Takri Alphabet Information
The Takri script (sometimes called Tankri) is an abugida writing system of the Brahmic family of scripts. It is closely related to, and derived from, the Sharada script employed by Kashmiri. It is also related to the Gurmukhī script used to write Punjabi. Until the late 1940s, Takri was the official script for writing the Dogri language in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Takri has historically been used by a number of Western Pahari, Garhwali and Dardic languages in the Western Himalayas, such as Gaddi or Gaddki (the language of the Gaddi ethnic group), Kashtwari (the dialect centered around the Kashtwar or Kishtwar region of Jammu and Kashmir) and Chamiyali (the language of the Chamba region of Himachal Pradesh). Takri used to be most prevalent script for business records and communication in various parts of Himachal Pradesh including Chintpurni, Una, Kangra, Bilaspur, and Hamirpur regions. The aged businessmen can still be found using Takri in these areas, but newer generation has now shifted to Devnagri and even English (Roman). This shift can be traced to have happened during the period ranging from 1950s to 1980s.
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Proposed Unicode Support
There is a project to encode the Takri script in the Unicode standard, for which Anshuman Pandey has submitted a proposal to the Unicode Technical Committee[1]. Takri was accepted for encoding at the range U+11680..U+116CF of the SMP and has been included in the version 6.1.0 beta release. It is anticipated to be formally released in February 2012. [2]
Revival Movements
Since Takri fell into disuse, there have been sporadic attempts to revive the script in Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh states. Kashtwari and Kulluvi are two languages for which recent efforts have been made.
References
- ^ Pandey, Anshuman. 2009. Proposal to Encode the Takri Script in ISO/IEC 10646
- ^ "BETA Unicode 6.1.0". The Unicode Standard. Unicode, Inc.. http://www.unicode.org/versions/beta-6.1.0.html. Retrieved 2011-09-19.
External resources
- The Takri alphabet, http://ancientscripts.com/takri.html
- Examples of Takri usage on Kashmir state stamps, http://www.kashmirstamps.ca/DogriGloss.html
- Comparative examples of Takri and related scripts (Spanish language website), http://www.proel.org/alfabetos/takri.html
- A discussion of the Gaddi, with a reference to Takri,
- Ancient script of the Himalayas fights for survival, http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=275913&sid=FTP
Categories:
- Takri script
- Brahmic scripts
- Sarada scripts
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