1.
Abugida
–
This contrasts with a full alphabet, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad, in which vowel marking is absent, partial, or optional. The terms also contrast them with a syllabary, in which the symbols cannot be split into separate consonants, abugidas include the extensive Brahmic family of scripts of South and Southeast Asia, Semitic Ethiopic scripts, and Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. As is the case for syllabaries, the units of the system may consist of the representations both of syllables and of consonants. For scripts of the Brahmic family, the term akshara is used for the units, abugida as a term in linguistics was proposed by Peter T. Daniels in his 1990 typology of writing systems. Abugidas were long considered to be syllabaries, or intermediate between syllabaries and alphabets, and the term syllabics is retained in the name of Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, other terms that have been used include neosyllabary, pseudo-alphabet, semisyllabary and syllabic alphabet. The formal definitions given by Daniels and Bright for abugida and alphasyllabary differ, some writing systems are abugidas but not alphasyllabaries, an abugida is defined as a type of writing system whose basic characters denotes consonants followed by a particular vowel, and in which diacritics denote other vowels. Bright did not require that an alphabet explicitly represent all vowels, Phagspa is an example of an abugida that is not an alphasyllabary, and modern Lao is an example of an alphasyllabary that is not an abugida, for its vowels are always explicit. This description is expressed in terms of an abugida and this may formally make the system ambiguous, but in practice this is not a problem, for then the interpretation with the never used inherent vowel sound will always be a wrong interpretation. The fundamental principles of an abugida apply to words made up of consonant-vowel syllables, the syllables are written as a linear sequences of the units of the script. If all modifications are by diacritics and all follow the direction of the writing of the letters. However, most languages have words that are more complicated than a sequence of CV syllables, the first complication is syllables that consist of just a vowel. Now, in languages, this issue does not arise. This is common in Semitic languages and in languages of mainland SE Asia, for some languages, a zero consonant letter is used as though every syllable began with a consonant. For other languages, each vowel has a letter that is used for each syllable consisting of just the vowel. These letters are known as independent vowels, and are found in most Indic scripts and these letters may be quite different to the corresponding diacritics, which by contrast are known as dependent vowels. As a result of the spread of writing systems, independent vowels may be used to represent syllables beginning with a glottal stop, the next two complications are sequences of consonants before a vowel and syllables ending in a consonant. The simplest solution, which is not always available, is to break with the principle of writing words as a sequence of syllables and use a unit representing just a consonant. In a true abugida, the lack of marking may result from the diachronic loss of the inherent vowel
Abugida
–
An inscription of
Swampy Cree using
Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, an abugida developed by Christian missionaries for Aboriginal Canadian languages
Abugida
–
Writing systems
Abugida
–
A 19th-century manuscript in the
Devanagari script
Abugida
–
The
Ge'ez script, an abugida of Eritrea and Ethiopia
2.
Sinhalese language
–
Sinhalese, known natively as Sinhala, is the native language of the Sinhalese people, who make up the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, numbering about 16 million. Sinhalese is also spoken as a language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages, Sinhalese has its own writing system, the Sinhalese alphabet, which is one of the Brahmic scripts, a descendant of the ancient Indian Brahmi script closely related to the Kadamba alphabet. Sinhalese is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, Sinhalese, along with Pali, played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature. The closest relative of Sinhalese is the language of the Maldives and Minicoy Island, Sinhala is a Sanskrit term, the corresponding Middle Indo-Aryan word is Sīhala. The name is a derivation from siṃha, the Sanskrit word for lion Siṃhāla is attested as a Sanskrit name of the island of in the Bhagavata Purana, the name is sometimes glossed as abode of lions, and attributed to a supposed former abundance of lions on the island. According to the chronicle Mahavamsa, written in Pali, Prince Vijaya, in the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from Eastern India which led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits. An example of an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular in Sinhalese Prakrit. There are several cases of vocabulary doublets, e. g. the words mässā and mäkkā, some of the differences can be explained by the substrate influence of the parent stock of the Vedda language. Sinhalese has many words that are found in Sinhalese, or shared between Sinhalese and Vedda and not etymologically derivable from Middle or Old Indo-Aryan. Common examples are kola for leaf in Sinhala and Vedda, dola for pig in Vedda, Other common words are rera for wild duck, and gala for stones. The author of the oldest Sinhalese grammar, Sidatsangarava, written in the 13th century CE, the grammar lists naramba and kolamba as belonging to an indigenous source. Kolamba is the source of the name of the commercial capital Colombo, however, formal Sinhalese is more similar to Pali and medieval Sinhalese. g. I do not know whether it is new, as a result of centuries of colonial rule, modern Sinhalese contains some Portuguese, Dutch and English loanwords. It is now spoken by a few families in Macau and in the Macanese diaspora, Sinhalese shares many features common to other Indo-European languages. For native speakers all dialects are mutually intelligible, and they might not even realise that the differences are significant, the language of the Vedda people resembles Sinhala to a great extent, although it has a large number of words which cannot be traced to another language. The Rodiya use another dialect of Sinhalese, Rodiya used to be a caste in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka no longer recognizes castes, in Sinhalese there is distinctive diglossia, as in many languages of South Asia
Sinhalese language
–
Sinhalese
3.
Proto-Sinaitic alphabet
–
It is also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite, Old Canaanite, and Canaanite. The earliest Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are dated to between the mid-19th and the mid-16th century BC. The principal debate is between an early date, around 1850 BC, and a date, around 1550 BC. The choice of one or the other date decides whether it is proto-Sinaitic or proto-Canaanite, the so-called Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were discovered in the winter of 1904–1905 in Sinai by Hilda and Flinders Petrie. The Wadi el-Hol inscriptions strongly suggest a date of development of Proto-Sinaitic writing from the mid-19th to 18th centuries BC, the Sinai inscriptions are best known from carved graffiti and votive texts from a mountain in the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim and its temple to the Egyptian goddess Hathor. The mountain contained turquoise mines which were visited by repeated expeditions over 800 years, many of the workers and officials were from the Nile Delta, and included large numbers of Canaanites who had been allowed to settle the eastern Delta. The date of the inscriptions is placed in the 17th or 16th century BC. Four inscriptions have been found in the temple, on two small statues and on either side of a small stone sphinx. They are crudely done, suggesting that the workers who made them were illiterate apart from this script and they are all very short, most consisting of only a couple of letters, and may have been written by Canaanite caravaners or soldiers from Egypt. They sometimes go by the name Proto-Canaanite, although the term Proto-Canaanite is also applied to early Phoenician or Hebrew inscriptions, the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions were carved on the stone sides of an ancient high-desert military and trade road linking Thebes and Abydos, in the heart of literate Egypt. They are in a wadi in the Qena bend of the Nile, 25°57′N 32°25′E, among dozens of hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions. If the latter, h1 and h2 may be graphic variants rather than different consonants, some scholars think that the רב rb at the beginning of Inscription 1 is likely rebbe, and that the אל ʾl at the end of Inscription 2 is likely ʾel god. Brian Colless has published a translation of the text, in some of the signs are treated as logograms or rebuses Excellent banquet of the celebration of ʿAnat. ʾEl will provide plenty of wine and victuals for the celebration and we will sacrifice to her an ox and a prime fatling. This interpretation fits into the pattern in some of the surrounding Egyptian inscriptions, according to the alphabet hypothesis, the shapes of the letters would have evolved from Proto-Sinaitic forms into Phoenician forms, but most of the names of the letters would have remained the same. Below is a table showing selected Proto-Sinaitic signs and the correspondences with Phoenician letters. Also shown are the values, names, and descendants of the Phoenician letters. The Other section shows the corresponding Archaic Greek, Modern Greek, Etruscan, abjad Byblos syllabary Ugaritic script Albright, Wm. F
Proto-Sinaitic alphabet
–
A specimen of Proto-Sinaitic script containing a phrase which may mean 'to Ba'alat'. The line running from the upper left to lower right may read mt l b c lt.
Proto-Sinaitic alphabet
–
Traces of the 16 and 12 characters of the two Wadi el-Hol inscriptions. (Photos here and here)
4.
Phoenician alphabet
–
The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, is the oldest verified alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad consisting of 22 letters, all consonants and it was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia. The Phoenician alphabet is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs and it became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Another derivative script is the Aramaic alphabet, which was the ancestor of the modern Arabic script, the Modern Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Aramaic script. The Greek alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are texts written in boustrophedon. The earliest known inscriptions are the so-called Proto-Sinaitic script sporadically attested in the Sinai and in Canaan in the late Middle. The script was not widely used until the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC, the Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the Proto-Canaanite script of the Bronze Age collapse period. Beginning in the 9th century BC, adaptations of the Phoenician alphabet -- such as Greek, Old Italic, Anatolian, and the Paleohispanic scripts -- were very successful. This simple system contrasted with the scripts in use at the time, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Another reason for its success was the trading culture of Phoenician merchants. Phoenician inscriptions have been found in sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos. Later finds indicate earlier use in Egypt, Phoenician had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations that came in contact with it. As mentioned above, the script was the first widespread phonetic script and its simplicity not only allowed it to be used in multiple languages, but it also allowed the common people to learn how to write. The Phoenician alphabet was first uncovered in the 17th century, and it was at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This idea was popular due to the recent decipherment of hieroglyphs. However, scholars could not find any link between the two writing systems, nor to hieratic or cuneiform, the theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single man conceiving it, to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian
Phoenician alphabet
–
Phoenician alphabet
5.
Aramaic alphabet
–
The ancient Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet and became distinctive from it by the 8th century BCE. It was used to write the Aramaic language and had displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet for the writing of Hebrew, the letters all represent consonants, some of which are also used as matres lectionis to indicate long vowels. Rather, it is a different type, the earliest inscriptions in the Aramaic language use the Phoenician alphabet. Over time, the alphabet developed into the form shown below, Aramaic gradually became the lingua franca throughout the Middle East, with the script at first complementing and then displacing Assyrian cuneiform, as the predominant writing system. Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised, its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect and was influenced by Old Persian. Both were in use through the Achaemenid Persian period, but the cursive form steadily gained ground over the lapidary, the Aramaic script would survive as the essential characteristics of the Iranian Pahlavi writing system. A group of 30 Aramaic documents from Bactria has been recently discovered, an analysis was published in November 2006. The texts, which were rendered on leather, reflect the use of Aramaic in the 4th century BC in the Persian Achaemenid administration of Bactria, the widespread usage of Achaemenid Aramaic in the Middle East led to the gradual adoption of the Aramaic alphabet for writing Hebrew. Formerly, Hebrew had been using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician. After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the unity of the Imperial Aramaic script was lost, the Hebrew and Nabataean alphabets, as they stood by the Roman era, were little changed in style from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet. A cursive Hebrew variant developed from the early centuries AD, the Old Turkic script is generally considered to have its ultimate origins in Aramaic, in particular via the Pahlavi or Sogdian alphabets, as suggested by V. Thomsen, or possibly via Karosthi. Aramaic is also considered to be the most likely source of the Brahmi script, ancestor of the Brahmic family of scripts, today, Biblical Aramaic, Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects and the Aramaic language of the Talmud are written in the Hebrew alphabet. Syriac and Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects are written in the Syriac alphabet, Mandaic is written in the Mandaic alphabet. The near-identity of the Aramaic and the classical Hebrew alphabets caused Aramaic text to be mostly in the standard Hebrew script in scholarly literature. In Maloula, one of few surviving communities in which a Western Aramaic dialect is still spoken and they started to use the Syriac alphabet instead. In Aramaic writing, Waw and Yodh serve a double function, originally, they represented only the consonants w and y, but they were later adopted to indicate the long vowels ū and ī respectively as well. In the latter role, they are known as matres lectionis or mothers of reading. Ālap, likewise, has some of the characteristics of a mater lectionis because in initial positions, it indicates a glottal stop, among Jews, the influence of Hebrew often led to the use of Hē instead, at the end of a word
Aramaic alphabet
–
Bilingual Greek and Aramaic inscription by the
Mauryan emperor
Ashoka the Great at
Kandahar,
Afghanistan, 3rd century BC
6.
