Hmong Constitute

Title:	Hmong Constitute
Category:	Hmong
Clicks:	0
Listing added:	Mar 11, 2007
PageRank:	2/10

The Hmong constitute one of the most ancient peoples in Asia. Today, they number about 8 million, including other subgroups of Miao, scattered by the events of history, over centuries, from China to Southeast Asian, from Laos to Australia, Europe and America. Since 1975, which marked the end of the Vietnam War, more than 150,000 Hmong refugees from the Secret War of Laos have been resettled in the United States.

If the Hmong had a long and rich oral tradition, their language was provided with a writing system only 45 years ago. Thus, in 1952, in Luang Prabang, the Royal City of the former Kingdom of Laos, three men - Dr. Linwood Barney, Father Yves Bertrais and Dr. William Smalley - put their efforts and knowledge together to create the Hmong Romanized Popular Alphabet (R.P.A.) script. Immediately after, Father Bertrais started teaching the Hmong R.P.A. to a first group of young Hmong in his adopted Hmong village of the Guars Mountains (Roob Nyuj Qus), some 50 miles south of Luang Prabang, where in 1950 he had begun his apostolic mission with the Hmong in Laos, whom he has never left since then.