standardised form based on the Qugu Qiang dialect, which belongs to the Northern dialect area but roughly situated at the linguistic middle point between the two dialects.

The Qiang Phonetic Alphabet Scheme was completed in late 1990 and was approved for trial operation by the Sichuan provincial government in 1991, in tandem with recommending the Scheme for official approval by the National Ethnic Affairs Commission (NEAC) in 1991. In