125. Ahom

 

Ahom or Tai Ahom is a Tai-Kadai language formerly spoken in the Indian state of Assam, where the Ahom people, who originally came from Yunnan province in China, ruled Brahmaputra valley between 1228 to 1826. Ahom was used as the sole language of the Ahom kingdom until the 15th or 16th century, when it started to be replaced by Assamese.
By the early 19th century Ahom was no longer used as a spoken language, although it continued to be used in religious ceremonies throughout the 19th century, and since 1920 efforts have been made to revive the Ahom language and culture. One difficultly is that the phonology of Ahom was not recorded. An Ahom-Assamese-English Dictionary was published by G. Barua in 1920, and a number of other works in Ahom have been published since then, especially since 1997, when the first computer font for Ahom was developed by Stephen Morey.
The Ahom alphabet was probably derived from the Brahmi script. The earliest inscriptions, on a stone pillar, dates from the 15th century. The alphabet also appears on coins, brass plates and numerous manuscripts on cloth or bark.

Notable features

• Type of writing system: abugida / alphasyllabary
• Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines
• Used to write: Ahom
• Consonants have an inherent vowel, which is changed or silenced by diacritics.
• Vowels are indicated by diacritics either combined with the letter a or with the consonants letters. There are no independent vowel letters.

Ahom alphabet

Consonants

There are two ways of ordering the consonants: the first is used in modern primers and in the Barua's 1920 dictionary; the second is based on analysis by Stephen Morey.

Vowel diacritics

Numerals

Sample text in Ahom

Source: http://www.sealang.net/archives/ahom/

Links

Information about the Ahom language and alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahom_language
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3928.pdf
http://www.sealang.net/archives/ahom/