Hmong LG's Posting relating to the Hmong RPA Founders' Recognition Banquet
(Note: This is not an official transcript by the steering committe)
Go to The Hmong Language Users Group Homepage
From hlug@geocities.com Mon Jun 30 02:30 CDT 1997
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 02:17:21 -0500 (CDT)
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: HLUG
Subject: HLUG Post #94
*********************************************************************
Hmong Language Users Group
POST #94
(06/30/97)
*********************************************************************
In this issue:
HLUG Number Subject
----------- ---------------------------------------------
94-1 Personal (unofficial) Brief Summary of the
Hmong RPA Founders' Recognition Banquet
(Part 1 of 2)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
HLUG #94 Item 1
***************
Subject: Personal (unofficial) Brief Summary of the
Hmong RPA Founders' Recognition Banquet
(Part 1 of 2)
From: tswvxyooj@hotmail.com
PART 1: Brief summary of the event
I attended the recognition banquet on Saturday night in
Milwaukee, WI and I would like to share what I saw there
with our HLUG readers.
To me, June 28, 1997 marked a spectacular historical moment for
the entire Hmong community in the world. It was the Hmong RPA
Founders' Recognition Banquet which was held in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, USA to officially recognize those who founded the
Hmong Romanized Popular Alphabets (RPA) about 45 years ago.
All of the three Hmong RPA founders, Dr. Smalley, Dr. Barney,
and Fr. Bertrais and the benefactor, Archbishop Martino, all
were present at the banquet.
More than 200 attendees from more than 12 states and from
Canada and France were present at the banquet to help present
and witness the special recognition awards.
Booth displays on Hmong books (carried by Ywj Pheej) was a great
scene on the hall way. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the
great many books in prints nowadays on Hmong and Hmong language.
Xia Vue Yang (of Sheboygan, WI) and Mai Zong Vue (of Madison, WI)
were the announcers and moderators.
The three founders and the spouses of Dr. Barney and Dr. Smalley
were given the great honor to sit behind a head table in front of
everyone.
After the banquet dinner, the official recognition was begun with
traditional Hmong dance shows.
At the end of the first dance show, two of the girl dancers offered
beautiful bouquets of flowers to Mrs. Barney and Mrs. Smalley in
appreciation for their presence at the banquet with their husbands.
Three young men and three young women made up the group of the
second dance show. Each of the men played a bamboo instrument
called "qeej". At the end of the dance, the three young men handed
over the three "qeej" to the three founders, as gifts, for their
remembrance of the Hmong people.
Dr. Yang Dao was asked by the moderators to come up to the podium
to make the occasion's opening remark. Dr. Yang Dao made a
remarkable speech in three different languages--English, French,
and Hmong.
After the opening remark, special recognition awards were presented
to the founders and the benefactor.
Mrs. Col. Song Leng Xiong was asked to came up to speak about her
success story with the Hmong RPA language.
Song Kue was asked to come up to present something on how he
envisioned Hmong RPA could evolve as an important language and
as a tool and that Hmong RPA could greatly benefit all the Hmong
language users around the world with the help of the modern
technology and the information superhighway.
NOTE: This is NOT an official transcript from the steering
committee.
<>
--TswvXyooj
----------------------------------------------------------------------
H L U G
hlug@geocities.com
http://geocities.datacellar.net/Tokyo/4908/
** Copyright © 1997 HLUG. All Rights Reserved **
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From hlug@geocities.com Mon Jun 30 22:45 CDT 1997
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 22:35:38 -0500 (CDT)
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: HLUG
Subject: HLUG Post #95
*********************************************************************
Hmong Language Users Group
POST #95
(06/30/97)
*********************************************************************
In this issue:
HLUG Number Subject
----------- ---------------------------------------------
95-1 Personal (unofficial) Brief Summary of the
Hmong RPA Founders' Recognition Banquet
(Part 2 of 2)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
HLUG #95 Item 1
***************
Subject: Personal (unofficial) Brief Summary of the
Hmong RPA Founders' Recognition Banquet
(Part 2 of 2)
From: tswvxyooj@hotmail.com
PART 2: What I heard people said at the event
The following are some sample paraphrases that I heard from
those who were at the event. If any of you also attended the
event, please share what you heard with our HLUG readers.