Tamil-Brahmi
–
Tamil-Brahmi, or Tamili, is a variant of the Brahmi script used to write the Tamil language. These are the earliest documents of a Dravidian language, and the script was established in the Chera and Pandyan states, in what is now Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh. Inscriptions have been found on beds, pot sherds, Jar burials, coins, seals. The language is Archaic Tamil, and led to classical Sangam literature, Tamil Brahmi differs in several ways from Ashokan Brahmi. It adds several letters for sounds not found in Prakrit, ṉ ṟ ṛ ḷ and this is unique to Tamil Brahmi and Bhattiprolu among the early Indian scripts. This appears to be an adaptation to Dravidian phonotactics, where words commonly end in consonants, as opposed to Prakrit, where this never occurs. According to Mahadevan, in the earliest stages of the script the inherent vowel was either abandoned, as above, later stages of Tamil Brahmi returned to the inherent vowel that was the norm in India. The origins of the Brahmi in general and Tamil Brahmi specifically are unclear, there are number of inscriptions whose dates have not been settled yet. Nevertheless, a number of theories has been put forward with literary, epigraphic, the received consensus is a 3rd-century post-Ashokan dispersal, but that since the year 2000, there have been two serious candidates for a pre-Ashokan date. The earliest mention of a script for writing the Tamil language is found in the Jaina work Samavayanga Sutta, in the Buddhist work, Lalitavistara, a script called Dravidalipi is mentioned. According to Kamil Zvelebil, Damilli and Dravidalipi are synonymous for Tamil writing, references to writing are also available in early Tamil literature. Tolkappiyam in stanza 16 and 17 mentions dots added to consonants, the author of Tolkappiyam displays awareness of a writing system and the graphic system as he knew it corresponds with later writing systems. Other works such as Tirukkural mentions writing using the word ezhuttu, cilappatikaram mentions kannezhuttu that was used to mark merchandise imported at the port emporium of Kaveripattinam, it also mentions kannezhuttalar or scribes. A reference to palm leaf manuscript writing is found in Nalatiyar, based on the literature analysis, Kamil Zvelebil believes writing was known to Tamil people at least from the 3rd century BCE. The evidence for pre-Ashokan dispersal comes from Sri Lanka and more recently, the earliest well accepted Brahmi inscriptions in South Asia are found in the citadel of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and are dated to the 4th century BCE. Brahmi developed before the spread of Ashokan missionary activities and spread across South Asia due to trade networks. However, these instances of Brahmi were not considered to be examples of Tamil-Brahmi. In 2013, Rajan and Yatheeskumar published excavations at Porunthal and Kodumanal in Tamil Nadu and their stratigraphic analysis combined with radiocarbon dates of paddy grains and charcoal samples indicated that inscription contexts date to as far back as the 5th and perhaps 6th centuries BCE
Tamil-Brahmi
–
Mangulam Tamil Brahmi inscription at Dakshin Chithra, Chennai.
Tamil-Brahmi
–
Stone bed with inscription in sittanavasal, Tamil brahmi Inscriptions
Tamil-Brahmi
–
Jambai Tamil Brahmi inscription
Tamil-Brahmi
–
Nehanurpatti Tamil Brahmi inscription
7.
Grantha alphabet
–
It is a Brahmic script, having evolved from the Brahmi script in Tamil Nadu. The Malayalam script is a descendant of Grantha as are the Tigalari. Grantha script still lives in Tamil Nadu, albeit in reduced state, in Sanskrit, grantha is literally a knot. It is a word that was used for books, and the used to write them. This stems from the practice of binding inscribed palm leaves using a length of thread held by knots, although Sanskrit is now mostly written with Devanagari, Grantha was widely used to write Sanskrit in the Tamil-speaking parts of South Asia until the 19th century. Scholars believe that the Grantha script was used when the Vedas were first put into writing around the 5th century CE, in the early 20th century, it began to be replaced by Devanagari in religious and scholarly texts and the Tamil script in popular texts. The Grantha script was historically used for writing Manipravalam, a blend of Tamil. This evolved into a complex writing system which required that Tamil words be written in the Tamil script. In modern times, the Grantha script is used in religious contexts by orthodox Tamil-speaking Hindus. It is also used in many religious almanacs to print traditional formulaic summaries of the coming year, Grantha script may be classified as follows, An archaic and ornamental variety of Grantha is sometimes referred to as Pallava Grantha. They were used by the Pallava in some inscriptions, mamallapuram Tiruchirapalli Rock Cut Cave Inscriptions, Kailasantha Inscription come under this type. The Pallavas also produced a distinctive script separate from the Grantha family, the Tigalari-Malayalam script is called Western Grantha. Currently two varieties are used, Brahmanic, or square, and Jain, or round, the Tigalari-Malayalam script was a variety of Grantha dating from the 8th or 9th century CE. It later split into two distinct scripts – Tigalari and Malayalam and this type of Grantha was used by Cholas approximately from 650 CE to 950 CE. Inscription of later Pallavas and Pandiyan Nedunchezhiyan are also examples for this variety of Grantha Script, Inscriptions of the Imperial Thanjavur Cholas are an example for Medieval Grantha. This variety was in vogue from 950 CE to 1250 CE, Grantha in the present form descended from later Pandyas and the Vijayanagara rulers. The Modern form of Grantha is very similar to Malayalam alphabet, the font used in the following tables is e-Grantamil taken from INDOLIPI. The glyphs below denote the form of Grantha Script, which can be noticed by its similarity with the Modern Tamil Script
Grantha alphabet
–
Grantha inscription at
Bṛhadīśvara Temple, India
Grantha alphabet
8.
Kadamba alphabet
–
The Kadamba script marks the birth of a dedicated script for writing Kannada. It is a descendant of the Brahmi script, an abugida visually close to the Kalinga alphabet, the Kadamba script was developed during the reign of the Kadamba dynasty in the 4th-6th centuries. The Kadamba script is known as Pre-Old-Kannada script. This script later became popular in what is today the state of Goa and was used to write Sanskrit, Kannada, Konkani, the Kadamba script is one of the oldest of the southern group of South Asian scripts that evolved from the Brahmi script. By 5th century CE it became different from other Brahmi variants and was used in southern Indian states of Karnataka and it evolved into the Old Kannada script by the 10th century CE and was used to write Kannada and Telugu. Many scripts were derived from Kadamba script, including the Pyu script, during the rule of Kadambas major change in the Brahmi script evolved into Kadamba Kannada script, letters were shorter and round in shape. During the rule of Gangas southern parts of Karnataka the Kannada script used differently in rock edicts, during 6th to 10th century AD the Kannada script stabilized during the rule of Badami Chalukyas and Rastrakutas. The Old Kannada script is the continuation of Kadamba script used to write Kannada and Telugu, sinhala script is closely related to Grantha script and Old Khmer script taken the elements from Kadamba script. Indian Writing Systems Comparison, During the rule of Pallavas, the script accompanied priests, monks, Pallavas developed a script based on Brahmi, main characteristics of the newer script are aesthetically matched and fuller consonant glyphs. Similar to Pallava script, also visible in the systems of Chalukya, Kadamba. Brahmi design iwas slightly different of the scripts of Cholas, Pandyas and Cheras, Kadamba-Pallava script evolved into early forms of Kannada and Telugu scripts. Glyphs become more rounded and incorporate loops because of writing upon leaves, the scripts which are descended from the Kadamba-Pallava script are Pyu script, Burmese, Mon, Kawi, Lanna, Tham, Khom, Khmer, Thai, Lao, Sinhalese and Tai Lue
Kadamba alphabet
–
sri manarashi written in Kadamba script on Kadamba coin
Kadamba alphabet
–
Coin of Kadamba king Sri Manarashi, name written in Kadamba script
Kadamba alphabet
–
Coin of the Kadambas written in Kadamba script as sri dosharashi and other side Shri shashankaha
Kadamba alphabet
–
sri dosharashi written in Kadamba script on Kadamba coin
9.
Dhives Akuru
–
Divehi Akuru or Dhives Akuru is a script formerly used to write the Maldivian language. This script was called Dives Akuru by H. C. P, bell who studied Maldive epigraphy when he retired from the British government service in Colombo and wrote an extensive monography on the archaeology, history and epigraphy of the Maldive islands. The Divehi Akuru has developed from the Grantha script, the early form of this script was Dīvī Grantha which was named Evēla Akuru by H. C. P. Bell in order to distinguish it from the more recent variants of the same script, the ancient form can be seen in the loamaafaanu of the 12th and 13th centuries and in inscriptions on coral stone dating back from the Maldive Buddhist period. Like the Sinhala script and most of the scripts of India. Divehi Akuru was still used in some atolls in the South Maldives as the script around 70 years ago. Since then, the use is purely scholarly, or its used by hobbyists and it can still be found on gravestones, and some monuments, including the stone base of the pillars supporting the main structure of the ancient friday mosque in Malé. Bell obtained a book written in Divehi Akuru in Addu Atoll, in the south of Maldives. This book is now kept in the National Archives of Sri Lanka in Colombo, Bodufenvalhuge Sidi, an eminent Maldivian scholar, wrote a book called Divehi Akuru in 1959 prompted by then Prime Minister Ibrahim Nasir, in order to clarify H. C. P. However, Maldivian cultural associations have not paid attention to Bodufenvalhuge Sidis work. Monograph on the History, Archaeology and Epigraphy, the Evolution of the Sinhalese Script. The Maldive Islanders, A Study of the Popular Culture of an Ancient Ocean Kingdom, Indian Epigraphy and South Indian Scripts. Bulletin of the Madras Government Museum
Dhives Akuru
–
The last version of the Maldivian script used after the Conversion to Islam until the 1700s
10.
Kannada script
–
Several minor languages, such as Tulu, Konkani, Kodava, Sanketi and Beary, also use alphabets based on the Kannada script. The Kannada and Telugu scripts share high mutual intellegibility with each other, other scripts similar to Kannada script are Sinhala script, and Old Peguan script. The Kannada script is an abugida of forty-nine letters, and is written from left to right. The character set is almost identical to that of other Brahmic scripts, consonantal letters imply an inherent vowel. Letters representing consonants are combined to form digraphs when there is no intervening vowel, otherwise, each letter corresponds to a syllable. The letters are classified into three categories, ಸ್ವರ svara, ವ್ಯಂಜನ vyan̄jana, and ಯೋಗವಾಹಕ yōgavāhaka, the Kannada words for a letter of the script are ಅಕ್ಷರ akshara, ಅಕ್ಕರ akkara, and ವರ್ಣ varṇa. Each letter has its own form and sound, providing the visible and audible representations, Kannada is written from left to right. The Kannada script derives from the Old Kannada script, which evolved around 10th century as the continuation of the Kadamba alphabet of the fourth century and this evolved from the ancient Brahmi script of the third century BCE. Over the centuries some changes have made to the Kannada script. These changes consist of, Modification of existing glyphs, In the early Kannada script, however, distinct signs were employed to denote the special consonants viz. the trill ಱ the retroflex lateral ಳ and the retroflex rhotic ೞ found only in South Indian languages, by 5th century. Introduction of new characters, Kannada script includes characters like ಶ, ಷ, ೠ, ఌ, ౡ, ಐ, ಔ, ಅಂ, ಅಃ, the introduction was done so that Sanskrit could be written using the Kannada script. These changes have facilitated the use of the Kannada script for writing many of the literary Indic languages, when a vowel follows a consonant, it is written with a diacritic rather than as a separate letter. The structured consonants are classified according to where the tongue touches the palate of the mouth and are classified accordingly into five structured groups and these consonants are shown here with their IAST transcriptions. See place of articulation for more information on tongue positions, the unstructured consonants are consonants that do not fall into any of the above structures, ಯ, ರ, ಱ, ಲ, ವ, ಶ, ಷ, ಸ, ಹ, ಳ, ೞ. The Kannada script is rich in conjunct consonant clusters, with most consonants having a standard subjoined form, a table of consonant conjuncts follows, although the forms of individual conjuncts may differ according to font. The decimal numerals in the script are, Written Kannada is composed of akshara or kagunita, the letters for consonants combine with diacitics for vowels. The consonant letter without any diacritic, such as ಕ ka, has the inherent vowel a ಅ, a consonant without a vowel is marked with a killer stroke, as ಕ್ k. This is known as hrasva ಹ್ರಸ್ವ, * This diacritic has the form ಿ when combined with other consonant letters
Kannada script
–
Kannada Alphabet ಕನ್ನಡ ಲಿಪಿ
Kannada script
–
Halmidi Inscription Replica
Kannada script
–
Brahmi script,
Kanheri Caves
Kannada script
–
A
Bilingual sign board in Kannada and
Latin script
11.
Malayalam script
–
The Malayalam script is a Brahmic script used commonly to write Malayalam, which is the principal language of Kerala, India, spoken by 35 million people in the world. Malayalam script is widely used for writing Sanskrit texts in Kerala. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an alphasyllabary, a system that is partially “alphabetic”. The modern Malayalam alphabet has 15 vowel letters,36 consonant letters, the Malayalam script is a Vatteluttu alphabet extended with symbols from the Grantha alphabet to represent Indo-Aryan loanwords. The script is used to write several minority languages such as Paniya, Betta Kurumba. The Malayalam language itself was written in several different scripts. A consonant letter, despite its name, does not represent a pure consonant, for example, ക is the first consonant letter of the Malayalam alphabet, which represents /ka/, not a simple /k/. A vowel sign is an attached to a consonant letter to indicate that the consonant is followed by a vowel other than /a/. If the following vowel is /a/, no sign is needed. The phoneme /a/ that follows a consonant by default is called an inherent vowel, in Malayalam, its phonetic value is unrounded, or as an allophone. To denote a pure consonant sound not followed by a vowel, the following are examples where a consonant letter is used with or without a diacritic. It is written left to right, but certain vowel signs are attached to the left of a consonant letter that it logically follows. In the word കേരളം, the vowel sign േ visually appears in the leftmost position, Malayalam was first written in the Vatteluttu alphabet, an ancient script of Tamil. However, the modern Malayalam script evolved from the Grantha alphabet, both Vatteluttu and Grantha evolved from the Brahmi script, but independently. Vatteluttu is a script that had evolved from Tamil-Brahmi and was used extensively in the southern part of present-day Tamil Nadu. Malayalam was first written in Vatteluttu, the Vazhappally inscription issued by Rajashekhara Varman is the earliest example, dating from about 830 CE. In the Tamil country, the modern Tamil script had supplanted Vatteluttu by the 15th century, a variant form of this script, Kolezhuthu, was used until about the 19th century mainly in the Kochi area and in the Malabar area. Another variant form, Malayanma, was used in the south of Thiruvananthapuram and it later evolved into Tigalari-Malayalam script was used by the Malayali, Havyaka Brahmins and Tulu Brahmin people, but was originally only applied to write Sanskrit
Malayalam script
–
A
bilingual sign in
Malayalam and
Latin script (
English) in
Kasaragod
Malayalam script
–
Grantha, Tigalari and Malayalam scripts
Malayalam script
–
Malayalam letters
Malayalam script
–
A school sign. Notice the word-initial a അ in akkādami, and the vowel sign ē േ in Kēraḷa.
