Lepcha, Wancho & Other Scripts of India and Nepal

Between the Himalaya and the Bay of Bengal, dozens of communities speak languages that for centuries were written in a neighbour’s script, Devanagari, Bengali, Odia or Latin, or not written at all. This page gathers the scripts that these communities made or kept for themselves, each one in Unicode and each one copyable from the grid above: the Lepcha script of Sikkim and Darjeeling (ᰛᰩᰵ Róng), Sora Sompeng for Sora in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, Sunuwar for the Kõits people of eastern Nepal and Sikkim, Gurung Khema for the Tamu (Gurung) of Nepal and Sikkim, Mro for the Mru of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, Toto for the single village of Totopara in West Bengal, Ol Onal for Bhumij in Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal, Wancho for Longding district in Arunachal Pradesh, and the historical letters of Meetei Mayek, the Manipuri script. The modern Manipuri letters have their own page, Manipuri Alphabet & Meitei Mayek; here you get only the old orthography that page leaves out.

Each group of the grid is one script, and inside it the characters run in the order that script’s own primers teach: the ka-kha-ga rows of Lepcha and Gurung Khema, Jentich’s own sequence for Sunuwar, the vowel-led rows of Ol Onal, the Hindi-sounds-then-Wancho-sounds chart of Wancho. Signs that attach to a letter (vowel signs, finals, tone marks) follow the letters, then the digits. Lepcha is the only old script here, from around 1720; everything else was created between 1936 and 2015, mostly by one named person, which is why these pages read like biographies as much as alphabets.

Lepcha script: the oldest alphabet of Sikkim

Lepcha, called Róng by its people (ᰛᰩᰵᰛᰧᰵ, Róng ríng, ‘the Róng language’), is the script of the Lepcha of Sikkim, the Darjeeling hills, and parts of Bhutan and Nepal. Tradition credits it either to the scholar Thikúng Men Salóng in the 17th century or to the Sikkimese king Chakdor Namgyal around 1720. The letters are Tibetan letters turned on their side: early Lepcha was written in vertical columns, and when it switched to horizontal lines the whole script was rotated a quarter turn. That is why its final consonants look the way they do: ᰭ k, ᰮ m, ᰯ l, ᰰ n, ᰱ p, ᰲ r, ᰳ t are small marks written above the letter, and the velar nasal ᰴ nyin-do or ᰵ kang is written to its left.

Lepcha is an abugida. Every consonant carries an inherent a, so ᰀ reads ka; ᰣ is the vowel carrier used when a syllable begins with a vowel. The vowel signs ᰦ ᰧ ᰨ ᰩ ᰪ ᰫ ᰬ are placed before, after or below the letter (ᰧ i and ᰨ o go to the left, ᰬ e underneath), ᰤ and ᰥ are the subjoined ya and ra, and the six conjunct letters ᰁ kla, ᰄ gla, ᰏ pla, ᰒ fla, ᰔ bla and ᰖ mla are counted as letters of their own in the traditional order. ᰶ ran marks a vowel as long and ᰷ the nukta turns ᰀ ᰝ ᰃ into the retroflex sounds of loanwords; the newer letters ᱍ ᱎ ᱏ do the same job with their own shapes. ᰻ ta-rol is the full stop, ᰼ the double one, and the digits ᱀ to ᱉ are Lepcha’s own. All 74 characters entered Unicode in version 5.1 (2008).

Sora Sompeng, Sunuwar and Gurung Khema: scripts made for a language

Sora Sompeng (𑃐𑃦𑃝𑃗 𑃐𑃦𑃖𑃛𑃣𑃗) is the script of Sora, a Munda language of about 300,000 people in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Mangei Gomango, a Sora pharmacist, received it on the night of 18 June 1936 after days of penance in the hills, and it is used above all in the rites of the Matar Banom religious movement, and to a smaller extent for schooling and books. It has 18 consonants in its own order from 𑃐 sah, 6 vowel letters 𑃢 𑃣 𑃤 𑃥 𑃦 𑃧, and the helper letter 𑃨 mae used to mark retroflex sounds. A schwa is simply not written: 𑃢𑃖𑃙 spells amən, ‘arrow’. Unicode 6.1 (2012); Windows ships it in the Nirmala UI font.

