Hanifi Rohingya script 𐴌𐴟𐴇𐴥𐴝𐴚𐴒𐴙𐴝 𐴇𐴝𐴕𐴞𐴉𐴞 𐴓𐴠𐴑𐴤𐴝 رُحَ࣪ڠۡگَ࣪ࢬ حَنِفِي لࣦكَ࣪‎ Ruáingga Hanifi leká
The word "Rohingya" written in the script
Script type	Alphabet
Creator	Mohammad Hanif
Created	1980s
Direction	right-to-left script
Languages	Rohingya language
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic script Phoenician script Aramaic script Nabataean script Arabic script Hanifi Rohingya script
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Rohg (167), ​Hanifi Rohingya
Unicode
Unicode alias	Hanifi Rohingya
Unicode range	U+10D00–U+10D3F

The Hanifi Rohingya script is a unified script for the Rohingya language. Rohingya today is written in three scripts, Hanafi, 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 can't stand on their own and always need to be connected to a consonant similar to diacritics. Therefore, diphthongs can't 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]

Characters

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.

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

Letters and their pronunciations and their equivalents

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.

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.^[6]

The Unicode block for Hanifi Rohingya is U+10D00–U+10D3F and contains 50 characters:^[7]

Fonts

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

Rohingya keyboard

Layout of the Rohingya virtual 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 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.

Sample text

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.

References

External links

• Tri-orthographic dictionary application Google Playstore