女真文字
The Jurchens, ancestors of the Manchus, had created Jurchen script in the Jin dynasty. After the Jin dynasty collapsed, the Jurchen script was gradually lost. In the Ming dynasty, 60%–70% of Jurchens used Mongolian script to write letters and 30%–40% of Jurchens used Chinese characters. This persisted until Nurhaci revolted against the Ming Empire. Nurhaci considered it a major impediment that his people lacked a script of their own, so he commanded his scholars, Gagai and Eldeni, to create Manchu characters by reference to Mongolian scripts. They dutifully complied with the Khan's order and created Manchu script, which is called "script without dots and circles" (; ) or "old Manchu script" (). Due to its hurried creation, the script has its defects. Some vowels and consonants were difficult to distinguish. Shortly afterwards, their successor Dahai used dots and circles to distinguish vowels, aspirated and non-aspirated consonants and thus completed the script. His achievement is called "script with dots and circles" or "new Manchu script".