Rohingya

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Other

Vowel sounds

Vowels can be nasalised.

Diphthongs often start or end in j or w, but vowels can also appear together with no intervening consonant.

Consonant sounds

	labial	alveolar	post- alveolar	retroflex	palatal	velar	glottal
stop	p b	t d		ʈ ɖ	c ɟ	k ɡ	ʔ
fricative	f	s z	ʃ		ç	x	h
nasal	m	n			ɲ	ŋ
approximant	w	l			j
trill/flap		ɾ		ɽ

Tone

Rohingya has 3 tones. They indicate stress and vowel length.

1. short and high
2. long and falling
3. long and rising

Structure

tbd

Vowel summary table

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.

The right-hand column shows word-initial forms.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Post-consonant vowels

Vowel sounds after a consonant are written using 6 vowel letters, plus 2 semi-vowels used in diphthongs.

Standalone vowels

A standalone vowel at the beginning of a word is always preceded by 𐴀, which acts as a vowel carrier, eg. 𐴀𐴝𐴣𐴍𐴥𐴝𐴓𐴞 𐴀𐴦𐴟𐴘

Similarly, in a sequence of vowels inside a word, the non-initial vowels are preceded by the carrier, eg. 𐴅𐴝𐴕𐴟𐴀𐴝𐴌𐴞

When 𐴀 occurs without a following vowel letter at the beginning or in the middle of a word, it represents the vowel ɔ, eg. 𐴁𐴡𐴀𐴌 𐴉𐴝𐴃𐴝

Tones

Rohingya has 3 tones. They indicate stress and vowel length, and are indicated in writing using dedicated combining characters, as follows.

1. short and high, 10D24
2. long and falling, 10D25
3. long and rising, 10D26

These usually appear above the consonant in a syllable, however in some fonts the mark drifts to the left, so that it appears between the consonant and the vowel, eg. 𐴁𐴤𐴝 ba¹ ba 𐴁𐴥𐴝 ba² ba 𐴁𐴦𐴝 ba³ ba

Observation: In order to achieve the best positioning using the Noto Sans Hanifi Rohingya and the Rohingya Noories One fonts, it is necessary to type the tone mark after the consonant (rather than after the vowel, as suggested in Pandey's script proposal).

When both 10D27 and a tone mark appear together, it is important to type in and store both in the correct order for display. The tassi is typed and stored first,u,684 eg. 𐴔𐴡𐴙𐴅𐴧𐴤𐴙𐴠𐴊𐴠 moiɟ&¹iede

These diacritics may appear side-by-side, with the tone mark to the left, when they occur together.u,684

Consonants with no following vowel

Consonant clusters are typically written just as a sequence of consonant letters, eg. 𐴑𐴡𐴔𐴂𐴘𐴟𐴄𐴝𐴌

At the end of a word, or when just the consonant is written alone, 𐴢 is used after some consonants when there is no following vowel.

Consonants that typically take the sakin include the following:

And those that don't:

However, these rules are not hard and fast. For example, m may be written either way (see the example of 'turnip' below).

Examples: 𐴇𐴥𐴝𐴙𐴓𐴢 𐴐𐴥𐴝𐴓𐴒𐴡𐴔𐴢 𐴄𐴝𐴘𐴧𐴡𐴕 𐴋𐴥𐴠𐴙𐴇𐴝𐴑

Vowel sounds to characters

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

For additional details see consonant_mappings.

Consonant letters

Consonant clusters

Consonant clusters are written simply as a sequence of consonants. 𐴑𐴟𐴌𐴥𐴏𐴞 𐴀𐴞𐴏𐴃𐴞𐴌𐴞 𐴇𐴥𐴠𐴚𐴒𐴝𐴌

Gemination

Geminated consonant sounds are indicated using 10D27, which is typed immediately after the consonant and before any following vowel, and which is rendered above the consonant letter, eg. compare the z sounds in the following 𐴎𐴥𐴞𐴘𐴡𐴎𐴧𐴝𐴔𐴝𐴘

Consonant sounds to characters

Digits

Hanifi Rohingya has a set of native digits

Numbers are written left-to-right within the overall right-to-left flow.

