I’m [Hmong.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_people) and my BIL is from a thinned line of Gaelic Irish. We were talking about the histories of our peoples and I realized there’s a ton of neat comparisons between the two cultures:
– constantly and routinely oppressed by a nearby ethnic group.
– both have a druidic shamanistic culture that was wiped by Protestant/catholic missionaries who committed horrific atrocities to them.
– Uses a romanized alphabet far removed from their native language that doesn’t sound anything like it’s written using a ton of unnecessary letters. Siobhan phonetically is Shivon and Tais Phonetically is pronounced Thigh.
– They have a lot of the same kind of intricate knot designs and embroidery. It’s kind of neat actually.
– their respective neighboring culture that they interact with they have a very particular accent that marks them.
– randomly spits out red headed children.
I’m sure there’s more if I think more about it. Just thought it was neat that a tiny ethnic group in southern China has so many Stark similarities to another ethnic group on the other side of the planet. Happy New Year everyone.
21 comments
Love the last one 😂
I used to live in Thailand and shared a house with a Hmong woman, we became really good friends and you’re right, there are huge similarities between our cultures and how we’ve been stripped of them.
My brother always said I was a bit of Hmong.
>both have a druidic shamanistic culture that was wiped by Protestant/catholic missionaries who committed horrific atrocities to them.
Nothing like this happened here though. Ireland was converted by individual monks coming in drips and drabs preaching to kings and chieftains who they had no power of to enforce shite like this at all. There’s no evidence of any kind of pagan genocide, or a purging of the druids, in Ireland whatsoever.
Ireland didn’t have to deal with any colonialism like you’re describing until several centuries post-Christianisation.
The Hmong- a great bunch of lads.
“Gaelic Irish” 🙃🙃🙃
Very neat. I think I had a class with a Hmong person a few years ago.
>my BIL is from a thinned line of Gaelic Irish.
So, American then?
– begrudgingly earned the respect of Clint Eastwood?
>Uses a romanized alphabet far removed from their native language that doesn’t sound anything like it’s written using a ton of unnecessary letters. Siobhan phonetically is Shivon and Tais Phonetically is pronounced Thigh.
Irish uses a reformed alphabet, with its own orthography and has embraced the roman alphabet far longer than other languages, for example older written form than English. It hasn’t been romanised in the same fashion as the south-east asian languages. English isn’t known for using a very logical spelling either, it’s just more dominant and gives the impression of being a standard. when every language has its own orthography.
The Hmong word for black is Dub, it says in Wikipedia. Is that right?
> Uses a romanized alphabet far removed from their native language that doesn’t sound anything like it’s written using a ton of unnecessary letters. Siobhan phonetically is Shivon and Tais Phonetically is pronounced Thigh.
Look I don’t blame you for repeating this and I won’t make any assumptions about your language, but this shit drives me up the wall. Irish does *not* have unnecessary letters in it. It is *not* written weirdly to how it sounds. The way Irish is written reflects how those letters and digraphs are pronounced *in Irish*. Not in English! Of course ‘Siobhan’ doesn’t make any sense if you pronounce it using English phonology, it’s **not an English word!** You pronounce it with Irish phonology, which has used the Latin alphabet for a very long time, where the /v/ sound is (often) written as a ⟨bh⟩, and that’s not any less valid than how the sound is written in English.
Rant over, but I wonder if it also sounds familiar to you!
Actually, not that surprising. I’ve heard that there are similarities between some Asian cultures and Irish. The theory is that there was a culture that spread across Asian and Europe that then got displaced by Christianity and Roman cultures. The preexisting cultures got pushed out to the edges of of Europe and Asia. Ireland is the edge of Europe.
>a thinned line of Gaelic Irish
I’m curious what that means. Thank you.
What part of Ireland is he from?
There’s more to Irish culture than historical instances of oppression and regional accents.
Happy new year all the same though
I’m really sorry, I should really know, but what does BIL stand for?
This is really cool
As an Irish person living in VietNam (where many hmong live) I would say VietNam has a lot more in common with Ireland if the early-mid 90s.
Like uncanny….
Lol, if the OP said he was from Boston and an Irish American, this topic would’ve been torn to shreds. He may even have been banned.
> randomly spits out red headed children.
Ha, really?