The Bunu people are the Yao people who speak Hmongic languages. That is, Bunu in the broad sense is a cultural rather than linguistic group. Strecker had classified Bu-Nao as a Western Hmongic language, and the other Bunu languages—Younuo, Wunai, and Jiongnai —as distinct branches of Hmongic. Matisoff grouped all of these together in a Bunu branch of Hmongic. Ratliff returned Bu-Nao to Western Hmongic, and moved Jiongnai to its own peripheral branch of Hmongic, but did not address Younuo or Wunai. Chinese sources generally do not treat the languages as Hmongic because the speakers are not ethnic Miao, but Wang & Deng classify Bunao as a cousin of Western Hmongic, and Jiongnai and Younuo as independent branches.
Varieties
Bu-Nao dialects include:
Bunu 布努 - 359,474 speakers; representative dialect: Nongjing, Qibainong Township, Dahua County 大化七百弄乡弄京
*Dongnu 东努 - 293,489 speakers in Funing County, Yunnan and northern Guangxi: Du'an, Dahua, Bama, Pingguo, Tiandong, Mashan, Debao, Long'an, Baise, Tianyang, Donglan, Hechi, Shanglin, Xicheng, Yishan, Laibin. In Funing County, they are known as Buzha 布咋 or the Mountain Yao 山瑶.
Baonao 包瑙 - 28,952 speakers in Nandan, Hechi, and Tian'e in Guangxi as well as Libo County, Guizhou; representative dialect: Lihu Township, Nandan County 南丹里湖瑶族乡
Numao 努茂 - 1,715 speakers in Libo County, Guizhou; representative dialect: Yaolu Township, Libo County 荔波瑶麓瑶族乡
*Numao 努茂 - about 1,200 speakers in the townships of Yaolu 瑶麓 and Jiarong 佳荣
*Dongmeng 冬孟 - about 400 speakers in the townships of Maolan 茂兰, Dongtang, 洞塘, and Weng'ang 翁昂
These add up to a total number of 390,000 speakers. The Guizhou Province Gazetteer lists the following autonyms for these villages in Libo County, Guizhou.
': Yaolu 瑶麓
': Yaoshan 瑶山
': Yao'ai 瑶埃
The Yunnan Province Gazetteerreports that a Bunu dialect known as ' is spoken by about 7,000 people in Guichao 归朝乡 and Dongbo 洞波瑶族乡 townships of Funing County, Yunnan. The Shaoyang Prefecture Gazetteer reports that the Miao of Xinning County, Hunan, speak a Bunu-branch language. Intelligibility among these varieties is difficult, and they may be separate languages. Strecker went so far as to suggest they may not form a group at all, but separate languages within West Hmongic.
