Lisu is a
Unicode block
A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes (code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and documentation purposes. Typically, proposals such as the ad ...
containing characters of the
Fraser alphabet
The Fraser or Old Lisu script is an constructed script, artificial abugida invented around 1915 by Sara Ba Thaw, a Karen people, Karen preacher from Myanmar and improved by the missionary James O. Fraser, to write the Lisu language. It is a singl ...
, which is used to write the
Lisu language
Lisu (Fraser alphabet: , or ; New Lisu script: ; zh, c=傈僳语, p=Lìsùyǔ; my, လီဆူဘာသာစကား, ) is a tonal Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Yunnan (Southwestern China), Northern Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand and ...
. This alphabet (and by extension the block) consists of glyphs resembling capital letters in the basic
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
in their standard form and
horizontally or vertically mirrored.
The addition of the block was subject to significant debate as to whether allocating a new block was necessary for the alphabet or if the turned letters not already in Unicode could instead be added to an existing block for the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greece, Greek city of Cumae, in southe ...
. However, since the Lisu letters only visually resemble their Latin counterparts and are semantically different, the former approach was ultimately taken.
This block is supported by a few fonts including Noto Sans Lisu, Lisu Unicode,
DejaVu Sans
The DejaVu fonts are a superfamily of fonts designed for broad coverage of the Unicode Universal Character Set. The fonts are derived from Bitstream Vera ( sans-serif) and Bitstream Charter ( serif), two fonts released by Bitstream under a f ...
, Horta, Montagel,
Quivira
Quivira is a place named by Spanish conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1541, for the mythical Seven Cities of Gold that he never found.
Quivira was a province of the ancestral Wichita people, located near the Great Bend of the Arkans ...
,
Segoe UI
Segoe ( ) is a typeface, or family of fonts, that is best known for its use by Microsoft. The company uses Segoe in its online and printed marketing materials, including recent logos for a number of products. Additionally, the Segoe UI font su ...
(since Windows 8), and
Highway Gothic
Highway Gothic (formally known as the FHWA Series fonts or the Standard Alphabets for Highway Signs) is a sans-serif typeface developed by the United States Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and used for road signage in the Americas, includi ...
(Wide, version 2.0.3).
In Unicode 13.0, a new block was also assigned for a single supplementary Lisu character used for the
Naxi language
Naxi (Naqxi ), also known as ''Nakhi, Nasi, Lomi, Moso, Mo-su'', is a Sino-Tibetan language or group of languages spoken by some 310,000 people, most of whom live in or around Lijiang City Yulong Naxi Autonomous County of the province of Yunnan, ...
,
Lisu Supplement
Lisu Supplement is a Unicode block containing supplementary characters of the Fraser alphabet, which is used to write the Lisu language. This is a supplement to the main Lisu block, with currently only a single character used for the Naxi langua ...
.
History
The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Lisu block:
References
{{reflist
Unicode blocks