Managing text direction

Unicode provides a set of 10 formatting characters that can be used to control the direction of text when displayed. These characters have no visual form in the rendered text, however text editing applications may have a way to show their location.

202B (RLE), 202A (LRE), and 202C (PDF) are in widespread use to set the base direction of a range of characters. RLE/LRE comes at the start, and PDF at the end of a range of characters for which the base direction is to be set.

In Unicode 6.1, the Unicode Standard added a set of characters which do the same thing but also isolate the content from surrounding characters, in order to avoid spillover effects. They are 2067 (RLI), 2066 (LRI), and 2066 (PDI). The Unicode Standard recommends that these be used instead.

There is also 2068 (FSI), used initially to set the base direction according to the first recognised strongly-directional character.

061C (ALM) is used to produce correct sequencing of numeric data. Follow the link and see expressions for details.

200F (RLM) and 200E (LRM) are invisible characters with strong directional properties that are also sometimes used to produce the correct ordering of text.

For more information about how to use these formatting characters see How to use Unicode controls for bidi text. Note, however, that when writing HTML you should generally use markup rather than these control codes. For information about that, see Creating HTML Pages in Arabic, Hebrew and Other Right-to-left Scripts.

Glyph shaping & positioning

Experiment with examples using the Hanifi Rohingya character app.

Cursive text

Hanifi Rohingya is cursive, ie. letters in a word are joined up.

Nearly all letters join on both sides. 𐴢 joins only to the right. And 𐴀 joins only to the left, which is very unusual. Fonts automatically produce the appropriate joining form for a code point, according to its visual context.

The cursive treatment produces only minor changes to glyph shapes in most cases, other than extensions to the baseline. 𐴔 is an exception, with different final and medial/initial shapes (see fig_joining_forms).

There is a style of font which behaves slightly differently, and appears to be quite commonly used. fig_cursive_triangle_noories shows an example. Note how the n doesn't join to the right, and the o falls short of the l. The glyphs in this font don't have joining strokes to the right, and taper off and barely touch (if they do) to the left.

 

The following tables show all joining forms.

isolated	right-joined	dual-join	left-joined	joining groups
𐴂	ـ𐴂	ـ𐴂ـ	𐴂ـ	𐴂␣𐴉␣𐴜
𐴁	ـ𐴁	ـ𐴁ـ	𐴁ـ	𐴁
𐴃	ـ𐴃	ـ𐴃ـ	𐴃ـ	𐴃
𐴊	ـ𐴊	ـ𐴊ـ	𐴊ـ	𐴊
𐴄	ـ𐴄	ـ𐴄ـ	𐴄ـ	𐴄
𐴋	ـ𐴋	ـ𐴋ـ	𐴋ـ	𐴋
𐴆	ـ𐴆	ـ𐴆ـ	𐴆ـ	𐴆
𐴅	ـ𐴅	ـ𐴅ـ	𐴅ـ	𐴅
𐴑	ـ𐴑	ـ𐴑ـ	𐴑ـ	𐴑
𐴒	ـ𐴒	ـ𐴒ـ	𐴒ـ	𐴒
𐴏	ـ𐴏	ـ𐴏ـ	𐴏ـ	𐴏
𐴎	ـ𐴎	ـ𐴎ـ	𐴎ـ	𐴎
𐴐	ـ𐴐	ـ𐴐ـ	𐴐ـ	𐴐
𐴈	ـ𐴈	ـ𐴈ـ	𐴈ـ	𐴈
𐴇	ـ𐴇	ـ𐴇ـ	𐴇ـ	𐴇
𐴔	ـ𐴔	ـ𐴔ـ	𐴔ـ	𐴔
𐴕	ـ𐴕	ـ𐴕ـ	𐴕ـ	𐴕
𐴛	ـ𐴛	ـ𐴛ـ	𐴛ـ	𐴛
𐴚	ـ𐴚	ـ𐴚ـ	𐴚ـ	𐴚
𐴖	ـ𐴖	ـ𐴖ـ	𐴖ـ	𐴖
𐴗	ـ𐴗	ـ𐴗ـ	𐴗ـ	𐴗
𐴌	ـ𐴌	ـ𐴌ـ	𐴌ـ	𐴌
𐴍	ـ𐴍	ـ𐴍ـ	𐴍ـ	𐴍
𐴓	ـ𐴓	ـ𐴓ـ	𐴓ـ	𐴓
𐴘	ـ𐴘	ـ𐴘ـ	𐴘ـ	𐴘
𐴙	ـ𐴙	ـ𐴙ـ	𐴙ـ	𐴙␣𐴣␣𐴞␣𐴠
𐴟	ـ𐴟	ـ𐴟ـ	𐴟ـ	𐴟
𐴡	ـ𐴡	ـ𐴡ـ	𐴡ـ	𐴡
𐴝	ـ𐴝	ـ𐴝ـ	𐴝ـ	𐴝
𐴢	ـ𐴢	ـ𐴢ـ	𐴢ـ	𐴢