12.
Tigalari alphabet
–
Tigalari is a southern Brahmic script used in the Coastal and Malenadu regions of Karnataka, also prevalent in Kasaragod district of Kerala. It evolved from the Grantha script and it bears high similarity and relationship to its sister script Malayalam, which also evolved from the Grantha. It was mainly used by Tulu-speaking Brahmins like Shivalli Brahmins and Kannada speaking Havyaka Brahmins and Kota Brahmins to write Vedic mantras, Sanskrit is the main language of the script. But some Kannada and Tulu works are also available and it is currently not used to write the Kannada and Tulu languages as they use the Kannada script for documentation. Tigalari was proposed for inclusion in Unicode in 2011, thousands of manuscripts have been found in this script such as Vedas, Upanishads, Jyotisha, Dharmashastra, Purana and many more. However, some Kannada manuscripts are found such as Gokarna Mahatmyam etc. The popular 16th-century work Kaushika Ramayana written in Old Kannada language by Battaleshwara of Yana, mahabharato of 15th century written in this script in Tulu language is also found. But earlier to this several 12th-13th century Sanskrit manuscripts of Madhvacharya are also found, the Honnavar in Uttara Kannada District is known for its Samaveda manuscripts. Other manuscripts like Devi Mahatmyam, from the 15th century and two poems written in the 17th century, namely Sri Bhagavata and Kaveri have also been found in Tulu Language. The script is used all over Canara and Malenadu regions of Karnataka, many manuscripts are also found Uttara Kannada, Udupi, Dakshina Kannada, Shimoga and Kasaragod district of Kerala. There are innumerable manuscripts found in this region, the major language of manuscripts is Sanskrit, mainly the works of Veda, Jyotisha and other Sanskrit epics. Today the usage of the script has decreased and it is still used in parts of Kanara region and traditional maṭhas of undivided Dakshina Kannada and Uttara Kannada Districts. The National Mission for Manuscripts has conducted workshops on Tigalari script. Dharmasthala and the Ashta Mathas of Udupi have done significant work in preserving the script, several studies and research work has been done on Tigalari script. Keladi houses over 400 manuscripts in Tigalari script and they relate to literature, art, dharmaśāstra, history, astrology, astronomy, medicine, mathematics and veterinary science. There are several collections in the museum, including art objects, arms coins, stone sculptures and copper plate inscriptions belonging to the Vijayanagara, the Institution is affiliated to Gnana Sahyadri, Shankaraghatta, Kuvempu University of Shimoga. Oriental Research Institute Mysore The Oriental Research Institute Mysore houses over 33,000 palm leaf manuscripts and it is a research institute which collects, exhibits, edits and publishes rare manuscripts in both Sanskrit and Kannada. It contains many manuscripts, including Sharadatilaka, in Tigalari script, the Sharadatilaka is a treatise on theory and practice of Tantric worship
Tigalari alphabet
–
A Sanskrit manuscript
Tigalari alphabet
–
Tigalari
Tigalari alphabet
–
A chart showing complete list vowels and consonants used in Tigalari script.
Tigalari alphabet
13.
Telugu script
–
The Telugu script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts and to some extent the Gondi language. It gained prominence during the Vengi Chalukyas era and it shares many similarities with its sibling Kannada script. The Brahmi script used by Mauryan kings eventually reached the Krishna River delta, buddhism spread to east Asia from the nearby ports of Ghantasala and Masulipatnam. The Bhattiprolu Brahmi script evolved into the Telugu script by 5th century C. E, the Muslim historian and scholar Al-Biruni referred to both the Telugu language as well as its script as Andhri. Telugu uses eighteen vowels, each of which has both an independent form and a form used with consonants to create syllables. The language makes a distinction between short and long vowels, the independent form is used when the vowel occurs at the beginning of a word or syllable, or is a complete syllable in itself. The diacritic form is added to consonants to form a consonant-vowel syllable, అ does not have a diacritic form, because this vowel is already inherent in all of the consonants. The other diacritic vowels are added to consonants to change their pronunciation to that of the vowel, examples, There are also several other diacritics used in the Telugu script. ్ mutes the vowel of a consonant, so only the consonant is pronounced. ం and ఁ nasalize the vowels or syllables to which they are attached, ః adds a voiceless breath after the vowel or syllable it is attached to. Examples, The places of articulation are classified as five, kaṇṭhya, Velar Tālavya, Palatal Mūrdhanya, Retroflex Dantya, Dental Ōshtya, Labial Apart from that, other places are combinations of the above five places. The below table gives a view upon articulation of consonants, the Telugu script has generally regular conjuncts, with trailing consonants taking a subjoined form, often losing the v-shaped headstroke. The following table shows all two-consonant and one three-consonant conjunct, but individual conjuncts may differ between fonts. NOTE, ౹, ౺, and ౻ are used also for 1⁄64, 2⁄64, 3⁄64, 1⁄1024, etc. and ౼, ౽, Telugu script was added to the Unicode Standard in October,1991 with the release of version 1.0. Telugu Braille Ethnologue Languages of the World - Telugu Microsoft - Telugu Input tool OLAC resources in, celebration of Telugu Culture in Sydney Telugu Association of Australia Inc. Celebration of Telugu Language, Literature and Culture in Victoria Telugu to English Dictionary Useful and authenticated information about Telugu
Telugu script
–
Telugu Script తెలుగు లిపి
14.
Unicode range
–
The Unicode Consortium and the International Organisation for Standardisation collaborate on the Universal Character Set. The UCS is a standard to map characters used in natural language, mathematics, music. By creating this mapping, the UCS enables computer software vendors to interoperate, because it is a universal map, it can be used to represent multiple languages at the same time. UCS has a capacity to encode over 1 million characters. Each UCS character is represented by a code point, which is an integer between 0 and 1,114,111, used to represent each character within the internal logic of text processing software. The number of encoded characters is made up as follows,128,019 graphical characters 218 special purpose characters for control, ISO maintains the basic mapping of characters from character name to code point. Often the terms character and code point will get used interchangeably, however, when a distinction is made, a code point refers to the integer of the character, what one might think of as its address. Input methods can be through keyboard or a character palette. The UCS can be divided in various ways, such as by plane, block, character category, the x must be lowercase in XML documents. The nnnn or hhhh may be any number of digits and may include leading zeros, the hhhh may mix uppercase and lowercase, though uppercase is the usual style. In contrast, an entity reference refers to a character by the name of an entity which has the desired character as its replacement text. The entity must either be predefined or explicitly declared in a Document Type Definition, the format is the same as for any entity reference, &name, where name is the case-sensitive name of the entity. Unicode and ISO divide the set of points into 17 planes. As of 2016 ISO and the Unicode Consortium has only allocated characters, the others remain empty and reserved for future use. Most characters are assigned to the first plane, the Basic Multilingual Plane. This is to ease the transition for legacy software since the Basic Multilingual Plane is addressable with just two octets. The characters outside the first plane usually have very specialized or rare use. Each plane corresponds with the value of the one or two hexadecimal digits preceding the four ones, hence U+24321 is in Plane 2, U+4321 is in Plane 0
Unicode range
–
Example of fraction slash use. This
typeface (
Apple Chancery) shows the synthesized common fraction on the left and the precomposed fraction glyph on the right as a rendering the plain text string “1 1⁄4 1¼”. Depending on the text environment, the single string “1 1⁄4” might yield either result, the one on the right through substitution of the fraction sequence with the single precomposed fraction glyph.
15.
International Phonetic Alphabet
–
The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark
International Phonetic Alphabet
–
The official chart of the IPA as of 2005. Click to enlarge. The proper symbols for upstep and downstep are not available in this font, and have been substituted.
International Phonetic Alphabet
–
X-ray photos show the sounds [i, u, a, ɑ]
16.
Mojibake
–
Mojibake, from the Japanese 文字 character + 化け transform, is the garbled text that is the result of text being decoded using an unintended character encoding. The result is a replacement of symbols with completely unrelated ones. This display may include the replacement character � in places where the binary representation is considered invalid. A replacement can also involve multiple consecutive symbols, as viewed in one encoding and this is either because of differing constant length encoding, or the use of variable length encodings. Failed rendering of glyphs due to either missing fonts or missing glyphs in a font is a different issue that is not to be confused with mojibake, symptoms of this failed rendering include blocks with the codepoint displayed in hexadecimal or using the generic replacement character �. Importantly, these replacements are valid and are the result of error handling by the software. To correctly reproduce the text that was encoded, the correspondence between the encoded data and the notion of its encoding must be preserved. As mojibake is the instance of incompliance between these, it can be achieved by manipulating the data itself, or just relabeling it. Mojibake is often seen with text data that have been tagged with an encoding, it may not even be tagged at all. A major source of trouble are communication protocols that rely on settings on each computer rather than sending or storing metadata together with the data. Whereas Linux distributions mostly switched to UTF-8 for all uses of text, Microsoft Windows still uses codepages for text files, for some writing systems, an example being Japanese, several encodings have historically been employed, causing users to see mojibake relatively often. If the encoding is not specified, it is up to the software to decide it by other means, depending on type of software, the typical solution is either configuration or charset detection heuristics. Both are prone to mispredict in not-so-uncommon scenarios, the encoding of text files is usually governed by the OS-level setting, which depends on brand of operating system and possibly the users language. Therefore, the encoding is systematically wrong for files that come from a computer with a different setting. One solution is to use a byte order mark, but for source code and other machine readable text, another is storing the encoding as metadata in the filesystem. Filesystems that support extended file attributes can store this as user. charset and this also requires support in software that wants to take advantage of it, but does not disturb other software. While a few encodings are easy to detect, in particular UTF-8, Mojibake also occurs when the encoding is wrongly specified. This often happens between encodings that are similar, for example, the Eudora email client for Windows was known to send emails labelled as ISO-8859-1 that were in reality Windows-1252
Mojibake
–
Mojibake caused by a song title in Cyrillic (
Моя Страна) on a car audio system
Mojibake
–
The
UTF-8 -encoded Japanese Wikipedia article for mojibake, as displayed in the
Windows-1252 encoding.
17.
Unicode
–
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters
Unicode
–
Logo of the
Unicode Consortium
18.
Brahmic scripts
–
The Brahmic scripts are a family of abugida or alphabet writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia, and were used in Japan. They are used by languages of several families, Indo-European, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian. They were also the source of the order of Japanese kana. Brahmic scripts descended from the Brahmi script, the most reliable of these were short Brahmi inscriptions dated to the 4th century BC and published by Coningham et al. Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, the Siddhaṃ script was especially important in Buddhism, as many sutras were written in it. The art of Siddham calligraphy survives today in Japan, the syllabic nature and dictionary order of the modern kana system of Japanese writing is believed to be descended from the Indic scripts, most likely through the spread of Buddhism. Southern Brahmi evolved into Old-Kannada, Pallava and Vatteluttu scripts, which in turn diversified into other scripts of South India, Bhattiprolu was a great centre of Buddhism during 3rd century BCE and from where Buddhism spread to east Asia. The present Telugu script is derived from Bhattiprolu Script or Kannada-Telugu script or Kadamba script, also known as old Telugu script, owing to its similarity to the same. Initially, minor changes were made which is now called Tamil Brahmi which has far fewer letters than some of the other Indic scripts as it has no separate aspirated or voiced consonants. Some characteristics, which are present in most but not all the scripts, are, other vowels are written by adding to the character. A mark, known in Sanskrit as a virama/halant can be used to indicate the absence of an inherent vowel, Each vowel has two forms, an independent form when not part of a consonant, and a dependent form, when attached to a consonant. Depending on the script, the dependent forms can be placed to the left of, to the right of, above, below. Consonants can be combined in ligatures, special marks are added to denote the combination of r with another consonant. Nasalization and aspiration of a dependent vowel is also noted by separate signs. The alphabetical order is, vowels, velar consonants, palatal consonants, retroflex consonants, dental consonants, bilabial consonants, approximants, sibilants, Each consonant grouping had four stops, and a nasal consonant. Below are comparison charts of several of the major Indic scripts, accordingly, The charts are not comprehensive. Glyphs may be unrepresented if they dont derive from any Brahmi character, the pronunciations of glyphs in the same column may not be identical
Brahmic scripts
–
Calligraphy
Brahmic scripts
–
Spread of Brahmic family of scripts from India.
