119. Sourashtra alphabet

 

Origin

The Sourashtra alphabet was developed towards the end of the 19th century. A number of Sourashtra letters a similar to letters in the Oriya and Gujarati alphabets. Sourashtra has also been written with Telugu and Devanagari alphabets but is usually written with a slightly modified version of the Tamil alphabet.

Notable features

• Type of writing system: syllabic alphabet in which all consonants have an inherent vowel. Diacritics, which can appear above, below, before or after the consonant they belong to, are used to change the inherent vowel.
• Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines.
• When they appear the the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as independent letters.

Used to write

Sourashtra (ꢱꣃꢬꢵꢰ꣄ꢜ꣄ꢬꢵ), an Indo-Aryan language closely related to Gujarati and spoken by about 310,000 people in southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh, particularly in Salem, Thanjavur, and Madurai cities.

Sourashtra vowels and vowel diacritics with 'ka'

Sourashtra consonants

Sourashtra numerals

Links

Information about the Sourashtra language and culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurashtra_language
http://www.palkar.org
http://www.sourashtra.com
Upamanyu - a blog about Sourashtra language and literature
http://subramanian-obula.blogspot.com
Recording in Sourashtra
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/lsi/161AK
Learn Sourashtra
http://learn.sourashtra.info/
Information about the Sourashtra alphabet (in PDF format)
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2549.pdf
Vishwa Sourashtram - First International Journal in Sourashtra
http://sourashtra.info
Free Sourashtra fonts and other information about Sourashtra language & culture
http://www.palkar.org
http://www.sourashtra.info/daar.htm