"Today's event should be well recorded in our Hmong history book
forever," Joe Kue from WI said. "I got a chance to shake hands
with the founders who did a special thing for the Hmong, long
before I was born. I also got a chance to chat and shake hands
with a few Hmong doctors."
"I couldn't believe how the Hmong people look today. They all
dressed up very formal. I only saw at most one or two little kids
coming to the event," a Hmong person whose name I can no longer
remember told me.
"I come here today to thank the Hmong RPA founders. The language
that they created helped me overcome a special thing in my life.
I was an illiterate woman. I had never been to school but I could
learn how to read and write Hmong RPA. ...Due to the fact that I
could express all my thoughts in Hmong RPA in a letter to my
husband [who remained in Laos at the time], I was able to save my
marriage...," Mrs. Colonel Song Leng Xiong from MN said in her
speech.
"We should thank those Hmong who are not here with us tonight.
I'm referring to those illiterate Hmong who were on the
mountains," said Dr. Smalley. "They were our teachers. We
learned the spoken language from them so that we could construct
the Hmong script. The Hmong script project couldn't be completed
without them. They deserve the credits as well. I feel guilty for
being recognized by the Hmong tonight because, what I did back
then on the Hmong script, was just a lot of fun and I was
professionally enriched by doing it."
"It was a challenge for the steering committee to pick the
appropriate awards for the founders and the benefactor,"
Dr. Yang Dao said during the awards presentation. "We picked
a globe-engraved crystal ball. Inside the crystal ball, there
is a book embraced from the two sides with Hmong "qeej". The two
"qeej" signify the Hmong people. The book signifies Hmong RPA.
The globe signifies the fact that Hmong people have dispersed
throughout the world."
"We were in a mission to create a written language for the Hmong
so that they would have a Hmong Bible, and get to know the Lord...
Steve [Dr. Steve Smalley] deserves more credits than I do because
he could handle the technicality of the language," Dr. Barney
said.
"Please don't change the Hmong RPA. When we completed the Hmong
script, we promised each other that we were not going to change
it," Father Bertrais from the Philippines said. "Many People
have already suggested to me that why don't we change the
consonant "NP" to "B" and my responses were always that they
shall not try to change anything at all."
"In the old days, the Hmong RPA character set, consisted of the
upper cases A-Z, lower cases a-z, numerical characters 0-9, and a
few simple punctuation marks, was quite adequate to satisfy the
intended purposes," Song Kue said during his presentation. "Today,
we need an expanded set of Hmong characters or symbols to be inline
with the age of information technology." "Do we already have it?"
He asked the audience. "Yes we do have the entire 128 American
Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) characters to
do what ever we want with the Hmong language. The ASCII character
set allows us to write and retrieve Hmong RPA on any computers
using any simple text editors or word processors without resorting
to hard-to-find fonts. In addition, we will soon have the joy to
use the Unicode which is a forthcoming new idea in setting up
binary codes (image) for text or scripts characters. Unicode
standard contains 34,168 distinct coded characters derived from
24 supported language scripts. All these will come free of charge
for the Hmong because our founders happened to pick the right
character set, the Hmong RPA."
"We will never be able to pay back what you did for the Hmong
people," a Hmong said to Father Bertrais.
"I am glad that I have a chance to be photographed with these
great founders," Sawm Muas said to a video camera crew.
"The Hmong people cannot forget a great benefactor: You
[archbishop Renato R. Martino, Permanent Observer Mission of The
Holy Sea to the United Nations]," Dr. Yang Dao said. "Without
your generous contribution, the RPA system would not have known
such successful development today. Thanks to your help, numerous
research projects on Hmong culture and traditions have been
accomplished and more than 100,000 books in the Hmong language
have been printed and distributed all over the world."
One important Hmong person who I think might want to remain
anonymous said, "I have not seen a well-organized, very formal,
and non-political event such this one in the Hmong community."
--TswvXyooj
----------------------------------------------------------------------
H L U G
hlug@geocities.com
http://geocities.datacellar.net/Tokyo/4908/
** Copyright © 1997 HLUG. All Rights Reserved **
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Back to: HLUG Homepage
This page hosted by 
Get your own Free Home Page