Brahmic scripts
–
A fragment of
Ashoka's 6th pillar edict.
19.
Gupta script
–
The Gupta script was used for writing Sanskrit and is associated with the Gupta Empire of India which was a period of material prosperity and great religious and scientific developments. The Gupta script was descended from Brahmi and gave rise to the Nāgarī, Sharada, the Gupta Script was descended from the Ashokan Brahmi script, and is a crucial link between Brahmi and most other scripts in the Brahmic family of Scripts, a family of alphasyllabaries or abugidas. This means that while only consonantal phonemes have distinct symbols, vowels are marked by diacritics, in fact, the Gupta script works in exactly the same manner as its predecessor and successors, and only the shapes and forms of the graphemes and diacritics are different. Through the 4th century, letters began to take more cursive and symmetric forms, in this sense, the term Gupta script should be taken to mean any form of writing derived from the Gupta period, even though there may be a lack of uniformity in the scripts. The surviving inscriptions of the Gupta script are found on iron or stone pillars. One of the most important was the Allahabad Prasasti, the study of Gupta coins began with the discovery of a hoard of gold coins in 1783. Many other such hoards have since discovered, the most important being the Bayana hoard, discovered in 1946. Many of the Gupta Empire’s coins bear inscriptions of legends or mark historic events, in fact, it was one of the first Indian Empires to do so, probably as a result of its unprecedented prosperity. Almost every Gupta king issued coins, beginning with its first king, moreover, space was more limited especially on their silver coins, and thus many of the symbols are truncated or stunted. Formerly Preserved in the China Ethnic Library
Gupta script
–
Brahmi and its descendent scripts.
20.
Tocharian alphabet
–
Samples of the language have been discovered at sites in Kucha and Karasahr, including many mural inscriptions. Tocharian A and B are not mutually intelligible, a common Proto-Tocharian language must precede the attested languages by several centuries, probably dating to the 1st millennium BC. However, the lack of a corpus in Tocharian A is by no means definite. The alphabet the Tocharians were using is derived from the Brahmi alphabetic syllabary and is referred to as slanting Brahmi. Besides the Buddhist and Manichaean religious texts, there were also monastery correspondence and accounts, commercial documents, caravan permits, and medical and magical texts, many Tocharians embraced Manichaean duality or Buddhism. In 1998, Chinese linguist Ji Xianlin published a translation and analysis of fragments of a Tocharian Maitreyasamiti-Nataka discovered in 1974 in Yanqi, Tocharian script probably died out after 840, when the Uyghurs were expelled from Mongolia by the Kyrgyz, retreating to the Tarim Basin. This theory is supported by the discovery of translations of Tocharian texts into Uyghur, during Uyghur rule, the peoples mixed with the Uyghurs to produce much of the modern population of what is now Xinjiang. The Tocharian script is based on Brahmi, where each consonant has an inherent vowel, which can be altered by adding a vowel mark, or removed with a special nullifying mark, the virama. Like Brahmi, Tocharian uses stacking for conjunct consonants, and has irregular forms of
Tocharian alphabet
–
Tocharian script
21.
Khudabadi script
–
Khudabadi is a script generally used by some Sindhis in India to write the Sindhi language. It is also known as Vaniki, Hatvaniki and Hatkai script, Khudabadi is one of the three scripts used for writing the Sindhi language, the other being Perso-Arabic and Devanagari script. It was used by traders and merchants to record their information and rose to importance as the script began to be used to record information kept secret from other groups, the nukta has been borrowed from Devanagari for representing additional signs found in Arabic but not found in Sindhi. It is written left to right, like Sanskrit. It follows a pattern and style of other Landa scripts. The Khudabadi script has roots in the Brahmi script, like most north Indian and it appears different from other Indic scripts such as Bengali, Odia, Gurmukhi or Devanagari, but a closer examination reveals they are similar except for angles and structure. Khudabadi is an abugida in which all consonants have an inherent vowel, matras are used to change the inherent vowel. Vowels that appear at the beginning of a word are written as independent letters, when certain consonants occur together, special conjunct symbols are used which combine the essential parts of each letter. The Khudabadi script was created by the Sindhi diaspora residing in Khudabad to send messages to their relatives. Due to its simplicity, the use of this script spread very quickly and got acceptance in other Sindhi groups for sending written letters and it continued to be in use for very long period of time. Because it was originated from Khudabad, it was called Khudabadi script, the Sindhi traders started maintaining their accounts and other business books in this new script. Schools started teaching the Sindhi language in Khudabadi script, Sindhi language is now generally written in the Arabic script, but it belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family and over seventy percent of Sindhi words are of Sanskrit origin. The historian Al-Biruni found Sindhi written in three scripts – Ardhanagari, Mahajani and Khudabadi, all of them variations of Devanagari, after Mir Nasir Khan Talpurs defeat, British rule commenced in Sindh. The British called it Hindu Sindhi to differentiate it from Sindhi written in the Perso-Arabic script, a debate began, with Captain Richard Francis Burton favoring the Arabic script and Captain Stack favouring Devanagari. The Education Department should give the instructions to the schools in the script of Sindhi which can meet the circumstance and prejudices of the Mohammadan, in the year 1868, the Bombay Presidency assigned Narayan Jagannath Vaidya to replace the Abjad script used for Sindhi with the Khudabadi script. The script was decreed a standard script modified with ten vowels by the Bombay Presidency, the Khudabadi script of Sindhi language did not make further progress. Traders continued to maintain their records in this script till the independence of Pakistan in 1947, the present script predominantly used in Sindh as well as in many states in India and else, where migrants Hindu Sindhi have settled, is Arabic in Naskh styles having 52 letters. However, in circles in India, Khudabadi and Devanagari is used for writing Sindhi
Khudabadi script
–
Chart of the Khudabadi Script
Khudabadi script
–
The word " Sindhi " written in the Khudabadi script
22.
Mahajani
–
Mahajani is a Laṇḍā mercantile script that was historically used in northern India for writing accounts and financial records in Hindi, Punjabi, and Marwari. It is a Brahmic script and is written left-to-right, Mahajani refers to the Hindi word for bankers, also known as sarrafi or kothival. Mahajani has been used as a primary accounting script for Marwari traders and for the use of Hindi and Punjabi in a region across northwest India. It was taught in merchant schools as part of the education system, a vast majority of documents in which it is found are financial documents, in addition to primers. Its use has been reported by bookkeepers in Haryana as the Langdi script, Mahajani descended from Landa scripts in the greater Punjab region in historic times and was well known as a merchants script throughout north India. It may have also influenced by Kaithi and Devanagari. It has fewer vowels than most North Indian scripts, and the use of them is optional, the vowels i and u can represent both their short and long forms in addition to diphthongs and related vowels. Since vowels are optional, they must be interpreted in context for most Mahajani texts, there are no special conjunct consonant forms, and there are no viramas to indicate them. Nasalization, if indicated, is represented by na. It also has various fraction marks, accounting marks, and textual organization marks, to indicate paragraph and word spacing, and abbreviation, punctuation, as many Mahajani texts are accounting books, accounting symbols have been found, but they are undergoing further research for proper encoding. It also uses a Devanagari-like baseline only to mark title headings on texts, some characters also have glyphic variants, which can be found in greater detail in the Unicode Proposal. Mahajani script was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0, the Unicode block for Mahajani is U+11150–U+1117F
Mahajani
–
Mahajani characters
23.
Tibetan alphabet
–
The Tibetan alphabet is an abugida used to write the Tibetic languages such as Tibetan, as well as Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, and sometimes Balti. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script. The alphabet is closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity, spanning across areas in Tibet, Bhutan, India. The Tibetan alphabet is of Indic origin and it is ancestral to the Limbu alphabet, the Lepcha alphabet, the creation of the Tibetan alphabet is attributed to Thonmi Sambhota of the mid-7th century. Tradition holds that Thonmi Sambhota, a minister of Songtsen Gampo, was sent to India to study the art of writing, the form of the letters is based on an Indic alphabet of that period. The most important, an official orthography aimed to facilitate the translation of Buddhist scriptures, Standard orthography has not altered since then, while the spoken language has changed by, for example, losing complex consonant clusters. As a result, in all modern Tibetan dialects, in particular in the Standard Tibetan of Lhasa and this divergence is the basis of an argument in favour of spelling reform, to write Tibetan as it is pronounced, for example, writing Kagyu instead of Bka-rgyud. In contrast, the pronunciation of the Balti, Ladakhi and Burig languages adheres more closely to the archaic spelling, in the Tibetan script, the syllables are written from left to right. Syllables are separated by a tsek, since many Tibetan words are monosyllabic, spaces are not used to divide words. The Tibetan alphabet has thirty basic letters, sometimes known as radicals, as in other Indic scripts, each consonant letter assumes an inherent vowel, in the Tibetan script its ཨ /a/. The alphabet ཨ /a/ is also the base for dependent vowels marks, although some Tibetan dialects are tonal, the language had no tone at the time of the scripts invention, and there are no dedicated symbols for tone. However, since tones developed from segmental features they can usually be predicted by the archaic spelling of Tibetan words. The unique aspect of the Tibetan script is that the consonants can be either as radicals, or they can be written in other forms. To understand how this works, one can look at the radical ཀ /ka/, in both cases, the symbol for ཀ /ka/ is used, but when the ར /ra/ is in the middle of the consonant and vowel, it is added as a subscript. On the other hand, when the ར /ra/ comes before the consonant and vowel, ར /ra/ actually changes form when it is above most other consonants, thus རྐ rka. However, an exception to this is the cluster རྙ /rnya/, similarly, the consonants ཝ /wa/, ར /ra/, and ཡ /ja/ change form when they are beneath other consonants, thus ཀྭ /kwa/, ཀྲ /kra/, ཀྱ /kja/. Besides being written as subscripts and superscripts, some consonants can also be placed in prescript, postscript, the third position, the post-postscript position is solely for the consonants ད /tʰa/ and ས /sa/. The superscript position above a radical is reserved for the consonants ར /ra/, ལ /la/, the vowels used in the alphabet are ཨ /a/, ཨི /i/, ཨུ /u/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/
Tibetan alphabet
–
Polychrome text left of center is the primary
mantra of
Tibetan Buddhism, Sanskrit
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ (
Tibetan: ༀམཎིཔདྨེཧཱུྃ,
Wylie: oMmanipad+mehU~M). Monochrome text right of center reads Sanskrit "Oṃ
Vajrasattva Hūm" (
Tibetan: ༀབཛྲསཏྭཧཱུཾ,
Wylie: oM badzrasatwa hUM), an invocation to the embodiment of primeval purity.
Tibetan alphabet
–
The number plate of a car registered in
Jammu and Kashmir, in Roman and Tibetan scripts.
24.
Mongolian alphabets
–
Many alphabets have been devised for the Mongolian language over the centuries, and from a variety of scripts. It has spawned several alphabets, either as attempts to fix its perceived shortcomings, or to allow the notation of other languages, such as Sanskrit and Tibetan. Mongol chinese in Inner Mongolia and other parts of China, on the other hand, the Xianbei spoke a proto-Mongolic language and wrote down several pieces of literature in their language. They are believed to have used Chinese characters to phonetically represent Xianbei like the Japanese system of Manyōgana, with only minor modifications, it is used in Inner Mongolia to this day. Its most salient feature is its direction, it is the only vertical script that is written from left to right. This is because the Uyghurs rotated their script 90 degrees anticlockwise to emulate the Chinese writing system, as a variant of the traditional script there exists a vertical square script, also called folded script, used e. g. on the Mongolian banknotes. In 1587, the translator and scholar Ayuush Güüsh created the Galik alphabet, inspired by Sonam Gyatso and it primarily added extra letters to transcribe Tibetan and Sanskrit terms in religious texts, and later also from Chinese & Russian. Later some of these letters officially merged to traditional alphabet as group named Galig usug to transcribe foreign word in todays use, the script was used by Kalmyks of Russia until 1924, when it was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet. In Xinjiang, China, the Oirats still use it, the traditional Mongolian alphabet is not a perfect fit for the Mongolian language, and it would be impractical to extend it to a language with a very different phonology like Chinese. Therefore, during the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan asked a Tibetan monk, Drogön Chögyal Phagpa, the script did not receive wide acceptance and fell into disuse with the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368. After this it was used as a phonetic gloss for Mongols learning Chinese characters. However, scholars such as Gari Ledyard believe that in the meantime it was the source of some of the letters of the Korean hangul alphabet. The Soyombo script is a created by the Mongolian monk and scholar Bogdo Zanabazar in the late 17th century. Zanabazar had created it for the translation of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit or Tibetan, aside from historical texts, it can usually be found in temple inscriptions. It also has relevance to linguistic research, because it reflects certain developments in the Mongolian language. At around the time, Zanabazar also developed the Horizontal square script. The scripts applications during the period of its use are not known and it was also largely based on the Tibetan alphabet, read left to right, and employed vowel diacritics above and below the consonant letters. Additionally, a dot was used below consonants to show that they were syllable-final, before the 13th century, foreign scripts had to be used to write the Mongolian language
Mongolian alphabets
–
Various alphabets that were historically used in Mongolia, on the table at the entrance into a temple. The scripts are
'Phags-pa (sides),
Lantsa,
Tibetan,
Soyombo, and
Classical Mongolian (bottom).
