This page brings together basic information about the Mro script and its use for the Mru language. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Mru using Unicode.
Sample
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list of characters, with links to more details.
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Mru (or Mro) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken primarily in Bangladesh with a few speakers in India. According to the Unicode script proposal, literacy levels for this script among the 100,000 Mro exceed 80%.p Education in the script is available up to grade 3.@Scriptsource,https://scriptsource.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=script_detail&key=Mroo
The script was invented by Menlay Murang (or Manley Mro) in the 1980s. Mro folklore says that an earlier script was sent with a cow by the god Turai, but the cow became hungry and ate the book it was carrying. Murang aimed to restore a writing system to the Mro people.
The Mro script is an alphabet. Both consonants and vowels are indicated by letters, and the script is mostly quite straightforward. See the table to the right for a brief overview of features for the orthography used to write the Mro language.
Mru text runs from left to right in horizontal lines. Words are separated by spaces. The orthography is unicameral.
Mru uses 25 consonant letters, but 6 of those are duplicates, representing the same sound as another letter. There are no combining marks or special forms for consonant clusters. Syllable medial and final consonants are represented using ordinary consonant letters. โฏ consonants
The Mro orthography is an alphabet that uses letters to write vowel sounds. Vowel sounds are written using 7 letters, and one digraph, which combines 2 of the 7. Mru has no prebase glyphs. or circumgraphs. Multiple vowels may sometimes be used together. There are no letters or diacritics for tone, nasalisation, or vowel length. โฏ vowels
Standalone vowel sounds are written using the normal vowel letters. โฏ standalone_vowels
Punctuation is mostly that used for the Latin script, but Mro includes 2 native punctuation marks resembling dandas.
Mro doesn't indicate tones, nasalisation or long vowels.
No special mechanism is used to show the absence of a vowel.
Standalone vowels
Standalone vowel sounds are simply represented using ordinary vowel letters.
Vowel length
Vowel length is not indicated in the orthography.
Nasalisation
Nasalisation is not indicated in the orthography.
Tones
Mru is not a tonal language.
Vowel sounds to characters
This section maps Mru vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Mro 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.
Several consonants can be written with more than one letter. Typically the first letter in the list above is used for most words, but a few words use the following letter instead. Click on the letters above for examples.
Some sound sequences can be abbreviated to a single letter (see abbrev).
Vowel absence
No special mechanisms or rules are employed to indicate consonants that are not followed by a vowel. The vowel letter is simply omitted.
Syllable onsets
Mru syllables can begin with a consonant cluster, but they are just written using the relevant letters.
๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ
๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ
Final consonants
Syllable-final consonants are also just represented by ordinary letters.
Consonant gemination doesn't appear to be common in Mru.
Consonant sounds to characters
This section maps Mru consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Latin orthography. Uppercase is not shown. 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.
Stops
p
๐ฉ
b
๐ฉ
t
๐ฉ
๐ฉ
d
๐ฉ
k
๐ฉ
๐ฉ
ส
๐ฉ
Aspirated
pสฐ
๐ฉ
tสฐ
๐ฉ
kสฐ
๐ฉ
Affricates
tอกs
๐ฉ
Fricatives
s
๐ฉ
ส
๐ฉ
h
๐ฉ
๐ฉ
Nasals
m
๐ฉ
๐ฉ
n
๐ฉ
ล
๐ฉ
Other
w
๐ฉ
r
๐ฉ
l
๐ฉ
๐ฉ
๐ฉ
j
๐ฉ
Abbreviations
tek
๐ฉ
hai
๐ฉ
ษi
๐ฉ
Numbers, dates, currency, etc
Digits
Mru has its own set of digits, with a decimal base.
Mru text is written horizontally, with lines that flow from top to bottom.
Glyph shaping & positioning
This section brings together information about the following topics:
writing styles;
cursive text;
context-based shaping;
context-based positioning;
font styles;
case & other character transforms.
Basic phrase and section boundaries in Mru use ASCII punctuation.
phrase
,
๐ฉฎ
;
:
sentence
.
๐ฉฏ
?
!
Observation: The sources are not very clear about the relationship between the 2 danda-like characters. It may be that one represents a comma like pause and the other a sentence-final punctuation. Occasionally, ASCII punctuation can also be found in the same text for each of those functions.
Mru texts may use quotation marks around quotations. Of course, due to keyboard design, quotations may also be surrounded by ASCII double and single quote marks.
Two consonant letters may be used to represent an abbreviated sound sequence.
๐ฉโฃ๐ฉ
Compare the following pairs.
๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ
๐ฉ
๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ
๐ฉ๐ฉ
๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ-๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ
๐ฉ-๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ
Inline notes & annotations
tbd
Other punctuation
tbd
Other inline text decoration
tbd
Line & paragraph layout
Line breaking & hyphenation
The principal line-break opportunities are inter-word spaces.
Text alignment & justification
tbd
Text spacing
tbd
Baselines, line height, etc.
tbd
Mru uses the 'alphabetic' baseline.
Counters, lists, etc.
tbd
Styling initials
tbd
Page & book layout
This section is for any features that are specific to Mru and that relate to the following topics:
general page layout & progression;
grids & tables;
notes, footnotes, etc;
forms & user interaction;
page numbering, running headers, etc.
