Pahawh is written from left to right. Each syllable is written with two letters, an
onset (, an initial consonant or
consonant cluster) and a
rime (, a vowel,
diphthong, or vowel plus
final consonant). However, the order of these elements is rime-initial, the opposite of their spoken order; that is, each syllable would seem to be written right to left if it were transcribed literally into the Roman alphabet. Pahawh Hmong might therefore be thought of as a vowel-centered
abugida; tones and onsets are distinguished by
diacritics. The consonant onset
k is not written, so that a rime letter (V) written by itself is read as
kV. Nor is the rime
au (on mid tone) written, so that an onset letter (C) written by itself is read
Cau, except following a bare rime, as otherwise these could be read as a single syllable. The
absence of an onset, however, is indicated with a
null-onset letter. Again, this is similar to an abugida, but with the roles of consonant and vowel reversed. For an example of the positional variation, consider the phrase (written in RPA orthography):
kuv rau tshais rau koj noj "I serve you breakfast". Since the first word,
kuv, starts with a
k, it is written as the bare rime
uv in Pahawh (). The word
rau, with mid-tone
au as the rime, is normally written as a bare onset
r ()
, and indeed this is the case for the second instance in this sentence. However, since the first
rau follows a bare rime, it cannot be written as a bare onset
r, or the combination might be read as
ruv rather than
kuv rau. Therefore, the combination
kuv rau is written as
uv rau () rather than
uv r ()
, with the rime
au () made explicit. Here is the aforementioned sentence in Pahawh, written in Second and Third Stage respectively: ; Image:Pahawh yu glossed.png|left|thumb|Pahawh rimes, stage 2. The tone diacritics are irregular. Note that
-v tone is sometimes written with the left-hand rime glyph, sometimes with the right. In stage 3, it is consistently written with the right-hand glyph, and all tones have the diacritics of
koo above: [left glyph]
-b none,
-m dot,
-j macron; [right glyph]
-v none,
- dot,
-s macron,
-g trema. When used,
-d tone takes the left-hand glyphs with a stroke diacritic. The
ia and
a rows may be read
a and
aa in Hmong Njua. Pahawh has twenty onset letters to transcribe sixty phonemic onsets. This is accomplished with two diacritics, a dot (, ) and a tack (, ), written above the onset. However, although there is some scattered similarity between the sounds of the resulting forms, there is no overall pattern to the system. For example, the letter for
h () with a dot is pronounced
th ()
, and with a tack is pronounced
pl ()
. The null consonant () does not take diacritics in Hmong Daw, but does in Hmong Njua, for two onsets,
ndl and
ndlh ()
, which only occur in Hmong Njua; similarly, the letter for
l () with a dot and tack, respectively, represents Daw
d and
dh ()
, which do not occur in Njua, but are used to represent Njua
dl and
dlh ()
, which do not occur in Daw. However, Cwjmem retains the Daw values for the letter
d and
dh and instead designates Njua
dl, dlh, and
ndlh with a letter used for the null consonant, with a rounded tack (, ) to represent
ndlh (thus representing Njua
ndl,
dl,
dlh, and
ndlh as , respectively). The rimes, in contrast, are over-specified. There are thirteen rime sounds, but twenty-six letters to represent them. One of each pair takes four of the eight
tones, while the other takes the other four tones. Diacritics (dot, , ; macron, , ; and trema, , ), or the lack of one, distinguish the tones that each rime letter may carry. One of the tones, written
-d in RPA, is not phonemic but is a
prosodic unit-final
allophone of the
creaky register -m; it may be written in Pahawh by changing the dot diacritic to a short stroke (, ), but it is not in primarily use by Second Stage writers. Shong used the rimes with the values
kiab and
kab in Hmong Daw for
kab and
kaab () in Hmong Njua. However, Cwjmem retains the Daw values for Njua and adds a pipe (|) to the left of
kab kam kav etc. to write
kaab kaam kaav etc. In addition to phonetic elements, Pahawh Hmong has a minor
logographic component, with characters for • the numerals 0–10, (hundreds), (myriads), (millions), , , and (trillions), though the higher numerals have been dropped leaving a positional decimal system •
arithmetical signs • periods of time: year, season, month, day, date • the most common
grammatical classifier,
lub, which when written out phonetically consists of two very similar letters (), and • eighteen
clan signs. These were never disseminated, but were intended to clarify personal relationships in Hmong refugee camps, where people regularly met strangers of unknown clan. Strict taboos govern the behavior of Hmong men and women from the same clan. Punctuation is derived from the Roman alphabet, presumably through French or Lao, except for a sign introduced by one of Shong's disciples, Pa Kao Her (), that replaced Shong's , but also includes a native sign for
reduplication and a native
cantillation mark.
Second and third stage tones There are two orthographic systems in use for Pahawh Hmong, the
second reduced stage from 1965 and the
third reduced stage from 1970 (see history, below). Some Hmong communities consider the second stage to be more authentic, while others prefer the third stage as being more pragmatic. The differences are primarily in tone assignment. Bare rimes—that is, rime letters without a tone diacritic—have various values in stage two, but are regularly high tone
(-b) or rising tone
(-v) in stage three. Likewise, although the pedagogic charts are organized so that each column corresponds to a single tone, the tonic diacritics are scattered about the columns in stage two, but correspond to them in stage three. (Stage 4, which today is only used for shorthand, replaces the
-v rime letters with additional diacritics on the
-b rime letters, so that each rime and tone has a single dedicated glyph.) Tone transcription is that of the
Romanized Popular Alphabet. ==History==