Lepcha letter Mla

Choose ᰖ in a Lepcha Unicode keyboard or character picker. The tool must support Lepcha; Latin m plus l produces two characters rather than this dedicated letter.

What does ᰖ represent?

It is the Lepcha letter for the mla consonant cluster. The Latin transliteration mla names this cluster at the start of a Lepcha syllable. Lepcha gives clusters with medial -la their own letters instead of adding a separate -la sign to a base letter.

The Tibetan dbu-med style—a form of Tibetan writing—was laid out in vertical columns. The Lepcha script adapted its forms and turned that model a quarter turn into horizontal lines running left to right. Accounts differ about its origin: the Unicode Standard places it around 1720 and links it to Sikkim ruler Chakdor Namgyal; linguist Heleen Plaisier records Lepcha tradition crediting Thikúng Mensalóng, believed to have lived in the 17th century, and a Tibetan tradition crediting Lama Lhatsun Chenpo.

Linguist Richard Keith Sprigg identifies two eyewitness accounts written in 1826 about the murder of a Lepcha prime minister as the earliest dated Lepcha texts known to him; they were archived in 1828.

Why can a Lepcha vowel sign appear to the left?

Text order and screen position can differ. Lepcha vowel signs follow the letter in text order. The signs for -i, -o, and -oo can render to its left, while -e renders below; this is normal positioning, not a different underlying letter.