong and Green Hmong. These two dialects are mutually intelligible to speakers, although they differ both in  lexicon and in certain aspects of phonology.

The Hmong children born in the U.S., as well as recent immigrants, typically speak Hmong (L1) at home from birth and start to learn English (L2) later in their lives (Reeve & Bennett, 2004). We use White Hmong as a starting point to examine the home language of the typically-developing Hmong-English bilingual children, in relation to their L2 (English) (cf. Kan & Kohnert, 2005). We hope that the information can be useful to clinicians, educators, and parents for preparing language assessment and intervention for Hmong-English bilingual children who need further support in their language development (e.g., children with primary language disorders, with hearing loss, or with cleft palate).

 

 

 

©2006  Kan, Xiong, & Kohnert