Mongolian alphabets
–
Bronze 'fish tally' with Khitan script
Mongolian alphabets
–
Yuan Dynasty official pass with inscription in the 'Phags-pa script
Mongolian alphabets
–
Mongolian text in Chinese transcription, with a glossary on the right of each column
25.
Soyombo alphabet
–
The Soyombo alphabet is an abugida developed by the monk and scholar Zanabazar in 1686 to write Mongolian. It can also be used to write Tibetan and Sanskrit, the Soyombo script was created as the fourth Mongolian script, only 38 years after the invention of the Clear script. The name of the script alludes to this story and it is derived from the Sanskrit word Svayambhu self-created. The syllabic system in fact appears to be based on Devanagari, details of individual characters resemble traditional Mongolian alphabets and the Old Turkic alphabet. It is unclear whether Zanabazar designed the Soyombo symbol himself or if it had existed beforehand, the eastern Mongols used the script primarily as a ceremonial and decorative script. Zanabazar had created it for the translation of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit or Tibetan, as it was much too complicated to be adopted as an everyday script, its use is practically nonexistent today. Aside from historical texts, it can usually be found in temple inscriptions and it also has some relevance to linguistic research, because it reflects certain developments in the Mongolian language, such as that of long vowels. The Soyombo script was the first Mongolian script to be written horizontally left to right. As in the Tibetan and Devanagari scripts, the signs are suspended below a horizontal line, the two variations of the Soyombo symbol are used as special characters to mark the start and end of a text. Two of its elements form the base frame for the other characters. Within this frame, the syllables are composed of one to three elements, the first consonant is placed high within the angle. The vowel is given by a mark above the frame, except for u and ü which are marked in the low center. A second consonant is specified by a mark, appended to the inside of the vertical bar. A short oblique hook at the bottom of the vertical bar marks a long vowel, there is also a curved or jagged mark to the right of the vertical bar for the two diphthongs. The first character of the alphabet represents a syllable starting with a short a, syllables starting with other vowels are constructed by adding a vowel mark to the same base character. All remaining base characters represent syllables starting with a consonant, a starting consonant without a vowel mark implies a following a. In theory,20 consonants and 14 vowels would result in almost 4000 combinations, there are additional base characters and marks for writing Tibetan or Sanskrit. Apart from the Soyombo symbol, the punctuation mark is a full stop
Soyombo alphabet
–
Soyombo script
26.
Lepcha alphabet
–
The Lepcha script, or Róng script, is an abugida used by the Lepcha people to write the Lepcha language. Unusually for an abugida, syllable-final consonants are written as diacritics, Lepcha is derived from the Tibetan script, and may have some Burmese influence. According to tradition, it was devised in the beginning of 18th century by prince Phyagdor Namgyal of the Tibetan dynasty in Sikkim, early Lepcha manuscripts were written vertically, a sign of Chinese influence. When they were written horizontally, the letters remained in their new orientations. This resulted in a method of writing final consonants. As in most other Brahmic scripts, the short vowel /-a/ is not written, other vowels are written with diacritics before, after, the length mark, however, is written over the initial, as well as any final consonant diacritic, and fuses with /-o/ and /-u/. Initial vowels do not have letters, but are written with the vowel diacritics on an &-shaped zero-consonant letter. There are postposed diacritics for medial /-y-/ and /-r-/, which may be combined, for medial /-l-/, however, there are seven dedicated conjunct letters. That is, there is a letter for /kla/ which does not resemble the letter for /ka/. One of the letters, /-ŋ/, is an exception to these patterns. First, unlike the other finals, final /-ŋ/ is written to the left of the initial consonant rather than on top and that is, /kiŋ/ is written ngki. Second, there is no inherent vowel before /-ŋ/, even short /-a-/ must be written and that is, /kaŋ/ is written ngka, rather than ngk as would be expected from the general pattern. Lepcha script was added to the Unicode Standard in April,2008 with the release of version 5.1, the Unicode block for Lepcha is U+1C00–U+1C4F, Leonard van der Kuijp, The Tibetan Script and Derivatives, in Daniels and Bright, The Worlds Writing Systems,1996. Via reocities. com Mingzat - A Lepcha Unicode font based on Jason Glavy’s JG Lepcha
Lepcha alphabet
–
Lepcha
27.
Limbu alphabet
–
The Limbu script is used to write the Limbu language. The Limbu script is a derived from the Tibetan script. Limbu, Lepcha and Nepal Bhasa are the only Sino-Tibetan languages of the Central Himalayas to possess their own scripts. Tells us that the Limbu or Kirat Sirijunga script was devised during the period of Buddhist expansion in Sikkim in the early 18th century when Limbuwan still constituted part of Sikkimese territory. The Limbu script was composed at roughly the same time as the Lepcha script which was by the third King of Sikkim. As an abugida, a basic letter represents both a consonant and an inherent, or default, vowel, in Limbu, the inherent vowel is /ɔ/. To change the inherent vowel, a diacritic is added, shown here on /k/, ᤁᤨ represents the same thing as ᤁ. Some writers avoid the diacritic, considering it redundant and they follow the marks for consonant clusters, if any. Long vowels without a final consonant are written with a diacritic called kemphreng. Glottalization is marked by a sign called mukphreng, Limbu script was added to the Unicode Standard in April,2003 with the release of version 4.0. The Unicode block for Limbu is U+1900–U+194F, Noto Sans Limbu, Namdhinggo SIL, Code2000, Sun-ExtA, Limbu script page from Omniglot Unicode code charts
Limbu alphabet
–
The Limbu script. Gray letters are obsolete.
28.
Devanagari
–
Devanagari, also called Nagari, is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal. It is written left to right, has a strong preference for symmetrical rounded shapes within squared outlines. The Nagari script has roots in the ancient Brāhmī script family, the Nagari script was in regular use by the 7th century CE and it was fully developed by about the end of first millennium. Nagari has been the primus inter pares of the Indic scripts, the Devanagari script is also used for classical Sanskrit texts. The Devanagari script is closely related to the Nandinagari script commonly found in ancient manuscripts of South India. Devanagari script has forty-seven primary characters, of which fourteen are vowels, the ancient Nagari script for Sanskrit had two additional consonantal characters. The script has no distinction similar to the capital and small letters of the Latin alphabet, generally the orthography of the script reflects the pronunciation of the language. Devanagari is part of the Brahmic family of scripts of India, Nepal, Tibet and it is a descendant of the Gupta script, along with Siddham and Sharada. Medieval inscriptions suggest widespread diffusion of the Nagari-related scripts, with biscripts presenting local script along with the adoption of Nagari scripts, the 7th-century Tibetan king Srong-tsan-gambo ordered that all foreign books be transcribed into the Tibetan language. Other closely related scripts such as Siddham Matrka was in use in Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, Sharada remained in parallel use in Kashmir. Nāgarī is the Sanskrit feminine of Nāgara relating or belonging to a town or city and it is a phrasing with lipi as nāgarī lipi script relating to a city, or spoken in city. The use of the name devanāgarī is relatively recent, and the older term nāgarī is still common, the rapid spread of the term devanāgarī may be related to the almost exclusive use of this script to publish Sanskrit texts in print since the 1870s. As a Brahmic abugida, the principle of Devanagari is that each letter represents a consonant. This is usually written in Latin as a, though it is represented as in the International Phonetic Alphabet, the letter क is read ka, the two letters कन are kana, the three कनय are kanaya, etc. This cancels the inherent vowel, so that from क्नय knaya is derived क्नय् knay, the halant is often used for consonant clusters when typesetting conjunct ligatures is not feasible. Consonant clusters are written with ligatures, for example, the three consonants क्, न्, and य्, when written consecutively without virāma form कनय, as shown above. Alternatively, they may be joined as clusters to form क्नय knaya, कन्य kanya and this system was originally created for use with the Middle Indo-Aryan languages, which have a very limited number of clusters. When applied to Sanskrit, however, it added a deal of complexity to the script
Devanagari
–
A 19th century
Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari.
Devanagari
–
Devanagiri script (vowels top, consonants bottom) in Chandas font
Devanagari
–
Devanagari text from Vayu Purana.
Devanagari
–
Devanagari देवनागरी
29.
Gujarati alphabet
–
The Gujarati script, which like all Nagari writing systems is an abugida, a type of alphabet, is used to write the Gujarati and Kutchi languages. It is a variant of Devanagari script differentiated by the loss of the horizontal line running above the letters. With a few characters, added for this purpose, the Gujarati script is also often used to write Sanskrit. Gujarati numerical digits are also different from their Devanagari counterparts, Gujarati script is descended from Brahmi and is part of the Brahmic family. The Gujarati script was adapted from the Devanagari script to write the Gujarati language, Gujarati language and script developed in three distinct phases — 10th to 15th century, 15th to 17th century and 17th to 19th century. The first phase is marked by use of Prakrit, Apabramsa and its variants such as Paisaci, Shauraseni, Magadhi, in second phase, Old Gujarati script was in wide use. The earliest known document in the Old Gujarati script is a handwritten manuscript Adi Parva dating from 1591–92, the third phase is the use of script developed for ease and fast writing. The use of shirorekha was abandoned, until the 19th century it was used mainly for writing letters and keeping accounts, while the Devanagari script was used for literature and academic writings. It is also known as the śarāphī, vāṇiāśāī or mahājanī script and this script became basis for modern script. Later the same script was adopted by writers of manuscripts, Jain community also promoted its use for copying religious texts by hired writers. The Gujarati writing system is an abugida, in each base consonantal character possesses an inherent vowel. For postconsonantal vowels other than a, the consonant is applied with diacritics, while for non-postconsonantal vowels, with a being the most frequent vowel, this is a convenient system in the sense that it cuts down on the width of writing. Following out of the property, consonants lacking a proceeding vowel may condense into the proceeding consonant. The formation of these follows a system of rules depending on the consonants involved. In accordance with all the other Indic scripts, Gujarati is written left to right. The Gujarati script is basically phonemic, with a few exceptions, first out of these is the written representation of non-pronounced as, which are of three types. Thus ઘર house is pronounced ghar and not ghara, the as remain unpronounced before postpositions and before other words in compounds, ઘરપર on the house is gharpar and not gharapar, ઘરકામ housework is gharkām and not gharakām. This non-pronunciation is not always the case with characters, મિત્ર friend is truly mitra
Gujarati alphabet
–
Excerpt from "
My experiments with truth " - the
autobiography of
Mahatma Gandhi in its original Gujarati.
30.
Modi alphabet
–
Modi is a script used to write the Marathi language, which is the primary language spoken in the state of Maharashtra, India. There are at least two different theories concerning its origin, Modi was an official script used to write Marathi until the 20th century when the Balbodh style of the Devanagari script was promoted as the standard writing system for Marathi. Although Modi was primarily used to write Marathi, other such as Urdu, Kannada, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Hindi. The name ‘Modi’ perhaps derives from the Marathi verb moḍaṇe, which means “to bend or break”, Modi is believed to be derived from broken Devanagari characters, which lends support to that particular etymology. Hemāḍpant was a minister during the reign of Mahadeva and the years of the reign of Rāmachandra of the Yadava Dynasty. The Modi script already existed in the 13th century and it was refined and introduced as an official script for Marathi by Hemāḍpant. Hemāḍpant brought the Modi script to India from Sri Lanka, bāḷājī Avajī was the secretary of state to the Maratha king Shivaji Raje Bhonsle. Bāḷājī Avajī created the Modi script, there are various styles of the Modi script associated with a particular era. Many changes occurred in each era The proto-Modi style, or ādyakālīn, the Yadav Era style, or yādavkālīn, emerged as a distinct style in the 13th century during the Yādav Dynasty. The Bahamanī Era style, or bahamanīkālīn, appeared in the 14th–16th centuries during the Bahmani Sultanate, in Shiva Era, or shivakālīn, which was during the 17th century, the Chitnisi style of the Modi script developed. In the Peshwa Era, or peshvekālīn, various Modi styles proliferated during the Maratha Empire, the distinct styles of Modi used during this period are Chitnisi, Bilavalkari, Mahadevapanti, and Ranadi. The British Colonial era, or the ānglakālīn, is the stage of the Modi script. It is associated with British rule and was used from 1818 to 1952, the Modi script continued to be taught in schools until several decades later and continued to be used as an alternate script to the Balbodh style of Devnagari. The script was widely used up until the 1940s by the people of older generation for personal and financial uses. The use of Modi has diminished since the independence of India, now the Balbodh style of Devnagari is the primary script used to write Marathi. Some linguists in Pune have recently begun trying to revive the script, the Modi script derives from the Nāgari family of scripts and is a modification of the Balbodh style of the Devanagari script intended for continuous writing. Although Modi is based upon Devanagari, it considerably from it in terms of letter forms, rendering behaviors. The shapes of some consonants, vowels, and vowel signs are similar, the Modi script has 46 distinctive letters, of which 36 are consonants and 10 vowels
Modi alphabet
–
A verse from the
Jñānēśvarī in the Moḍī script
31.
