| Hanifi Rohingya script | |
| Also Known As: | Ruáingga Hanifi leká |
| Languages: | Rohingya language |
| Creator: | Mohammad Hanif |
| Date: | 1980s |
| Fam1: | Egyptian hieroglyphs |
| Fam2: | Proto-Sinaitic script |
| Fam3: | Phoenician script |
| Fam4: | Aramaic script |
| Fam5: | Nabataean script |
| Fam6: | Arabic script |
| Type: | Alphabet |
| Unicode: | U+10D00–U+10D3F |
| Iso15924: | Rohg |
| Sample: | Rohingya.svg |
| Caption: | The word "Rohingya" written in the script |
The Hanifi Rohingya script is a unified script for the Rohingya language. Rohingya today is written in three scripts, Hanifi, Arabic (Rohingya Fonna), and Latin (Rohingyalish).[1] The Rohingya language was first written in the 19th century with a version of the Perso-Arabic script. In 1975, an orthographic Arabic script was developed and approved by the community leaders, based on the Urdu alphabet but with unique innovations to make the script suitable to Rohingya.
In the 1980s, Mohammad Hanif and his colleagues created a suitable phonetic script based on the Arabic alphabet; it has been compared to the N’ko script.
This script, unlike the Arabic script, is alphabetical, meaning that all vowels are independent letters, as opposed to diacritics as is the case in Arabic. However, vowels cannot stand on their own and always need to be connected to a consonant similar to diacritics. Therefore, diphthongs cannot be written as vowel-vowel combination even though typographically this is possible. Tone markers are shown as diacritics in Hanifi script. It is written from right to left, following the direction of the Arabic script.[2] [3]
The script has 32 consonant letters. Four of the consonant letters are unique to Rohingya and represent consonants that undergo fusion with a preceding consonant.
The script has 6 vowels and 2 semi-vowels.| ◌ | ◌ | ◌ |
| Character [4] | Burmese | Name | Final | Medial | Latin Script | Arabic Script | Pronunciation | Unicode [5] | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| အ | A | ــ | - | ا, ع | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ | U+10D00 | |||||
| ဗ | BA | ــ | b | ب | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D01 | |||||
| တ | TA | ــ | t | ت, ط | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D03 | |||||
| ထ | TTA | ــ | th | ٹ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D04 | |||||
| ဇ | JA | ــ | j | ج | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D05 | |||||
| ဆ | CA | ــ | ch | چ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D06 | |||||
| ဟ | HA | ــ | h, h' | ح, ه | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D07 | |||||
| ခ | KHA | ــ | h, kh | خ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D08 | |||||
| ဖဟ | FA | ــ | f | ف | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D09 | |||||
| ပ | PA | ــ | p | پ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D02 | |||||
| ဒ | DA | ــ | d | د, ض | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D0A | |||||
| ဓ | DDA | ــ | dh | ڈ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D0B | |||||
| ရ | RA | ــ | r | ر | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D0C | |||||
| RRA | ــ | ç | ڑ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D0D | ||||||
| ဇ | ZA | ــ | z | ز, ذ, ظ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D0E | |||||
| သ | SA | ــ | s | س, ص | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D0F | |||||
| စ | SHA | ــ | c | ش | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D10 | |||||
| ခ | KA | ــ | k | ك, ق | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D11 | |||||
| ဂ | GA | ــ | g | گ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D12 | |||||
| လ | LA | ــ | l | ل | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D13 | |||||
| မ | MA | ــ | m | م | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D14 | |||||
| န | NA | ــ | n | ن | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D15 | |||||
| ဝ | WA | ــ | v | و | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ | U+10D16 | |||||
| ဥ | KINNA WA | ــ | u | و | pronounced as /link/ (for cluster or diphthong) | U+10D17 | |||||
| ယ | YA | ــ | y | ي | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D18 | |||||
| ဣ | KINNA YA | ــ | i | ي | pronounced as /link/ (for cluster or diphthong) | U+10D19 | |||||
| င | NGA = gan | ــ | ng | ڠ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D1A | |||||
| ည | NYA = nayya | ــ | ny | ني | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D1B | |||||
| ဝ | VA | ــ | v | ڤ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D1C | |||||
| Tassi | double consonant | ّ | U+10D27 |
| Character | Name | Latin Script | Arabic Script | Pronunciation | Unicode | Character | Name | Latin Script | Arabic Script | Type | IPA | Unicode | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| align=center | aa-for | a | ◌َ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D1D | align=center | Sakin (Ttura/Les) | none | ◌ۡ | Vowel silencer | none | U+10D22 | |||
| align=center | i-for | i | ◌ِ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D1E | align=center | Na-Khonna | ñ (full letter) | ں, ◌ً, ◌ࣧ, ◌ٍ, ◌ࣩ, ◌ٌ, ◌ࣨ | Nasalization mark | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D23 | |||
| align=center | u-for | u | ◌ُ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D1F | align=center | ◌ | Harbai | á (acute accent) | ◌࣪ / ◌࣭ | Short high tone | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D24 | ||
| align=center | e-for | e | ◌ࣦ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D20 | align=center | ◌ | Tela | áa (double, acute at first) | ◌࣫ / ◌࣮ | Long falling tone | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D25 | ||
| align=center | o-for | o | ◌ࣤ, ◌ࣥ | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D21 | align=center | ◌ | Tana | aá (double, acute at second) | ◌࣬ / ◌࣯ | Long rising tone | pronounced as /link/ | U+10D26 |
Mohammad Hanif and his colleagues also created a set of numerals for the Rohingya language, The numbers are based on the Hindu–Arabic numerals but with some modifications.
| Name | sifír | ek | dui | tin | sair | fañs | só | háñt | añctho | no | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| سِفِ࣭رۡ | اࣦكۡ | دُيۡ | تِنۡ | سَيۡرۡ | فَنسۡ | سࣤ࣪ | حَ࣪نتۡ | اَنشۡٹࣤ | نࣤ | |||
| Digit | ||||||||||||
| Number | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | ||
| Unicode | U+10D30 | U+10D31 | U+10D32 | U+10D33 | U+10D34 | U+10D35 | U+10D36 | U+10D37 | U+10D38 | U+10D39 |
See main article: Hanifi Rohingya (Unicode block).
The Hanifi Rohingya script was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2018 with the release of version 11.0. Proposals to include it in Unicode were written by linguist Anshuman Pandey.[6]
The Unicode block for Hanifi Rohingya is U+10D00–U+10D3F and contains 50 characters:[7]
Google's Noto Sans has developed a Rohingya script font called Noto Sans Hanifi Rohingya, available at GitHub.
A virtual keyboard was developed by Google for the Rohingya language in 2019 and allows users to type in the Rohingya script. Ahkter Husin, a Rohingya software developer developed a keyboard for Android phones which is available on Google Play Store. Users can download here. Ahkter Husin and Kyaw Zay Ya Lin Tun developed a keyboard app for iOS which can be found here. The Rohingya Unicode keyboard layout can be found here.
The following is a sample text in Rohingya of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with English, contrasted with versions of the text in Bengali and Assamese.
| Rohingya in Hanifi Script | . | |
|---|---|---|
| Rohingya in Rohingya Arabic Script | ||
| English original: | "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." |