Limbu vowel sign ee

Write the Limbu consonant letter first, then add ᤣ.

A Limbu consonant letter normally includes an unwritten vowel; ᤣ replaces it. Unicode’s example ᤋᤣ pairs the sign with consonant ᤋ.

When a syllable starts with a vowel, write it after ᤀ, the Limbu vowel-carrier used in that position: ᤀᤣ.

Where did the Limbu script come from?

Its origin is debated, with tradition and documented history differing.

Limbu community tradition places an original codification in the 9th century. Historical scholarship finds no documented predecessor and traces the surviving script tradition to Srijanga’s 18th-century work. The oldest known Limbu-script writings were collected in Darjeeling in the 1850s, and a revival began in the 1920s. Srijanga’s project aimed to give Limbu oral tradition a distinct written medium.

Later use tied the script to religious practice, cultural and political identity, and literary publishing; Limbu publications may also use Devanagari. Unicode classifies Limbu within the Brahmic family, a group of scripts used for South Asian languages, describes distant ties to Lepcha and Tibetan scripts, and says its code layout follows a variant of the Tibetan model.