Updated 29 November, 2024
This page brings together basic information about the Tai Le script and its use for the Tai Nüa language. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Tai Nüa using Unicode.
Richard Ishida, Tai Nüa (Tai Le) Orthography Notes, 29-Nov-2024, https://r12a.github.io/scripts/tale/tdd
The two paragraphs show the same text, except that the first uses spacing characters for tone marks, and second shows the older combining-character orthography.
ᥘᥬᥰᥔᥩᥛᥳᥝᥢᥰᥘᥭᥳ，ᥐᥩᥙᥘᥭᥲᥑᥨᥛᥱᥑᥦᥢᥴᥖᥫᥒᥰᥐᥣ，ᥝᥣᥐᥖᥣᥙᥱᥐᥨᥢᥰᥑᥥᥢᥴᥛᥣᥰᥔᥥᥴ，ᥛᥣᥢᥲᥘᥣᥰᥟᥢᥐᥬᥲᥓᥛᥑᥩᥙᥱᥞᥤᥛᥰᥙᥥᥲᥢᥣᥢᥳᥘᥢᥳ，ᥛᥤᥰᥐᥣᥭᥰᥚᥣᥒᥳᥓᥤᥢᥚᥧᥒᥴᥘᥫᥒᥑᥝᥲᥛᥣᥢᥳᥛᥣᥰ，ᥟᥣᥛᥥᥝᥰᥖᥭᥰᥖᥒᥰᥘᥣᥭᥴᥟᥩᥢᥐᥢᥐᥣᥱᥓᥩᥭᥗᥦᥛᥴ．
ᥘᥬ̈ᥔᥩᥛ̇ᥝᥢ̈ᥘᥭ̇，ᥐᥩᥙᥘᥭ̀ᥑᥨᥛ̌ᥑᥦᥢ́ᥖᥫᥒ̈ᥐᥣ，ᥝᥣᥐᥖᥣᥙ̌ᥐᥨᥢ̈ᥑᥥᥢ́ᥛᥣ̈ᥔᥥ́，ᥛᥣᥢ̀ᥘᥣ̈ᥟᥢᥐᥬ̀ᥓᥛᥑᥩᥙ̌ᥞᥤᥛ̈ᥙᥥ̀ᥢᥣᥢ̇ᥘᥢ̇，ᥛᥤ̈ᥐᥣᥭ̈ᥚᥣᥒ̇ᥓᥤᥢᥚᥧᥒ́ᥘᥫᥒᥑᥝ̀ᥛᥣᥢ̇ᥛᥣ̈，ᥟᥣᥛᥥᥝ̈ᥖᥭ̈ᥖᥒ̈ᥘᥣᥭ́ᥟᥩᥢᥐᥢᥐᥣ̌ᥓᥩᥭᥗᥦᥛ́．
Source: Tai Dehong story site
Origins of the Tai Le script, 1954 – today.
Phoenician
└ Aramaic
└ Brahmi
└ Pallava
└ Mon-Burmese
└ Lik-Tai
└ Tai Le
+ Ahom
+ Khamti
The Tai Le script, or Dehong Dai script, is used to write the Tai Nüa language of south-central Yunnan, China. (The language is also known as Tai Nüa, Dehong Dai, Tai Mau, Tai Kong, and Chinese Shan.)
The script is currently widely used in China for government documents, public notice boards and signage, in advertising, education and publishing. There are 6 publishing houses in China which publish over 45,000 book copies per year in the script. It is estimated that speakers of Tai Le in Dehong are about 95% literate in the Tai Le script.s
ᥖᥭᥰᥘᥫᥴ
Several orthographic conventions have been used over the 700-800 years of the script's use. Between 1952 and 1988, the script went through four reforms. The reform of 1954 rationalised the old system, to reduce the redundancy of symbols to represent sounds, to represent tones more accurately, and to standardise the handwritten cursive forms. That of 1963/4 standardised combining marks used to represent tones. The reform of 1988 replaced the tone diacritics with today's spacing characters.
More information: Unicode Standard, Wikipedia • Scriptsource
The Tai Le script is an abugida, ie. consonants carry an inherent vowel sound that is overridden using vowel signs. In Tai Le, consonants carry an inherent vowel a. See the table to the right for a brief overview of features for the modern Tai Nüa orthography.
Tai Le text runs left to right in horizontal lines. Words are not separated by spaces.
The key distinguishing feature of Tai Le is its regularity and simplicity compared to other Tai scripts. The sequence of characters is C(V)(C)(T). Tones always go after any other characters in the syllable.
Tai Le's 19 consonants are straightforward. There is no duplication for tone support, no stacking or other conjunct behaviour, etc.
Syllable-final consonant sounds use ordinary code points without an inherent vowel. Parsing syllables is usually straightforward because each syllable-final consonant is folllowed by a tone mark.
❯ basicV
The Tai Le orthography is an abugida with one inherent vowel, pronounced a.