isolated	left-joined	letters
𐴀	𐴀ـ	𐴀

isolated	right-joined	letters
𐴢	ـ𐴢	𐴢

Typographic units

Punctuation & inline features

Phrase & section boundaries

،␣:␣؛␣۔␣.␣؟␣!

Rohingya uses a mixture of Arabic and ASCII punctuation, and may also use Myanmar signs.

phrase	، ؛ :
sentence	۔ . ؟ !

Observation: It seems to be standard practise to separate the punctuation from the foregoing text with a space.

Observation: Two online sites use punctuation that looks like the Burmese section marks, ၊ and ။, except that they use different characters. One uses a single or double 𐴱 [U+10D31 HANIFI ROHINGYA DIGIT ONE], the other uses | [U+007C VERTICAL LINE] or |𐴱 [U+007C VERTICAL LINE + U+10D31 HANIFI ROHINGYA DIGIT ONE]. (The page from which the example in fig_section_signs is taken also uses other strange punctuation choices, such as the Arabic thousands separator instead of the Arabic comma, that can be seen in the bottom line of the example.)

Bracketed text

(␣)

Rohingya commonly uses ASCII parentheses to insert parenthetical information into text.

	start	end
standard	(	)

Mirrored characters

It is important to note that the Unicode names for parentheses, brackets, and other paired characters should be ignored. LEFT should be read as if it said START, and RIGHT as END. The direction in which the glyphs point will be automatically determined according to the base direction of the text.

The number of characters that are mirrored in this way is around 550, most of which are mathematical symbols. Some are single characters, rather than pairs. The following are some of the more common ones used for Rohingya.

(␣)␣<␣>␣[␣]␣{␣}

Line & paragraph layout

Text alignment & justification

Examples of printed matter show full justification. A baseline extension is frequently used to stretch words in order to achieve flush lines (see fig_justification).

Pandey recommends using ـ for this.p,12 However, it should be noted that the tatweel character is only useful if the text is static. If window resizing or inserted text cause the line breaks to appear between different words, the tatweels will end up in the wrong place.

Counters, lists, etc.

You can experiment with counter styles using the Counter styles converter. Patterns for using these styles in CSS can be found in Ready-made Counter Styles, and we use the names of those patterns here to refer to the various styles.

Hanifi Rohingya uses numeric counters.

Numeric

The numeric style is decimal-based and uses these digits.

𐴱␣𐴲␣𐴳␣𐴴␣𐴵␣𐴶␣𐴷␣𐴸␣𐴹␣𐴰

Examples:

𐴲␣𐴳␣𐴴␣𐴵␣𐴶␣𐴲𐴲␣𐴳𐴳␣𐴴𐴴␣𐴵𐴵␣𐴲𐴲𐴲␣𐴳𐴳𐴳␣𐴴𐴴𐴴␣𐴵𐴵𐴵

Prefixes and suffixes

Observation: Further examples are needed to clarify the standard prefix and/or suffix for lists. The examples in fig_counters show circled numbers followed by a hyphen, and numbers followed by an equals sign.

Page & book layout

Online resources

1. 𐴌𐴟𐴇𐴝𐴙𐴚𐴒𐴙𐴝 𐴖𐴞𐴐𐴠𐴕 (Rohingya Vision)

References