24 May 2004Musings
How's Your Hmoob?

Yesterday I was at the Wells Fargo ATM and I was shocked to see "Hmoob" as one of the language choices. Hmoob? I consider myself well-traveled and generally knowledgable about these sorts of things, but Hmoob through me for a loop.

A simple check on Google this afternoon revealed that Hmoob is actually the language of the Hmong, a hill-tribe people in Southeast Asia. Which begs the question, what the hell is Hmoob doing as option on my ATM? Not that I have a huge problem with it or anything. It just seems bizarre.

I visited the Hmong people on a trip through Northern Thailand. I stayed in the Hmong Guest House near Chang Saen. I know that a certain number of them have emigrated to the US, especially in and around Minneapolis. However, I wasn't aware of any presence of Hmong in Northern California, let alone one significant enough to have a presence on my ATM.

Anyway, as they say in Hmoob:
Niam txiv npluanuj tubki tsis kawm txuj.

Posted by andrew at May 24, 2004 04:19 PM


Comments

JenBen Says:

I blogged about this very thing about a year ago and got a lot of good information back. Many Hmong fled their homes to avoid persecution in their own country and apparently there are a ton of them in MN and CA ergo, why Hmoob on the ATMs.

Here is a response I got from one of the guys who did the translating:

nteresting posts and comments. I was one of two linguists that translated all of the Wells Fargo ATM screens into Hmong last summer. Other teams translated Spanish and Chinese during the same time period. I think the language options are only available on the newer html-based ATMs. We translated the FDK screens (the ones with the function buttons on the sides), but I haven't seen the language options on any of the older ATMs. Here is a link to the Wells Fargo fact sheet which has some info about their ATM machines. www.wellsfargo.com/about/today2.jhtml

May 24, 2004 04:44 PM
JenBen Says:

In case you wanna see what other people wrote about Hmoob and Hmong on my site, go here:

http://www.haloscan.com/comments.php?user=jenben&comment=060803#122101

May 24, 2004 04:47 PM
Rachel Says:

There's a pretty significant Hmong community in Northern California, at least according to The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down, a book I read a few years ago and highly recommend.

May 31, 2004 03:03 AM
Cody Says:

WOW!!!! This is a great website.

Cody

June 13, 2004 06:57 PM




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