Other vowels are written using 10 dedicated vowel letters. All vowel signs are ordinary spacing characters (no combining marks), and are stored and displayed after the base character. A rhyme can also end with a -j or -w glide. There is a dedicated letter for the former, and the letter w doubles for the latter.
There are no pre-base vowels, circumgraphs, or multipart vowels.
Tones are written using 5 spacing characters after the final character in a syllable, however they were written using 5 combining marks until 1988.
Tai Nüa numbers use ASCII digits, but may also use Myanmar digits with some shape changes.
These sounds are for the Tai Nüa 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.
| ia | ip | it | ik | im | in | iŋ | iw | |
| ɯp | ɯt | ɯk | ɯm | ɯn | ɯŋ | ɯw | ɯj | |
| ua | up | ut | uk | um | un | uŋ | uj | |
| ep | et | ek | em | en | eŋ | ew | ej | |
| op | ot | ok | om | on | oŋ | ow | oj | |
| əp | ət | ək | əm | ən | əŋ | əw | əj | |
| ɛp | ɛt | ɛk | ɛm | ɛn | ɛŋ | ɛw | ɛj | |
| ɔp | ɔt | ɔk | ɔm | ɔn | ɔŋ | ɔj | ||
| aɯ | ap | at | ak | am | an | aŋ | aw | aj |
| aːp | aːt | aːk | aːm | aːn | aːŋ | aːw | aːj |
Source: Wikipedia
| labial | dental | alveolar | post- alveolar |
palatal | velar | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| stops | p | t | k |
ʔ | |||
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | ||||
| affricates | t͡s | ||||||
| aspirated | t͡sʰ | ||||||
| fricatives | f | s | x | h | |||
| nasals | m | n | ŋ | ||||
| approximants | w | l | j | ||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
kʰ and t͡sʰ appear in loan words.
| labial | dental | alveolar | post- alveolar |
palatal | velar | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| stop | p | t | k | ||||
| nasal | m | n | ŋ |
Tai Nüa has the following 6 tones in unchecked syllables.
| Description | Representation | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| mid-rise | ˨˦ | 35 | ¹ |
| high-level | ˥ | 55 | ² |
| low-level | ˩ | 11 | ³ |
| mid-fall | ˦˨ | 42 | ⁴ |
| high-fall | ˥˧ | 54 | ⁵ |
| mid-level | ˧ | 33 | – |
Checked syllables are limited to the following 3 tones.
| Description | Representation | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| mid-rise | ˨˦ | 35 | ¹ |
| low-level | ˩ | 11 | ³ |
| high-fall | ˥˧ | 54 | ⁵ |
The script is syllable-based.
A syllable's phonetic and orthographic structure is very simple; C(V)(C)(T).
There are no medial consonant letters. Single characters are available for the onset sequences.
Syllable-final consonants are the same characters used for onset.
There are 6 tone marks, which may be represented by spacing characters or in older orthographies by combining marks, but which always come at the end of the syllable..
The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.
ⓘ represents the inherent vowel.
| Simple | |
|---|---|
| Diphthongs | |
| Glides |
For additional details see vowel_mappings.
ᥐ ka [U+1950 TAI LE LETTER KA]
a following a consonant is not written, but is seen as an inherent part of the consonant letter, so ka is written by simply using the consonant letter.
Post-consonant vowels are written using 10 dedicated vowel letters. All vowel signs are ordinary spacing characters (no combining marks), and are stored and displayed after the base character. A rhyme can also end with a -j or -w glide. There is a dedicated letter for the former, and the letter w doubles for the latter.
There are no pre-base vowels, circumgraphs, or multipart vowels.
ᥐᥤ ki [U+1950 TAI LE LETTER KA + U+1964 TAI LE LETTER I]
Non-inherent vowel sounds that follow a consonant are represented using ordinary spacing letters, rather than combining marks, and they all appear after the base. The following are used for plain vowel sounds.
Seventeen rhymes end with a glide. Tai Le uses the dedicated character ᥭ for -j and uses the consonant ᥝ for -w.
ᥑᥣᥭᥰ
ᥑᥣᥝᥱ
ᥑᥭᥲ
ᥟᥝ
The 3 letters just above represent diphthongs. The first 2 are also used for plain vowel sounds, but ᥬ is just used for the diphthong.
Syllable-initial standalone vowels are written after the vowel carrier ᥟws,#Letters. On its own, it represents the sound of the inherent vowel.
ᥟᥛᥱ
ᥟᥣᥒᥱ
The current orthography for Tai Le uses spacing characters to represent tone marks.
Tone marks were introduced in 1963, and until 1988 were written using the following combining characters.
Whether spacing character or combining characters are used, Tai Le tone marks always appear at the very end of a syllable (ie. after any final consonant).
The table of tones shown earlier is extended here to show how tones are written in the current (spacing character) and old (combining mark) orthographies.
| Description | Representation | Old | Current | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| mid-rise | ˨˦ | 35 | ¹ | ́ | ᥴ |
| high-level | ˥ | 55 | ² | ̈ | ᥰ |
| low-level | ˩ | 11 | ³ | ̌ | ᥱ |
| mid-fall | ˦˨ | 42 | ⁴ | ̀ | ᥲ |
| high-fall | ˥˧ | 54 | ⁵ | ̇ | ᥳ |
| mid-level | ˧ | 33 | – | – | – |
The mid-level tone is unmarked.
