Developing new scripts in Northeast India_Morey-Mossang-Losu
Channel: ICLDC YT
Date: 2021-05-04

Developing new scripts in Northeast India – case study of Wancho and Tangsa

This paper will discuss three aspects of collaboration in the development of literacy for various languages of the ‘Northern Naga’ group from the Myanmar-India border region. Like many communities in the larger ‘Eastern Himalayan’ region, there are traditional stories of writing being handed to communities by the creator on the skin of animals, and then being eaten away by the people in time immemorial and lost.

In the 20th century, the writing of these languages fell into three general categories (i) developing Roman-based orthographies initially for Bible translation later extended to more general literacy development, (ii) the creation of new scripts to write languages, especially for the preservation of traditional knowledge and (iii) writing systems created by linguists to present and analyse linguistic data.

Our case studies will examine the development of two new scripts, the Tangsa script created by the late Lakhum Mossang (died July 2020) and the Wancho script created by Banwang Losu. Both scripts have been approved for educational use by the the Arunachal Pradesh Pradesh Directorate of Elementary Education.

In order to use these scripts fully in the 21st century, the development of Unicode proposals, and the subsequent development of fonts, keyboards and tools to allow for the implementation of the scripts are required. In this work, the interaction of community members, academic linguists and people with a range of specialist computing skills is required. 

The paper will discuss the history of these two scripts, the process of bringing them into Unicode, the current status of their usage and in particular will discuss the collaboration with community members and the benefits flowing to all sides from that. In particular the paper will involve the contribution of Mr Banwang Losu, the creator of the Wancho script and a long-term research collaborator and also Mr Wanglung Mossang, who is one of the leaders of the Tangsa Script Development Committee which is promoting the use of the script created by the late Lakhum Mossang.