Hanifi Rohingya script

The Hanifi Rohingya script is a unified script for the Rohingya language. It is one of three scripts currently used to write the Rohingya language, the other two being the Rohingya Arabic alphabet and the Rohingya Latin script. 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.

Characters

The Rohingya script has 28 consonant letters and 10 vowel letters.

The script has 10 vowel letters.

The script has three tone markers that are shown as diacritics above the vowel letters. The tone markers indicate high, low or falling tones.

Letters and their pronunciations and their equivalents

Consonants

Vowels and tone markers

Numbers

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.

Rohingya Alphabet Writing System on Four Lines

The Rohingya script is written from right to left, similar to the Arabic script. There are 28 consonants and 10 vowels in the Rohingya language.

Each letter sits differently on the four-line writing system:

• 21 alphabets are written above the middle three lines
• 6 alphabets are written within the middle two lines
• 1 alphabet is written below the middle two lines

Understanding these positions is important for learning proper handwriting and preserving the beauty of the Rohingya script.

21 Alphabets Written Above the Middle Three Lines

6 Alphabets Written Within the Middle Two Lines

1 Alphabet Written Below the Middle Two Lines

Unicode

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.

The Unicode block for Hanifi Rohingya is U+10D00–U+10D3F and contains 50 characters:

Fonts

• Google's Noto Sans has developed a Rohingya script font called Noto Sans Hanifi Rohingya, available at .
• Rohingya Hanifi Script font styles
• Rohingya Hanifi Script font styles

Rohingya keyboard

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 . Ahkter Husin and Kyaw Zay Ya Lin Tun developed a keyboard app for iOS which can be found . The Rohingya Unicode keyboard layout can be found .

Sample text

The following is a Rohingya translation of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, comparing the Hanifi and Arabic scripts.

External links

• English-Rohingya dictionary application
• Rohingya Picture Dictionary application
• Rohingya Keyboard App with auto suggestion
• Rohingya Books App with 1000 plus books in Hanifi Script
• Rohingya Hanifi Script font styles