About
Tangsa Script
Tangsa languages
The script proposed to be named ‘Tangsa’ is a script developed since 1990 by Mr Lakhum Mossang (died 11th July 2020), of Namphai Nong, Miao, Arunachal Pradesh. It was developed for writing the Tangsa languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, India and across the border in the north of Sagaing Region, Myanmar.
It is an alphabetic script and is genetically unrelated to existing scripts. The script has been revised a couple of times. The 2020 January version consists of 89 characters: 79 letters (48 listed as vowels and 31 listed as consonants) and 10 digits.
Since the creation of the script in 1990, it has been promoted for many years by it’s creator, Mr Lakhum Mossang, in the early years mostly being taught in small face-to-face classes and in handwritten form. The creator produced handwritten documents, Tangsa is not a single language but a network of language varieties some of which are fully mutually intelligible and some of which are fully mutually unintelligible with many in between.
It is an alphabetic script and is genetically unrelated to existing scripts. The script has been revised a couple of times. The 2020 January version consists of 89 characters: 79 letters (48 listed as vowels and 31 listed as consonants) and 10 digits.
Since the creation of the script in 1990, it has been promoted for many years by it’s creator, Mr Lakhum Mossang, in the early years mostly being taught in small face-to-face classes and in handwritten form. The creator produced handwritten documents, Tangsa is not a single language but a network of language varieties some of which are fully mutually intelligible and some of which are fully mutually unintelligible with many in between.
The script developed by
Lakhum Mossang
The script developed by Lakhum Mossang is able to fully represent all of the sounds, and all phonemic distinctions, in his own variety, the Mossang. The word Mossang is an exonym (outsiders term) for a variety that is spelled in the Roman script as Muishvung .
The script is currently used by a number of native speakers of Muishvung (Mossang), several of whom have been learning it and using it for many years. Throughout the 30 year history of the Tangsa script, the basic characters (vowels + tones and consonants) and the guiding principals of the script have remained stable.
The relatively minor changes introduced in 2019 have been made to allow the script to cover all the possible consonants in all the Tangsa varieties and also to ensure that all the vowels are treated by the script in a consistent manner.