This page brings together basic information about the Kayah Li script and its use for the Western Kayah language. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Western Kayah using Unicode.
Kayah Li is used to write the Eastern and Western Kayah Li languages, spoken by 360,000 and 210,000 people, respectively. Although native to Myanmar, these languages are now also spoken by significant numbers of refugees in Thailand, where the Kayah Li script is taught in schools.
ꤊꤢ꤬ꤛꤢ꤭ꤜꤟꤤ꤬ ꤢ꤬ꤜꤤ꤬ꤊꤢ꤬ꤛꤢ꤭ꤜꤟꤤ꤬ ꤍꤟꤥ
The Kayah Li script was invented in 1962 by Htae Bu Phae (also written Hteh Bu Phe).
The Kayah Li script is an alphabet. Both consonants and vowels are indicated by letters. See the table to the right for a brief overview of features for the Western Kayah language.
Kayah Li text runs left to right in horizontal lines. It is a fairly simple and straightforward writing system. Words are separated by spaces, and can be multi-syllabic.
The combining vowel diacritics can also be used with ꤣ [U+A923 KAYAH LI LETTER OE] to write 5 diphthongs used in loan words. The one common diphthong, ɯə, is somewhat more complicated, however, and uses different sequences of consonant characters to write breathy and non-breathy forms.
There are no special arrangements for standalone vowels.
Kayah Li has 3 combining tone marks, which are always used in a straightforward way at the end of every syllable to indicate one of 4 tones. One tone is not marked.
The set of dedicated vowel letters used for Kayah is:
ꤤ␣ꤢ␣ꤥ␣ꤣ␣ꤢ
Consonants used for vowels
No consonants are used alone to represent a vowel, but the following are used in multipart vowels (see compositeV).
ꤛ␣ꤟ␣ꤌ
Combining marks used for vowels
The set of combining marks used for vowels is:
ꤦ␣ꤨ␣ꤩ␣ꤧ␣ꤪ
Multipart vowels
All but 4 basic vowels in Kayah are represented by multipart vowels made up of a base character and a combining mark. Most of the diphthongs are represented in the same way. Two diphthongs are represented by a combination of letters. Here is the full set.
ꤢꤦ␣ꤢꤨ␣ꤢꤩ␣ꤢꤧ␣ꤢꤪ␣ꤣꤧ␣ꤣꤦ␣ꤣꤨ␣ꤣꤩ␣ꤣꤪ␣ꤛꤣ␣ꤟꤌꤣ
Vowels may also be mixed with ꤟ to produce breathiness (see breathiness). (The last item in the list above is a special case of that.) All vowels may also be associated with a tone mark (see tones).
Standalone vowels
There appear to be no special mechanisms for dealing with standalone vowels. A written vowel is simply placed where needed.
ꤢ꤬ꤗꤥ꤬ꤢ꤬ꤚꤢ
ꤥ꤬ꤗꤛꤢꤩ
ꤢꤟꤌꤣꤢꤛꤢ
Observation: The Wiktionary entries sometimes show a glottal stop before a standalone vowel, and sometimes do not. See the examples just above.
Observation: The IPA transcriptions for some words found in the Learning Kayah PDF have silent initial vowels, eg. ꤢꤛꤢ꤭ꤞꤤ꤭.
Breathiness
Apart from the diphthong mentioned earlier, breathiness of vowels is indicated by immediately preceding the vowel with ꤟ [U+A91F KAYAH LI LETTER HA].
ꤍꤟꤥ
However, when ꤛ [U+A91B KAYAH LI LETTER YA] is the second or third consonant in a cluster, the HA is written before the YA,h eg. ꤡꤟꤛꤢ
Vowel length
There appears to be no phonemic distinction in vowel length, and no way to mark different lengths in the orthography.
Nasalisation
tbd
Tones
꤬␣꤭␣꤫
Observation: Different sources describe Kayah tones slightly differently, and this is an attempt to synthesise them.
Kayah Li has four tones, although the high tone is rarely seen. Each syllable is marked for tone, unless it has the mid-high tone. They are written as follows:
The tone marks all combine below the base (whereas vowel diacritics combine above). Examples:rꤞꤢꤨ꤬ꤞꤢꤨ꤭ꤞꤢꤨ
The tone mark is normally written as the last component of a syllable, ie. after the vowel.e (Some fonts will correctly display the sequence vowel_base+tone+vowel_diacritic, but in that case the application must be relied upon to treat both orders the same for comparisons.)
This section maps Kayah vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Kayah Li orthography,. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.
Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc.
ꤌ [U+A90C KAYAH LI LETTER GA] is only normally found as part of the breathy diphthong ɯ̤ə,h though Helgerson says it may be used as in loan words, eg. ꤥ꤬ꤊꤟꤌꤣ
Breathy vowels add another consonant, ꤟ [U+A91F KAYAH LI LETTER HA], to these groups. It usually occurs immediately after the cluster, eg.
ꤗꤝꤟꤤ꤭
ꤊꤜꤛꤢꤩ꤬ꤕꤜꤟꤢꤧ
But when the cluster contains j in second or third position it occurs before that,h eg.
ꤢ꤬ꤕꤟꤛꤢ
ꤞꤥ꤬ꤕꤜꤟꤛꤢꤩ꤬
Finals
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Consonant clusters
The consonant clusters in Kayah are all syllable-initial. See onsets.
Consonant length
tbd
Consonant sounds to characters
This section maps Kayah consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Kayah Li orthography. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.
Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc.
Visually, two diacritics look as it they could be composed of smaller parts. This section gives guidance on which approach is best.
It is possible that someone may occasionally try to use 2 characters rather than the single character which is canonical. Doing so produces text that will not match correctly encoded text for search, spell-checking, and so on, and so should be avoided. The list below shows the characters in question.
Kayah letters don't interact with each other, so no special shaping is needed for that.
Base characters may carry one or two combining marks, and the font needs to correctly shape and position these relative to the base. However, if there are two combining marks, one will appear above and the other below the base, so they won't interfere with each other.
Graphemes
Grapheme clusters
tbd
Punctuation & inline features
Word boundaries
Words are separated by spaces.
Phrase & section boundaries
,␣;␣:␣꤯␣?␣!
Kayah punctuation is mostly ASCII, however ꤯ [U+A92F KAYAH LI SIGN SHYA] is used as a phrase/sentence delimiter.u
