| Sanqiao | |
| States: | China |
| Region: | Guizhou |
| Ethnicity: | Miao |
| Speakers: | 6,000 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| Familycolor: | Hmong-Mien |
| Fam2: | Hmongic |
| Fam3: | East Hmongic |
| Fam4: | Eastern Qiandong Miao |
| Iso3: | none |
| Glotto: | sanq1234 |
| Glottorefname: | Sanqiao |
Sanqiao is a Hmongic language spoken in Jinping County and Liping County, Guizhou, China by about 6,000 people.
The Sanqiao people sing traditional songs using the Suantang language (Chinese: 酸汤话), a Sinitic language that is similar to New Xiang.
A study by Hsiu (2024) found that Sanqiao is an East Hmongic (Central Miao) language, belonging to the East Qiandong dialectal group.[1]
Earlier demographic studies performed by non-linguists claimed that Sanqiao vocabulary is about 30–40% Miao (Hmu) and 40%-50% Dong (Kam), with the remainder consisting of Chinese words.[2]
Sanqiao speakers can understand the local Dong and Miao dialects, but the Dong and Miao cannot understand the Sanqiao language.[2]
In Liping County and Jinping County, Guizhou, the Sanqiao live in just over 20 villages, with over 6,000 people (Yu 2017).[2]
Sanqiao in a broader sense, however, is a grouping of about 30,000 people who speak unrelated languages, who are spread across Jingzhou, Huitong, Tongdao, and Suining counties of Hunan, and Liping, Jinping, and Tianzhu counties of Guizhou.[2] In Hunan, they are also known as the Flowery Miao (Chinese: 花苗) or Flowery-Clothed Miao (Chinese: 花衣苗), while in Guizhou they are known as the Sanqiao people (Chinese: 三撬人).[2]
The Sanqiao are distributed in the following locations of Qiandongnan Prefecture, Guizhou (Deng 2010).[3] There are 22 villages in total.