tnv,

i did not say anything in the affirmative only that the etymology is
still opened for research.

i completely disagree with you 199%% that suav (as in ethnic han) has
anything to do with npau suav (dream). in fact, i am a bit bothered
that you would/could 'reason' your way to such consideration. in fact,
i see many others doing the same thing with hmong words. for example,
huab tais = emperor, niam tais = mother's sister (or when niam tais
laus and laus is omitted, then maternal grandmother). now, it is
undeniable that huab tais = huang di. huang = yellow, di = emperor.
when you want to compare huab tais and huang di to niam tias, one
could come out with a silly conclusion, niam tais = mother emperor. in
fact, in the old days, ethnic han also called their mother, 'nian',
which is the sinicized version, of course, of niam. so is nian di =
niam tias = mother emperor? of course not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(well, actually, for a lot of you hmong men, your mother-in-law might
be, hahahahahahhahahahah LOL@B2BH).

i don't think the suav in npau suav has anything to do with suav
(ethnic han). suav represents more than 1 word; suav = count, suav =
'chinese' (and quite possibly, suav=dream). had we truly developed our
own writing system customized for our language, we would never end up
with such silly and possible interpretations such as, kuv noog koj = i
bird you, peb noj peb cuag = three eat us knee. every single writing
system for hmong people, to date, that i have seen, suffer from this
limitation and equivocation.

of course, hmong language is largely mono-syllabic, but that is not
say it is exclusively mono-syllabic. there are many multi-syllable
words, whos component syllables may have no relation to their single
syllable forms. and i would argue, that npau suav is one such example.
npau suav should be taken, at least for now, and as far as i can tell,
to be one word, referring to a dream.

to say that npau suav could be derived from hmong envy of the
chinese's way of life is not only ungrounded linguistically, but also
historically. hmong people never coveted, envied, or were jealous of
the chinese life, land, government, people. of these items, hmong
people had developed their own and/or kept to their own. if anything,
it is the chinese that was probably envious of the hmong, especially
when they continued to trespass into hmong land and adopt hmong
culture into their own.

npau could mean boiling or angry too. so, to say, 'nws ua npau suav'
could mean, he do angry chinese, meaning, he is angry at the chinese,
which would be quite opposite of your consideration, 'he is envious of
the chinese'.

believe me, and you are a student of hmong/chinese history, you did
not have to be raw or cooked hmong to have tax collected. hmong people
have been taxed whenever, wherever, however---chinese/french/america.
txawm yog koj tsis txia ua suav los suav yeej tuaj sau se. txawm koj
yog niag meo xwb los fabkis yeej tuaj sau se. txawm koj yog hmoob xwb
los amekas yeej tuaj sau se.

On Dec 6, 4:03 pm, Tzianeng Vang gmail.com> wrote: