Romanized Popular Alphabet: Difference between revisions

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 <span style="background:#EEE8AA">HmongWhite DerHmong</span> (denoted with †) or <span style="background:#CAFF70">Green Mong</span> (denoted with ⁂) are color-coded respectively.<ref>

Phonology adapted from: {{Harvcoltxt|Golston|Yang|2001}} and {{Harvcoltxt|Smalley|Vang|Yang|1990|pp=48–51}}. See also: Mortensen, David. [https://web.archive.org/web/20060906061745/http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~dmort/mong_leng_phonology.pdf "Preliminaries to Mong Leng (Hmong Njua) Phonology"] ([https://www.webcitation.org/6GOueLaJm?url=http://web.archive.org/web/20060906061745/http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~dmort/mong_leng_phonology.pdf Archive]) Unpublished, [[UC Berkeley]]. 2004.</ref> Some writers make use of variant spellings. Much as with Tosk for [[Albanian language|Albanian]], HmongWhite DerHmong was arbitrarily chosen to be the "standard" variant.

|+Occlusive consonants and vowels in the Romanized Popular Alphabet

|+Fricative consonants and vowels in the Romanized Popular Alphabet

| align=center | || align=center | {{IPA|/f/}} || align=center | {{IPA|/v/}} || align=center | {{IPA|/s/}} || align=center | {{IPA|/ʂ/}} || align=center | {{IPA|/ʐ/}} || align=center | {{IPA|/ʝç/}} || align=center | {{IPA|/çʝ/}} || align=center | {{IPA|/h/}}

RPA indicates tone by letters written at the end of a syllable,<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Clark|2000|p=47}}</ref> likesimilarly to [[Gwoyeu Romatzyh]] or [[Standard Zhuang|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.