This page brings together basic information about the Nag Mundari (Mundari Bani) script and its use for the Mundari language. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Mundari using Unicode.
The Mundari language is spoken in northeast India, primarily in the states of Jharkand, West Bengal, and Odisha, by around 1.1 million people.@Ethnologue,https://www.ethnologue.com/language/unr/. Mundari may be written in Devanagari, Bengali, and Oriya scripts, as well as Nag Mundari (also known as Mundari Bani). The Unicode proposal describes a 'huge' surge of interest in recent years in the script, with schools teaching Mundari Bani as well as workshops many Munda-inhabited districts. The state government of Odisha runs the Multilingual Education (MLE) Programme for tribal children to teach children their mother tongue. Mundari is one of the languages covered in their programme.m It is estimated that approximately 10% of Mundari speakers can read Mundari Bani.wm
๐ง๐๐จ๐๐๐ฃ๐
The script was invented by Rohidas Singh Nag (1934 - 2012) in the latter half of the 20th century. A significant reform of the script took place in 2008, and all material printed today uses that version of the orthography. The reform simplified or changed the shape of some letters, and added symbols for ษณ and w. The Unicode proposalwm,7-8 has a table showing the differences.
The Nag Mundari 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 modern Mundari orthography.
Mundari text runs from left to right in horizontal lines. Words are separated by spaces. The orthography is unicameral.
Mundari represents consonants using 22 basic letters, plus one diacritic.
An unusual feature of Nag Mundari is that the sound w is written using a diacritic below the letter representing the following vowel. This applies for standalone vowels as well as for syllable onset clusters.
Another unusual feature of Mundari is that word-final b and dmay be pronounced as checked sounds หbฬฅ(แต) or หdฬฅ(โฟ). This can be signalled by placing the special letter ๐ซ before the consonant.
A diacritic can be used to extend the repertoire when close transcription of words from neighbouring languages is desired.
There are no conjunct forms or ligatures. Gemination is not a feature of the Mundari language, but ๐ซ may be used to indicate gemination in close transcriptions of neighbouring languages.
The Mundari orthography is an alphabet that writes vowels using 5 vowel letters. Two diacritics indicate vowel length and nasalisation; they are placed above and to the right side of the base, and may overlap following letters. The use of these diacritics varies from one author to another.
Standalone vowel sounds are written using the normal vowel letters.
Punctuation includes that used for the Latin script. Mundari has its own set of digits.
Line-breaking and justification are primarily based on inter-word spaces.
The following represents the general repertoire of the Mundari language.
Click on the sounds to reveal locations in this document where they are mentioned.
Phones in a lighter colour are non-native or allophones. Source Wikipedia.
Vowel sounds
Vowels can be long or short, but length is not phonemically contrastive.o,100
Vowels following a nasal, following dอกz (optional), or preceding ษณ are normally nasalised. Nasalisation is not contrastive, either.o,100
Consonant sounds
labial
alveolar
post-
alveolar
retroflex
palatal
velar
glottal
stop
pb
td
สษ
kษก
ส
aspirated
pสฐ
tสฐ
สสฐ
kสฐ
affricate
tอกษdอกส
aspirated
dอกสสฐ
fricative
s
h
nasal
m
n
ษณ
ษฒ
ล
approximant
w
l
j
trill/flap
r
ษฝ
Aspiration only occurs in the Naguri and Kera dialects.wl
Checked consonants
Checked consonants are a special feature of Mundari phonology. They may occur in morpheme-final position as หbฬฅ(แต) or หdฬฅ(โฟ). These are pronounced by closing the glottis while articulating the stop, then the glottal stop is released (in monosyllabic words only) with an optional nasal release.
Tone
Mundari has no tones.
Structure
See page 101 of Osada for detailed information about where sounds appear in words.
w and j never occur in word-initial position.o,101
Vowels
Vowel summary table
This table summarises basic vowel to character assignments.
Another diacritic is added to the vowels to indicate nasalisation (not shown here).
Nag Mundari writes vowels that follow consonants using 5 vowel letters. Two diacritics indicate vowel length and nasalisation; they are placed above and to the right side of the base, and may overlap following letters. The use of these diacritics varies from one author to another.
There are no special mechanisms to indicate the absence of a vowel.