Nandinagari
–
Nandinagari is a Brahmic script derived from Nāgarī script which appeared in the 7th century AD. This script and its variants were used in central Deccan region and south India, some of the discovered manuscripts of Madhvacharya of Dvaita Vedanta school of Hinduism are in Nandinagari script. Its sister script is Devanagari, which is common in parts of India. The etymological origin of the name Nandinagari is unclear, the first part of the term Nandi is ambiguous in its context. It may mean sacred or auspicious, Nandi is the name of Lord Sivas Vrishabhavahana, a revered icon, and it may be the source of the name. It derives from the group of Nagari scripts and is related to Devanagari. There are also several styles of Nandinagari, considered by scholars as variant forms of the script, some of the earliest inscriptions in Nandi nagari have been found in Tamil Nadu. A Rigveda manuscript has been written in Nandi nagari script. Manuscripts of the first century BCE Vikramacarita, also known as the Adventures of Vikrama or the Hindu Book of Tales, have found in Nandinagari script. In a Travancore temple of Kerala, an Anantasayana Mahatmya palm-leaf manuscript was found, Nandi Nagari script was used to write Sanskrit language, and many Sanskrit copper plate inscriptions of the Vijayanagar Empire were written in that script. Numerous Sanskrit manuscripts written in Nandinagari have been discovered in South India and these cover Vedas, philosophy, commentaries on ancient works, mythology, science and arts. These are preserved in the libraries, particularly those in the southern regions of the country. Some Nandi nagari texts are in biscript that include other major south India language scripts, such as Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Nandinagari and Devanagari scripts are very close and share many similarities, but they also show systematic differences. Nandinagari differs from Devanagari more in the shape of its vowels and it has mātra but lacks long connecting mātra over words. Nandinagari is thus a sister script of Devanagiri, but not a trivial variation, the Nandinagari manuscripts also show cosmetic and style differences, such as the use of distinct Anusvaras and method of labeling each hymn or verse. Within Unicode standards, a block of codes have been allocated to Nandinagari. Shiksha – the Vedic study of sound, focussing on the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet Palaeographical Importance of Nandinagari, HareKrsna. com
Nandinagari
–
A Nandinagari manuscript
Nandinagari
–
A 16th century CE Sanskrit record of
Sadasiva Raya in Nandi nagari script engraved on copper plates. Manuscripts and records in Nandi nagari were created and preserved historically by creating inscriptions on metal plates, specially treated palm leaves, slabs of stone and paper.
32.
Kaithi
–
Kaithi, also called Kayathi or Kayasthi, is a historical script used widely in parts of North India, primarily in the former North-Western Provinces, Awadh and Bhojpur, and Madhesh in Nepal. It was used for writing legal, administrative, and private records, Kaithi script derives its name from the word Kayastha, a social group of India that traditionally consists of administrators and accountants. The script used by them acquired the name Kaithi, documents in Kaithi are traceable to at least the 16th century. The script was used during the Mughal period. In the 1880s, during the British Raj, the script was recognized as the script of the law courts of Bihar. Although in general, Kaithi was much more used than Devanagari in some areas. Kaithi script was added to the Unicode Standard in October,2009 with the release of version 5.2, the Unicode block for Kaithi is U+11080–U+110CF
Kaithi
–
Kaithī کیتھی ਕੈਥੀ
Kaithi
–
The printed form of the Kaithi script, as of the mid-19th century
33.
Odia alphabet
–
The Odia script, also known as Oriya script, is used to write the Odia language. The Odia script is developed from the Kalinga alphabet, one of the descendants of the Brahmi script of ancient India. The earliest known inscription in the Odia language, in the Kalinga script, the script has undergone several phases. From a linguistic perspective, the Hati Gumpha inscriptions are similar to modern Odia, the question has also been raised as to whether Pali was the prevalent language in Odisha during this period. The Hati Gumpha inscriptions, which are in Pali, are perhaps the only evidence of inscriptions in Pali. This may be the reason why the famous German linguist Professor Oldenburg mentioned that Pali was the language of Odisha. The curved appearance of the Odia script is a result of the practice of writing on palm leaves, Odia is a syllabic alphabet or an abugida wherein all consonants have an inherent vowel embedded within. Diacritics are used to change the form of the inherent vowel, when vowels appear at the beginning of a syllable, they are written as independent letters. Also, when certain consonants occur together, special symbols are used to combine the essential parts of each consonant symbol. Oṛiyā is encumbered with the drawback of an awkward and cumbrous written character. At first glance, an Oṛiyā book seems to be all curves, overwhelmingly, the Odia script was used to write the Odia language. However, it has used as a regional writing-system for Sanskrit. The consonants j and y are pronounced the same in Odia, initial ḍa, ḍha vary with intervocalic ṛa, ṛha. As in other scripts, Odia consonant letters have an inherent vowel. It is transliterated as ⟨a⟩, phonetic value, clusters of two or more consonants form a ligature. Basically Odia has two types of such consonant ligatures, the northern type is formed by fusion of two or more consonants as in northern scripts like Devanāgarī. In some instances the components can be identified, but sometimes completely new glyphs are formed. With the southern type the second component is reduced in size and put under the first as in the scripts used for Kannaḍa
Odia alphabet
–
Kharabela's inscription in Kalinga script and Odia language at Hatigumpha,
Khandagiri, Bhubaneswar
Odia alphabet
–
Development of Odia scripts
Odia alphabet
–
Development of ancient numerals in Odia
Odia alphabet
–
Governance
34.
Bengali alphabet
–
The Bengali alphabet or Bangla alphabet or Bangali/Bengali script is the writing system for the Bengali language and is the 5th most widely used writing system in the world due to its population. Historically, the script has also used to write Sanskrit in the region of Bengal. From a classificatory point of view, the Bengali script is an abugida, i. e. its vowel graphemes are mainly realised not as independent letters and it is written from left to right and lacks distinct letter cases. It is recognisable, as are other Brahmic scripts, by a horizontal line running along the tops of the letters that links them together which is known as মাত্রা matra. The Bengali script is less blocky and presents a more sinuous shape. The Bengali script evolved from the Kamarupi script, which belongs to the Brahmic family of scripts, Assamese script has an additional character, wô, represented as ৱ, which is absent in the Bengali script. The version of the used for Manipuri is also a different variation, it uses the rô. It also uses the Assamese script character sounding wô, represented as ৱ, the Bengali script was originally not associated with any particular language but was often used in the eastern regions of the Middle kingdoms of India and then in the Pala Empire. It later continued to be used in the Bengal region. It was later standardised into the modern Bengali script by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar under the reign of the East India Company, today, the script holds official script status in Bangladesh and India, and it is associated with the daily life of Bengalis. The Bengali script can be divided into vowel diacritics, consonant and vowel letters, modifiers, digits, the Bengali script has a total of 11 vowel graphemes, each of which is called a স্বরবর্ণ sbôrôbôrnô vowel letter. The sbôrôbôrnôs represent six of the seven vowel sounds of Bengali. All of them are used in both Bengali and Assamese, the two main languages using the script, অ ô /ɔ/ sounds as the default Inherent vowel for the entire Bengali script. As a result, the sound is orthographically realised by multiple means in modern Bengali orthography, usually using some combination of এ, অ, আ, two vowel symbols for the vowel sound and two symbols for the vowel sound. The redundancy stems from the time when this script was used to write Sanskrit, a language that had a short ই and a long ঈ, and a short উ and a long ঊ. The letters are preserved in the Bengali script with their traditional names despite the fact that they are no longer pronounced differently in ordinary speech and these graphemes serve an etymological function, however, in preserving the original Sanskrit spelling in tôtsômô Bengali words. The grapheme called ঋ ri does not really represent a vowel phoneme in Bengali, nevertheless, it is included in the vowel section of the inventory of the Bengali script. This inconsistency is also a remnant from Sanskrit, where the grapheme represents a retroflex approximant, when a vowel sound occurs at the beginning of a syllable or when it follows another vowel, it is written using a distinct letter
Bengali alphabet
–
An example of handwritten Bengali script. Part of a poem written by Nobel Laureate
Rabindranath Tagore in 1926 in Hungary.
Bengali alphabet
35.
Tirhuta
–
Tirhuta
Tirhuta
Tirhuta
Tirhuta
Tirhuta
36.
Bhujimol
–
Bhujimol is the most ancient form of Nepal script. It is also one of the most common varieties of the Nepal alphabet, Bhujimol has been used to write Nepal Bhasa and Sanskrit. The term Bhujinmol means fly-headed, from the Nepal Bhasa words bhujin, meaning housefly, the head is the horizontal line that is put above each letter, and Bhujimol refers to its rounded shape. There are Swastika marks at the two ends of the face with a Chakra mark in between. The brick measures 35.5 cm x 23 cm x 7 cm, the brick may date to as early as the 3rd century BC. The previously earliest known inscription in the Kathmandu Valley dates from the 6th century and is installed at Changu Narayan, the inscription is interpreted to refer to Charumati, a daughter of emperor Ashoka
Bhujimol
–
Bhujimol script, palm-leaf MS of the
Devimahatmya,
Bihar or
Nepal, 11th century.
Bhujimol
–
Bhujimol compared to other historical scripts of Nepal
Bhujimol
–
Chart of Bhujimol script vowel letters, with Devanagari and Latin correspondences.
37.
Prachalit Nepal alphabet
–
Prachalit Nepal script is a type of Abugida script developed from the Mol script derivatives of Brahmi script. It is used to write Nepal Bhasa, Sanskrit and Pali, various publications are still published in this script including the Sikkim Herald the bulletin of the Sikkim government. Prachalit Nepal script was added to the Unicode Standard in June,2016 with the release of version 9.0, the Unicode block for Prachalit Nepal, called Newa, is U+11400–U+1147F, Nepal script Rabison Shakya. Covers Prachalit, Ranjana and Bhujimol, development, current use, information about, problems with Unicode for Languages Unsupported by Computers. ScriptSource page on Prachalit Nepal script Fonts for Prachalit, Ranjana and Bramhi scripts
Prachalit Nepal alphabet
–
Nepal script used on letterhead of Nepalese business house in Lhasa dated 1958.
Prachalit Nepal alphabet
–
Letter in Nepal Bhasa and Nepal script dated 7 May 1924 sent from
Lhasa to Kathmandu.
38.
Ranjana alphabet
–
The Rañjanā script is an abugida writing system which developed in the 11th century. It is primarily used for writing the Newar language but is used in Buddhist monasteries in India, China, Mongolia. It is normally written from left to right but the Kutakshar form is written from top to bottom and it is also considered to be the standard Nepali calligraphic script. Rañjanā is a Brahmi script and shows similarities to the Devanagari script of North India, the script is also used in most of the Mahayana and Vajrayana monasteries. Along with the Prachalit Nepal alphabet, it is considered as one of the scripts of Nepal and it is the formal script of Nepal duly registered in the United Nation while applying for the free Nation. Therefore, it is vital script to all Nepalese as well, the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra lettered in gold ink by Bhiksu Ananda of Kapitanagar and dating back to the Nepal Sambat year 345 is an early example of the script. These are the rules for vowel diacritics in Ranjana script, there are altogether three rules where the vowel diacritics of क, ग and ब are given. The script is used in Hindu scriptures. However, in late Imperial China, the influence of Tibetan Buddhism popularized the Rañjanā script as well, and so this script is found throughout East Asia. When Rañjanā was introduced to Tibet, it was referred to as Lanydza and this script varies slightly from the standard Rañjanā. In Tibet, the Lanydza variant is used to write original texts of Sanskrit, examples of such texts include the Mañjuśrīnāmasamgīti, the Diamond Sutra and the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra. The Lanydza script is found in manuscripts and printed editions of some Sanskrit-Tibetan lexicons like the Mahāvyutpatti. The script is used decoratively on temple walls, on the outside of prayer wheels. Numerous alternative spellings of the term Lanydza exist, including the following and it is only one of the Nepalese scripts that can be written in monogram. After falling into disuse in the century, the script has recently seen dramatically increased use. Regular programs are held in the Kathmandu Valley to promote the script, the script is being endorsed by the Nepal Bhasa movement and is used for headings in newspapers and websites. A Nepalese-German project is trying to conserve the manuscripts of Rañjanā script, a Unicode block for the script has also been proposed by Evertype. The 11-12th Centuries, Collection of Sanskrit Mss, formerly Preserved in the China Ethnic Library Akṣara List of the Sanskrit Inscriptions of Feilai peak, Hangzhou, China Lantsha script
Ranjana alphabet
–
Rañjanā
Ranjana alphabet
–
Street sign in Kathmandu in Ranjana, Devanagari and English.
Ranjana alphabet
–
Signboard of
Kathmandu Metropolitan City Office in Ranjana script (second row).
Ranjana alphabet
–
Mantra in Rañjanā script, on the ceiling of a Buddhist temple in
Tianjin,
China.
39.
