New Tai Lue alphabet

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New Tai Lue
ᦟᦲᧅᦷᦎᦺᦑᦟᦹᧉ
Xishuangbanna Dai
Script type
Time period
since 1950s
DirectionLeft-to-right 
Unicode range
U+1980–U+19DF
 This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and  , see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
China Post logo with New Tai Lü script reading hoŋ⁴ faːk¹ haːi¹ tsoŋ⁵ ko⁶ in Mohan, Yunnan.

New Tai Lue script, also known as Xishuangbanna Dai

Tai Tham alphabet
.

Consonants

Initials

Similar to the

Lao scripts, consonants come in pairs to denote two tonal registers (high and low).[4]

High
Low
IPA /ʔa/ /ka/ /xa/ /ŋa/ /t͡sa/ /sa/ /ja/ /ta/ /tʰa/ /na/ /pa/
High
Low
IPA /pʰa/ /ma/ /fa/ /va/ /la/ /da/ /ba/ /ha/ /kʷa/ /xʷa/ /sʷa/

Finals

Final consonants do not have an inherent /a/ vowel.[4] They are modified forms of initials with a virama-like hook:

Final no final with
IPA /k̚/ /t̚/ /p̚/ /ŋ/ /n/ /m/ /w/ /ʔ/

Vowels

Consonants have a default vowel of /a/. In the table below, '◌' represents a consonant and is used to indicate the position of the various vowels:

      Short vowels             Long vowels       Diphthongs with i
Letters IPA Letters IPA Letters IPA
not present /a/ ᦺ◌ /aj/
◌ᦰ /aʔ/ ◌ᦱ /aː/ ◌ᦻ /aːj/
◌ᦲᦰ /iʔ/ ◌ᦲ /i(ː)/
ᦵ◌ᦰ /eʔ/ ᦵ◌ /e(ː)/
ᦶ◌ᦰ /ɛʔ/ ᦶ◌ /ɛ(ː)/
◌ᦳ /u(ʔ)/ ◌ᦴ /uː/ ◌ᦼ /uj/
ᦷ◌ᦰ /oʔ/ ᦷ◌ /o(ː)/ ◌ᦽ /oj/
◌ᦸᦰ /ɔʔ/ ◌ᦸ /ɔ(ː)/ ◌ᦾ /ɔj/
◌ᦹᦰ /ɯʔ/ ◌ᦹ /ɯ(ː)/ ◌ᦿ /ɯj/
ᦵ◌ᦲᦰ /ɤʔ/ ᦵ◌ᦲ /ɤ(ː)/ ᦵ◌ᧀ /ɤj/

In some words, the symbol is just used for distinguishing

onomatopoeiae
.

Generally, vowels in

closed syllables
become short (except /aː/ and /uː/).

Tones

New Tai Lue has two tone marks which are written at the end of a syllable: and .[4] Because consonants come in pairs to denote two tonal registers, the two tone marks allow for representation of six specific tones:

High register Low register
Mark
Shown with k ᦂᧈ ᦂᧉ ᦅᧈ ᦅᧉ
IPA /ka˥/ /ka˧˥/ /ka˩˧/ /ka˥˩/ /ka˧/ /ka˩/
Transcription ka¹ ka² ka³ ka⁴ ka⁵ ka⁶

Abbreviations

Two letters are used only for abbreviations:

  • Syllable ᦶᦟᦰ (/lɛʔ˧/, "and", "or"[5]) can be abbreviated as the character
  • Syllable ᦶᦟᧁᧉ (/lɛu˩/, "already") can be abbreviated as the character

Digits

New Tai Lue has its own set of digits:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
᧑/᧚

An alternative glyph for one () is used when might be confused with the vowel .[4]

Unicode

New Tai Lue script was added to the Unicode Standard in March, 2005 with the release of version 4.1.

In June 2015, New Tai Lue was changed from an

TIS-620-style visual ordering model (where a vowel modifier will be encoded before the base consonant if it appears before it in the line, or after it otherwise), as used for the Thai and Lao scripts. This change was made since visual ordering for New Tai Lue was found to be more widespread in practice than the previously-prescribed logical ordering.[4][6][7][8]
This change affected the four vowel letters which appear to the left of the initial consonant.

The Unicode block for New Tai Lue is U+1980–U+19DF:

New Tai Lue[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+198x
U+199x
U+19Ax
U+19Bx ᦿ
U+19Cx
U+19Dx
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Diringer, David (1948). Alphabet a key to the history of mankind. p. 411.
  2. JSTOR 40860228
    .
  3. ^ Penth, Hans (1986). "On the History of Thai scripts" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ^ a b c d e f "The Unicode Standard, Chapter 16.6: New Tai Lue" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. March 2020.
  5. ^ "Dai Lue Dictionary ᦈᦹᧈ ᦶᦑᧃ ᦺᦑ ᦟᦹᧉ 傣泐词典 » ᦂᦱᧃᧉ ᦅᧄ".
  6. ^ Moore, Lisa (2014-11-10). "L2/14-250: UTC #141 Minutes".
  7. ^ Hosken, Martin (2014-04-23). "L2/14-090: Proposal to Deprecate and add 4 characters to the New Tai Lue block" (PDF).
  8. ^ Pournader, Roozbeh (2014-08-05). "L2/14-195: Data on the usage of left-side spacing marks in New Tai Lue".