The Pau Cin Hau scripts, known as Pau Cin Hau lai ('Pau Cin Hau script'), or Zo tual lai ('Zo indigenous script') in Zomi, are two scripts, a

logographic script In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chinese c ...

and an

alphabetic script An alphabet is a standard set of letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from another in a given ...

created by Pau Cin Hau, a Zomi religious leader from

Chin State Chin State (, ) is a state in western Myanmar. Chin State is bordered by Sagaing Division and Magway Division to the east, Rakhine State to the south, the Chattogram Division of Bangladesh to the west, and the Indian states of Mizoram to th ...

Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...

. The logographic script consists of 1,050 characters, which is a traditionally significant number based on the number of characters appearing in a religious text. The alphabetic script is a simplified script of 57 characters, which is divided into 21 consonants, 7 vowels, 9 final consonants, and 20 tone, length, and glottal marks. The original script was produced in 1902, but it is thought to have undergone at least two revisions, of which the first revision produced the logographic script. The logographic script has not been encoded, but the alphabetic script has been encoded in Unicode 7.0. The characters in the script seem to resemble characters in the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a 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 Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

and in the

Burmese script Burmese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia * Burmese people * Burmese language * Burmese alphabet * Burmese cuisine * Burmese culture Animals * Burmese cat * Burmese chicken * Burmese (horse) ...

in a way similar to the relationship between Pahawh Hmong and both

Lao script Lao script or Akson Lao ( ) is the primary script used to write the Lao language and other languages in Laos. Its earlier form, the Tai Noi script, was also used to write the Isan language, but was replaced by the Thai script. It has 27 co ...

and

. They are glyphically similar but encode different phonological values. The script was designed for the Zomi language but is able to transcribe other Zo languages, as there are additional letters and tone marks to represent sounds present in other Chin languages but not present in Zomi. The script also had limited use for Christian literature in the region, as is evidenced by some Baptist documents produced in 1931-32 in Burma. The script is not only a vehicle for Pau Cin Hau's monotheism. The letters are also used as icons for the religion along portraits of its creator.

History

Pau Cin Hau claimed to have a series of dreams in 1900 in which an elderly saintly man instructed, later identified as the creator god , handled him a book with symbols and taught him certain shapes. From these symbols, Pau Cin Hau created the logographic script in 1902 and later the alphabet. After being incorporated into Unicode, it is increasingly used in mobile communication and

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, causing religious leaders concern that it loses its sacred status.

Unicode

The Pau Cin Hau alphabet was added to the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0. The Unicode block for the Pau Cin Hau alphabet is U+11AC0–U+11AFF:

Fonts

Noto Sans Pau Cin Hau supports the Pau Cin Hau script.

References

External links

Noto Sans Pau Cin Hau
{{Kuki-Chin-Naga languages Kuki-Chin languages Writing systems of Asia Writing systems introduced in 1902 1902 in Burma Alphabets