Romanized Popular Alphabet
TheRomanized Popular Alphabet(RPA) orHmong RPA(alsoRoman Popular Alphabet), is a system ofromanizationfor the various dialects of theHmong language.Created in Laos between 1951 and 1953 by a group of missionaries andHmongadvisers, 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 notablyNyiakeng Puachue HmongandPahawh Hmong.[1]
History
[edit]InXiangkhoang 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 withWilliam A. Smalley,a missionary studying theKhmu languageinLuang Prabang Provinceat 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.[2]
Orthography
[edit]The Alpha bet 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 inWhite Hmong(denoted with †) orGreen Mong(denoted with ⁂) are color-coded respectively.[3]Some writers make use of variant spellings. Much as with Tosk forAlbanian,White Hmong was arbitrarily chosen to be the "standard" variant.
Consonants and vowels
[edit]| Occlusives | Nasals | Stops | l |
Affricates | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ny | n | m | ml | p | pl | t | d† | dl⁂ | r | c | k | q | tx | ts | ||
| Unmodified | /ɲ/ | /n/ | /m/ | /mˡ/ | /p/ | /pˡ/ | /t/ | /d/† | /tˡ/⁂ | /ʈ/ | /c/ | /k/ | /q/ | /l/ | /ts/ | /ʈʂ/ |
| Preceding⟨n⟩ | np /ᵐb/ |
npl /ᵐbˡ/ |
nt /ⁿd/ |
ndl /ⁿdˡ/⁂ |
nr /ᶯɖ/ |
nc /ᶮɟ/ |
nk /ᵑɡ/ |
nq /ᶰɢ/ |
ntx /ⁿdz/ |
nts /ᶯɖʐ/ | ||||||
| Preceding/Following⟨h⟩ | hny /ɲ̥/† |
hn /n̥/† |
hm /m̥/† |
hml /m̥ɬ/† |
ph /pʰ/ |
plh /pɬ/ |
th /tʰ/ |
dh /dʱ/† |
dlh /tɬ/⁂ |
rh /ʈʰ/ |
ch /cʰ/ |
kh /kʰ/ |
qh /qʰ/ |
hl /ɬ/ |
txh /tsʰ/ |
tsh /ʈʂʰ/ |
| ⟨n⟩and⟨h⟩ | nph /ᵐpʰ/ |
nplh /ᵐpɬ/ |
nth /ⁿtʰ/ |
ndlh /ⁿtɬ/⁂ |
nrh /ᶯʈʰ/ |
nch /ᶮcʰ/ |
nkh /ᵑkʰ/ |
nqh /ᶰqʰ/ |
ntxh /ⁿtsʰ/ |
ntsh /ᶯʈʂʰ/ | ||||||
- Theglottal stopis not indicated in the orthography. The few truly vowel-initial words are indicated by anapostrophe,which thus acts as azero consonant.
| Fricatives | Labial | Coronal | Dorsal | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| f | v | x | s | z | xy | y | h | |
| /f/ | /v/ | /s/ | /ʂ/ | /ʐ/ | /ç/ | /ʝ/ | /h/ | |
| Vowels | Monophthongs | Nasalized | Diphthongs | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| i | e | a | o | u | w | ee | aa⁂ | oo | ai | aw | au | ia† | ua | |
| /i/ | /e/ | /a/ | /ɔ/ | /u/ | /ɨ/ | /ẽ/ | /ã/⁂ | /ɔ̃/ | /ai/ | /aɨ/ | /au/ | /iə/† | /uə/ | |
Tones
[edit]RPA indicates tone by letters written at the end of a syllable,[4]similarly toGwoyeu RomatzyhorZhuang,rather than with diacritics like those used in theVietnamese Alpha betorPinyin.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.
| Tone | Example[5] | Orthographic Spelling |
|---|---|---|
| High | /pɔ́/'ball' | pob |
| Mid | /pɔ/'spleen' | po |
| Low | /pɔ̀/'thorn' | pos |
| High falling | /pɔ̂/'female' | poj |
| Mid rising | /pɔ̌/'to throw' | pov |
| Creaky | /pɔ̰/'to see' | pom1 |
| Low fallingbreathy | /pɔ̤/'grandmother' | pog |
- ⟨d⟩represents a phrase-final low-rising variant of the creaky tone
See also
[edit]
Notes
[edit]- ^Smalley, Vang & Yang (1990:151–154)
- ^Smalley, Vang & Yang (1990:151–154)
- ^ Phonology adapted from:Golston & Yang (2001)andSmalley, Vang & Yang (1990:48–51). See also: Mortensen, David."Preliminaries to Mong Leng (Hmong Njua) Phonology"(Archive) Unpublished,UC Berkeley.2004.
- ^Clark (2000:47)
- ^Examples taken from: Heimbach, Ernest H. White Hmong-English Dictionary [White Meo-English Dictionary]. 2003 ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1969. Note that many of these words have multiple meanings.
Bibliography
[edit]- 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.ISBN978-0226762876.
External links
[edit]- Hmong Language FAQ,David Mortensen
- Mong Literacy– includes lessons on writing Mong Leng with RPA
- http:// hmongrpa.org/
- Father Yves Bertrais papers, 1950-2007