When a diacritic is used with a tall vowel letter it is displayed to the side (see context). For example:
ᥛᥣ̈
This section maps Tai Nüa vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Tai Le orthography.
ᥤ
ᥐᥤᥢ
ᥪ
ᥓᥪ
ᥧ
ᥒᥧᥰ
ᥥ
ᥔᥥᥒᥴ
ᥨ
ᥞᥨᥐᥱ
ᥫ
ᥛᥫᥒᥰ
ᥦ
ᥛᥦᥝᥴ
ᥩ
ᥔᥩᥒᥴ
Inherent vowel
ᥐᥝ
ᥣ
ᥑᥣᥛᥰ
ᥦ
ᥩ
ᥬ
ᥚᥬᥴ
ᥭ
ᥕᥭᥰ
ᥝ
ᥑᥣᥝᥱ
The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.
| Onsets | |
|---|---|
| Finals |
For additional details see vowel_mappings.
Whereas the table just above takes you from sounds to letters, the following simply lists the basic consonant letters (however, since the orthography is highly phonetic there is little difference in ordering).
Tai Nüa has no syllable-initial clusters. Check this.
Consonants do appear in syllable-final position, but Tai Le has no dedicated characters for this, other than the glide ᥭ, used for -j. For the rest, standard consonant characters are used. It is usually easy to tell that a character is used in final consonant position, because of the position of tone marks, however it seems possible that an open syllable with no tone mark followed by an open syllable using the inherent vowel would create some ambiguity.
When used in final position, 195D is pronounced w.
This section maps Tai Nüa consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Tai Le orthography. Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc.
ᥙ
ᥙᥤ
ᥚ
ᥚᥬᥴ
ᥖ
ᥖᥦᥛᥲ
ᥗ
ᥗᥬᥴ
ᥓ
ᥓᥪ
ᥡ
ᥐ
ᥐᥤᥢ
ᥠ
ᥟ
ᥟᥛᥱ
ᥜ
ᥜᥒᥴ
ᥝ
ᥝᥢᥰ
ᥔ
ᥔᥥᥒᥴ
ᥑ
ᥑᥣᥛᥰ
ᥞ
ᥞᥨᥐᥱ
ᥛ
ᥛᥫᥒᥰ
ᥢ
ᥢᥣᥒᥰ
ᥒ
ᥒᥧᥰ
ᥝ
ᥑᥣᥝᥱ
ᥘ
ᥘᥤᥐ
ᥕ
ᥕᥭᥰ
ᥭ
ᥕᥭᥰ
In China, European digits are used, in the main, although Myanmar digits (U+1040..U+1049) are also used with slight glyph variants.
These are the Myanmar digits. Unfortunately, the default font for this page doesn't show the typical differences in glyph shape, in particular, for the digits 2, 6, 8, and 9. u
The differences can be seen in fig_digits.u650
Tai Le text runs left to right in horizontal lines.
Show default bidi_class properties for characters in the Tai Nüa orthography described here.
You can experiment with examples using the Tai Le character app.
Vowels all follow the initial consonant and are spacing characters with no special joining behaviour. Therefore, the Tai Le script has no need for special shaping, other than that when a tone diacritic is used with a tall vowel letter it is displayed to the side.
Words are not separated by spaces.
Graphemes in Tai Nüa consist of single letters or letters with one combining mark. This means that text can be adequately segmented into typographic units using grapheme clusters.
Tai Le uses western and fullwidth Chinese punctuationu650, which may include the following (needs to be checked).
| phrase | FF0C 3001 FF1B FF1A |
|---|---|
| sentence | FF0E 3002 FF1F FF01 |
Tai Nüa commonly uses ASCII parentheses to insert parenthetical information into text.
| start | end | |
|---|---|---|
| standard | FF08 |
FF09 |
Tai Nüa uses fullwidth angle brackets around quotations.
| start | end | |
|---|---|---|
| initial | 300A |
300B |
| nested | 3008 |
3009 |
tbd
As in almost all writing systems, certain punctuation characters should not appear at the end or the start of a line. The Unicode line-break properties help applications decide whether a character should appear at the start or end of a line.
Show (default) line-breaking properties for characters in the modern Tai Nüa orthography.
The following list gives examples of typical behaviours for some of the characters used in modern Tai Nüa. Context may affect the behaviour of some of these and other characters.
Click/tap on the characters to show what they are.
Tai Nüa uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.
Tai Nüa places tone marks above base characters, but they are placed to the side of tall character glyphs.
To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Tai Nüa glyphs from a Noto font. The basic height of Tai Nüa letters is typically just over the Latin x-height, however tall glyphs reach a little beyond the Latin ascenders, creating a need for slightly larger line spacing.
