ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N2748
2004-4-29

Universal Multiple Octet Coded Character Set
International Organization for Standardization
Organisation internationale de normalisationМеждународная организация по стандартизацииDoc Type:

Working Group Document

Title: Proposal on encoding New Tai Lue
Source:Status:Action:China
Expert contribution
For consideration by JTC1/SC2/WG2The New Tai Lue is improved and simplified from traditional Dai scripts,
mainly used in Xishuanbanna Prefecture, China. From 1950s’, a great
number of books, magazines and newspapers in Dai language have been
published. It is also used in school education. New Tai Lue is a main tool
to write and read for Dai people.
The simplified New Tai Lue has 42 consonants, which are divided into 2
groups: high tone and low tone. Compound consonants those already not
been used in oral language are canceled, while 4 labialised consonants arekept. There are 9 monophthongs dividing into long and short. The shortvowels are presented by combining the long vowels with the symbol“”. There are 13 diphthongs. New Tai Lue has 7 consonantal codas,
represented by a small circle in the end of related consonants. There are 6
checked syllable tones and 3 unchecked syllable tones in New Tai Lue.
There are two symbols represent the other tones besides the high tone andlow tone of consonants.
Encoding ways
z Cosonants
Most consonants of New Tai Lue scripts are single symbols besides 10
consonants are combined with two symbols. The low tone consonants
are combined by high tone consonant with a hat “^” over it. The
are represented by high tone consonants with theconsonants
1symbol “ ” under it. The 7 low tone consonants mentioned above arecorresponding to high tone consonants. They belong to same phoneme.
also is combined by consonant with symbol
The high tone consonantis“ ” under it, but they are not corresponding. The mood particle
combined by another mood particle
with the symbol “” under it.
There are 2 combined consonants
that the shapes are changed. It’s
better to keep the combined characters rather than design an underneath
symbol for each character. Based on the situation described above, we
encode New Tai Lue in separate way, i.e., use the consonants alreadyexisting combine with overhead symbol and underneath symbol torepresent the combined characters. We don’t encode the combined
characters as single character. This principle is widely accepted by Daipeople. In Dai custom, these characters are not independent, but
combined characters.
z Vowels
Monophthongs also are encoded in combining way. Long vowels
combine with symbol “”represent short vowels. Vowels combinedwith two characters are encoding in combining way. For example, thevowel “”is encoded by combining two single vowel “”,vowel “” is encoded by combining single vowel “” and“”. The diphthong “” is encoded by combining “” and“”. This is the best way to encode the vowels in New Tai Lue. Insome proposals on encoding New Tai Lue, the encoding way is notconsistent. For example, in proposal N2634, vowels “” and“” are encoded in combining way, while the vowel “” isnot.
z Symbols
There are two symbols in the proposal, one is overhead mark “^”, an”. New characters are presented byother is underneath mark “combining the symbols with existing consonants.
Ordering of charactersz Consonants
The consonants are ordered according to several properties in Dai
tradition.
- Point of articulation: glottal, velar, apical, labial- Manner of articulation: plosive (unaspirated, aspirated), affricate(unaspirated, aspirated), nasal, fricative, semi-vowel- Tone class: high, low
The traditional way of ordering the consonants is divided the 422

consonants into 8 groups according to the point of articulation. The
consonants with same point of articulation (usually 3 consonants) aretaken as one sub-group. Among the sub-group the consonants are orderedaccording to the manner of articulation. At last, the consonants areordered according to the tone class. The group of consonants with hightone is listed before the group of consonants with low tone. In New TaiLue, 6 out of the 8 original consonants are canceled, only the high glottal
and low glottal are kept. This ordering has linguistic continuity. In
language study practice in hundreds of years, this ordering is considered
the best one for mastering the point of articulation, the manner ofarticulation and the inner principle of the language.
z Vowels
The vowels are ordered in the turn of monophthong, diphthong andconsonantal coda. The vowels can be put before or after a consonant in asyllable, but the consonantal coda should be after any consonant andvowel. The consonantal coda is the changing of the shape ofcorresponding consonant, i.e., to add a circle in the end. It belongs toeither consonant character or vowel character. It is a special symbol.
There for the consonantal coda should be ordered after the characters,
follow the compound vowels.
z Other symbols
The tone marks are ordered after the vowels. Then come the ten digits
listed as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In New Tai Lue, the shape and size of thedigit “0” is simillar with the character “”. So they are encoded as one
character. The last three are the character of mood particle, the overhead
symbol and the underneath symbol.
Spelling rule
The spelling of New Tai Lue takes the consonants as the centre. Vowels
can be put before or after consonants. When a consonant is spelling witha consonantal coda, and with tone mark in the end, the spelling ordershould be as following:- if the vowel is before the consonant,vowel + consonant + consonantal coda + tone mark- if the vowel is after the consonant,consonant + vowel + consonantal + tone mark
About the font
New Tai Lue has many kinds of fonts. The font in this proposal is widelyused in China at the present time. It is developed by BeidafanzhengGroup and used by Yunnan Nationality Publishing House.
3Row

