hnia

White Hmong

Etymology

From Proto-Hmong-Mien *hmji̯əmH (“to sniff at”),[1] likely related to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m/s-nam (“to smell”), whence Tibetan སྣོམ་པ (snom pa, “to smell”) and Chinese 聞／闻 (wén, “to smell; to hear”).[2] The "kiss" meaning is a semantic extension of the original "sniff" meaning.[2]

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /n̥iə̯˧/

Verb

hnia

  1. to sniff at, to smell something intentionally
  2. to kiss
    Kuv xav hnia koj. ― I want to kiss you.

References
  • Heimbach, Ernest E. (1979) White Hmong — English Dictionary‎, SEAP Publications, →ISBN, page 69.
  1. Ratliff, Martha (2010) Hmong-Mien language history (Studies in Language Change; 8), Camberra, Australia: Pacific Linguistics, →ISBN, page 275.
  2. https://web.archive.org/web/20101031002604/http://wold.livingsources.org/vocabulary/25
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