Stay b upstairs, the Miao people used to have a language but no writing. Of course, it is said that the Miao people had writing in ancient times, but it was later lost. These legends are now difficult to verify. At the beginning of the 20th century, Samuel Pollard, an Englishman who preached in the Shimenkan area of ??Weining, Guizhou, together with Miao and Han intellectuals Yang Jacob, Zhang Wu and others, used some Latin letters and some notations. The phonetic symbols, using the Shimenkan Miao language as the standard pronunciation, created a pinyin script called "Pola Alphabet Miao Script" (commonly known as the old Miao script).
In the early years of the Republic of China, when the British missionary M.H. Hutton was preaching in Panghai Town, Lushan County (now Kaili City) in southeastern Guizhou, he used the Beiyang Warlord Government’s Ministry of Education as the basis for the Seventh Year of the Republic of China (1918). ) based on the Mandarin phonetic alphabet published by the Panghai Miao language as the standard pronunciation, a "Miao phonetic alphabet" was created.
In addition, some Miao scholars such as Shi Bantang, Shi Qigui, and Long Shaohua also created different types of Miao writing.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Shi Bantang, a Miao poet from western Hunan, used the character creation rules of the "Six Books" and borrowed Chinese radicals to create a "square-shaped Miao script".
During the Anti-Japanese War, Shi Qigui, a Miao scholar from Qiancheng (now Jishou), used Arabic letters and created a "shorthand Miao script" based on the Qiancheng Miao language. During the same period, when Long Shaohua, a Miao teacher from Songtao, Guizhou, was teaching in Guiyang, he used the International Phonetic Alphabet to compile Miao textbooks in the eastern dialect. However, under the conditions at that time, it was impossible for these Miao texts to be popularized and promoted.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the majority of the Miao people strongly demanded the creation of written characters. The party and the state are very concerned about the writing problem of the Miao people, and have sent working groups and work teams several times to investigate the Miao language. In 1952, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Central Academy for Nationalities sent a working group to Guizhou to conduct a preliminary investigation of the Miao language. In May 1955, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Central Institute for Nationalities formed a Miao language investigation team to conduct a seven-month investigation in Guizhou, Yunnan, and Guangxi. From May to September 1956, the Second Working Team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Minority Language Survey conducted a large-scale in-depth survey of the Miao language across the country. The team of more than 120 people was divided into four teams: East Road, Middle Road, West Road, Qianzhongnan and The Hainan team investigated the Miao language in seven provinces: Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hubei and Hainan. These surveys provided scientific basis for the division of Miao dialects, sub-dialects and dialects and the creation of Miao language.
After full preparation, the Scientific Seminar on Miao Language and Writing Issues was held in Guiyang City, Guizhou Province from October 31 to November 7, 1956. 285 representatives participated in the seminar. Zhou Lin, First Secretary of the CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee and Governor of Guizhou Province, delivered an opening speech. Yin Yuran, deputy director of the Department of Culture and Education of the Central Ethnic Affairs Commission and director of the Preparatory Office of the Institute of Minority Languages ??of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ma Xueliang, leader of the Second Working Team of the Minority Language Survey of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Ou Baichuan, deputy governor of Guizhou Province, made reports at the meeting.
Based on the survey materials, the meeting initially divided the Miao language into four dialects: eastern, central, western and northeastern Yunnan dialects (the northeastern Yunnan dialect was later changed to a sub-dialect of the western dialect). The meeting believed that due to the complexity of Miao dialects, although the dialects are basically the same in grammar, they are very different in pronunciation and vocabulary. It is impossible to create a written language for the Miao people. Therefore, three dialects, namely eastern, central and western, were decided. Each created a script and reformed the original script of the Northeast Yunnan dialect. The convening of this meeting is a major event in the political life of the Miao people and is of extremely important historical significance. The birth of the Miao script ended the long history of the Miao people without their own written language.
Of course, the Miao people spread their religion and live together with other ethnic groups, so many people no longer use it.