This page brings together basic information about the Tangsa script and its use for the Tangsa languages, and in particular the Muishvung dialect. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Tangsa using Unicode.
Tangsa is a Southeast Asian monocameral alphabet used on the border between India and Myanmar to write the Tangsa language. In India the script is taught in some schools to write the local Muishvung (Mossang) variety of Tangsa, but the name Tangsa covers a range of dialects in the region (¾ of speakers are in Myanmar). Other dialects haven't yet taken up the script to the extent of the Muishvung speakers, but the script was adapted to cater for the needs of other dialects.
Note that there is some ambiguity surrounding the language tag nst which we use to represent the dialects often referred to collectively as Tangsa on the Indian side of the border and Tangshang on the Myanmar side. (See section 1.4 of Morey.)
The Tangsa script is an alphabet, ie. consonants and vowels are written separately. See the table to the right for a brief overview of features for the Tangsa orthography.
Text runs left to right in horizontal lines. There is no case distinction. Words are separated by spaces.
Tangsa represents native consonant sounds using 32 basic letters. There is also a set of 4 syllabic M characters, one per tone. Syllable codas are written using ordinary letters but there are separate letters for ŋ as an onset and a coda. There are no dedicated medial consonants.
Since this is an alphabet, the absence of vowel sounds in consonant clusters or after codas is marked simply by an absence of vowel letters. There are no conjunct forms or other ways of marking consonant clusters.
The Tangsa orthography uses letters for all vowels. There are no combining marks. Unusually, each vowel sound has distinct letters for the 4 tones of the Tangsa language (and a few have special extra letters). Vowel letters don't interact graphically with each other or with the consonant letters. There are no pre-base glyphs or circumgraphs.
Tangsa has a number of diphthongs. The orthography has a letter for the sound ɯu, but other dipthongs are written using two letters.
The following represents the repertoire of the Mueshaungx dialect.
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
Plain vowels
Complex vowels
ɯiɯu
ui
ɤi ɤu
oi
əi əu
ɔə ɔəi
aiau
Consonant sounds
labial
dental
alveolar
post-
alveolar
palatal
velar
glottal
stop
pb
t̪
td
kɡ
ʔ
pʰ
t̪ʰ
tʰ
kʰ
affricate
t͡s
t͡ɕ
t͡ɕʰ
fricative
β
ð
sz
ʃ
xɣ
h
ɬɮ
ɧ
ɕʑ
nasal
m
n̪
n
ɲ
ŋ
approximant
w
lɹ
j
Note the distinction between dental and alveolar unvoiced stops, which carries through to the orthography.
Tone
The Muishvung dialect of Tangsa has four tones. Other dialects may vary.
tone 1
low falling
˩
ˋ
-z
tone 2
mid-high falling
˧
ˊ
-x
tone 3
mid-high level or rising
˦
ˉ
-c
tone 4
short, final glottal stop
ˀ
ˀ
-q
Column 3 shows how this tone is represented in the character descriptions. Column 4 shows how this tone is represented in IPA transcriptions in the current document. Column 5 shows the letter used in the Latin orthography to indicate the tone. These letters are found in the Unicode names for the characters.
The first 3 tones are used with open finals: vowels, nasals, and sometimes -l and -r.
Tone 4 is used with a final glottal stop or -p, -t, or -k.
Structure
Tangsa syllables have the structure:
C VT (VT) (C)
Legend
C
Consonant.
VT
Vowel with tone.
A very small number of syllables begin with a vowel.m,6
Many of the words are monosyllabic.
Vowels
Vowel summary table
This table only summarises basic vowel to character assignments. Click on the phonetic transcriptions for more detail.
The Tangsa orthography uses letters for all vowels. There are no combining marks. Unusually, each vowel sound has distinct letters for the 4 tones of the Tangsa language (and a few have special extra letters). Vowel letters don't interact graphically with each other or with the consonant letters. There are no pre-base glyphs or circumgraphs.
The same letters are used for both post-consonant and standalone vowel sounds.
Tangsa has a number of diphthongs. The orthography has a letter for the sound ɯu, but other dipthongs are written using two letters.
Basic vowels
The basic Tangsa vowel letters cater for the following sounds.
i, ɯ, u, e, ɤ, o, ə, ɔ, and a.
The basic letters for each of these sounds are each associated with a tone, and are shown below.
The four letters representing the sound ə are a recent innovation. The letters were created in 2019 by adding a small loop to the a series. Prior to their inclusion, this short sound was written using an a vowel and an i vowel after the coda (which is ambiguous), eg. compare the following:
cf.
𖪶𖩴𖪫𖪀
𖪶𖩸𖪫
Additional vowel letters
Three vowel letters are for specialised uses: the first for toneless prefixes, and the other two for prosodic effects.m,9
𖪒,𖪑,𖪓
𖪒 is used for a toneless prefix.
eg.
𖪦𖪒𖪷𖩵𖪬
𖪰𖪒𖪷𖪌𖪀
𖪑 applies length with a falling tone, such as in:
𖪬𖪑 𖪠𖪕𖪲𖩷
𖪓 is a short vowel with a falling tone, such as in the following phrase which ends with an imperative particle:
𖩸𖪲𖪗 𖪮𖪓
Diphthongs
Tangsa writes the diphthong ɯu using an atomic character, one per tone.
𖪘,𖪙,𖪚,𖪛
Other combinations of vowels are written by simply juxtaposing vowel letters.
eg.
