Kayah Li script

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kayah Li
Type	Abugida
Spoken languages	Kayah languages
Time period	1962–present
Parent systems	Proto-Canaanite alphabet → Phoenician alphabet → Aramaic alphabet → Brāhmī → Kayah Li
Unicode range	U+A900–U+A92F
ISO 15924	`Kali`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Kayah Li script is used to write the Kayah languages Eastern Kayah Li and Western Kayah Li, which are members of Karenic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. They are also known as Red Karen and Karenni. Eastern Kayah Li is spoken by about 360,000 people, and Western Kayah Li by about 210,000 people, mostly in the Kayah and Karen states of Myanmar, but also by people living in Thailand.

Kayah Li script was devised by Htae Bu Phae in March 1962, in part in response to the appearance of Latin-based orthographies which had appeared after 1950. It is taught in schools in refugee camps in Thailand. Kayah Li’s relation to Brahmic scripts can be seen in its ordering and the shapes of some of its letters, although the shapes of most of them were developed independently. At least nine of its characters bear a relation to characters in the Myanmar script.