Sunuwar Letter Carmi

It represents the consonant heard at the start of “church.”

K. B. Jentich created the Sunuwar script in 1942 to write Sunuwar, a language spoken in eastern Nepal and Sikkim. Carmi was among the original 22 letters; users later added letters and marks to represent more sounds. Sunuwar community histories written in the script date from the 1940s.

Its overall structure was modeled on the Latin alphabet, and some letterforms appear inspired by Latin shapes.

Why can the Carmi letter look different?

Regional writing practice and font design can give Carmi different outlines.

In Nepal’s alphabetic convention, Carmi writes a consonant and vowels are written separately. In the Sikkim Herald newspaper’s abugida—a system in which consonants carry a default vowel—it normally brings a short, unstressed vowel unless a mark cancels it.

In 2021, a Unicode proposal reported that no formal shared spelling standard existed, though the Sunuwar Welfare Society of Nepal promoted a common repertoire. A 2024 font comparison shows different Carmi outlines in publications from Nepal and Sikkim. An earlier version of the Society’s Mukdum font used Sikkim-like forms; the comparison suggests later changes aimed to improve readability.

How do I type the Sunuwar Carmi letter?

Use a Unicode Sunuwar keyboard layout.

An ordinary Latin keyboard has no dedicated Carmi key, so use an input layout that outputs Unicode Sunuwar. The 2021 Unicode proposal describes Sunuwar fonts mapped to Latin key values instead of Unicode; text can look like Carmi in its matching font without containing the Unicode letter.