Umê script
Form of Tibetan writing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Umê (Tibetan: དབུ་མེད་, Wylie: dbu-med, IPA: [ume]; variant spellings include umé, u-me) is a semi-formal script used to write the Tibetan alphabet used for both calligraphy and shorthand.[1] The name umê means "headless" and refers to its distinctive feature: the absence of the horizontal guide line ('head') across the top of the letters. Between syllables, the tsheg mark (་) often appears as a vertical stroke, rather than the shorter 'dot'-like mark in some other scripts. There are two main kinds of umê writing:
- Drutsa (Tibetan: འབྲུ་ཚ་, Wylie: 'bru-tsa), used for writing documents.
- Bêtsug (Tibetan: དཔེ་ཚུགས་, Wylie: dpe-tshugs), used for writing scriptures.
Other Tibetan scripts include the upright block form, uchen (དབུ་ཅན་ dbu-can; IPA: [utɕɛ̃]) and the everyday, handwritten cursive, gyug yig (རྒྱུག་ཡིག་ rgyug-yig). The name of the block form, uchen means "with a head", corresponding to the presence of the horizontal guide line.
