Limbu letter ja

It is the Limbu consonant that begins a syllable. The letter is conventionally romanized ja and belongs to the script used to write the Limbu language. Each consonant letter carries an inherent short, open-o vowel. A vowel sign changes that vowel; a smaller letter joined below can add a y-like, r-like, or w-like sound to the initial cluster.

The oldest known Limbu writings are manuscripts collected in Darjeeling in the 1850s. The modern script was revived in Kalimpong in 1925; that form added voiced consonants such as ja and changed some letter shapes and functions. Limbu tradition credits the culture hero Sirijanga with creating the script. It is also called Sirijanga or, sometimes, Kirat; the traditional attribution is distinct from the surviving manuscript record.

The revival gave Limbu communities a way to write oral and ritual teachings, including mundhum, a body of sacred oral traditions. After democracy returned to Nepal in the 1990s, Limbu-language literature and religious publishing grew. Limbu people also use Yakthung as a self-name. Limbu writing appears alongside Devanagari, another script, in Nepal and Sikkim. The Limbu script belongs to the Brahmic family of writing systems; Unicode uses a subjoined-letter model also found in Tibetan script. The Limbu language is distantly related to Lepcha and Tibetan; that is a language connection, not a claim that their letters are the same.

Why can ᤈ look different across Limbu texts?

Different historical styles give ᤈ different outlines. Limbu writing includes manuscript forms from the nineteenth century, early-modern print forms from 1928 through the 1970s, and a modern form used since the 1970s. Fonts that follow different forms can draw the same encoded letter differently.