A Saint Paul Sight

Possibly only in Saint Paul could you see this billboard:


In case you aren't aware, Raug Mob is in the Hmong language. Minnesota, and Saint Paul in particular, has the largest Hmong population in the U.S.

I have a general familiarity with the language, but this billboard still brought me up short for just a second. I think it's because Mob is a word in English as well.

If the translation had been in a different writing system -- say, Thai or Cambodian -- I don't think I would even have paused. But the Hmong had no written language before the last 50 years, and so their words are written in the Latin alphabet.