The Kayah Li alphabet is used to write the Kayah languages

Kayah languages

The Kayah languages of Burma are spoken by the Kayah people. They are:*Manumanaw Karen*Yinbaw Karen*Yintale Karen*Eastern Kayah*Western Kayah...

 Eastern Kayah Li and Western Kayah Li, which are members of Karenic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. They are also known as Red Karen and Karenni

Karenni

Red Karen also known as Karenni, is a subgroup of the Karen people, a Sino-Tibetan people living mostly in Kayah State of Burma....

. Eastern Kayah Li is spoken by about 26,000 people, and Western Kayah Li by about 100,000 people, mostly in the Kayah and Karen states of Myanmar

Myanmar

Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....

, but also by people living in Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

.

History

Kayah Li script was devised by Htae Bu Phae in March 1962, in part in response to the appearance of Latin-based orthographies which had appeared after 1950. It is taught in schools in refugee camps in Thailand. Kayah Li’s relation to Brahmic scripts can be seen in its ordering and the shapes of some of its letters, although the shapes of most of them were developed independently. At least nine of its characters bear a relation to characters in the Myanmar script.

Description

Unlike the Myanmar script, the Kayah Li script is a alphabet proper as the consonant letters don't have any subsequent vowel. Four of the vowels are written with separate letter, the others are written using a combination of the letter for a and a diacritic marker. The diacritics can also be used in combination with the letter for ơ to represent sounds uccuring in loanwords. There is also a set of three diacritics that are used to indicate tone. Unlike the vowel diacritics, that are written above the letter, these are written under.

Vowels

ꤢ	ꤣ	ꤤ	ꤥ	ꤢꤦ	ꤢꤧ	ꤢꤨ	ꤢꤩ	ꤢꤪ
a	ơ	i	ô	ư	e	u	ê	o
[a]	[ɤ]	[i]	[o]	[ɯ]	[ɛ]	[u]	[e]	[ɔ]

Vowels used for loanwords

ꤣꤦ	ꤣꤧ	ꤣꤨ	ꤣꤩ	ꤣꤪ
ơư	ưe	ơu	ơê	ơo
[ɤɯ]	[ɯɛ]	[ɤu]	[ɤe]	[ɤɔ]

Tone markers

ꤢ꤫	ꤢ꤬	ꤢ꤭
high	low	medial

Consonants

ꤊ	ꤋ	ꤌ	ꤍ	ꤎ	ꤏ	ꤐ	ꤑ
k	kh	g	ng	s	sh	zh	ny
[k]	[kʰ]	[ɡ]	[ŋ]	[s]	[sʰ]	[ʑ]	[ɲ]
ꤒ	ꤓ	ꤔ	ꤕ	ꤖ	ꤗ	ꤘ	ꤙ
t	ht	n	p	ph	m	d	b
[t]	[tʰ]	[n]	[p]	[pʰ]	[m]	[d]	[b]
ꤚ	ꤛ	ꤜ	ꤝ	ꤞ	ꤟ	ꤠ	ꤡ
r	y	l	w	th	h	v	c
[r]	[j]	[l]	[w]	[ɕ,θ,s]	[h]	[v]	[tɕ]

Digits

꤀	꤁	꤂	꤃	꤄	꤅	꤆	꤇	꤈	꤉
0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

Unicode

Kayah Li was added to the Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

Standard in April, 2008 with the release of version 5.1.

The Unicode block for Kayah Li is U+A900–U+A92F:

External links

• Page on Omniglot about Kayah Li
• Unicode Kayah Li chart
• GNU FreeFont, a Unicode font with support for Kayah Li