Umê script
| Umê scripts དབུ་མེད་ | |
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| Script type | Abugida
(Informal cursive forms of the Tibetan script) |
| Created | c. 620 |
Period | c. 620–present |
| Languages | |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
Child systems | |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Tibt (330), Tibetan |
| Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Tibetan |
| U+0F00–U+0FFF | |
Umê (Tibetan: དབུ་མེད་, Wylie: dbu-med, IPA: [ume]; variant spellings include umé, u-me) is a family of stylistic variants of the Tibetan alphabet used for both calligraphy and shorthand.[3] The name umê means "headless" and refers to its distinctive feature: the absence of the horizontal guide line ('head') across the top of the letters. Between syllables, the tsheg mark (་) often appears as a vertical stroke, rather than the shorter 'dot'-like mark in some other scripts.[4]
Kyuyig (Tibetan: འཁྱུག་ཡིག།་, Wylie: kyug-yig) or Gyu-yig (Tibetan: རྒྱུག་ཡིག།, Wylie: gyug-yig), is the most common form of Umê that people in the Tibetan region use as an informal shorthand for notes and personal correspondence. It is extremely cursive, with free-flowing, distorted glyph forms. It remains unstandardised and is difficult to decipher because of its divergent shapes. [5]
The other main style of the Tibetan script is the upright block form, uchen (དབུ་ཅན་ dbu-can; IPA: [utɕɛ̃]). The name of the block form, uchen means "with a head", corresponding to the presence of the horizontal guide line. This script is the standard formal variant of the script, used for official and religious purposes.
Styles
[edit]Umê scripts span from formal calligraphy to highly informal shorthand with context-specific styles. Besides Kyuyig, there are (broadly) five main styles of umê writing:[6]
- Drutsa (Tibetan: འབྲུ་ཚ་, Wylie: 'bru-tsa), used for writing documents.
- Bêtsug (Tibetan: དཔེ་ཚུགས་, Wylie: dpe-tshugs), used for writing scriptures.
- Tsugtung (Tibetan: ཚུགས་ཐུང༌།, Wylie: tsug-tung) shortened, abbreviated variant traditionally used for commentaries.
- Tsugring (Tibetan: ཚུགས་རིང་།, Wylie: tsug-ring) used for novice scribes to improve handwriting and familiarity with the script. It is elegant with vertically elongated glyphs.[7]
- Tsugma-chu (Tibetan: ཚུགས་ཆུ་ཡིག་, Wylie: tsug-ma-kyug) a hybrid style designed to be written quickly without losing the uchen form.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Daniels, Peter T. (January 2008). "Writing systems of major and minor languages". In Kachru, Braj B.; Kachru, Yamuna; Sridhar, S. N. (eds.). Language in South Asia. pp. 285–308. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511619069.017. ISBN 978-0-521-78653-9.
- ^ Masica, Colin (1993). The Indo-Aryan languages. p. 143.
- ^ Chen, Jinhua (2024-02-08). Esoteric Buddhism and Texts: Volume I, Manuscript Culture and Transborder Transmission. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-003-85355-8.
- ^ Gyatso, Ribur Ngawang (1984). "A Short History of Tibetan Script". The Tibet Journal. 9 (2). Library of Tibetan Works and Archives: 28–30. JSTOR 43300125.
- ^ Phuntsok, Kelsang; Wang, Hao; Jia, Yaming; Li, Yalong (2024). "Digital preservation and generation of Tibetan Umê script calligraphy: A review". Digital Governance and Innovation. 1 (4): 312–325. doi:10.3724/2096-7004.di.2024.0048.
- ^ Quenzer, Jörg; Bondarev, Dmitry; Sobisch, Jan-Ulrich (2014). "Towards a Tibetan Palaeography: Developing a Typography of writing styles in early Tibet". Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field: 299–441.
- ^ Chakrishar, Jamyang Dorjee (2020). Tibetan Handwriting Workbook - I: Tsugring-Thung. Diverse Voices. ISBN 978-1734914405.
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