XX : NEW TAI LUE

Dec

hex

Name

Dec

hex

Name

001

81

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH OA

040

A8TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN E002

82

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH KA041

A9TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN OO

003

83

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH XA

042

AATAI LUE VOWEL SIGN O

00484

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH NGA

043

ABTAI LUE VOWEL SIGN

005

85

TAI LUE LETTER LOW KA

044

AC

TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN AY

006

86

TAI LUE LETTER LOW XA

045

AD

TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN AAY

00787

TAI LUE LETTER LOW NGA

046

AETAI LUE VOWEL SIGN UY

008

88

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH TSA

047

AFTAI LUE VOWEL SIGN OOY

009

89TAI LUE LETTER HIGH SA

048

B0TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN OY

0108ATAI LUE LETTER HIGH YA

049

B1TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN UEY

011

8B

TAI LUE LETTER LOW TSA

050

B2TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN IY

012

8C

TAI LUE LETTER LOW SA

051

B3TAI LUE LETTER FINAL V

013

8D

TAI LUE LETTER LOW YA

052

B4TAI LUE LETTER FINAL NG

014

8E

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH TA

053

B5TAI LUE LETTER FINAL N

015

8F

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH THA

054

B6TAI LUE LETTER FINAL M

016

90

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH NA055

B7TAI LUE LETTER FINAL K

017

91

TAI LUE LETTER LOW TA056B8TAI LUE LETTER FINAL D

018

92

TAI LUE LETTER LOW THA

057

B9TAI LUE LETTER FINAL B

019

93

TAI LUE LETTER LOW NA058

BATAI LUE TONE MARK-1020

94

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH PA

059

BB

TAI LUE TONE MARK-2021

95

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH PHA

060

BCTAI LUE DIGIT ONE

022

96

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH MA061

BDTAI LUE DIGIT TWO

023

97

TAI LUE LETTER LOW PA

062

BETAI LUE DIGIT THREE

024

98

TAI LUE LETTER LOW PHA

063

BFTAI LUE DIGIT FOUR

025

99

TAI LUE LETTER LOW MA064C0TAI LUE DIGIT FIVE

026

9A

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH FA

065

C1TAI LUE DIGIT SIX

027

9B

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH LA066

C2TAI LUE DIGIT SEVEN

0289C

TAI LUE LETTER LOW FA

067

C3TAI LUE DIGIT EIGHT

029

9DTAI LUE LETTER LOW VA

068

C4TAI LUE DIGIT NINE

030

9E

TAI LUE LETTER LOW LA

069

C5TAI LUE SIGN AND

031

9F

TAI LUE LETTER HIGH HA070

C6TAI LUE COMPONENT PART OF LOW

032

A0TAI LUE LETTER HIGH DA

033

A1TAI LUE LETTER HIGH BA

034

A2TAI LUE LETTER LOW HA035

A3TAILUE VOWEL SIGN VOWEL SHORTENER

036

A4TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN AA037

A5TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN II038

A6TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN U039

A7TAI LUE VOWEL SIGN UUVOICE071

C7UE

LETTERSTAI LUE COMPONENT PART4

***************5******************************************************
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2PROPOSAL SUMMARY FORM TO ACCOMPANY SUBMISSIONSFOR ADDITIONS TO THE REPERTOIRE OF ISO/IEC 10646

