Umê script

Umê (Tibetan: དབུ་མེད་, Wylie: dbu-med, IPA: [ume]; variant spellings include umé, u-me) is a family of stylistic variants of the Tibetan alphabet used for both calligraphy and shorthand.^[3] 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.^[4]

Script type

Abugida

(Informal cursive forms of the Tibetan script)

Createdc. 620

Period

c. 620–present

Languages

• Tibetan
• Dzongkha (limited)

Quick facts Umê scripts དབུ་མེད་, Script type ...

Umê scripts དབུ་མེད་
Kyu-yig (Chuyig) Umê style Bêtsug Umê style Drutsa Umê style Tsugtung Umê style Tsugring Umê style Tsugma-chu Umê style
Script type	Abugida (Informal cursive forms of the Tibetan script)
Created	c. 620
Period	c. 620–present
Languages	Tibetan Dzongkha (limited)
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Brahmi Northern Brahmi Gupta[1][2] Tibetan Umê scripts
Child systems	Lepcha Khema Phagspa Marchen Tamyig
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Tibt (330), ​Tibetan
Unicode
Unicode alias	Tibetan
Unicode range	U+0F00–U+0FFF
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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Kyuyig (Tibetan: འཁྱུག་ཡིག།་, Wylie: kyug-yig) or Gyu-yig (Tibetan: རྒྱུག་ཡིག།, Wylie: gyug-yig), is the most common form of Umê that people in the Tibetan region use as an informal shorthand for notes and personal correspondence. It is extremely cursive, with free-flowing, distorted glyph forms. It remains unstandardised and is difficult to decipher because of its divergent shapes. ^[5]

The other main style of the Tibetan script is the upright block form, uchen (དབུ་ཅན་ dbu-can; IPA: [utɕɛ̃]). The name of the block form, uchen means "with a head", corresponding to the presence of the horizontal guide line. This script is the standard formal variant of the script, used for official and religious purposes.