Meithei script
–
In the twentieth century, the script experienced a resurgence. Since Meetei does not have voiced consonants, there are only fifteen consonant letters used for native words, nine additional consonant letters inherited from the Indic languages are available for borrowings. There are seven vowel diacritics and a final consonant diacritic, one of the unique feature of this script is the use of body parts in naming the letters. Every letter is named after a body part in the Meetei language. For example, the first letter kok means head, the second letter sam means hair, the third letter lai means forehead, the another form of script still exist which retains Bengali influence and follows Bengali styles of sound system viz ko, kho, Go and so on. This script is known as Meitei Mayek 36 including Anji, a replica of Bengali script and this Meitei Script lost its popularity and replaced by indigenous Meetei Script which does not follow Bengali styles in writing and sound system. The Meitei script was added to the Unicode Standard in October,2009 with the release of version 5.2, the Unicode block for the Meitei script, called Meetei Mayek, is U+ABC0–U+ABFF. Characters for historical orthographies are part of the Meetei Mayek Extensions block at U+AAE0–U+AAFF, beckwith, Medieval Tibeto-Burman languages, PIATS2000, Tibetan studies, Proceedings of the ninth seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Leiden 2000. A glossary of 39 basic words in archaic and modern Meithei, beckwith, Medieval Tibeto-Burman languages, PIATS2000, Tibetan studies, Proceedings of the ninth seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Leiden 2000. Meitei Mayek Channel, E-Pao. Net Meetei Mayek Omniglot, a guide to written language Contemporary Meetei Mayek based Poetry
Meithei script
–
Meetei Mayek
40.
Vatteluttu alphabet
–
The Vaṭṭeḻuttu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhutthu is an abugida writing system originating from the ancient Tamil people of South India. The syllabic alphabet is attested from the 6th century CE to the 14th century in present-day Tamil Nadu and it was later supplanted by modern Tamil script and Malayalam script. Vaṭṭeḻuttu replaced Tamil-Brahmi for writing Tamil after the 2nd century CE and this rounded form of writing was also used in Kerala to write in Tamil as well as in proto-Malayalam and Malayalam language. Currently, Malayalam uses the Malayalam script, inhabitants of Kuccaveli, located north of Trincomalee, used the Vaṭṭeḻuttu script between the 5th and 8th centuries, attested to on rock inscriptions found there. Inscriptional records in Tamil date from 300 BCE to 1800, grantha was an alphabet in which extra letters were created specifically for Sanskrit words. It was also a form of Tamil script to write Sanskrit granthas or books. In Tamil, many of the letters which are found in Sanskrit do not exist, the following image shows the divergent evolution of the Tamil script and the Vatteluttu script. The Vatteluttu script is shown on the left, while the Tamil script is shown on the right, the following image shows the characters used in Vatteluttu. Tamil copper-plate inscriptions Indian copper plate inscriptions Laguna Copperplate Inscription Pallava script Tamil script Sivaramamurti, C, Indian Epigraphy, bulletin of the Madras Government Museum
Vatteluttu alphabet
–
Vatteluttu in
Tharisapalli Copper Plates.
Vatteluttu alphabet
–
Vatteluttu script sample
41.
Tamil script
–
Certain minority languages such as Saurashtra, Badaga, Irula, and Paniya language are also written in the Tamil script. The Tamil script has 12 vowels,18 consonants and one special character, however, it is listed at the end of the vowel set. The script is syllabic, not alphabetic and these combinant letters are formed by adding a vowel marker to the consonant. Some vowels require the basic shape of the consonant to be altered in a way that is specific to that vowel. Others are written by adding a suffix to the consonant, yet others a prefix. In every case the vowel marker is different from the character for the vowel. The Tamil script is written left to right. The Tamil script, like the other Brahmic scripts, is thought to have evolved from the original Brahmi script, the earliest inscriptions which are accepted examples of Tamil writing date to a time just after the Ashokan period. The script used by these inscriptions is known as the Tamil-Brahmi or Tamili script. For example, early Tamil-Brahmi, unlike Ashokan Brahmi, had a system to distinguish pure consonants and consonants with an inherent vowel. Inscriptions from the second century use a form of Tamil-Brahmi, which is substantially similar to the writing system described in the Tolkāppiyam. Most notably, they use the puḷḷi to suppress the inherent vowel, the Tamil letters thereafter evolved towards a more rounded form, and by the fifth or sixth century had reached a form called the early vaṭṭeḻuttu. The modern Tamil script does not, however, descend from this script, parallel to Pallava script a new script again emerged in Chola territory resembling the same glyph development like Pallava script, although it didnt evolve from that. By the 8th century, the new scripts supplanted Vaṭṭeḻuttu in the Chola resp, Pallava kingdoms which lay in the north portion of the Tamil-speaking region. With the fall of Pallava kingdom, the Chola dynasty pushed the Chola-Pallava script as the de facto script, over the next few centuries, the Chola-Pallava script evolved into the modern Tamil script. The Grantha and its parent script influenced the Tamil script notably, the use of palm leaves as the primary medium for writing led to changes in the script. The scribe had to be not to pierce the leaves with the stylus while writing, because a leaf with a hole was more likely to tear. As a result, the use of the puḷḷi to distinguish pure consonants became rare, the forms of some of the letters were simplified in the nineteenth century to make the script easier to typeset
Tamil script
–
History of Tamil script
Tamil script
–
Diverging evolution of
Tamil Brahmi script (center column) into the
Vatteluttu alphabet (leftmost column) and the Tamil script (rightmost column)
Tamil script
–
A page from a Tamil
palm-leaf manuscript.
Tamil script
–
Tampiran Vanakkam (Doctrina Christum) was the first book in Tamil, printed on 20 October 1578
42.
Sinhala alphabet
–
The Sinhalese alphabet is an alphabet used by the Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka and elsewhere to write the Sinhalese language and also the liturgical languages Pali and Sanskrit. The Sinhalese alphabet, which is one of the Brahmic scripts, Sinhalese is often considered two alphabets, or an alphabet within an alphabet, due to the presence of two sets of letters. The core set, known as the śuddha siṃhala or eḷu hōḍiya, in order to render Sanskrit and Pali words, an extended set, the miśra siṃhala, is available. The alphabet is written left to right. The Sinhalese script is an abugida, as each consonant has an inherent vowel, most of the Sinhalese letters are curlicues, straight lines are almost completely absent from the alphabet. This is because Sinhala used to be written on dried palm leaves and this was undesirable, and therefore, the round shapes were preferred. The core set of forms the śuddha siṃhala alphabet, which is a subset of the miśra siṃhala alphabet. This pure alphabet contains all the necessary to write Eḷu as described in the classical grammar Sidatsan̆garā. This is the reason why this set is also called Eḷu hōdiya, the definition of the two sets is thus a historic one. Out of pure coincidence, the inventory of present-day colloquial Sinhala is such that yet again the śuddha alphabet suffices as a good representation of the sounds. All native phonemes of the Sinhala spoken today can be represented in śuddha, while in order to render special Sanskrit and Pali sounds and this is most notably necessary for the graphemes for the Middle Indic phonemes that the Sinhalese language lost during its history, such as aspirates. Sinhalese had special symbols to represent numerals, which were in use until the beginning of the century and this system is now superseded by Arabic numerals. Neither the Sinhala numerals nor U+0DF4 ෴ Sinhalese punctuation kunddaliya is in use today. The kunddaliya was formerly used as a full stop, thereafter it underwent a largely separate process of development, than the mainland scripts. It was also influenced by South Indian scripts, at stages of its development. By the 9th century CE, literature written in Sinhalese script had emerged, for instance, the Buddhist literature of the Theravada-Buddhists of Sri Lanka, written in Pali, used the Sinhalese alphabet. Sinhala is the language written in this script, but rare instances of Sri Lanka Malay are recorded. Most phonemes of the Sinhalese language can be represented by a letter or by a miśra letter
Sinhala alphabet
–
The basic form of the letter k is ක "ka". For "ki", a small arch called ispilla is placed over the ක: කි. This replaces the inherent /a/ by /i/. It is also possible to have no vowel following a consonant. In order to produce such a pure consonant, a special marker, the hal kirīma has to be added: ක්. This marker suppresses the inherent vowel.
43.
Thaana
–
Thaana, Taana or Tāna is the present writing system of the Maldivian language spoken in the Maldives. Thaana has characteristics of both an abugida and an alphabet, with consonants derived from indigenous and Arabic numerals. The Thaana script first appeared in a Maldivian document towards the beginning of the 18th century in an initial form known as Gabulhi Thaana which was written scripta continua. This early script slowly developed, its characters slanting 45 degrees, becoming more graceful, as time went by it gradually replaced the older Dhives Akuru alphabet. The oldest written sample of the Thaana script is found in the island of Kanditheemu in Northern Miladhunmadulu Atoll, Thaana, like Arabic, is written right to left. It indicates vowels with diacritic marks derived from Arabic, each letter must carry either a vowel or a sukun. The only exception to rule is nūnu which, when written without a diacritic. Long vowels are denoted by doubled fili, gemination of nasals, however, is indicated by nūnu+sukun preceding the nasal to be geminated. The origins of Tāna are unique among the worlds alphabets, The first nine letters are derived from the Arabic numerals, whereas the next nine were the local Indic numerals. The remaining letters for loanwords and Arabic transliteration are derived from similar native consonants by means of diacritics, with the exception of y. This means that Thaana is one of the few alphabets not derived graphically from the original Semitic alphabet — unless the Indic numerals were, the order of the Tāna alphabet doesn’t follow the order of other Indic scripts or of the Arabic script. There is no apparent logic to the order, this has been interpreted as suggesting that the script was scrambled to keep it secret from average islanders, the script was originally used primarily to write magical incantations. These included Arabic quotations, written right to left. Maldivian learned men, who were all well versed in sorcery, saw the advantages of writing in this simplified hidden script, Tāna nearly disappeared for a brief period in recent history. Towards the mid-1970s, during President Ibrahim Nasirs tenure, Telex machines were introduced by the Maldivian Government in the local administration. The new telex equipment was viewed as a progress. Following this, a rough Latin transliteration for Maldivian was officially approved by the Maldivian government in 1976 and was implemented by the administration. Booklets were printed and dispatched to all Atoll and Island Offices, as well as schools and this was seen by many as the demise of the Tāna script
Thaana
–
Thaana
44.
Saurashtra alphabet
–
Saurashtra is a script used to write the Saurashtra language. Its usage has declined and Tamil script and Latin are now used more commonly, the Saurashtra Language is written in its own script. Because this is a minority language not taught in schools, people learn to write in Sourashtra Script through Voluntary Organisations like Sourashtra Vidya Peetam, Sourashtra is the popular spelling and it refers to both the Sourashtra language and a person who speaks Sourashtram. Saurashtra is an area in Gujarat State in India, from where the present Sourashtras in Tamil Nadu are traditionally believed to have migrated some centuries back, vrajlal Sapovadia describes the Saurashtra language and language as a hybrid of Gujarati, Marathi & Tamil. The language has had its own script for centuries, the earliest one available from 1880 and this language is not taught in schools and hence had been confined to being merely a spoken language. But many great works like Bhagavath Gita and Tirukkural were translated into Sourashtram and it is now a literary language. Sahitya Akademi has recognized this language by conferring Bhasha Samman awards to Sourashtra Scholars, though some of the books were printed in Devanagari script, it failed to register the growth of the language. For writing Sourashtram using Devanagari Script, we require seven additional symbols to denote the short e and o. We also require one more symbol to mark the sound of half yakara which is peculiar to the Sourashtra language, the books printed in Devanagari Script were discarded because they did not represent the sounds properly. The Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities, Allahabad by his letter No, the Leaders in the Community could not realize the importance of teaching of mother tongue in schools and did not evince interest in production of textbooks in Sourashtram for class use. Of late in internet, many Sourashtra Yahoo groups in their use the Roman script for the Sourashtra language. Now the Sourashtra font is available in computers and this enabled the supporters of Sourashtra Script to print books in its own script, an electronic journal, printed in the Sourashtra Script. One journal, Bhashabhimani, is published from Madurai, in Sourashtra Script, another journal, Jaabaali, is also published by the same Editor of Bhashabhimani from Madurai. The Zeeg Sourashtra script practice Magazine is also published from Madurai only, all the three journals support the Sourashtra script only. There is a journal in Devanagari called palkar Sourashtra Samachar, the letter order of Saurashtra script is similar to other Brahmic Scripts. The letters are vowels, consonants, and the letters which are formed essentially by adding a vowel sound to a consonant. Saurashtra script was added to the Unicode Standard in April,2008 with the release of version 5.1, the Unicode block for Saurashtra is U+A880–U+A8DF
Saurashtra alphabet
–
Saurashtra
Saurashtra alphabet
Saurashtra alphabet
Saurashtra alphabet
45.
