Meitei Mayek alphabet

Meetei Mayek
Type	abugida
Languages	Meitei language
ISO 15924	Mtei, 337
Direction	Left-to-right
Unicode alias	Meetei Mayek
Unicode range	U+ABC0..U+ABFF U+AAE0..U+AAFF

The Meithei script, Meetei Mayek, is an abugida that was used for the Meitei language (Manipuri), one of the official languages of the Indian state of Manipur, until the eighteenth century, when it was replaced by the Bengali script. A few manuscripts survive. In the twentieth century, the script experienced a resurgence.

Since the Meitei language does not have voiced consonants, there are only fifteen consonant letters used for native words, plus three letters for pure vowels. Nine additional consonant letters inherited from the Indic languages are available for borrowings. There are seven vowel diacritics and a final consonant (/ŋ/) diacritic.

One of the unique feature of this script is the use of body parts in naming the letters. Every letter is named after a human body part in the Meitei language. For example, the first letter "kok" means "head"; the second letter "sam" means "hair"; the third letter "lai" means "forehead", and so on.

Unicode

Meitei Mayek script was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2009 with the release of version 5.2.

Blocks

The Unicode block for Meitei Mayek, called Meetei Mayek, is U+ABC0–U+ABFF.

Characters for historical orthographies are part of the Meetei Mayek Extensions block at U+AAE0–U+AAFF. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points:

References

• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (1997). A grammar of Meithei. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 0-19-564331-3.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (2002). Early Meithei manuscripts. In C. I. Beckwith (Ed.), Medieval Tibeto-Burman languages: PIATS 2000: Tibetan studies: Proceedings of the ninth seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Leiden 2000 (pp. 59–71). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
• Chelliah, Shobhana L. (2002). A glossary of 39 basic words in archaic and modern Meithei. In C. I. Beckwith (Ed.), Medieval Tibeto-Burman languages: PIATS 2000: Tibetan studies: Proceedings of the ninth seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Leiden 2000 (pp. 189–190). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.

External links

• Meitei Mayek Channel : E-Pao.Net
• Meetei Mayek
• Omniglot, a guide to written language
• Contemporary Meetei Mayek based Poetry
• Poetry In Manipuri
• Seirangba Marup, the language based Yahoo Group about Manipuri Art and Literature
• , Largest Collection of Manipuri sms,Manipuri Proverbs,Manipuri Riddles on Internet