Sunuwar, long known in Unicode drafts as Jenticha, was created in 1942 by Krishna Bahadur Jentich (1926–1991) for the Kõits (Sunuwar, Mukhia) language of eastern Nepal and Sikkim, some 40,000 speakers. His original 22 letters run 𑯀 devi, 𑯁 tasla, 𑯂 eko, 𑯃 imar, 𑯄 reu … 𑯕 ava, each with a Sunuwar name; later users added 11 more, 𑯖 aal to 𑯠 kloko, and the long-vowel colon. In Nepal it is written as a plain alphabet; in Sikkim, where Sunuwar has been an official language since 1996 and the Sikkim Herald prints an edition in it, the letters are read with an inherent vowel, like an abugida. 𑯡 pvo is not a letter but an auspicious syllable, spoken twice in greetings and written before a name in a letter’s heading. Unicode 16.0 (2024).

Gurung Khema, or Khema Phri (𖄁 ka, 𖄂 kha …), is the script of the Tamu or Gurung people, about 325,000 speakers in Kaski, Lamjung, Syangja and the neighbouring districts of Nepal and in Sikkim. In 1977 a Gurung committee decided the language needed a script of its own and Bal Narsingh Gurung, guided by Pim Bahadur Gurung, built it; the Tamu assembly adopted it in 1995, Sikkim recognised it in 1997, and today it is taught in some 40 Sikkim government schools. The name joins khe, ‘male ancestor’, and ma, ‘female ancestor’, with phri, ‘writing’. It is an abugida in Brahmi order with 29 consonants, 11 vowel signs (long ones added in 2019), four medial signs 𖄪 ya 𖄫 va 𖄬 ha 𖄮 ra, the anusvara 𖄭 for nasal vowels and 𖄯 tholhoma, the mark that silences a consonant’s inherent vowel. Unicode 16.0 (2024).

Mro, Toto, Ol Onal and Wancho: alphabets of the last forty years

Mro (𖩃𖩓𖩑 Mru) was created in the 1980s by Menlay Murang, who also founded the Crama (Khrama) religion among the Mru of the Bandarban hills in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts, with smaller groups across the border in Myanmar. It is a plain left-to-right alphabet of 31 letters from 𖩀 ta to 𖩞 tek, with no combining marks and no tone marks; 𖩞 tek doubles as the written abbreviation for the word ‘quote’. Sentences end with 𖩮 the Mro danda, and the digits 𖩠 to 𖩩 are the script’s own. Unicode 7.0 (2014).

Toto (𞊒𞊪𞊒𞊪) belongs to one of India’s smallest communities: about 1,500 Toto people in Totopara, a village on the Bhutan border in West Bengal. Dhaniram Toto, an elder and writer, designed the script and launched it on 22 May 2015; he was awarded the Padma Shri in 2023. It has 17 consonants 𞊐 pa to 𞊠 la and 13 vowel letters, and its unusual feature is that breathy vowels are letters of their own: 𞊡 i and 𞊢 breathy i, 𞊦 e and 𞊧 breathy e, and so on, because ‘two’ (ni̤) and ‘seven’ (ni) differ only in breathiness. 𞊮 marks a rising tone and sits on the stem’s first vowel; a falling tone is left unmarked. Unicode 14.0 (2021).

Ol Onal, ‘Bhumij script’, was designed between 1981 and 1992 by Ol Guru Mahendra Nath Sardar for Bhumij, a North Munda language close to Mundari and Santali, spoken by about 27,000 people in Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal and Assam. Like Ol Chiki (see Santali Alphabet (Ol Chiki)) it is a true alphabet with standalone vowels and no inherent vowel, laid out in five rows of six: each row starts with a vowel letter, 𞗐 ô, 𞗖 a, 𞗜 i, 𞗢 u, 𞗨 e, and the consonants that follow take their names from it (𞗑 om, 𞗒 ong, 𞗗 ad, 𞗘 ab …). Three ṭiḍaḥ marks adjust a letter: 𞗮 mu nasalises a vowel, 𞗯 ikir lengthens 𞗖 a, 𞗰 hoddond glottalises 𞗘 ab and 𞗥 uj. Sardar also drew a lowercase set, Galang Onal, but only the capitals were ever printed, so only they are encoded. Unicode 16.0 (2024).

