Limbu script

According to traditional histories, the Limbu script was first invented in the late 9th century by King Sirijunga Hang, then fell out of use, to be reintroduced in the 18th century by Te-ongsi Sirijunga Xin Thebe during the time, teaching of the limbu script was outlawed by the monarchy in Sikkim, as it posed a threat to the Monarchy.

The Limbu script. Gray letters are obsolete.

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:

ᤁᤨ /kɔ/ represents the same syllable as ᤁ /kɔ/. Some writers avoid the diacritic, considering it redundant.

Syllable-initial vowels use the vowel-carrier ᤀ with the appropriate dependent vowel sign. Used by itself, ᤀ represents syllable-initial /ɔ/.

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 (᤺). For example, ᤁ᤺ /kɔː/.

There are two methods for writing long vowels with syllable-final consonants:

1. Use the kemphreng diacritic and the final consonant, such as ᤁ᤺ᤰ /kɔːk/.
2. Replace the final consonant with the corresponding full consonant and add an underscore-like diacritic mark. This indicates that the consonant is final (vowel-less) and that the preceding vowel is lengthened. For example: ᤁᤁ᤻ /kɔːk/. 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.

The first method is widely used in Sikkim; the second method is advocated by certain writers in Nepal.[1]

Glottalization is marked by a sign called mukphreng (᤹). For example, ᤁ᤹ /kɔʔ/.

Three additional letters were used in early versions of the modern script:[1]

• ᤉ /ɟʱɔ/
• ᤊ /ɲɔ/
• ᤚ /ʂɔ/

Two ligatures were used for Nepali consonant conjuncts:[2]

• ᤝ jña (for Devanagari ज्ञ)
• ᤞ tra (for Devanagari त्र)

Nineteenth-century texts used a small anusvara (ᤲ) to mark nasalization. This was used interchangeably with ᤱ /ŋ/.

The sign ᥀ was used for the exclamatory particle ᤗᤥ (/lo/).[1]

The main punctuation mark used in Limbu is the Devanagari double danda (॥).[1] It has its own exclamation mark (᥄) and question mark (᥅).

Limbu has its own set of digits:

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: