Phagspa script
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| Phagspa | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type: | abugida | |
| Languages: | ||
| Time period: | ||
| ISO 15924 code: | Phag | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
The Phagspa script (also square script) was an abugida designed by the Tibetan Lama Phagspa for the emperor Kublai Khan during the Yuan Dynasty in China, as a unified script for all languages within the Mongolian Empire. It fell out of use after the empire was overturned by the Ming Dynasty. The vast documentation about its use gives modern linguists many clues about the changes of the Chinese languages and other Asian languages during the period.
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[edit] History
The Uighur-based Mongolian alphabet is not a perfect fit for the Mongol language, and it would be impractical to extend it to a language with a very different phonology like Chinese. Therefore, during the Yuan Dynasty (ca. 1269), Kublai Khan asked Phagspa to design a new alphabet for use by the whole empire. Phagspa extended his native Tibetan script (an Indic script) to encompass Mongol and Chinese. The resulting 38 letters have been known by several descriptive names, such as "square script" based on their shape, but today are primarily known as the Phagspa alphabet.
Despite its origin, the script was written vertically (top to bottom) like the previous Mongolian scripts. It did not receive wide acceptance and fell into disuse with the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368. After this it was mainly used as a phonetic gloss for Mongolians learning Chinese characters. Scholars such as Gari Ledyard believe that in the meantime it was one of the sources for the Korean Hangul alphabet.
[edit] Unicode
For the purpose of encoding in digital media, The Unicode Standard, starting with version 5.0,[1] assigns codepoints U+A840 to U+A877 to the 56 Phags-pa letters. [2]
