The script bears strong resemblance toThai script in structure and form and characters inspired from theHebrew alphabet, although the characters themselves are different.[1] It contains 36 consonant characters, 9 vowel characters, and 7 combining tone characters.[1] There are also 5 characters fordeterminatives 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.[3]
The termNtawv Nyiajkeeb Puajtxwm Hmoob means ‘Genesis Complete Hmong script’;ntawv means ‘letter’,nyiajkeeb means ‘genesis’,puajtxwm means ‘complete’, andhmoob is ‘Hmong’.[1] The script is also called Hmong Kong Hmong, Pa Dao Hmong (also the name of a different Hmong script), and 'the Chervang script', after its inventor.[1]
