The Limbu alphabet, or Kirat-Sirijonga script, is a Brahmic script used to write the Limbu language of northern India and Nepal. The Limbu language is also written in Devanagari.

[edit] History

According to traditional histories, it was first invented in the late 9th century by the king Sirijonga Hang, then fell out of use, to be reintroduced in the 18th century by Te-ongsi Sirijunga Xin Thebe (1704-1741?). This Sirijonga, who was believed to be the reincarnation of the first, was apparently martyred in 1741 (or 1743) for the sake of this script by the Sikkim Lamas, who tied him to a tree and flung poison arrows at him. The script was named 'Sirijonga' in his honour by the Limbu scholar Iman Xin Chemjong in 1925.

Unlike most other Brahmic scripts, it does not have separate independent vowel characters, instead using a vowel carrier letter with the appropriate dependent vowel attached.

[edit] Structure

This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.

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/ (ᤁ):

ᤁᤨ represents the same thing as ᤁ. Some writers avoid the diacritic, considering it redundant.

Initial consonant clusters are written with small marks following the main consonant:

Final consonants after short vowels are written with another set of marks, except for some final consonants occurring only in loanwords. They follow the marks for consonant clusters, if any.

Long vowels without a following final consonant are written with a diacritic called kemphreng:

There are two systems for writing long vowels with syllable-final consonants. One system is simply a combination of the kemphreng and final consonant marks:

The other is to write the final consonant with the basic letter, and a diacritic that marks both that the consonant is final, and that the preceding vowel is lengthened:

This same diacritic may be used to mark final consonants in loanwords that do not have final forms in Limbu, regardless of the length of the vowel.

Glottalization is marked by a sign called mukphreng.

[edit] Unicode

The Unicode range for Limbu is U+1900–U+194F. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.

[edit] External links

• Limbu script page from Omniglot
• Unicode code charts (range 1900-194F)