A. Administrative1. Title:
Proposing on Encoding New Tai Lue
2. Requester's name:
China
3. Requester type (Member body/Liaison/Individual contribution):
Member body
4. Submission date:
2004/4/13
5. Requester's reference (if applicable):
N967, N2044, N2242R, N2634
6. Choose one of the following:This is a complete proposal:
Yes
B. Technical - General
1. Choose one of the following:a. This proposal is for a new script (set of characters):
Yes
Proposed name of script:
New Tai Lew
b. The proposal is for addition of character(s) to an existing block:No
2. Number of characters in proposal:
71
3. Proposed category (select one from below - see section 2.2 of P&Pdocument):
A-Contemporary
4. Proposed Level of Implementation (1, 2 or 3)(see Annex K in P&P document):
Level 2Is a rationale provided for the choice?
Yes
If Yes, reference:
New Tai Lue requrees Level 2 implementation as other Brahmic scripts do.
5. Is a repertoire including character names provided?
Yes6

a. If YES, are the names in accordance with the "character naming
guidelines" in Annex L of P&P document?
Yesb. Are the character shapes attached in a legible form
suitable for review?
Yes
6. Who will provide the appropriate computerized font (ordered preference:
True Type, or PostScript format) for publishing the standard?
PUC FOUNDER (MSC) BERHAD （Beijing Founder Electronic Co., Ltd）
If available now, identify source(s) for the font (include address,e-mail, ftp-site, etc.) and indicate the tools used:
yjh@founder.com.cn , No.9, 5 Street, Shangdi, Information Industry Base, HaidianDistrict, Beijing 100085, China
7. References:a. Are references (to other character sets, dictionaries,
descriptive texts etc.) provided?
Yesb. Are published examples of use (such as samples from newspapers,magazines, or other sources) of proposed characters attached?
Yes
8. Special encoding issues:
Does the proposal address other aspects of character data processing(if applicable) such as input, presentation, sorting, searching,indexing, transliteration etc. (if yes please enclose information)?
No
9. Additional Information:
Submitters are invited to provide any additional information about Propertiesof the proposed Character(s) or Script that will assist in correctunderstanding of and correct linguistic processing of the proposedcharacter(s) or script. Examples of such properties are: Casing information,
Numeric information, Currency information, Display behaviour information such asline breaks, widths etc., Combining behaviour, Spacing behaviour,
Directional behaviour, Default Collation behaviour, relevance in Mark Up
contexts, Compatibility equivalence and other Unicode normalization relatedinformation. See the Unicode standard at http://www.unicode.org for suchinformation on other scripts.
Also see http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UCD.html and associated
Unicode Technical Reports for information needed for consideration by theUnicode Technical Committee for inclusion in the Unicode Standard.
C. Technical - Justification
1. Has this proposal for addition of character(s) been submitted before? Yes
If YES explain
This is a revised proposal

7

2. Has contact been made to members of the user community (for example:
National Body, user groups of the script or characters,other experts, etc.)?
Yes
If YES, with whom?
Yunnan Nationality Publishing Company, Tai language group of Yunnan people’s
broadcasting station
If YES, available relevant documents: ________________________________
3. Information on the user community for the proposed characters(for example: size, demographics, information technology use, orpublishing use) is included?
Yes
Reference:
New Tai Lew is used by Dai people in Yunnan province. See N 2242R for more
information
4. The context of use for the proposed characters(type of use; common or rare)
It is widely used to write Tai Lue language by Dai people.
Reference:___________________________________________________________
5. Are the proposed characters in current use by the user community?
Yes
If YES, where? Reference:
Yunnan Province, China
6. After giving due considerations to the principles in the P&P document
must the proposed characters be entirely in the BMP?
Yes
If YES, is a rationale provided?
Yes
If YES, reference:Contemporary use and accordance with the roadmap.
7. Should the proposed characters be kept together in a contiguous range(rather than being scattered)?
Yes
8. Can any of the proposed characters be considered a presentation formof an existing character or character sequence?
No
If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
_________________
If
YES,
reference:______________________________________________
9. Can any of the proposed characters be encoded using a composed character
sequence of either existing characters or other proposed characters? No
If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided? ____________________8

If YES, reference: _____________________________________
10. Can any of the proposed character(s) be considered to be similar(in appearance or function) to an existing character?
No
11. Does the proposal include use of combining characters and/or use ofcomposite sequences?
Yes
If YES, is a rationale for such use provided?
Yes
If YES, reference:
Is a list of composite sequences and their corresponding glyph
images (graphic symbols) provided?
No
12. Does the proposal contain characters with any special properties such ascontrol function or similar semantics?
No
13. Does the proposal contain any Ideographic compatibility character(s)?
No9