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The Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA) or Hmong RPA (also Roman Popular Alphabet), is a system of romanization for the various dialects of the Hmong language. 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

In Xiangkhoang Province, 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 is not indicated in the orthography. The few truly vowel-initial words are indicated by an apostrophe, which thus acts as a zero consonant.

Tones

RPA indicates tone by letters written at the end of a syllable, similarly to Gwoyeu Romatzyh or Zhuang, rather than with diacritics like those used in the Vietnamese alphabet or 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.

1. ⟨d⟩ represents a phrase-final low-rising variant of the creaky tone

See also

• Standard Zhuang

Notes

1. Smalley, Vang & Yang (1990:151–154)
2. Smalley, Vang & Yang (1990:151–154)
3. Phonology adapted from: Golston & Yang (2001) and Smalley, Vang & Yang (1990:48–51). See also: Mortensen, David. "Preliminaries to Mong Leng (Hmong Njua) Phonology" (Archive) Unpublished, UC Berkeley. 2004.
4. Clark (2000:47)
5. Examples taken from: Heimbach, Ernest H. White Hmong-English Dictionary . 2003 ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1969. Note that many of these words have multiple meanings.

Bibliography

• Clark, Marybeth (2000), Diexis and anaphora and prelinguistic universals, Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications, vol. 29, pp. 46–61
• Golston, Chris; Yang, Phong (2001), "Hmong loanword phonology" (PDF), in Féry, Caroline; Green, Antony Dubach; van de Vijver, Ruben (eds.), Proceedings of HILP 5, Potsdam: University of Potsdam, pp. 40–57
• Smalley, William A.; Vang, Chia Koua; Yang, Gnia Yee (1990). Mother of Writing: The Origin and Development of a Hmong Messianic Script. Chicago: 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