Miao people used to have language, but no writing. Of course, it is said that Miao people also had characters in ancient times, but they were later lost. These legends are hard to prove now. At the beginning of the 20th century, the British missionary in Shimenkan, Weining, Guizhou, together with Miao and Han intellectuals Yang Jacob and Zhang Wu, used some Latin letters and some phonetic symbols, and took Shimenkan Miao language as the standard pronunciation to create a phonetic symbol called "Pollard alphabet" (commonly known as Lao).

In the early years of the Republic of China, when M.H.Hutton, a British missionary, preached in Binhai Town (now Kaili City), Lushan County, Qiandongnan Prefecture, he created a kind of "phonetic symbol Miao Wen" according to the Putonghua phonetic symbol (19 18) published by the Ministry of Education of Beiyang Warlord Government in the seventh year of the Republic of China.

In addition, some Miao scholars such as Shi Bantang, Shi Qigui and Long Shaohua also created different types of Miao Wen.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Shi Bantang, a Miao poet in western Hunan, used the "six-character formula" and Chinese radical to compose a "square Miao Wen".

During the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period, Shi Qigui, a Miao scholar in Gancheng (now Jishou), created a kind of "shorthand Miao Wen" with Arabic letters based on Gancheng Miao language. At the same time, Long Shaohua, a Miao teacher in Songtao, Guizhou Province, compiled the textbook "Miao Eastern Dialect" with the international phonetic alphabet when he was teaching in Guiyang. However, under the conditions at that time, these Miao Wen could not be popularized.

After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), the broad masses of Miao people strongly demanded writing. The party and the state are very concerned about the Miao language, and have sent working groups and task forces to investigate the Miao language many times. During the period of 1952, the China Academy of Sciences and the Central Institute for Nationalities sent a working group to Guizhou to conduct a preliminary investigation of Miao language. 1955 In May, a Miao language investigation team composed of China Academy of Sciences and Central Institute for Nationalities conducted a seven-month investigation in Guizhou, Yunnan and Guangxi. 1956 from may to September, the second research group of minority languages survey of China academy of sciences conducted a large-scale and in-depth survey of the national Miao language. /kloc-The team of more than 20 people is divided into four groups: East Road, Middle Road, West Road, Qiannan Middle School and Hainan Group, and the Miao language in seven provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hubei and Hainan was investigated. These investigations provide a scientific basis for the division of Miao language, sub-dialects and dialects and the establishment of Miao Wen.

After full preparation, the Miao language science seminar was held in Guiyang, Guizhou Province from 1956 10 to 10, and 285 representatives attended the seminar. Zhou Lin, First Secretary of Guizhou Provincial Party Committee and Governor, delivered an opening speech. Yin, deputy director of the Department of Culture and Education of the Central Ethnic Affairs Commission, director of the preparatory office of the Institute of Minority Languages of China Academy of Sciences, and Ou Baichuan, head of the second research group of minority languages survey of China Academy of Sciences and vice governor of Guizhou Province, spoke at the meeting successively.

According to the investigation materials, the meeting initially divided Miao dialect into four dialects: East Yunnan, Middle Yunnan, West Yunnan and Northeast Yunnan (the later northeast Yunnan dialect was changed into a sub-dialect of West Yunnan dialect). The meeting held 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, so it is impossible to create a script for the Miao people. Therefore, it was decided that East, Chinese and Western languages should each create a script to reform the original script of Northeast Yunnan dialect. The convening of this meeting is a major event in the political life of the Miao people and has extremely important historical significance. The birth of Miao Wen ended the long history of Miao people without their mother tongue.

Of course, there are also many Miao people who have scattered their teachings and lived together with other ethnic groups, and many people have stopped using them.