The Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA) or Hmong RPA (also Roman Popular Alphabet), is a system of

romanization In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...

for the various dialects of the

Hmong language Hmong or Mong ( ; Romanized Popular Alphabet, RPA: , Chữ Hmông Việt, CHV: ''Hmôngz'', Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong, Nyiakeng Puachue: , Pahawh: , ) is a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmongic languages spoken by the Hmong p ...

. Created in Laos between 1951 and 1953 by a group of missionaries and Hmong advisers, it has gone on to become the most widespread system for writing the Hmong language in the West. It is also used in Southeast Asia and China alongside other writing systems, most notably Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong and Pahawh Hmong.

History

Xiangkhoang Province Xiangkhouang ( Lao: ຊຽງຂວາງ, meaning 'Horizontal City') is a province of Laos on the Xiangkhoang Plateau, in the nation's northeast. The province has the distinction of being the most heavily-bombed place on Earth. Historically ...

, Protestant missionary G. Linwood Barney began working on the writing system with speakers of Green Mong (Mong Leng), Geu Yang and Tua Xiong, among others. He consulted with William A. Smalley, a missionary studying the Khmu language in Luang Prabang Province at the time. Concurrently, Yves Bertrais, a Roman Catholic missionary in Kiu Katiam, Luang Prabang, was undertaking a similar project with Chong Yeng Yang and Chue Her Thao. The two working groups met in 1952 and reconciled any differences by 1953 to produce a version of the script.

Orthography

The alphabet was developed to write both the Hmong Der (White Hmong, RPA: ''Hmoob Dawb'') and Mong Leng (Green/Blue Mong, RPA: ''Moob Leeg'') dialects. While these dialects have much in common, each has unique sounds. Consonants and vowels found only in White Hmong (denoted with †) or Green Mong (denoted with ⁂) are color-coded respectively. Some writers make use of variant spellings. Much as with Tosk for Albanian, White Hmong was arbitrarily chosen to be the "standard" variant.

Consonants and vowels

*The

glottal stop The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...

is not indicated in the orthography. The few truly vowel-initial words are indicated by an

apostrophe The apostrophe (, ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...

, which thus acts as a

zero consonant In orthography, a zero consonant, silent initial, or null-onset letter is a consonant letter that does not correspond to a consonant sound, but is required when a word or syllable starts with a vowel (i.e. has a null onset). Some abjads, abugid ...

Tones

RPA indicates tone by letters written at the end of a syllable, similarly to

Gwoyeu Romatzyh Gwoyeu Romatzyh ( ; GR) is a system for writing Standard Chinese using the Latin alphabet. It was primarily conceived by Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982), who led a group of linguists on the National Languages Committee in refining the system betwe ...

or Zhuang, rather than with diacritics like those used in the

Vietnamese alphabet The Vietnamese alphabet (, ) is the modern writing script for the Vietnamese language. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages like French language, French, originally developed by Francisco de Pina (1585–1625), a missionary from P ...

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...

. Unlike Vietnamese and Chinese, all Hmong syllables end in a vowel, which means that using consonant letters to indicate tone will be neither confusing nor ambiguous. # represents a phrase-final low-rising variant of the creaky tone

Notes

Bibliography

* * *{{cite book , last1 = Smalley , first1 = William A. , author-link1 = William A. Smalley , last2 = Vang , first2 = Chia Koua , last3 = Yang , first3 = Gnia Yee , year = 1990 , title = Mother of Writing: The Origin and Development of a Hmong Messianic Script , url = https://archive.org/details/motherofwritingo0000smal , url-access = registration , place = Chicago , publisher = University of Chicago Press , isbn = 978-0226762876

External links

Hmong Language FAQ
David Mortensen
Mong Literacy
– includes lessons on writing Mong Leng with RPA *http://www.hmongrpa.org/
Father Yves Bertrais papers, 1950-2007
Phonetic alphabets Latin alphabets Romanization West Hmongic languages Writing systems introduced in the 1950s