Vowel letters
The standard vowel sounds for Mundari are written as follows.
The sound w is written by adding the combining mark 1E4EE to the vowel that follows. It is used this way for onset consonant clusters such as
๐ข๐๐ฎkสทa,
๐ข๐ฎ๐kสทi,
etc., but the sources imply that it is also used for sounds such as
๐๐ฎwa,
๐๐ฎwi,
etc., although Osadao,101 says that w never occurs word initially.
Observation: This doesn't appear to be common. Most sources show this diacritic centred below the vowel letter, rather than placed to the right as it appears in the Noto font used for this page.
Mundari syllables can begin with a consonant cluster, but they are just written using the relevant letters, except for CสทV, as described just above, where the medial glide is written using a combining mark on the vowel letter.
Finals
Syllable-final consonants are also generally just represented by ordinary letters, but again there is an exception.
Checked finals
๐ซ
Final b or d in Mundari may be pronounced 'checked'. These checked sounds are written using ๐ซ before the consonant.
๐๐๐ฉ๐๐ซ๐
Some authors don't use this.wm,5
is an alternative shape which can be found in recent texts.
Consonant clusters
Mundari has no conjunct forms for consonant clusters.
๐ง๐๐จ๐๐๐ฃ๐
Gemination
Consonant gemination isn't common in Mundari, but may occur in words from other, neighbouring languages when they are transcribed. ๐ซ can be used for this.
Consonant sounds to characters
This section maps Mundari consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Nag Mundari orthography.
p
consonant๐
b
consonant๐
consonant๐ซ๐when checked in final position.
t
consonant๐
tอกส
consonant๐
d
consonant๐ก
consonant๐ซ๐กwhen checked in final position.
dอกส
consonant๐
ส
consonant๐ฉ
ษ
consonant๐
k
consonant๐ข
ษก
consonant๐ฆ
ส
consonant๐
ห
checked final mark๐ซGlottalisation mark, applied by some authors to represent 'checked' forms of word-finals.
s
consonant๐
h
consonant๐
m
consonant๐ง
n
consonant๐จ
ษณ
consonant๐ฅ
ษฒ
consonant๐
ล
consonant๐
w~สท
labialisation mark๐ฎplaced below the letter representing the following vowel sound.
r
consonant๐ฃ
ษฝ
consonant๐ช
l
consonant๐
j
consonant๐
Numbers, dates, currency, etc
Digits
Mundari has its own set of digits, with a decimal base.
There are no conjuncts in Mundari, and no shaping is needed for letters.
Mundari does have a few combining marks, and these need to be combined with the base appropriately. Some marks may be far enough to the right to slightly overlap the following letter as well.
Three combining marks over Mundari letters in the Noto Sans Nag Mundari font. They slightly overlap the following letter also.
Observation: Phonetic transcriptions of words show many that have long, nasalised vowels. It is not clear whether the script shows 2 combining marks together in such a case โ no such combinations were spotted in the online resources linked to below.
Typographic units
Word boundaries
Words are separated by spaces.
Some compounds and reduplicative phrases are linked by a hyphen, which is called eched.
๐๐๐งโ๐จ๐
๐๐๐ฃ๐๐โ๐๐๐ฃ๐๐
Graphemes
In Mundari text, grapheme clusters typically correspond to whole syllables. Where combining marks appear, the combination of base and combining mark still fits within the definition of a grapheme cluster.
Mundari 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.
start
end
initial
โ
โ
nested
โ
โ
Line & paragraph layout
Line breaking & hyphenation
The principal line-break opportunities are inter-word spaces.
Text alignment & justification
Full justification may be achieved by altering the width of inter-word spaces.
Baselines, line height, etc.
tbd
Mundari Bana uses the 'alphabetic' baseline.
In printed text, Mundari Bani has no ascenders or descenders, and all letters and digits are the same height. Combining marks appear above and below the letters.
To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Mundari glyphs from the only available Unicode-encoded font at the time of writing: Noto Sans Nag Mundari. The height of Mundari letters is set to the Latin x-height, however the combining marks, especially above letters, push out beyond the Latin extensions.
Font metrics for Latin text compared with Mundari glyphs in the Noto Sans Nag Mundari font.
is an alternative shape which can be found in recent texts.