Khmer alphabet
–
The Khmer alphabet or Khmer script is an abugida script used to write the Khmer language. It is also used to write Pali in the Buddhist liturgy of Cambodia and it was adapted from the Pallava script, a variant of the Grantha alphabet descended from the Brahmi script, which was used in southern India and South East Asia during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. The oldest dated inscription in Khmer was found at Angkor Borei District in Takéo Province south of Phnom Penh, the modern Khmer script differs somewhat from precedent forms seen on the inscriptions of the ruins of Angkor. The Thai and Lao scripts are descended from a form of the Khmer script. Khmer is written left to right. Words within the sentence or phrase are generally run together with no spaces between them. Consonant clusters within a word are stacked, with the consonant being written in reduced form under the main consonant. Originally there were 35 consonant characters, but modern Khmer uses only 33, each such character in fact represents a consonant sound together with an inherent vowel – either â or ô. Most dependent vowels have two different pronunciations, depending in most cases on the inherent vowel of the consonant to which they are added, in some positions, a consonant written with no dependent vowel is taken to be followed by the sound of its inherent vowel. There are also a number of used to indicate further modifications in pronunciation. The script also includes its own numerals and punctuation marks, there are 35 Khmer consonant symbols, although modern Khmer only uses 33, two having become obsolete. Each consonant has an inherent vowel, â /ɑː/ or ô /ɔː/, equivalently, a consonants series determines the pronunciation of the dependent vowel symbols which may be attached to it, and in some positions the sound of the inherent vowel is itself pronounced. Each consonant, with one exception, also has a subscript form and these may also be called sub-consonants, the Khmer phrase is ជើងអក្សរ cheung âksâr, meaning foot of a letter. Most subscript consonants resemble the corresponding consonant symbol, but in a smaller and possibly simplified form, most subscript consonants are written directly below other consonants, although subscript r appears to the left, while a few others have ascending elements which appear to the right. Subscripts are used in writing consonant clusters, clusters in Khmer normally consist of two consonants, although occasionally in the middle of a word there will be three. The first consonant in a cluster is written using the main consonant symbol, subscripts were previously also used to write final consonants, in modern Khmer this may be done, optionally, in some words ending -ng or -y, such as ឲ្យ aôy. The consonants and their forms are listed in the following table. Usual phonetic values are given using the International Phonetic Alphabet, variations are described below the table, the sound system is described in detail at Khmer phonology
Khmer alphabet
–
Ancient Khmer script engraved on stone.
Khmer alphabet
–
Âksâr khâm (អក្សរខម, Aksar Khom), an antique style of the Khmer script as written in Uttaradit, Thailand. In this picture, although it was written with Khmer script, all texts in this manuscript are in Thai languages.
46.
Lao alphabet
–
Lao script, or Akson Lao, is the primary script used to write the Lao language and other minority languages in Laos. It was also used to write the Isan language, but was replaced by the Thai script and it has 27 consonants,7 consonantal ligatures,33 vowels, and 4 tone marks. Akson Lao is a system to the Thai script, with which it shares many similarities. However, Lao has fewer characters and is formed in a curvilinear fashion than Thai. Lao is traditionally written from left to right, Lao is considered an abugida, in which certain implied vowels are unwritten. However, due to spelling reforms by the communist Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party, despite this, most Lao outside of Laos, and many inside Laos, continue to write according to former spelling standards, so vernacular Lao functions as a pure abugida. For example, the old spelling of ສເລີມ to hold a ceremony, vowels can be written above, below, in front of, or behind consonants, with some vowel combinations written before, over and after. Spaces for separating words and punctuation were traditionally not used, but a space is used, the letters have no majuscule or minuscule differentiation. The Lao script was standardized in the Mekong River valley after the various Tai principalities of the region were merged under Lan Xang in the 14th century. This script, sometimes known as Tai Noi, has changed little since its inception and continued use in the Lao-speaking regions of modern-day Laos, conversely, the Thai alphabet continued to evolve, but the scripts still share similarities. This script was derived locally from the Khmer script of Angkor with additional influence from Mon, traditionally, only secular literature were written with the Lao alphabet. Religious literature was written in Tua Tham, a Mon-based script that is still used for the Tai Khün, Tai Lue. Mystical, magical, and some literature was written in a modified version of the Khmer alphabet. Essentially Thai and Lao are almost typographic variants of other just as in the Javanese and Balinese scripts. The Lao and Thai alphabets share the same roots, but Lao has fewer characters and is written in a curvilinear fashion than Thai. However this is apparent today due to the communist party simplifying the spelling to be phonetic. There is speculation that the Lao and Thai script both derive from a common script due to the similarities between the scripts. When examining older forms of Thai scripts, many letters are almost identical to the Lao alphabet, some minority languages use separate writing systems, The Hmong have adopted the Roman Alphabet
Lao alphabet
–
Numeral systems
Lao alphabet
–
Lao
47.
Thai alphabet
–
Thai script is used to write the Thai language and other languages in Thailand. It has 44 consonant letters,15 vowel symbols that combine into at least 28 vowel forms, and four tone diacritics. Although commonly referred to as the Thai alphabet, the script is in not a true alphabet but an abugida. In the case of the Thai script this is an implied a or o, consonants are written horizontally from left to right, with vowels arranged above, below, to the left, or to the right of the corresponding consonant, or in a combination of positions. Thai has its own set of Thai numerals that are based on the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, the Thai alphabet is derived from the Old Khmer script, which is a southern Brahmic style of writing derived from the south Indian Pallava alphabet. Although Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan languages have distinctive tones in their phonological system, thus, tone markers are an innovation in the Thai language that later influenced other related Tai languages and some Tibeto-Burman languages on the Southeast Asian mainland. Thai tradition attributes the creation of the script to King Ramkhamhaeng the Great in 1283, there is a fairly complex relationship between spelling and sound. There are various issues, For many consonant sounds, there are two different letters that represent the same sound, but which cause a different tone to be associated. This stems from a change that occurred historically in the phonology of the Thai language. At the time the Thai script was created, the language had three tones and a set of contrasts between voiced and unvoiced consonants at the beginning of a syllable. Thai borrowed a number of words from Sanskrit and Pali. This means that the Thai alphabet has a number of letters that represent separate sounds in Sanskrit and Pali. These are mostly or exclusively used in Sanskrit and Pali borrowings, moreover, many consonants from Sanskrit and Pali loanwords are generally silent. The spelling of the words resembles Sanskrit or Pali orthography, Thai สามารถ to be able Thai จันทร์ moon Thai letters do not have small, spaces between words are not used, except in certain linguistically motivated cases. Minor pauses in sentences may be marked by a comma, and major pauses by a period, a birds eye ๏ formerly indicated paragraphs, but is now obsolete. A kho mut ๛ can be used to mark the end of a chapter or document, Thai writing also uses quotation marks and parentheses, but not square brackets or braces. There are 44 consonant letters representing 21 distinct consonant sounds, there are in addition four consonant-vowel combination characters not included in the tally of 44. Consonants are divided into three classes — in alphabetic order these are high and low class — as shown in the table below
Thai alphabet
–
Replica of the Ramkhamhaeng inscription, the oldest inscription using proto-Thai script
48.
Cham alphabet
–
The Cham alphabet is an abugida used to write Cham, an Austronesian language spoken by some 230,000 Chams in Vietnam and Cambodia. It is written left to right, as in English. The Cham script is a descendant of the Brahmi script of India, Cham was one of the first scripts to develop from a Tamil Brahmi script called the Grantha alphabet some time around 200 CE. It came to Southeast Asia as part of the expansion of Hinduism and Buddhism, Hindu stone temples of the Champa civilization contain both Sanskrit and Chamic language stone inscriptions. The earliest inscriptions in Vietnam are found in Mỹ Sơn, a temple dated to around 400 CE. The oldest inscription is written in faulty Sanskrit, after this, inscriptions alternate between Sanskrit and the Cham language of the times. Cham kings studied classical Indian texts such as the Dharmaśāstra and inscriptions make reference to Sanskrit literature, by the 8th century, the Cham script had outgrown Sanskrit and the Cham language was in full use. Most preserved manuscripts focus on rituals, epic battles and poems. Modern Chamic languages have the Southeast Asian areal features of monosyllabicity, tonality, however, they had reached the Southeast Asia mainland disyllabic and non-tonal. The script needed to be altered to meet these changes, the Cham now live in two groups, the Western Cham of Cambodia and the Eastern Cham of Vietnam. For the first millennium AD, the Chamic languages were a chain along the Vietnam coast. The division of Cham into Western and Phan Rang Cham immediately followed the Vietnamese overthrow of the last Cham polity, each uses a distinct variety of the script, although the former are mostly Muslim and now prefer to use the Arabic alphabet. The latter are mostly Hindu and still use the Cham script, during French colonial times, both groups had to use the Latin alphabet. The script is highly valued in Cham culture, but this does not mean that people are learning it. There have been efforts to simplify the spelling and to learning the script. Traditionally, boys learned the script around the age of twelve when they were old, however, women and girls did not typically learn to read. The traditional Indic Cham script is known and used by Vietnams Eastern Cham. As an abugida, Cham writes individual consonants supplemented by obligatory vowel diacritics tacked onto the consonant, most consonant letters, such as, or, includes an inherent vowel which does not need to be written
Cham alphabet
–
Closeup of the inscription on the Po Nagar stele, 965. The stele describes feats by the Champa kings.
Cham alphabet
–
A Champa manuscript recounting the social culture of the Cham community of the early 18th century
49.
Kawi script
–
Aksara Kawi is the name given to the writing system originating in Java and used across much of Maritime Southeast Asia from the 8th century to around 1500 AD. Kawi is the ancestor of traditional Indonesian scripts, such as Javanese and Balinese, Kawi is derived from the Pallava script mentioned by scholars of Southeast Asian studies such as George Coedès and D. G. E. Hall as the basis of several writing systems of Southeast Asia. The Pallava script was used to write middle Tamil. The earliest known texts in Kavi date from the Singhasari kingdom in eastern Java, the more recent scripts were extant in the Majapahit kingdom, also in eastern Java, Bali, Borneo and Sumatra. The scripts are abugidas, meaning that characters are read with an inherent vowel, diacritics are used, either to suppress the vowel and represent a pure consonant, or to represent other vowels. The literary genre written in this alphabet is called Kakawin, a well-known document written in Kawi is the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, found in 1989 in Laguna de Bay, in the metroplex of Manila, Philippines. Baybayin Hanunóo script Tagbanwa alphabet Buhid script Filipino orthography Vatteluttu - TAMIL Tiongson, Jaime F. Laguna copperplate inscription, a new interpretation using early Tagalog dictionaries
Kawi script
Kawi script
50.
Balinese alphabet
–
With some modifications, the script is also used to write the Sasak language, used in the neighboring island of Lombok. The script is a descendant of the Brahmi script, and so has similarities with the modern scripts of South. The Balinese script, along with the Javanese script, is considered the most elaborate and ornate among Brahmic scripts of Southeast Asia, the script is mainly used today for copying lontar or palm leaf manuscripts containing religious texts. There are 47 letters in the Balinese script, each representing a syllable with inherent vowel /a/ or/ə/ at the end of a sentence, which changes depending on the diacritics around the letter. Pure Balinese can be written with 18 consonant letters and 9 vowel letters, while Sanskrit transliteration or loan words from Sanskrit, a set of modified letters are also used for writing the Sasak language. Each consonant has a form called gantungan which nullifies the inherent vowel of the previous syllable. Punctuation includes a comma, period, colon, as well as marks to introduce, musical notation uses letter-like symbols and diacritical marks in order to indicate metrical information. Text are written left to right without word boundaries, There is also a set of holy letters called aksara modre which appears in religious texts and protective talismans. Most of them are constructed using diacritic ulu candra with corresponding characters, a number of additional characters, known to be used inline in text, remains under study and those characters are expected to be proposed as Balinese extensions in due course. A basic letter in Balinese is called aksara, and each letter stands for a syllable with inherent vowel /a/, consonants are called wianjana or aksara wianjana. Balinese script has 33 consonants, however only 18 consonants called wreṣāstra are used for writing basic vocabulary in Balinese language, the rest consonants are, known as sualalita, mainly used for writing Sanskrit and Kawi loanwords in Balinese language. The consonants can be arranged into Sanskrit order and hanacaraka traditional order, the consonants can be arranged in hanacaraka traditional order. The sequence forms a poem of 4 verses narrating the myth of Aji Saka, however, the hanacaraka sequence only has the 18 consonants of aksara wreṣāstra and exclude aksara sualalita. However, this table below include aksara sualalita as the current romanization have no diacritics for the consonants, as other Brahmic scripts, consonants in Balinese script can be arranged into Sanskrit order. Thus, Balinese script had been influenced by Shiksha, the table below uses Sanskrit order. They are, in order, ha na ca ra ka / da ta sa wa la / ma ga ba nga / pa ja ya nya. ^2 The consonant ha is sometimes not pronounced. For example, ᬳᬸᬚᬦ᭄ hujan is pronounced ujan. ^3 The exact form of ca laca is unknown because only the form is left. Vowels, called suara or aksara suara, can be written as independent letters when vowels appear in initial position
Balinese alphabet
–
Page from a
Bible printed with Balinese script
Balinese alphabet
Balinese alphabet
–
Balinese
palm-leaf manuscript
Balinese alphabet
–
Sign at Pura Puseh Temple,
Batuan, Bali
.svg)
