Meithei script
| Meetei Mayek ꯃꯤꯇꯩ ꯃꯌꯦꯛ |
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|---|---|
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| Type |
abugida
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| Languages | Meitei language |
| Direction | Left-to-right |
| ISO 15924 | Mtei, 337 |
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Unicode alias
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Meetei Mayek |
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The Meitei script, Meetei Mayek, is an abugida that was used for the Meitei language, one of the official languages of the Indian state of Manipur, until the eighteenth century, when it was replaced by the Bengali script. A few manuscripts survive. In the twentieth century, the script experienced a resurgence.
Since Meitei does not have voiced consonants, there are only fifteen consonant letters used for native words, plus three letters for pure vowels. Nine additional consonant letters inherited from the Indic languages are available for borrowings. There are seven vowel diacritics and a final consonant (/ŋ/) 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 human body part in the Meitei language. For example, the first letter "kok" means "head"; the second letter "sam" means "hair"; the third letter "lai" means "forehead", and so on. This is corroborated from the holybook "Wakoklol Heelel Theelel Salai Amailol Pukok Puya", which dealts on how each scripts originated and got the nomenclature viz "Kok"... etc based on creation of universe and cosmos. 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 sound system. This "Meitei Script" lost its popularity and replaced by indigenous "Meitei 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.
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Wikipedia