Meetei Mayek
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Type
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abugida
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Languages
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Meithei language
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ISO 15924
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Mtei, 337
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Direction
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Left-to-right
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Unicode alias
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Meetei Mayek
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U+ABC0–U+ABFF Meetei Mayek
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U+AAE0–U+AAFF Meetei Mayek Extensions
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The Meithei script, Meetei Mayek, is an abugida that was used for the Meithei language, one of the official languages of the Indian state of Manipur, until the eighteenth century, when it was replaced by the Bengali script. A few manuscripts survive. In the twentieth century, the script experienced a resurgence.
Since the Meithei language does not have voiced consonants, there are only fifteen consonant letters used for native words, plus three letters for pure vowels. Nine additional consonant letters inherited from the Indic languages are available for borrowings. There are seven vowel diacritics and a final consonant (/ŋ/) diacritic.
One of the unique feature of this script is the use of body parts in naming the letters. Every letter is named after a human body part in the Meithei language. For example, the first letter "kok" means "head"; the second letter "sam" means "hair"; the third letter "lai" means "forehead", and so on.
Unicode
The Meithei script was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2009 with the release of version 5.2.
Blocks
The Unicode block for the Meithei script, called Meetei Mayek, is U+ABC0–U+ABFF.
Characters for historical orthographies are part of the Meetei Mayek Extensions block at U+AAE0–U+AAFF.
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