What are the Miao people divided into?

According to the language, it can be roughly divided into three types: Xiangxi (East) Miao, Qiandong (Middle) Miao and Sichuan-Guizhou-Yunnan (West) Miao.

It can also be subdivided.

1. Xiangxi Dialect (Eastern Dialect) Miao people call themselves Guo Xiong, formerly known as Hong Miao, because women will wear red pleated skirts and men will tie red ribbons around their waists. During the Qing dynasty, influenced by Manchu costumes, there is no such costume now. Xiangxi dialect is divided into eastern dialect and western dialect. The eastern dialect Miao people live in the southeast of Guzhang County, luxi county, the east of Jishou City (mainly Danqing Town), Longshan County, Yongshun County and Mayang County. Their costumes are characterized by flower picking, mainly geometric patterns. Clothes, headscarves and bibs have flower picking patterns and small silver ornaments. Western dialects are widely distributed, with Huayuan County, Fenghuang County, southern Baojing County, southwestern Guzhang County, western Jishou City (Aizhai, Liuji and other places), Mayang, Xinhuang, Songtao County in Guizhou Province, southeastern Chongqing and Xuanen County in Hubei Province as the main distribution areas. The colors of Miao costumes in western dialects are mainly dark blue and black, with patterns embroidered on them, mainly flowers and birds, and there are many silver ornaments, especially in Fenghuang and Songtao areas, where silver ornaments are flourishing.

Second, the Miao people in eastern Guizhou dialect (central dialect) call themselves Mu, Gan 'ao and Meng. Formerly known as Jiugu (drum) black seedlings, they are distributed in southeastern Guizhou, southern Guizhou and southwestern Guizhou, Rongshui County, Guangxi, and Huaihua, Hunan. There is little difference in the languages of Miao people in eastern Guizhou, so you can basically communicate if you slow down. There are many branches of Miao nationality in eastern Guizhou, with more than 200 kinds of costumes and various kinds of silver ornaments. At present, most of the Miao silver ornaments and clothing styles in various media and tourist attractions come from Miao nationality in eastern Guizhou.

Third, Sichuan-Guizhou-Yunnan dialect (western dialect) has the largest number of Miao people, which can be divided into three groups according to language.

1, first of all, Sichuan-Guizhou-Yunnan sub-dialect group, which is the main force of Miao nationality in western dialects, calls itself "Meng". Old black seedling, white seedling, green seedling, flower seedling, small flower seedling and crooked comb seedling all belong to this group, which are widely distributed in western Guizhou, southern Sichuan, Yunnan, western Guangxi and Laos, Vietnam and Thailand in Southeast Asia. The language interoperability of this sub-dialect group is actually very high. From Bijie, Guizhou to Wenshan, Yunnan, and then to Mingzhou, the Miao people in the three places can communicate as long as they are used to each other's pronunciation. Some people's languages are not very different. The Miao people in Laos invented Miao Wen written in Latin letters and brought it to Europe and America, where it was widely used.

2. The second dialect group in northeast Yunnan, formerly known as Dahua Temple, is mainly distributed in Wumengshan area, namely Bijie in Guizhou, Kunming and Zhaotong in east Yunnan. It calls itself "Amao" and mainly believes in Christianity. Miao Wen, which is dedicated to writing the Miao Bible, has a special letter symbol called Bogley Miao Wen.

3. The third ethnic group can be called "Mashanmiao" ethnic group, including several sub-dialect ethnic groups (such as Huishui sub-dialect, Guiyang sub-dialect, Luobeihe sub-dialect, etc. Although their Miao language belongs to the western dialect, it is actually the same as the western dialect and the central dialect, but it is only distributed in transitional areas, such as Guiyang City, Qiannan Prefecture, Anshun and other places in Guizhou, claiming to be close to "Meng". The silver ornaments of Miao nationality in western dialect are less and less distributed westward.

There are also some small branches:

Miao people in eastern Huaihua, Shaoyang, Hunan and Longsheng, Guangxi used to be called Qingmiaoyi, but Miao language has died out, and there are only a few special Pinghua (such as Chengbu Pinghua, Maojia Pinghua, Longsheng Pinghua, Cantonese, etc.). This Pinghua belongs to Chinese in linguistics, but it is called "Miao language" in Chengbu, so it can't communicate with the Chinese of Chengbu Han people. At present, the bottom vocabulary of Chengbu Pinghua is close to the middle dialect of Miao language, but it is mixed with a small number of eastern dialect vocabulary of Miao language and Yao language. This part of the Miao nationality was recruited to the west of Guizhou in the Ming Dynasty, forming a local trumpet seedling.

Hainan Miao people, actually Yao people, speak the Jinmen dialect of Yao language. It was wrong to classify them as Miao people in those years.

There are special ethnic groups with similar cultures such as sour soup seedlings, grass seedlings and Sanchan in the Qingshui River valley at the junction of Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi, and some of them are identified as Miao. It is Miao, Han, Dong and other ethnic groups that have jointly established a stable society and integrated with each other in the relatively closed environment of Qingshui River. For example, the sour soup dialect of sour soup seedlings is Chinese dialect; Cao Miao language is close to Dong language, but it agrees with Miao language. Sancha people's language is a mixture of Chinese, Miao and Dong.

It's funny to see someone say in the comments that I deliberately split the Miao nationality. What I said is more objective. Miao people are numerous and widely distributed, so there are natural differences. The old appellation is quoted only for people to understand and to facilitate compatriots who don't know what dialect their Miao language is. The culture of each branch is worth understanding, and the integration of Miao branches should be based on mutual understanding of their respective cultures, rather than deliberately avoiding differences.

In addition, some people may have heard the names of black seedling, white seedling, seedling, crooked comb seedling and Siyin seedling. This is the division in the old society, and the prefix mainly comes from the color or some characteristics of this Miao costume. Personally, I don't support the continued use of this classification:

First of all, great changes have taken place in Miao costumes from the old society to the present age. For example, the Miao nationality in Xiangxi used to be called Red Miao because women wore red skirts and men wore red belts. However, by the end of the Qing Dynasty, Miao women in Xiangxi no longer wore skirts, nor did men wear red belts, and the colors of their costumes were mainly blue and black. Is it appropriate to call them red seedlings again? Miao people in southeastern Guizhou used to be called black Miao, and their costumes were mainly dark, but now Miao costumes in some places in southeastern Guizhou have turned red. There are also Wenshan Miao people, which are divided into seven branches: black, white, green and flower. The original clothes were different, and now the clothes have become unified. Obviously, this classification does not conform to the names of all branches of Miao nationality.

Secondly, after reading the above introduction, some readers found that there are black seedlings in southeastern Yunnan and Wenshan, but they are all Miao people in different dialect areas. Obviously, they are not the same Miao people. There are different flower seedlings in western dialects, such as big flower seedlings, small flower seedlings and Wenshan flower seedlings, and they are not the same. In addition, the oblique comb seedlings in Guizhou are called "partial seedlings" when they arrive in Guangxi. This is another shortcoming of this old classification, which is unscientific. Obviously, Miao people of different branches have the same name. It is obviously the same branch of the Miao nationality, but it is called two names. People who are superstitious about this old classification are likely to be misled and can only be used as reference.