Romanized Popular Alphabet in the context of "Pahawh Hmong"

The Hmong people (RPA: Hmoob, CHV: Hmôngz, Nyiakeng Puachue: 𞄀𞄩𞄰, Pahawh Hmong: 𖬌𖬣𖬵, IPA: [m̥ɔ̃́], Chinese: 苗族蒙人) are an ethnic group from East and Southeast Asia. In China, the Hmong people are classified as a sub-group of the Miao people. The modern Hmong reside mainly in Southwestern China and Mainland Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. There are also diaspora communities in the United States, Australia, France, and South America.

Hmong or Mong (/ˈmʌŋ/ MUNG; RPA: Hmoob, CHV: Hmôngz, Nyiakeng Puachue: 𞄀𞄩𞄰, Pahawh: 𖬌𖬣𖬵, [m̥ɔ̃́]) is a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmongic languages spoken by the Hmong people of Southwestern China, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. There are an estimated 4.5 million speakers of varieties that are largely mutually intelligible, including over 280,000 Hmong Americans as of 2013. Over half of all Hmong speakers speak the various dialects in China, where the Dananshan dialect forms the basis of the standard language. However, Hmong Daw and Mong Leng are widely known only in Laos and the United States; Dananshan is more widely known in the native region of Hmong.

Hmong Americans (RPA: Hmoob Mes Kas, Pahawh Hmong: 𖬌𖬣𖬵 𖬉𖬲𖬦 𖬗𖬲) are Americans of Hmong ancestry. Many Hmong Americans immigrated to the United States as refugees in the late 1970s, with a second wave in the 1980s and 1990s. Over half of the Hmong population from Laos left the country, or attempted to leave, in 1975, at the culmination of the Laotian Civil War.

During this period, thousands of Hmong were evacuated or escaped on their own to Hmong refugee camps in neighboring Thailand. About 90% of those who made it to refugee camps in Thailand were ultimately resettled in the United States. The rest, about 8 to 10%, resettled in countries including Canada, France, the Netherlands, and Australia.

Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong (Hmong: 𞄐𞄦𞄲𞄤𞄎𞄫𞄰𞄚𞄧𞄲𞄤𞄔𞄬𞄱‎; RPA: Ntawv Nyiajkeeb Puajtxwm Hmoob) is an alphabet script devised for White Hmong and Green Hmong in the 1980s by Reverend Chervang Kong for use within his United Christians Liberty Evangelical Church. The church, which moved around California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Colorado, and many other states, has used the script in printed material and videos. It is reported to have some use in Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, France, and Australia.

The script bears strong resemblance to Thai script in structure and form and characters inspired from the Hebrew alphabet, although the characters themselves are different. It contains 36 consonant characters, 9 vowel characters, and 7 combining tone characters. There are also 5 characters for determinatives used to indicate that the preceding noun is the name of a person, place, thing, vertebrate or invertebrate animal, or a pet name for the animal. Determinatives are not pronounced, but help distinguish homophones. They appear as the last character in a word, and are not separated by a space.