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Lepcha ᰛᰩᰵᰛᰧᰵ‎
Lepcha Alphabet chart (Mingzat)
Script type	Abugida
Period	c. 1700–present
Direction	Left-to-right
Languages	Lepcha
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Brahmi Gupta Tibetan Lepcha
Child systems	Limbu
Sister systems	Meitei, Khema, Phagspa, Marchen
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Lepc (335), ​Lepcha (Róng)
Unicode
Unicode alias	Lepcha
Unicode range	U+1C00–U+1C4F

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The Lepcha script, or Róng script, is an abugida used by the Lepcha people to write the Lepcha language. Unusually for an abugida, syllable-final consonants are written as diacritics.

Lepcha is derived from the Tibetan script, and may have some Burmese influence. According to tradition, it was devised at the beginning of the 18th century by prince Chakdor Namgyal of the Namgyal dynasty of Sikkim, or by scholar Thikúng Men Salóng in the 17th century. Early Lepcha manuscripts were written in vertical columns from top to bottom. When they were later written horizontally, the letters were reoriented 90° anticlockwise (compared to their Tibetan prototypes) to maintain their alignment with the direction of writing. This resulted in the script's unuusal method of writing final consonants, as conjunct forms (ligatures) became superposed diacritics.^[1]

As in most other Brahmic scripts, the short vowel /-a/ is not written; other vowels are written with diacritics before (/-i, -o/), after (/-ā, -u/), or under (/-e/) the initial consonant. The length mark, however, is written over the initial, as well as any final consonant diacritic, and fuses with /-o/ and /-u/. (When fused as /-ō/, however, it lies below any final consonant.) Initial vowels do not have separate letters, but are written with the vowel diacritics on an &-shaped zero-consonant letter.

There are postposed diacritics for medial /-y-/ and /-r-/, which may be combined (krya). For medial /-l-/, however, there are seven dedicated conjunct letters. That is, there is a special letter for /kla/ which does not resemble the letter for /ka/. (Only /gla/ is written with a straightforward diacritic.)

One of the final letters, /-ŋ/, is an exception to these patterns. First, unlike the other finals, final /-ŋ/ is written to the left of the initial consonant rather than on top, occurring even before preposed vowels. That is, /kiŋ/ is written "ngki". Second, there is no inherent vowel before /-ŋ/: even short /-a-/ must be written, with a diacritic unique to this situation. (It appears to be the diacritic for long /-ā/ rotated 180° around the consonant letter.) That is, /kaŋ/ is written "ngka", rather than "ngk" as would be expected from the general pattern.

As an abugida, a basic letter represents both a consonant followed by an inherent vowel. In Lepcha, the inherent vowel is /a/. To start a syllable with a vowel, the appropriate vowel diacritic is added to the vowel-carrier ᰣ‎. A vowel-carrier with no diacritic represents the sound /a/.

Lepcha script was added to the Unicode Standard in April, 2008 with the release of version 5.1.

The Unicode block for Lepcha is U+1C00–U+1C4F:

• Leonard van der Kuijp, The Tibetan Script and Derivatives, in Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems, 1996.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lepcha script.

• Lepcha script at Omniglot.com
• Róng Kít - A free Lepcha Unicode Kit including fonts and keyboard files (Win/Mac/Linux), published by the Sikkim Bhutia Lepcha Apex Committee (SIBLAC)
• Noto Sans Lepcha - A free Lepcha Unicode font that harmonizes with other fonts of the Noto font family
• Mingzat Archived 2017-11-19 at the Wayback Machine - A Lepcha Unicode font by SIL, based on Jason Glavy's JG Lepcha
• JG Lepcha - A free and well designed but non-Unicode compliant font by Jason Glavy.