Wancho (𞋒𞋀𞋉𞋃𞋕) was devised between 2001 and 2012 by Banwang Losu, a government middle-school teacher in Longding district, Arunachal Pradesh, for a Northern Naga language of about 51,000 speakers there and in Tirap, Assam, Nagaland and across the border in Myanmar; it is now taught in schools. Its 44 letters come in two blocks, the sounds Wancho shares with Hindi (𞋀 aa to 𞋞 u) and the sounds only Wancho has (𞋟 llha to 𞋫 yih, the glottal stop). Tone is written on the vowel with one of two pairs of marks: the dots 𞋬 tup and 𞋭 tupni for Northern Wancho, the feathers 𞋮 koi and 𞋯 koini (from okoi, ‘feather’) for Southern Wancho, so 𞋔𞋜 kì is ‘quarrel’, 𞋔𞋜𞋮 ki ‘dog’ and 𞋔𞋜𞋯 kí ‘hatch’. 𞋿 ngun is Wancho’s own rupee sign. Unicode 12.0 (2019).

The historical Meetei Mayek letters

Meetei Mayek is the script of Manipuri (Meitei), replaced by the Bengali script in the 18th century and officially revived in Manipur since 1980. The revived standard has 27 letters, and those, with the modern vowel signs and digits, are on the Manipuri Alphabet & Meitei Mayek page. The 23 characters here are the ones the 1980 reform dropped: the old orthography’s extra vowel letters ꫠ e and ꫡ o, nine consonants ꫢ ꫣ ꫤ ꫥ ꫦ ꫧ ꫨ ꫩ ꫪ for Sanskrit and Bengali sounds (cha, nya, ṭa, ṭha, ḍa, ḍha, ṇa, śa, ṣa), the long vowel signs ꫫ ꫬ ꫭ ꫮ ꫯ, the visarga ꫵ, and ꫶ the virama, which unlike the modern killer ꯭ is invisible and joins two letters into a conjunct, as in ꯉ꫶ꯍ ṅha.

The punctuation is still useful: ꫰ cheikhan is the single danda (the modern full stop is the double ꯫ cheikhei), ꫱ ahang khudam is the question mark, ꫲ anji is the auspicious sign written at the head of a text, and ꫳ and ꫴ repeat a syllable or a word. Use these characters only when typing or quoting old texts, puya manuscripts and pre-1980 printing; modern Manipuri spelling never needs them. The block, Meetei Mayek Extensions, was added in Unicode 6.1 (2012), three years after the main block.

How to type these scripts and make them show up

Tap any character above to copy it; all 411 are plain Unicode text and paste anywhere that has a font for them. That last part is the catch. No phone or desktop ships these scripts by default, so a reader without the right font sees boxes. Google’s free Noto fonts cover most of them: Noto Sans Lepcha, Noto Sans Sora Sompeng, Noto Sans Mro, Noto Sans Wancho, Noto Serif Toto, Noto Sans Meetei Mayek (which includes the extensions) and Noto Sans Sunuwar; for Gurung Khema and Ol Onal, encoded only in September 2024, use the fonts the communities made themselves (the Khema font and the Ol Onal fonts first released in 2013) until a Noto font ships. Windows’ Nirmala UI shows Sora Sompeng and Meetei Mayek; Mingzat from SIL is a good Lepcha font.

For typing, Lepcha has keyboard layouts in the free Róng Kít; Sora Sompeng, Wancho, Ol Onal and Gurung Khema have community keyboards and Android apps (search the script name plus ‘keyboard’); for the rest, copying from this page or using a code-point input (in Word type the hex code and press Alt+X, for example 1C00 Alt+X for ᰀ) is the practical route. Two pitfalls: Sunuwar’s tone and nasal marks and Toto’s glottal stop are written with ordinary combining characters and the modifier apostrophe (U+02BC), not script-specific signs, and the Toto breathy vowels are single letters, not a vowel plus a mark, so do not try to build them by hand.