Sunuwar letter Shyele

It marks /s/, as at the start of “sun.” Shyer, 𑯜, marks the “sh” sound. Mixing them changes the consonant a Sunuwar word spells.

The Sunuwar language is also called Koĩts-Lo. In Nepal, it is commonly written in Devanagari, the script used for Nepali and Hindi; when the Sunuwar script is used there, it works as an alphabet, with consonants written without a built-in vowel. In the Indian state of Sikkim, it is also used as an abugida: a consonant can carry a default, unwritten vowel. Sikkim recognized Koĩts-Lo as an official language in 1996, and government materials used the Sunuwar script.

Where did the Sunuwar script come from?

The modern script emerged in the 1940s; its earlier origin is disputed. A Unicode proposal credits Krishna Bahadur Jentich with developing it in 1942 and describes its first inventory as 22 letters. A Sunuwar community history traces Koĩts-BreɁse, its name for the script, to writing on animal hides, recopied as old inscriptions faded; it says Hem Karna Sunuwar brought it to discussion in the 1940s and Karna Bahadur (“K. B.”) Jentich later gathered and improved the alphabet in the 1960s.

By the turn of the 21st century, users had added 11 letters and a vowel-length mark. The new Shyer letter represented “sh,” separating it from Shyele’s “s”; earlier writing used one letter for both sounds. The Sunuwar script was modeled on the Latin alphabet, used for English, and a later letter for a long “a” vowel was borrowed from the Limbu script. A separate system, Tikamuli, based on Devanagari, was promoted alongside the Jentich script in 1970; a community history says a state policy favoring one language limited that effort.