English-Hmong / Hmong-English Dictionary

Yuepheng L. Xiong founded Hmong ABC in St. Paul, one of the only bookstores in the country built around Hmong-language books, and he compiled this dictionary because the market was never going to produce one on its own. It runs both directions, English to Hmong and Hmong to English, in White Hmong and RPA. That makes it the practical desk dictionary rather than the scholarly one: it is built for a person writing a letter, helping with homework, or reading something in Hmong right now, not for tracing a word's linguistic history. Its community-published origin is both why it exists and why it can be awkward to find, since it has never had a large distributor behind it. For adult learners, for heritage speakers filling in the gaps, and for parents who want an answer in the next thirty seconds. Pair it with Heimbach for the scholarly side; keep this one on the desk.