𖪥𖩵𖪠𖪄𖪀
𖪴𖩱𖩹𖪬𖪴𖩷𖪮
When open syllables use diphthongs, they use tones 1,2, or 3 and both vowels use letters with the same tone.
eg.
𖪲𖩻𖪇𖪐
𖪲,𖩻,𖪇,𖪐
When a syllable with a diphthong is followed by a stop coda, the second vowel uses a tone 4 letter.
eg.
𖪰𖩴𖪆𖪠
𖪰,𖩴,𖪆,𖪠
Vowel length
The only instance where vowel length is indicated in the script is with the special prosodic vowel 𖪑 (see dedicatedV).
Standalone vowels
Tangsa uses the same vowel letters for standalone vowel sounds as it does for post-consonant vowels.
eg.
𖩸𖪰𖪒𖪤𖪌𖪧
𖩸𖪲𖪗 𖪮𖪓
When used word-medially, the sources describe standalone vowels as components in a diphthong.
eg.
𖪥𖩵𖪠𖪄𖪀
𖪫𖪏𖪴𖩻𖪇𖪐
Tones
Separate vowel letters are provided for each combination of vowel and tone. For example, these are the letters used for the vowel a with the various tones.
Note how there are distinct letters for dental and alveolar plosives.
Extensions
Four additional consonants with built-in diacritics above are for sounds that are not needed for the Muishvung dialect (the dialect of the inventor). These do not decompose, and the diacritics are not encoded separately.
𖪽,𖪻,𖪼,𖪾
These are largely used in Muishvung for exclamations and confirmation particles.m,9
Syllabic M
Tangsa includes a set of tonal letters for the syllabic m̩. These are typically used for exclamations and confirmation particles.m,9
𖪜,𖪟,𖪝,𖪞
Codas
Codas are normally written using ordinary letters.
eg.
𖪶𖩸𖪫
𖪡𖩿𖪮
One exception is ŋ, which is written using 𖪐.
eg.
𖪣𖩿𖪐
𖪲𖩻𖪇𖪐
An open syllable ending with a glottal stop can be written in one of two ways:m,6
use a tone 4 letter for the vowel, eg.
𖪠𖩶
𖪠,𖩶
use an additional vowel to provide the fourth tone (the approach favoured by the script inventor), eg.
𖪠𖩴𖩶
𖪠,𖩴,𖩶
Consonant sounds to characters
This section maps Muishvung consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Tangsa orthography.
Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc. Light coloured characters occur infrequently.
p
𖪧
pʰ
𖪩
b
𖪪
t
𖪰
tʰ
𖪯
t̪
𖪹
t̪ʰ
𖪸
t͡s
𖪶
t͡ɕ
𖪵
t͡ɕʰ
𖪽Used in a dialect other than Muishvung.
d
𖪱
k
𖪠
kʰ
𖪡
ɡ
𖪢
f
𖪻Used in a dialect other than Muishvung.
ð
𖪼Used in a dialect other than Muishvung.
s
𖪤
z
𖪾Used in a dialect other than Muishvung.
ʃ
𖪴
x
𖪺
ɣ
𖪷
h
𖪭
m
𖪫
m̩˩
𖪜Syllabic m with tone.
m̩˧
𖪟Syllabic m with tone.
m̩˦
𖪝Syllabic m with tone.
m̩ˀ
𖪞Syllabic m with tone.
n
𖪬
n̪
𖪳
ɲ
𖪨
ŋ
𖪣Onset only.
𖪐Coda only.
w
𖪦Allophone is β.
r
𖪲
l
𖪮
j
𖪥
Encoding choices
This section offers advice about characters or character sequences to avoid, and what to use instead. It takes into account the relevance of Unicode Normalisation Form D (NFD) and Unicode Normalisation Form C (NFC). It also takes into account Unicode's Do Not Emit guidelines.
There appear to be no particular issues related to encoding choices in Tangsa. There are no combining characters, no decompositions, nor ways of creating letters from multiple parts.
Codepoint sequences
Since there are no combining marks, pre-base glyphs, etc, there are no issues related to codepoint sequencing.
Numbers
Digits
Tangsa has a set of native, decimal digits
𖫀,𖫁,𖫂,𖫃,𖫄,𖫅,𖫆,𖫇,𖫈,𖫉
Text direction
Tangsa text runs left to right in horizontal lines.
Tangsa letters don't interact, so no special shaping or positioning is needed.
Typographic units
Word boundaries
Words are separated by spaces.
Some hyphenated words have been seen in the sources.
Graphemes
Graphemes in Tangsa consist of single letters with no combining marks. This means that text can be segmented into typographic units using grapheme clusters.
Phrase, sentence, and section delimiters are described in phrase.
Punctuation & inline features
Phrase & section boundaries
Tangsa has no native punctuation marks. The following have been seen in examples provided to support the Unicode proposal.
phrase
,
sentence
.
Moreym,6 mentions that the question mark is not needed, since questions are marked in text using a question particle 𖪭𖩴.
Line & paragraph layout
Line breaking & hyphenation
Lines are generally broken between words.
Baselines, line height, etc.
tbd
Tangsa uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.
Tangsa requires no more vertical space than Latin text. To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Tangsa glyphs from the Noto Sans Tangsa font. The height of nearly all Tangsa letters is the Latin cap-height, with a few letters reaching the ascender height. There are no descenders.
Font metrics for Latin text compared with Tangsa glyphs in the Noto Sans Tangsa font.
Counters, lists, etc.
The Tangsa orthography uses native digits for numbering.
Numeric
The tangsa numeric style is decimal-based and uses these digits.m
