Iu Mien is Hmong-Mien language spoken by about 840,000 people
mainly in China, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and also in the USA.
Iu Mien speakers are known as Yao - 瑶族 in Chinese, and người Dao
in Vietnamese. They are one of the officially recognized ethnic
minorities in China, and are also officially recognised as an
ethnic group in Vietnam. Iu Mien is closely related to Kim Mun
(Lanten), Biao-Jiao Mien, and Dzao Min. In China the dialect
spoken in Changdong in Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County in Guangxi
is consider to be the standard. Iu Mien is also spoken in in
Guangdong, Yunnan, Hunan and Guizhou provinces. Iu Mien was
written with Chinese characters in China for several centuries,
then a Romanized script was devised for the language by Western
linguists in the 1930s. The Iu Mien Unified Script, based on the
Romanized script used in China, was created at a literacy
conference in Guangdong province in 1984 by delegates from the
USA, China, and Thailand. The tone letters appear at the ends of
words and are used to