Ho Alphabet: Warang Citi

Ho is a Munda language, part of the Austroasiatic family, so its relatives are not Hindi or Odia but Mundari, Santali and the other Munda languages of eastern India; Mundari is the closest. Like many languages of India it has been written in more than one script: in Devanagari, the script of Hindi, in the Odia script in Odisha, and in Roman letters by missionaries and scholars.

In the twentieth century the Ho scholar Lako Bodra gave Ho a script made for it, Warang Citi, often written Warang Chiti and in Hindi called the Warang Chiti lipi (script). It spread through Ho schools, books, signboards and community groups, and today it is a visible sign of Ho identity in the Kolhan region of Jharkhand. Devanagari and Odia are still widely used for Ho as well, so a Ho reader may meet the same words in three scripts.

Warang Citi letters: 32 letters with capitals and small forms

Warang Citi has 32 letters, and every one of them comes in two forms, a capital and a small letter: 𑢡 and 𑣁 (A), 𑢬 and 𑣌 (Ko), 𑢷 and 𑣗 (Bu). That is rare in India: Devanagari, Odia, Bengali, Tamil and nearly every other Indian script have no capitals at all, and Warang Citi shares the feature with alphabets such as Latin, Greek and Cyrillic.

The order in Unicode and in the symbol grid above is the script's own: Ngaa, A, Wi, Yu, Ya, Yo, Ii, Uu, E, O, Ang, Ga, Ko, Eny, Yuj, Uc, Enn, Odd, Tte, Nung, Da, At, Am, Bu, Pu, Hiyo, Holo, Horr, Har, Ssuu, Sii, Viyo. The names are not the a-b-c of English: several of them pair a consonant with a vowel (Ko, Ga, Bu, Pu, Da), others end in the consonant (Ang, At, Am, Uc), so do not expect one letter to map neatly onto one Latin letter.

The script also has its own numerals: ten digits 𑣠 𑣡 𑣢 𑣣 𑣤 𑣥 𑣦 𑣧 𑣨 𑣩 for 0 to 9, and nine extra signs 𑣪 𑣫 𑣬 𑣭 𑣮 𑣯 𑣰 𑣱 𑣲 for the tens from 10 to 90. The last character of the set is 𑣿, the Warang Citi sign for the sacred syllable Om. Warang Citi has no punctuation marks of its own in Unicode.

How to type the Ho alphabet and display Warang Citi

Warang Citi has been in the Unicode Standard since version 7.0 (2014), in the block U+118A0–U+118FF. Most computers and phones do not ship a Warang Citi keyboard, so the quickest way is to copy the letters from this page; if your phone's keyboard app offers Ho in its language list, add it there.

To display the letters you need a font that has them. Google's free Noto Sans Warang Citi does; without such a font you will see empty boxes (tofu) instead of 𑢡 𑢬 𑢷. If a page or app shows boxes, install that font, or set it in your design or word-processing program.

Typing by code point works anywhere a font is present. In Microsoft Word type the code, for example 118A1 for capital A, and press Alt + X. On Linux press Ctrl + Shift + U, type 118a1 and press Space. In HTML write 𑢡 (capital A) or 𑣁 (small a). On a Mac with the Unicode Hex Input source you must type the two halves of the code, holding Option: D806 then DCA1 for 𑢡. Windows Alt codes on the number pad do not reach these characters.

Where the Ho language is spoken

Ho is spoken by about 1.4 million people, according to Unicode's CLDR estimate, almost all of them in India. Its heartland is the Kolhan region of southern Jharkhand: West Singhbhum, with its town of Chaibasa and the sal forests of Saranda 🌳, and the neighbouring districts of Seraikela-Kharsawan and East Singhbhum. Many Ho also live across the border in northern Odisha, in Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar and Sundargarh.

In the Ho language the word ho itself means a person, a human being. Ho is one of the second official languages of Jharkhand, and Ho organisations have long campaigned for it to be added to the Eighth Schedule of India's Constitution, the list of the country's scheduled languages.

For the neighbouring languages and their characters, see our collections for Santali (written in its own Ol Chiki script), Mundari, Hindi (Devanagari) and Odia, and the India collection for the flag 🇮🇳, ₹ and the country's emoji.